SUNY Poly shifts mission to build workforce of tomorrow

MARCY — Take one look at the bustling SUNY Polytechnic Institute campus in Marcy today, and you’d be hard pressed to figure out why so many in the Mohawk Valley were worried just a few years ago. It was late 2022 when news broke that the College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering (CNSE), which had been housed at both SUNY Poly and the University at Albany for years, was being consolidated solely on the Albany campus. At the time, local leaders were fearful of what it meant for the Mohawk Valley region and for SUNY Poly at a time when its leadership was in flux. By late summer 2023, SUNY completed the CNSE move to Albany, and Winston Soboyejo took the helm as SUNY Poly’s next president on Oct. 2.

He’s been busy since then. Just nine months into his term, Soboyejo spoke to The Central New York Business Journal about how SUNY Poly has repositioned itself to better serve the community by training the workforce of tomorrow. “It’s a good time for us,” he says. Since last fall, SUNY Poly has been awarded millions in funding from the state for an array of projects on campus including $44 million to expand its health-science wing, update nursing labs, and create the Semiconductor Processing to Packaging Research, Education, and Training Center. The goal, Soboyejo says, is not only to train tomorrow’s workforce in the semiconductor and advanced manufacturing industry, but also for SUNY Poly to become a catalyst for the Mohawk Valley. “We’re in the era of resurgence of manufacturing in New York state and America,” he says. SUNY Poly wants to be part of that. Look at companies like Danfoss or Indium or nearby Wolfspeed. “They want people who are ready to work on day one,” Soboyejo says. SUNY Poly can train them. The new framing of SUNY Poly’s mission wasn’t that difficult, he says. The key parts? Align and anticipate. It’s all about finding real-world problems and figuring out how SUNY Poly can solve them. Shifting to a demand-driven focus will allow the college to remain responsive to what employers need. “We’re trying to provide the education, the workforce development that’s supporting the needs of industry that’s rising in the Mohawk Valley,” he says. SUNY Poly isn’t just focusing on advanced manufacturing, but also has its sights on the health arena. “We have this capacity to produce nurses in a world where there’s a growing need for health-care workers,” Soboyejo says. The new nursing labs will help the university train them well. The university is already anticipating the future needs of health care, with an amped up focus on microbiology and robotics in health care. To make all of this happen, it takes more than just one university. It takes a community, and SUNY Poly is working closely with businesses, K-12 schools, and other colleges to make sure the Mohawk Valley, and the entire region, has the workforce it needs. “We’re doing things like reaching out to schools and bringing girls interested in manufacturing to our campus,” Soboyejo says. SUNY Poly also recently joined the Innovare Alliance, signing a memorandum of understanding with Griffis Institute with the goal of leveraging collaborations among the academic, industrial, and defense sectors in upstate New York to advance technical and professional development disciplines. The hope is that nurturing a skilled workforce will maintain the region’s competitiveness and position it at the forefront of technological advancements and careers. “What’s exciting for me is that we can be part of this emerging renaissance,” Soboyejo says. The university isn’t neglecting its own either. With about $3 million in funding aimed at expanding research activity, it opened a space to bring faculty together in its new Hilltop building. SUNY Poly has between 30 and 40 professors across all fields actively working with artificial intelligence. Now they have a place to gather and trade notes, Soboyejo says. “It’s just been wonderful to see how people from all these multiple fields are coming together,” he says. “It’s exciting to see this approach to education and research.”