Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s visit to Batavia on Tuesday included some hands-on education.
Hochul met for about a half hour with officials at Genesee Community College, who discussed the college’s workforce development initiatives and STEM — or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — career path training.
A subsequent campus tour included the third-floor science laboratories, where Assistant Professor Karen Huffman-Kelly was teaching a Cellular Biology class.
The lab is equipped with a luminometer, a hand-held swab unit that uses bioluminescence technology to test bacteria levels on food-processing equipment.
Hochul — under the guidance of Greg Sharpe, instructor for the college’s Food Processing Technology program, pictured above — used the device to test the cleanliness of a student’s cell phone.
“We’ll see whether I want to keep holding your cell phone,” Hochul told the student.
The verdict?
After a quick swab and a 15-second countdown, the device yielded a score of 136.
“Not too bad,” Sharpe said.
“Cell phones on average (score) around a 300,” he explained. “In the food industry, typically anything over a 30 we make them re-clean it.”
GCC launched its Food Processing Technology degree program last year. It was designed to meet the demand for skilled workers in the food manufacturing field.
The program already has an international reach, as Hochul learned by chance on Tuesday.
She was introduced to Arsenio Ferreira, 22, who is in his second year of the FPT program.
Ferreira hails from the southeast Asian island nation of Timor-Leste, which became independent in 2002. He told Hochul he will bring new skills back to Timor-Leste, to help with its economic and social development.
Hochul called New York’s community colleges the creative engines of the SUNY System, with the flexibility to meet changing economic needs.
“I think we’re very lucky because we have a strong reputation as far as the academic quality of this institution,” said GCC President James Sunser, Ph.D.
The Food Processing Technology program, he noted, was developed in cooperation with Cornell University.
“Their willingness to work with us — and to accept our students in transfer — is in large part because of our strong academic reputation.”
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, right, speaks Tuesday at Genesee Community College with Arsenio Ferreira, an international student from Timor-Leste who is studying Food Processing Technology.
