Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues now at 8.40. It's our Scholastically Speaking segment where we focus on Finger Lakes Community College and I'm happy to welcome Salim Aranchi who is the professor of engineering science and the coordinator of the engineering science program at FLCC. Salim, good morning. How are you, sir?
Selim Araci: Good morning, Paul. I'm fine. How are you?
Paul Szmal: Doing well. I think with the first thing we want to establish is one of the programs that is available for technology education and it is called SUNY ReConnect. Can you give us a little explanation of what that program is about? I also am quite, you know, just recently heard about this.
Selim Araci: I think it is a program that is supported by New York State and free of charge to students who are aged between 25 and 55 and also they should not have any college degree prior and they can actually pursue a program either in health, technology or teaching as I said free of charge. So, we're just also learning about this new program.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, this sounds like it's fantastic and the idea is to match people that have maybe none or a little formal education on a college level and training with jobs that serve needs in the local economy and those are the three basic areas as you mentioned, health care, technology and teaching. Let's talk a little bit about the engineering science program at FLCC. How long have you been involved with the program?
Selim Araci: Well, for quite a long time. I just finished my 38th year actually at the college.
Paul Szmal: Wow. So, I started back in 1987, correct?
Selim Araci: Yes. No, no, it's fantastic. Can you tell me a little bit about the, I know there are a couple of different levels of curriculum that are available in the engineering sciences and we cover a wide berth which we can get to in a minute but just kind of give us the basic overview of what the engineering science program is about.
Selim Araci: Sure, sure. Engineering science is actually quite a standard curriculum. You can find across many of the community colleges within New York State. In fact, we're in quite in contact with each other, these other community colleges at the same program. It's titled as Associates in Science in Engineering Science. Now, it is designed to actually transfer students to four-year engineering programs. So even though students finishing the program with FLCC, they do get an AS, Associates in Science degree from us, but they really should continue on to a four-year school to complete and get their full engineering degree. Now, we provide the first two basics of engineering without any specialization. However, as you may know that the four-year programs actually specialize in various disciplines of engineering, let's say mechanical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, and so on. So we work with four-year schools and transfer students to these different programs. So that's the basic intent of the engineering science program. And it's a fairly standard curriculum, as I said. There are some variations from community college to community college, but in general, we follow some general guidelines with the curriculum.
Paul Szmal: Now, one thing I didn't know is that engineering science is currently one of the top 10 most popular degrees at FLCC.
Selim Araci: Yeah, that actually, it occurred with our online offering of this program. So we are, I believe, the only two-year engineering science program within New York State that offers it fully online. So the students actually seeing this opportunity, that's when we actually had quite an increase in our enrollment. It used to be a relatively small program. The total number of students in the program was around 50 to 60 students. Now we actually, our student enrollment overall is more than 120 students.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Salim Arachi, who is an engineering science professor at Finger Lakes Community College, our Scholastically Speaking segment here on FLxMorning. I understand also that FLCC has entered into a partnership with RIT.
Selim Araci: That's true, yeah. That's also, it's quite exciting. It can benefit a small group of students, but here's the deal. Actually it's an NSF grant that RIT initiated, but also collaborating both with us, Finger Lakes Community College, and Monroe Community College. So the idea is actually have only three students, incoming three students, that will be fully funded. They're both community, not fully funded. They'll get a large amount of stipend, around $5,000 per semester while they attend FLCC. And upon transferring to RIT's microelectronic engineering, so that has to be a specialized engineering field, microelectronic engineering, they will also get $10,000 per semester stipend. Only their first year though at RIT. It's a limited NSF supported grant, but it still provides opportunities to students. We're hoping to expand this grant in the future years.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, and one of the ultimate goals of this partnership is to help develop a workforce for that Micron plant that's coming to Syracuse.
Selim Araci: Exactly, exactly. In fact, today I do have a meeting with Micron and a few others on this topic as well. We're quite aware of the situation and we're trying to, you know, increase the, or have more students, you know, pursuing this program in semiconductors and microchip technology.
Paul Szmal: And there's also some extracurricular opportunities for hands-on experience as part of the engineering program.
Selim Araci: That's true. We're a engineering and technology club, and so the club meets regularly. And one of the highlights of the club, actually, every year there is a regional competition of miniature robotics. Sometimes it involves a UAV, which is an unmanned aerial vehicle, a drone, or sometimes a UGV, a ground vehicle. And so students actually work on that project and they take, they participate in a competition. And FLCC has actually been a leader in the last several years now. We always have a number one place, and we just recently, again, placed number one at that competition just this past month.
Paul Szmal: Well, absolutely. Congratulations on that.
Selim Araci: Thank you. Yes, yes.
Paul Szmal: We've talked a little bit about students coming in, coming basically out of high school into the engineering science program. Let's talk a little bit about the adult experience. There's actually an optional three-year program available.
Selim Araci: Yeah, but let me explain a little bit about this, the adult experience. And as I said before, we were always in-person, but we, in fact, pre-pandemic, we started to kind of investigate and we were hoping to offer our program fully online. And with the pandemic, that's accelerated. Now, we always had some adult students in our in-person educational approach at the engineering science program. But once we actually had the online program launched, our adult population really increased quite a bit because it provided them the flexibility of attending classes. So, that really helped those students. Now, the three-year option, that's somewhat informal because really the engineering science, the program must be completed in two years. However, the students should, in order to be able to complete the program in two years, they should come to the program at a reasonably advanced, at a calculus level math readiness. Now, oftentimes we find some students that are, they lack that background. So, we do provide them algebra, trigonometry, and some basic math. And that's when their studies increase to three years. And also, we spread out the rest of the curriculum over three years. And so, it lightens up their load. So, that's the three-year program.
Paul Szmal: Okay. And as always, I know FLCC has some fantastic support systems in place for students, whether they're college student age or adults.
Selim Araci: That's true, yes. We do have tutors and instructors are always helpful. And I know for myself that, especially with this online students, I find myself almost 24-7 excluding the sleep hours, answering student e-mails, and checking out discussion boards. And it is a little bit tough on the instructor, but it's just a habit that I can't help doing it. And students really like that quick response. Even if I can't answer them fully, I have to answer them telling them at least, no, I'll take a look at it the next day and so on. I'm always very prompt about responding to students. Also, we have a very good student support system at the college. And the feedback we get from our students is always very positive on that.
Paul Szmal: Salim, thank you very much for joining us this morning. Is there a website where people can find information about the engineering science program?
Selim Araci: The best place is to go to the college's website and Google it as FLCC or Finger Lakes Community College, and they can put some keywords on engineering science in the search box. And it will get to our page quickly, and they can get more information from that. And they can also get my contact information there as well, and they can contact me anytime. E-mail would be the best way to reach me, actually.
Paul Szmal: All right. Well, I appreciate you being here this morning, sir. Thank you very much.
Selim Araci: Thank you very much, Paul.
Paul Szmal: All right. It is 851 on FLX Morning.
