State awards Le Moyne $1.8 million for upcoming quantitative-reasoning center

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The state has awarded Le Moyne College a grant of $1.8 million for a project that will launch a quantitative-reasoning center (QRC).

The funding was among the grants announced in the regional economic-development council (REDC) awards announced last week in Albany.

The state grant will contribute to the overall $7.5 million cost of the project to develop the QRC within Le Moyne’s Noreen Reale Falcone Library, with other “portals” located across campus, the college said in a news release issued Tuesday.

Housed in a 25,000-square-foot space in Le Moyne’s library, the QRC will include computer stations and labs; seminar rooms and collaborative/peer-learning laboratories; tutoring facilities; maker and group-project spaces; videoconferencing capabilities; and demonstration/presentation rooms.

“The QRC will play a major role in developing a key competency not only for Le Moyne students but also for community and business partners throughout the Central New York region,” Le Moyne President Linda LeMura said in the release. “The skills that will be taught through the QRC are absolutely vital to this region as we seek to educate individuals with solid analytical and mathematical aptitude, as well as higher-level thinking and reasoning.”

Le Moyne also noted that the five-county, Central New York region is currently implementing plans tied to the $500 million Upstate Revitalization Initiative (URI) it was awarded in 2015.

The process has identified quantitative-reasoning skills and educational resources as “severely lacking,” which could hamper economic growth and job creation in the region, according to the release.

The QRC will be an “important resource for addressing this inadequacy,” the school contends.

Need for QRC
Le Moyne College sees “ample evidence of the increasing importance” of data analytics and quantitative-reasoning skills in preparing students and current professionals for jobs.

The college cites a 2015 study from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) that found that American students were below the international average in math and about average in science and reading.

The PISA is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students’ reading, mathematics, and science literacy every three years, according to the website of the National Center for Education Statistics, which conducts the assessment in the U.S.

The intent of Le Moyne’s QRC is to “build and strengthen” these skills among individuals, including students; elementary and secondary teachers; supervisors and administrative personnel in both the private and public sector; manufacturing workers; and veteran populations.

“Le Moyne recently expanded its emphasis on quantitative-reasoning skills in our core curriculum; we are convinced it is a real need for our students, societally and individually,” Kate Costello-Sullivan, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Le Moyne, said in the release. “A liberal-arts education prepares students with a breadth of skills to help them become engaged, productive citizens. Like writing, quantitative reasoning is foundational; both help students adapt and succeed over the course of what will inevitably be changeable careers in a complex, ever-evolving world.”

Jim Joseph, dean of Le Moyne’s Madden School of Business, helped the school secure the grant by “galvanizing support for the QRC among the region’s business community.” As a result, 55 companies have pledged their support.

They included Oneida Air Systems, Inc., which has already committed to utilizing the resources of the QRC to “improve the quantitative skills of its employees,” per the release.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com