Retaining Young Talent event
April 8, 2010
Students Tackle “Bright Flight” in Upstate New York
Thursday, April 15, 2010 7 p.m.
Alumni and Advancement Center
300 East River Road
Rochester, NY
In November 2009, students from the University of Rochester, Cornell University, and Syracuse University gathered for a weekend-long collaborative brainstorming session called “Work/Play/Stay//Mitigating Bright Flight: How to Retain Graduates in the Upstate Region.”. Join University alumni, parents, and friends April 15th at the University of Rochester for an enlightening evening with the Rochester students and faculty who participated in that session. There will be a panel presentation, a video, and a discussion about the “bright flight” issue and potential solutions.
Acording to U.S. census data analyses by the New York Times and the Brookings Institution, the population of young adults in upstate New York has been declining at an unprecedented rate. Between 1990 and 2004, the number of 25-to 34-year-old residents in the 52-county upstate region declined by more than 25 percent. In the Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Binghamton areas, the decline was more than 30 percent. The rates of emigration were found to be highest among college graduates and termed “bright flight.”
What implications do these trends have on the well-being of upstate communities? What can be done to mitigate this exodus? Please join us in a discussion of the causes and possible solutions to the “bright flight” phenomenon.
Following the program, enjoy a reception sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations.
Admission is free. Advance reservations are required. Special thanks goes to High Tech Rochester for its support of this event!
To Register:
Online: www.rochester.edu/alumnievents
Phone: 877.MELIORA (877.635.4672) toll free or 585.273.5888
Penfield Robotics Team 1511 Rolling Thunder owns Beantown
March 30, 2010
Penfield Robotics Team 1511 Rolling Thunder goes to Beantown - and proves that Rochester can innovate too!
Boston, MA, Sunday, March 28, 2010: The Penfield Robotics Team 1511 “Rolling Thunder” competed this past weekend in the Boston Regional Robotics competition. This team, which had already won the Engineering Inspiration award in the local Finger Lakes Regional in early March, proved to their competitors from Boston and throughout the Northeast that Rochester is a hotbed of innovation and student achievement. The team brought home the competition’s most coveted award (the Chairman’s award) and placed second overall in the robot competition qualifying again as a finalist for the International competition in Atlanta. The team won honors for the “Coopetition bonus - tying with the team seeded first overall in the competition by competing in the matches with the highest total scores. The team won an honorable mention in the Safety Award competition, and one team member, PHS Junior Crystal Vongnaphone, was selected as one of two students at the Regional to be a finalist for the new Dean’s List award - an award for excellence in student performance. Crystal is one of just over 100 Dean’s List finalists worldwide.
The Chairman’s Award represents the spirit of FIRST. It honors the team that, in the judges’ estimation, best represents a model for other teams to emulate, and which embodies the goals and purpose of FIRST. It remains FIRST’s most prestigious award, and qualifies the team to compete internationally in Atlanta for the International Chairman’s Award. The Judges at this year’s event in Boston had one recommendation for improvement: Clone Yourselves!
The Boston Regional was held on the Boston University campus in the Agannis Arena. Over 50 teams from that region and across the Northeast competed. Over 50 team members, mentors and parents travelled to Boston for the event. With, over 40 Penfield high school student team members-the students, their parents, team alumni, and 26 active teachers and mentors dedicate thousands of hours of time to the team. They work together year round, on top of building a competitive robot in 6 weeks. Significant accomplishments for Team 1511 included hundreds of hours of community service, robotics demos, outreach, recruiting, finding sponsors, FIRST Lego League help and assistance, helping rookie teams, helping out other teams at competitions, and even helping start FLL teams in other countries like the Bahamas. The presenters showed a map with Team 1511 “Thunderbolts” marking all the teams they had helped throughout the US and the world. The team was judged against 53 other teams who attended the Boston Regional, including teams from New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, England, Brazil, Connecticut, and Maine (More info at www.bostonfirst.org). To qualify the team submitted an essay, a video presentation and 3 team members presented to a judging panel (http://bit.ly/b7eXBk ). This is the 3rd Chairman’s award for the team (the last one being in 2009 when they won the Chesapeake Regional Chairman’s Award). The team can only submit an award application at one regional each year. Penfield Robotics team has an impressive record of over 26 trophies in 6 years, 3 Regional Chairman’s awards and the team won an International Judges Award in Atlanta in 2009.
The teams major sponsor is Harris RF Communications, and many of its 23 mentors are Harris Engineers, led by Larry Lewis the engineering team lead mentor. Other local sponsors include: Comella Orthodontics, Simcona Electronics, Schuler-Haas Electric, S & W Technologies, Penfield Hess, OS-Cubed, Inc., Debbie Supply, Drelick’s Welding, VanBortel Machines, Family First Federal Credit union, Huther Painting, IC2S, International Art Acquisitions, Maxie’s Ice Cream, National Fire Adjustment Company, Park Dental, STEM Robotics, Penfield HS Student Council, Drake Environmental, Town and Country Travel, Penfield HS PTSA and many smaller sponsors.
FIRST (which stands For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an international organization that promotes leadership and engineering in the elementary through high school environment by encouraging a cooperative team effort between professional engineers, teachers and parents. More information about FIRST can be found at www.usfirst.org .
The team has many pictures available from the Boston Regional and other events at http://rollingthunder.smugmug.com . More information about Rolling Thunder can be found on our award winning website at www.penfieldrobotics.com .
As usual the reaction from local press was Ho Hum - not worth mentioning. Sigh.
RIT 48 - create an entrepreneurial business in 48 hours
March 14, 2010
Starting this Friday RIT students will have the opportunity to create an entrepreneurial web-based business in 48 hours. RIT 48 has selected this blog author to be a judge for this highly competitive and interesting competition. So what is RIT48? They are glad you asked: RIT48 aims to bring together students from various disciplines to pitch, plan, develop and launch a web startup in one weekend— or, as the name suggests, 48 hours. An intense, energy fueled, entrepreneurial event, RIT48 was designed to showcase the innovative and creative spirit of RIT students while offering the opportunity to learn and meet new people. Always had a cool idea for a web startup but never the time or resources to make it happen? RIT48 is for you. You can form a team, develop your idea, and launch a web startup to the world in a mere 48 hours. We’ll bring the coffee.
The competition is open to Alumi, Students and Faculty, but all development of the website or business plan must be completed during the 48 hours of the competition.
I’m excited to say I’ve been selected to judge this awesome event and I’m really looking forward to working with my fellow Judges - Susan Beebe (SM expert), Aaron Newman (SM2/Techrigy), and Liz Lawley (Director of the Lab for Social Computing at RIT) on this task. The top winning team will receive $600. Here is the schedule for the 2 days:
Friday (9AM-All Night): Introductions, Planning, Developing
Saturday (10am-7pm): Testing, Tweaking, Refining, Presenting
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Good luck to the team members and may the best team win!
Only our highest achieving children being left behind.
August 28, 2009
In a recent post by Tom Loveless and Michael Petrilli on the NY Times editorial page they go into a detailed analysis of a recently touted study that showed that our highest achieving children were also benefitting from NCLB (the No Child Left Behind Act). In a rather thorough debunking they showed that, in fact, the rate of growth in achievement of these highest performing children had decreased over time (not the growth - the rate of growth) and that it fell far behind the improvement curve of the bottom section of the bell curve. While our lowest performing children improved by as much as 25% under the new system - higher performing children improved by no more than 5%, a slower rate of growth than in times previous to the enactment of NCLB.
Furthermore the studies had some significant statistical WTFs. Improvements in states such as North Dakota were weighted the same as states such as California - despite the fact that California has 60x the students of North Dakota.
As a parent of a high-performing child I can tell you from personal experience that the NCLB program and “experiential learning” experiments like “fuzzy math” are failing our high performing children. The saving grace is that private enterprise and colleges are stepping in to assist where schools are leaving off with programs like FIRST Robotics and John Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth. The fact of the matter is though that these programs - which generally require either substantial financial resources or corporate sponsorship - are having trouble helping bright children in the most economically challenged sections of our country. Think what could happen if the government got behind not just lifing up the lower 1/3 of our performers, but in enhancing the education of the top 1/2 of our performers. How much more productive could we be if our best and brightest were even better and brighter and were encouraged to succeed rather than beaten down into the general average population? Programs like FIRST and CTY show that it can be done - we just need to produce the will to do it.
If you don’t believe this is true look at your local school’s budget. How much of that budget is dedicated to assisting children with disabilities of one kind or another vs enhancing the education of our top performers. Now I’m not suggesting we reduce help for children with IEPs - they need that help to make them productive members of society. Is it so hard to envision though a scenario where we not only help our disabled children but we truly challenge our smart and creative ones? These are our next CEO’s, entrepreneurs, engineers, software developers, and visionaries. Our current educational system fails these kids in a fundamental way - by forcing them into an environment where they must “conform to the norm” instead of “exceed to succeed”. My son’s public school for instance (a well funded suburban school) fails to offer advanced software development classes, entrepreneurial programs or other challenges for high end performance. Getting teachers involved and reimbursed for helping with these programs is always last on the agenda, because the state and federal government mandate that they must spend so much on servicing the bottom 50% of performers.
So how do we change this? We need to take action at the grass roots level - every entrepreneur in America - to encourage our leadership to look at how we can best enhance programs like FIRST and CTY to push them into every school, even the disadvantaged ones. My son’s FIRST (Penfield Robotics team 1511) team adopted an inner-city team (team 2999) and helped them through their rookie year with money, mentors and facilities - if our children can step up to help why can’t we? Take some of your entrepreneurial dollars and dedicate them to your future by sponsoring a FIRST team, creating a CTY scholarship, or just volunteer to help and assist a program like Science Olympiad or Mathletes. It’s a great way to give back to the community and help create the next generation of employees, entrepreneurial partners, and industry visionaries.
Monroe Community College offers entrepreneur scholarship
July 28, 2009
Monroe Community College is offering a 15 week tuition, fees and books scholarship for their Entrepreneurial Studies class. The scholarship is for the entire class cost (100% of tuition, textbooks and student fees) for this 3 credit hour course. The classes will run September 8th through December 23rd, 2009. The Business 110 Entrepreneurial studies course will cover small business opportunities, management of a small business, marketing and resources. They are particularly interested in bringing students in who are interested in starting a company in the following fields:
- Health
- Medical Services
- Tourism
- Construction
- Food Industry
- Arts and Culture
To be eligible for the scholarship a candidate must be a US Citizen, National, Refugee Alien or Permanent Resident Alien, be interested in opening a business in the next 12 months, commit to successfully completing the entire 11 week course, be a resident of Monroe County for at least the last 6 months, and NOT already receiving funding from another program or programs that pays full tuition. The scholarship is open to all and under represented or minority groups are encourage to apply. You must COMPLETE the course to be eligible for the tuition waver. You must apply by August 3rd.
The College is awarding 38 scholarships this fall! Find out more at http://www.monroecc.edu/depts/business/entrepreneurs/ or Contact Sherry Tshibangu
Sherry Tshibangu
Director, Emerging Entrepreneur Scholarship Program
Building 5, Room 52l
Monroe Community College
1000 E. Henrietta Rd.
Rochester, NY 14623
Fax: 585.292.3828
Email: Newbiz@monroecc.edu
To submit an application by AUGUST 3RD you must fill in the following enrollment forms: http://www.monroecc.edu/depts/business/entrepreneurs/enroll.htm
Infotonics sponsors tech summer camp
June 22, 2009
INFOTONICS TECHNOLOGY CENTER TO HOST SEMI HIGH TECH UNIVERSITY SUMMER PROGRAM FEATURING INDUSTRY-LED INTRODUCTION TO SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY AND HIGH-TECH JOBS.
The Infotonics Technology Center (ITC) announced today that they are accepting applications from area high school students who are currently 16 or 17 years in age (or who will be 16 in 2009) for the SEMI High Tech U. program. High Tech U. provides students with an intensive, three-day, industry-led introduction to the semiconductor industry, potential career paths, and educational requirements. The program will be hosted at ITC’s facility on Route 332 in Canandaigua, and runs August 11th through the 13th.
Any student in the Rochester/Finger Lakes region who has an interest in high-tech is encouraged to apply. There is no cost for students to attend, and two students will by chosen to receive $1000 college scholarships at the conclusion of the program.
Students will participate in several hands-on activities that focus on topics including statistics, nano-technology, solar and alternative energy technologies, mathematics, and problem solving. Students will also participate in mock interviews and hear from a panel of area colleges and universities about local educational options. The program culminates with a graduation ceremony to be held at Finger Lakes Community College. Last year, 28 students from Canandaigua, Geneva and Victor high schools attended the program.
For more information, or to apply to the program, call David Gottfried, ITC Public Affairs, at (585) 919-3081 or email david.gottfried@itcmems.com. Applications will be accepted until Friday, July 31st.
Local Young Entrepreneurs to Debut Start-Up Ventures to the Public
May 18, 2009
Young Entrepreneurs Academy Logo
Local middle and high school students from the Young Entrepreneurs Academy Class of 2009 at both the University of Rochester and SUNY Geneseo will reveal more than two dozen new businesses to the public, at the YEA! Trade Show on Wednesday, May 27th, from 5:00PM to 7:00 PM, at the University of Rochester’s Wilson Commons.
The presentation is a culmination of nine months of hard work, resulting in the graduates owning and operating their own businesses or social movements.
At YEA! Students learn how to make a job-not take a job. They are taught by local entrepreneurs and with the help of business mentors from within the community they are able to brainstorm ideas, write business plans and actually launch their own real company.
YEA! runs during the academic year from October to June, with classes meeting on a weekly basis for a period of three hours. The program is now currently accepting applications for next year’s YEA! Class of 2010.
The Trade Show is free and open to the public, and is a great way to check out all the new innovations and services developed right in your own backyard! To learn more or to R.S.V.P, please call the Young Entrepreneurs Academy, Inc, at (585) 272-3535 or visit us online at www.yeausa.org
FIRST founder Woodie Flowers on Educational Reform
May 11, 2009
MIT Professor Emeritus Woodie Flowers discusses how and why science and engineering eductation must transform - and how he is working to achieve that goal through FIRST and other elements of education. The presentation was given at Olin College of Engineering. If you are an entrepreneur that is looking to hire Engineers or scientists in the future, this is a “must see” video:
He posits that training is a commodity, education confers comparative advantage, and much of what we call education is actually training. Learning spelling and grammar is training, learning to communicate with it is education. Learning calculus is training, learning to solve problems with it is education, etc.
FIRST is one of the best ways to promote this type of education - he says that learning WITH is always better than learning ABOUT something. Team 1511 (Penfield Robotics) is a woman-lead FIRST team that has a program called “Project Girl Wrench” that addresses attracting women to the FIRST team.
RIT to host innovation + creativity festival 2009
April 28, 2009
May 2nd from 10am-5pm RIT will host the ImagineRIT creativity festival on campus. The festival, which is free and open to the public, is held throughout the RIT campus in Henrietta, NY. There are also free shuttles from the MCC campus to the festival running all day, of the RIT parking lots fill. There will be food avaiable (for an extra charge) on campus, so you can plan to stay all day. The event will exposes thousands to the hundreds of examples of student, faculty and staff creativity and innovation. ImagineRIT is targeted at all ages from small children to high school, college and adults. The entire campus is involved in the festival with more than 400 events going on all over campus.
YEA to host student entrepreneur competition at RIT
April 27, 2009
The Young Entrepreneurs Academy, a program run by a variety of local colleges including the U of R, RIT and Geneseo, is holding a business plan competition on Friday May 1st at RIT. The program will feature student finalists between 11 and 17 who will present their business plans to a panel of judges and a public audience. The competition will award a college scholarship and a chance to showcase their business at the upcoming Innovation Creativity Festival May 2nd at RIT. To attend the presentation, which is being held from 4-6pm May 1st at the Golisano Auditorium on the RIT campus you must sign up by either calling 585-272-3535 or emailing khanna@yeausa.orgby the end of day on Tuesday April 28th.
For more information about YEA see their website at www.yeausa.org
