Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues now as we come up on 840. It's a little foggy in some spots still and temperature is at 63. Time for our Scholastically Speaking segment where we catch up with somebody from Finger Lakes Community College and today I have the honor of talking to Sam Samantha who is the professor of physics and a coordinator of the Smart Systems Technologies program there. Sam, good morning. How are you this morning, sir?
Sam Samanta: Thank you, Paul. I'm well. And the reason we wanted to bring this up is because FLCC has received what's called a three-year National Science Foundation grant. It's just shy of a nine hundred and fifty thousand dollar grant and these funds are going to be used to strengthen the Smart Systems Technologies program by expanding access to education through what's called a HyFlex, which makes it easier for students, incumbent workers, underemployed college graduates to complete the degree program course in the mandatory co-op without interrupting any current income or employment.
Paul Szmal: Looking at this field, by the way, which covers quite a bit, can you give us a little bit of an idea of what the Smart Systems Technologies program is all about, Sam?
Sam Samanta: About 15 years ago, we started out with the name Instrumentation and Control Technologies. That was the outcome of discussions with the Ontario County Economic Developer at that time and other business leaders. Mainly, the rationale was that many emerging businesses, high technology businesses, and startup businesses have need for adaptable workers with more advanced technical skills that currently were not available. And when businesses hire people from out of state, they may have a hard time keeping them here once they encounter winter, for example. So initially, it was focused on automation, robotics, and mechatronics. And then now, we call it Smart Systems Technology because we have incorporated industry 4.0 skills and beginning to add AI-related skills in the program.
Paul Szmal: And by the way, the FLCC Smart Systems Technologies program, two-year degree program that combines physics and industrial technology courses with 270-plus hours of co-op experience at local tech company. And those co-ops frequently lead to full-time jobs for students. So that co-op portion, that component of the course is a key element.
Sam Samanta: Yes, indeed. I have done presentations across the country at national conferences, and I've been urging educators and deans of other colleges to make sure to include even a brief co-op experience. And the rationale behind that is that although a large business could hire a dozen people with different backgrounds, put together a team with a good manager, and solve technical problems, that is not the luxury for small and medium-sized businesses. So often, they can only hire one or two persons at a time, but they need the person to be very versatile, have good communication skills, ability to learn on their own, as well as with the team. And these needs are very diverse because you have, you know, 98% of the businesses in the country are small and medium-sized businesses. And among the small, especially, the needs are very diverse, and no educational system can train people for all of those skills. So the best way to address that gap across the country is for students to start doing a co-op at a business where educators would match the students' ability to what the business needs. And business has a good opportunity to evaluate if the person is going to grow into the unicorn with all the skills that they are looking for.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Sam Samanta, who is a professor of physics and coordinator of the Smart Systems Technologies program at Finger Lakes Community College here on FLX Morning. Just how in high demand are robotics and mechatronics jobs right now, Sam?
Sam Samanta: So demand has been increasing, but it is hidden, meaning many of the small businesses, especially, they don't always advertise, and the type of new job description they come up with, they may not fit into clear cut DOL, Department of Labor categories. So it is not known widely. However, we are in constant contact with over 50 businesses across all industries in greater Rochester region. We also get phone calls or email when they have job opening, and we send them resumes of appropriate students who may work out best, meaning they didn't say nine skills and attributes, and they cannot find that in hundreds of resumes they may get. What we say to them that we don't have that ready-made unicorn, but connect them to someone who brings in, say, six out of nine skills, who can show that they are capable of learning other things.
The other important factor with this co-op, besides them getting their foot in the door and have opportunity to work full time, even while they are completing the study, the critical major component, I would say, is that it increases retention of students in the program. They are highly motivated to complete the program, and that is a problem across the country. Many students in technology and engineering fields are dropping out of their education plan, partly because they're running into some personal difficulty or academic difficulties. And they don't see the light before the end of the tunnel, whereas with our students, once they start working, they have a good understanding of what their opportunities are and career path going forward. And that's a very, very important component. And we, of course, encourage them to pursue further studies, so it's not just getting a good-paying job.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. As we continue on in the conversation here, I wanted to ask about the use of AI in smart systems technologies education. I have to imagine that it does play a role here as AI continues to emerge throughout the world.
Sam Samanta: Yeah, so AI has been around for a long time, not necessarily the GPT version that we are all familiar with since 21, 22. We were one of the first community college to teach students how to use machine vision. So you have a camera which is looking at an object and measuring parts or identifying what it is. Bad use, some AI, you know, even a decade ago, more based on machine learning. And we were the first college to teach that skill from get-go, from 15 years ago or so. And now what we do is we encourage students to use AI to learn about new concepts or if they run into difficulty, but make sure that they validate what they're seeing from multiple sources and also check it against the reality of what things are. And secondly, we are using some of the AI resources to create learning resources for the students, whereby they can get immediate feedback on the attempt to solve a problem or answer a question, rather than waiting for a teacher to give you feedback days later. And that becomes very, very important as we scale up the program, as we have more students who are asynchronous. That is a big help because we cannot spend a lot of one-on-one time with everybody. We would, we would definitely do that if there is a need, but we need to speed up the learning process.
So in part, one of the way we use AI is, let's say we teach students how to do programming. So it would start with the flowcharting, basically the process. Then we would go over a platform called LabVIEW, which is also very important for collecting data and controlling instruments. But they can learn programming and it's very visual. So it's easy to learn. The learning curve is easier, putting blocks and wiring them up. And once they understand the process and know answers, check it against what they're supposed to be, then they can put that question, user AI, say chat GPT and ask, how do I do this in Python or MATLAB? And the program spits out a code, you copy the code and put it in the appropriate programming environment, run it and see if it works and check it, modify it. So this way, you're not spending several years learning different computer languages. You can speed up the process if you understand one and know how to validate the answers, then you can quickly generalize to multiple different languages. And that's the power of AI for them.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, it's a very powerful tool. It is along with augmented virtual reality, which is also used as part of this program.
Sam Samanta: That's correct. So we have Microsoft HoloLens 2. These are head-mounted systems where you can see through them at the same time you can superimpose 3D graphics on it. And we also have Magic Leap 2. So these are useful. For example, with Magic Leap 2, you could put that headgear on, look at a machine, stand in front of a machine. And if an operator is encountering a difficulty, does not know how to solve it and nobody in the team or the company professionals know how to take care of it, then they can transmit what the operator is seeing through networks to someone who is sitting in Denver, who is looking at this remotely, someone who is an expert in the systems. And they can then say, OK, press this button or check that this is working fine and so on and help basically troubleshoot the machinery. So normally, when things break down or there are difficulties, one may bring in a consultant or a person who comes in from a distance. There's a travel time involved, cost involved, and that is all short-circuited through this remote assist framework. So that's one aspect. The other one is you can use this to teach people about how to handle situations or machinery which might be more expensive or situations which are dangerous, like working with electrical circuit box. If it is a main power box and you could, if you made a mistake, you could create an arc flash, which basically creates an electrical lightning bolt and that can damage a person as well as equipment. So practicing those things ahead of time using augmented virtual reality is very important. And of course, there are other programs which use this to teach people how to do welding and how to do medical procedure and so on.
Paul Szmal: I appreciate the conversation, Sam. We've learned a lot here in a short amount of time. And if you want to find out more about the Smart Systems Technologies program at FLCC, visit the website at flcc.org. Sam, thank you, sir. It was a pleasure speaking with you this morning.
Sam Samanta: Likewise, Paul. Thank you. It is 8.53 on FLX Morning.
