Aliyya Swaby Photo
Katherine Perez knew since she took her first advanced physics class that she wanted to be a scientist. Now a rising junior at Southern Connecticut State University, she will get a step closer this summer through a fellowship in nanotechnology and medicine.
A New Haven Promise scholar from Wilbur Cross High School, Perez is one of many students expected to benefit from a new partnership between SCSU and the city of New Haven to shuttle more local kids into the bioscience field.
Representatives from the city and the university gathered at SCSU Monday morning, to sign an agreement formalizing the initiative.
The collaborative program Biotechnology Academic and Career Pathway is intended to promote science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in New Haven at every level, including in local district schools and in colleges like Gateway and SCSU. It represents a $5 million investment in faculty, equipment and scholarships.
As Alexion Pharmaceuticals prepares to move its offices into a $100 million building downtown, city officials are hoping to grow New Haven into a biotech “cluster of global significance,” said Mayor Toni Harp.
Harp and Papazian
In signing the partnership agreement, the city is committing to “support industry,” in part through funding workforce initiatives and research and development programs, she said. The program focuses on attracting women and minorities to the field, which is a new goal, Harp said. The city will also support up to five internships in the biosciences each semester.
Superintendent Garth Harries said the district’s role in the partnership is to support teachers and students in learning and teaching STEM in the classroom. The Board of Education is hoping to get city funding to construct a new building for Strong School, a STEM-focused K‑4 magnet school, on the SCSU campus.
SCSU’s education students who work and study at Strong School will be learning how to teach the sciences to elementary school children, to start pressing its importance in early education, he said.
SCSU has aligned its “academic program with the needs of industry,” in part by creating a biotechnology major with a focus in chemistry, said the university’s president Mary Papazian. SCSU also is months away from opening a $49 million, 98,000 square-foot academic and lab science building that will house a center for nanotechnology and training labs for other STEM programs.
The building is set to be finished in early summer and should open for use in the fall, Papazian said.
It is the BOE's responsibility to foster and fund any commitment to:
"support industry," in part through funding workforce initiatives and research and development programs, Not the city of New Haven who is now contributing 10.6M to the building of strong school on the campus of SCSU.
The BOE's with its overall budget of $425M has a $10.6M line item called "other state grants," they are well equipped with city state and federal funds to sponsor this effort. Not the city. This effort in no way matches Harps campaign pledge.
"The city will also support up to five internships in the biosciences each semester".
This sponsorship in bio science is a duplication of services already provided by the BOE through ESUMS, An engineering and science program currently in operation, while awaiting the completion of the $85M building going on at UNH in West Haven, and partially funded by New Haven bonds to the tune of $6.2M. You would think New Have's contributions are well represented without adding more debt the city cannot afford.
Throughout this article there is not one word concerning the partnership contribution of SCSU.
If it sounds like a bad deal....it is...