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Obama: Innovation will shape the future
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| President Barack Obama directs parts of his speech to a group of Hudson Valley Community College students who attended the event held at their school Monday, Sept. 21. Robert Ragaini/Hudson-Catskill Newspapers |
By Francesca Olsen
President Barack Obama visited Hudson Valley Community College Monday, Sept. 21 for a speech and classroom tour and heralded the value of community colleges, their students and the value of education for individuals and for the country as a whole.
Obama also laid out a strategy for American innovation, saying: “We must choose to do what past generations have done: shape a brighter future through hard work and innovation.”
The speech took place in the Williams Automotive Building on the HVCC campus, with solar panels and a wind turbine visible behind the president’s podium. The event was not open to the public, but about 350 tickets were distributed to area technology workers and companies, HVCC students, faculty and staff and state/local leaders and White House guests.
Among the crowd were Gov. David Paterson, U.S. Representatives Maurice Hinchey (D-22nd), Paul Tonko (D-21st) and Scott Murphy (D-20th), state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, state Sen. John Sampson (D, WF-19th) and Albany Mayor Gerald Jennings.
Joe Sarubbi, executive director of TEC-SMART, was also in the audience and led the president on a tour of technology classrooms at HVCC. Sarubbi was responsible for the design and delivery of photovoltaic installers programs at HVCC.
TEC-SMART, which stands for Training and Education Center for Semi-Conductor Manufacturing and Alternative and Renewable Technologies, is an HVCC college facility scheduled to open in January 2010 and will feature more than a dozen classrooms and laboratories used to train the workforce in green technologies.
TEC-SMART is located in Malta, Saratoga County, next to the proposed GlobalFoundries semiconductor manufacturing plant.
Obama tied this in to his recipe for a successful nation that can once again become a global leader in innovation and education.
“Communities like this one were once the heart of America’s manufacturing strength,” he said. “Over the last few decades, you’ve borne the brunt of a changing economy which has seen many manufacturing plants close in the face of global competition.
“As we emerge from this economic crisis, our great challenge will be to ensure that we do not simply drift into the future, accepting less for our children and less for America … if government does its modest part, there is no stopping the most powerful and generative economic force the world has ever known: the American people.”
To see more American innovation, Obama said the nation must start from the ground up, doing more basic research, making the decision to attend college and graduate.
“These are the building blocks of innovation: education, infrastructure and research,” he said. “We know that the nation that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow.”
Obama said he has set an “ambitious goal” for America to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. Jobs requiring college degrees, he said, are the ones expected to increase in the nation and if the rate of college graduates stays where it is, it will be more difficult to fill those positions with qualified American people.
The president touched upon legislation that has been passed or is making its way through Congress to benefit education and innovation, including increasing Pell Grants, a simplified $2,500 tax credit for college tuition, the new GI Bill and a bill to “cut out the middleman” on student loans, allowing the federal government to loan money directly to students.
Banks “are lobbying to keep this easy money flowing,” he said. “This is exactly the kind of special interest effort that has succeeded before and that we cannot allow to succeed again.”
The entire room drowned in applause when the president made that statement.
“Future success is no guarantee. As Americans, we must always remember that our leadership is not an inheritance, it is a responsibility,” Obama said, in closing. “This generation has an unparalleled opportunity that we are called upon to seize. That is what you are doing at HVCC and that is what we will do as a nation.”
Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, introduced Obama. Biden has been a community college teacher for the bulk of her 30-year teaching career and currently teaches at a community college in Washington, D.C.
“People often ask me why I chose to teach at a community college,” she said. “It is because every day my students inspire me with their commitment, their struggles and their belief in education as the best hope for a brighter future for themselves and their families.”
In fact, at least in the Capital Region, citizens seem to be motivated to sign up for community college classes: HVCC enrolled approximately 13,500 students this fall and is expecting record enrollment for the third straight academic year. The first days of classes saw a 14 percent enrollment increase at Columbia-Greene Community College and C-GCC has hired 20 new part-time adjunct professors to accommodate the growing population.
Congressman Murphy said that he was proud to hear Obama speak about upstate New York in such a way. “I have spent my entire career working to create jobs in high tech business across upstate New York and I know that one of the keys to success is having a well educated work force,” he said in a press release.
“Twenty-first century jobs will require increasingly-knowledgeable workers and the innovative programs at Hudson Valley Community College are the key to providing them,” he added.
Obama also laid out a strategy for American innovation, saying: “We must choose to do what past generations have done: shape a brighter future through hard work and innovation.”
The speech took place in the Williams Automotive Building on the HVCC campus, with solar panels and a wind turbine visible behind the president’s podium. The event was not open to the public, but about 350 tickets were distributed to area technology workers and companies, HVCC students, faculty and staff and state/local leaders and White House guests.
Among the crowd were Gov. David Paterson, U.S. Representatives Maurice Hinchey (D-22nd), Paul Tonko (D-21st) and Scott Murphy (D-20th), state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, state Sen. John Sampson (D, WF-19th) and Albany Mayor Gerald Jennings.
Joe Sarubbi, executive director of TEC-SMART, was also in the audience and led the president on a tour of technology classrooms at HVCC. Sarubbi was responsible for the design and delivery of photovoltaic installers programs at HVCC.
TEC-SMART, which stands for Training and Education Center for Semi-Conductor Manufacturing and Alternative and Renewable Technologies, is an HVCC college facility scheduled to open in January 2010 and will feature more than a dozen classrooms and laboratories used to train the workforce in green technologies.
TEC-SMART is located in Malta, Saratoga County, next to the proposed GlobalFoundries semiconductor manufacturing plant.
Obama tied this in to his recipe for a successful nation that can once again become a global leader in innovation and education.
“Communities like this one were once the heart of America’s manufacturing strength,” he said. “Over the last few decades, you’ve borne the brunt of a changing economy which has seen many manufacturing plants close in the face of global competition.
“As we emerge from this economic crisis, our great challenge will be to ensure that we do not simply drift into the future, accepting less for our children and less for America … if government does its modest part, there is no stopping the most powerful and generative economic force the world has ever known: the American people.”
To see more American innovation, Obama said the nation must start from the ground up, doing more basic research, making the decision to attend college and graduate.
“These are the building blocks of innovation: education, infrastructure and research,” he said. “We know that the nation that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow.”
Obama said he has set an “ambitious goal” for America to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. Jobs requiring college degrees, he said, are the ones expected to increase in the nation and if the rate of college graduates stays where it is, it will be more difficult to fill those positions with qualified American people.
The president touched upon legislation that has been passed or is making its way through Congress to benefit education and innovation, including increasing Pell Grants, a simplified $2,500 tax credit for college tuition, the new GI Bill and a bill to “cut out the middleman” on student loans, allowing the federal government to loan money directly to students.
Banks “are lobbying to keep this easy money flowing,” he said. “This is exactly the kind of special interest effort that has succeeded before and that we cannot allow to succeed again.”
The entire room drowned in applause when the president made that statement.
“Future success is no guarantee. As Americans, we must always remember that our leadership is not an inheritance, it is a responsibility,” Obama said, in closing. “This generation has an unparalleled opportunity that we are called upon to seize. That is what you are doing at HVCC and that is what we will do as a nation.”
Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, introduced Obama. Biden has been a community college teacher for the bulk of her 30-year teaching career and currently teaches at a community college in Washington, D.C.
“People often ask me why I chose to teach at a community college,” she said. “It is because every day my students inspire me with their commitment, their struggles and their belief in education as the best hope for a brighter future for themselves and their families.”
In fact, at least in the Capital Region, citizens seem to be motivated to sign up for community college classes: HVCC enrolled approximately 13,500 students this fall and is expecting record enrollment for the third straight academic year. The first days of classes saw a 14 percent enrollment increase at Columbia-Greene Community College and C-GCC has hired 20 new part-time adjunct professors to accommodate the growing population.
Congressman Murphy said that he was proud to hear Obama speak about upstate New York in such a way. “I have spent my entire career working to create jobs in high tech business across upstate New York and I know that one of the keys to success is having a well educated work force,” he said in a press release.
“Twenty-first century jobs will require increasingly-knowledgeable workers and the innovative programs at Hudson Valley Community College are the key to providing them,” he added.
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