Week of October 9 – October 15, 2015
EDUCATION BRIEFS
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ECHS Students Participate in Jazz, Women, and the National Manufacturing Month Conundrum of “In” MALTA — The students from the Clean Technologies and Sustainable Industries Early College High School (Clean Tech ECHS) participated in a series of regional events as part of the National Manufacturing Month sponsored by the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association. On Friday morning, October 2, students in the 12th grade heard from representatives of GLOBALFOUNDRIES at the Clean Tech ECHS hosted at TEC-SMART in Malta. GLOBALFOUNDRIES engineers engaged students in handson activities, providing them with a glimpse into the world of nanotechnology and the career pathways available in the semiconductor industry. Several 10th grade female students attended a Women in Manufacturing panel discussion at the Museum of Innovation and Science (miSci) in Schenectady the same day. The panel of three women and one male manufacturers told their stories, describing the difficulties they faced and how they overcame them, and answered questions from the audience. “I’ve always wanted to prove I can do more than what they tell me I can do,” said Ballston Spa High School 10th grader Madison Wolfe. “I’ve always wanted to go into engineering, but going to this [panel] and hearing what women had to go through was eye-opening.” One story was told by a petite woman who described how sometimes colleagues would disrespect her based on the combination of her height and gender, not believing she could handle the work and even laughing at her. She overcame it by using it as a motivator until she succeeded. Wolfe identified with that. “I feel that knowledge will be a big battle. There’s so much you need to know for engineering,” she said, “not just your job, but also background on support jobs. It’ll be hard to remember it all, and if you make a mistake they will look down on you more. It’s just one motivation to work harder.” Tenth grader Jordyn Catherall is interested in starting her own business someday, perhaps in a food industry or a gymnastics training center.
Students learn about clean rooms. Photo provided.
“As a girl,” she said, “there’s not a lot of opportunities that we can get like guys can get, so we wanted to hear from girls [on the panel] about how to start our own business and learn more about manufacturing. I think if I go into owning a restaurant, where there are usually a lot of guy chefs, one challenge could be the chef will want to run it his way, not mine.” Both students said they would highly recommend the ECHS program for the wealth of opportunities it offers, including an introduction to college at a younger age. One such opportunity occurred on Wednesday, October 7, when students in the 11th grade, along with Clean Tech ECHS faculty and staff, toured Applied Robotics, Inc.
in Scotia and learned about the manufacturing of specialized automation end-of-arm tooling and connectivity solutions designed to bring greater speed, flexibility and efficiency to automation-based processes. National Manufacturing Day expands knowledge and improves public perception about manufacturing by giving manufacturers an opportunity to open their doors and show, in a coordinated effort, what manufacturing really is. For additional events, visit bscsd.org. For more information about the Clean Tech ECHS, contact ECHS Program Director Diane Irwin for the Ballston Spa Central School District at dirwin@bscsd. org or 884-7150.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — “A Conundrum is a Woman in Jazz” is the title of this fall’s Tsou Music Scholar Lecture, given by University of Kansas scholar Sherrie Tucker on Thursday, October 8 in the Arthur Zankel Music Center at Skidmore College. According to Tucker, jazz is often thought of as a particularly masculine musical practice; its history is usually depicted as a lineage of musical instrumentalist-geniuses, all of whom Sherrie Tucker. Photo provided. are men—unless an “exceptional woman” is thrown in for good measure (usually a pia- of conferences or festivals devoted nist). Jazz artists who are women to recognizing the significance of show up in feminized and deval- female players, the sheer continuued spheres (“all-girl” bands, ity of categorical exclusions and singers), or as perpetually emer- inclusions of the “Woman-in-Jazz” gent instrumentalists who never category poses a conundrum for quite make it into jazz recogni- artists and scholars. tion without gendered qualiJudy Tsou, a member of fiers—recurrently set apart as Skidmore’s Class of 1975, estab“Women-in-Jazz.” lished the Tsou Music Scholar Tucker will share research on Series to provide both formal and select moments from a century informal interaction of music of attempts by artists and schol- students with prominent music ars to improvise their way “out” of scholars. The series is designed to the “in” in the persistent category extend Skidmore students’ musiof “Women-in-Jazz.” Whether cal education and to provide an taken as a devalued realm of fem- introduction to prominent scholinized labor as novelty or gim- ars and their work. For more mick, or as a re-valuation project information, visit Skidmore.edu.