MEET OUR ALUMNI

Roger Harrington balanced family and career while pursuing an Electrical Technology degree at SUNY Adirondack.

Program offered new opportunity for career-changer

Roger Harrington came home from work late one night after a shift of assembly line work and, as he prepared for bed, realized something had to change. 

“It was a good job, but I wanted to do more,” said Harrington, who graduated from SUNY Adirondack with a degree in Electrical Technology in 2015.

He started to look into training programs, taking an occasional course at BOCES, but he wasn’t able to find electrical programs. In 2007, he made the leap and enrolled at SUNY Adirondack. 

“I just put one foot in front of the other and marched my way through,” Harrington said. “I chipped away at it.”

Working around a full-time job and a growing family, Harrington took only one or two classes a semester, “just to keep that dream alive of completing the program,” he said. “I worked hard. It wasn’t easy. You think, ‘OK, it seems like a million years away,' when you need 65 credits and you only have three, but you keep going. It became a lifestyle.”

When his employer closed its regional plant, he took advantage of a lineman training course offered in Georgia.

“I thought of it as, ‘Put my two-year degree and a 15-week hands-on course in climbing poles and that would work to help me get a job,’” he said. “It didn’t happen all at once, but eventually everything came together and I am working for National Grid.”

SUNY Adirondack’s proximity was a key factor in Harrington being able to earn a degree.

“If SUNY Adirondack wasn’t around, I wouldn’t have been able to improve my skills and knowledge, or to showcase it,” he said. “There would be no moving forward.”

But he is quick to stress the quality of education he received.

“The whole time I was going there, I was like, ‘This is no joke, this isn’t a watered-down college,’” he said. “It’s in your backyard, but when you’re going to SUNY Adirondack, you’re at a SUNY college and you’re getting a great value.”

Did you know?

Students in the Electrical Technology program have gone on to work in a variety of roles, such as:

• Industrial maintenance personnel
• Field service technician
• PLC Programmer
• Electrical laboratory technician

SUNY Adirondack also maintains transfer agreements with SUNY IT and Rochester Institute of Technology for those students seeking further education toward a four-year degree.

 

MEET OUR STUDENTS

Justin Fowler earned college credit while still in high school as part of SUNY Adirondack’s PTECH program.

Degree presents flexible career choices

From the time he was barely in elementary school, helping his father, a mechanic, fix the family’s lawn mower in the driveway, Justin Fowler wanted to have a career in technology.

The Hudson Falls native participated in the SUNY Adirondack and WSWHE BOCES PTECH (Pathways in Technology) program and knew right away that he wanted to pursue electrical technology. 

“I find it interesting you can use something you can’t see or hold,” said Fowler, who is in his last semester at SUNY Adirondack.

Already he sees connections between what he learns in his Electrical Technology classes at SUNY Adirondack and the work he performs as an operator at a local machine shop.

“I like how adaptable the program is,” Fowler said. “If you want to be a technician, it’s good for that. If you want to go into engineering, you can. It’s open-ended.”

 

Evan Macica is working full time while pursuing an Electrical Technology degree at SUNY Adirondack.

Student likes hands-on academic method

Evan Macica grew up on a farm in Schuylerville, under his father’s doctrine of “Free time is wasted time.”

The SUNY Adirondack Electrical Technology major certainly isn’t letting much time go to waste these days. In addition to attending college full time, he also works a full-time job and has an internship.

“I’m busy all the time,” he said — and that’s just how he likes it.

When he started classes at SUNY Adirondack, he was focusing on engineering. He quickly realized, though, that Electrical Technology was a better fit for him.

“Way too much of engineering was calculating,” Macica said. “I just want to get in there. I don’t think I’d be happy behind a desk.”

He finds what he learns in class applicable in much of what he does at his internship and job.

“A lot of what we talk about, we’re not learning it just to learn it,” he said. “It’s real life and you know you’ll use it, you’ll put everything together.”