Human Technologies recently presented a check for $1,000 to the MVCC Foundation, to be used for tools, materials, and outsides services in support of any engineering-related projects between the students at Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC) and any Utica area business. We expect that this money will help foster the engineering relationships with local industry that will be beneficial to the student learning experience while creating or enhancing business opportunities in our community.
Human Technologies has been partnering with MVCC’s Mechanical Engineering Technology program for the past nine years, working with the 3rd semester Mechanical Engineering Technology students Lean Six Sigma class as part of their lab requirement. The students are typically here for about six weeks, (two hours per week plus whatever time they put in on their own). Beginning last year, we started working with the 2nd-semester Engineering Science students in one of their Design classes. Class sizes are typically 15-20 students, and the students are broken up into groups of 3 or 4 and put on specific improvement projects depending on what we are working on at the time. The students get “real world” engineering experience, rather than following textbook examples, and Human Technologies receives the benefit of outside eyes looking at our processes to try to improve them. Plus, the students get a chance to implement change, see what works and what doesn’t, and engineer further design changes based on their successes and failures.
A group of students from 2017’s class was selected to take part in NYSID’s CREATE program and presented their final project in Albany, NY. It was the first time in the history of CREATE that a two-year degree program and college took part in the symposium.