Press release:
Genesee Community College has received a highly competitive $238,719 State University of New York "high need" grant to help the College establish its proposed new Food Processing Technology program, President James M. Sunser reported to the Board of Trustees at its May 13 meeting.
The program is expected to begin in Fall 2014. It will prepare students to work in the rapidly growing food processing businesses located throughout the Genesee-Livingston-Orleans-Wyoming region. The program will be the only one of its kind offered at any of SUNY's 30 community colleges.
The grant, which will be paid over three years, will provide seed money for the program, said Rafael Alicea-Maldonado, Ph.D., dean of Math, Science and Career Education. In addition to helping the College fund a new faculty position, the grant will enable the College to upgrade a microbiology lab to meet the needs of the new food processing technology program.
Food technology jobs in the GLOW region and across Upstate New York are being created every year, Dean Alicea-Maldonado said. They include jobs such as storage specialists, regulatory experts, safety experts, logistics and transport specialists, packaging specialists, plant operations managers, quality control technicians, account representatives, production supervisors, and many others.
Genesee's new Food Processing Technology program will offer an Associate in Applied Science (A.A.S.) degree. The 63-credit program consists of courses in food processing technology, sanitation, hazard analysis, operations management and food labeling. It also consists of business courses, biology, chemistry, physics and statistics, microeconomic theory, as well as English and liberal arts courses. All students in the program will complete a supervised internship in a real-life work setting.
