B-Roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces Completion of the Sydor Optics Advanced Technology Center at Monroe Community College

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced that work has been completed on the Sydor Optics Advanced Technology Center at Monroe Community College's (MCC) main campus in the Town of Brighton, Monroe County. The $69.6 million project moved critical technology programs from an outdated facility on West Henrietta Road to the state-of-the-art facility on the Brighton campus, connecting them with the college's science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs. The expansion will also provide a new home and accelerate the growth of the center's Optical Systems Technology program. With a 2,400 percent increase in student enrollment since 2019, this first-of-its-kind in the nation two-year training program provides a direct path to employment for hundreds of students. It will support the state's efforts to grow the semiconductor industry across Upstate New York.

B-ROLL of the Governor participating in the MCC ribbon-cutting can be found on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Good afternoon, everyone. What a great crowd here today. Spectacular day. Monday after a Bills win. Doesn't get any better than that. I look forward to many more happy Mondays. Happy Friday next week, too.

First of all, as evidence that leadership matters, you just heard from an extraordinary leader. I want to thank President Dr. Burt-Nanna for everything she's done over the last six years transforming an institution - like many community colleges, thought they had seen their better days, that there was a lack of interest. A lot of people not going to community colleges anymore, a lack of interest in overall higher education. But the transformation that we've seen here is a model for the rest of the state, and I want to give our President another round of applause for her leadership.

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Chairman Williams as well. It takes the trustees and Allen - everybody who's part of the MCC team, but also the elected officials who are here, my great partners, Adam Bello, who I'll be introducing in a couple minutes, our County Executive, doing an amazing job. Our Mayor, Malik Evans. We were just together at an event supporting the city of Rochester.

Our elected officials, we have Senator Pam Helming, and I think Malik Evans is - Demond Meeks is here. Harry Bronson's here. Bill Moehle is here from the town of Brighton. Let's give them a round of applause as well.

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And to the Sydor family, who are as popular as the Bills are today. Thank you for believing. It is companies like yours, led by your father and family members, who see the potential of education. And the reason that education means so much to me is that my parents used to live in a trailer park when my dad worked at the steel plant in Buffalo, until my dad got an education. He made steel by day, got a college degree at night and after that, everything changed for my family. And I went back to that neighborhood, that trailer park, last night to go to the diner in the neighborhood and look at the families who are still in that trailer park. So I understand personally the transformational power of education.

But not just education that sees a job at the end of the education. And that's what is so smart about community colleges and this investment here today, because we know there's jobs that are going unfilled. How do you meet the demand for a blossoming industry? And you mentioned that there were just a handful of students when this all started back many years ago in optics.

And over how many students now? Over how many? One hundred and 50 students now because the opportunities are just explosive in optics and in other fields. And much of it is driven by this demand for semiconductor chips as well. Think about what's going down a little place down the road called Syracuse with the largest private sector investment in American history with Micron. The demand and the supply chain opportunities and what IBM is doing and all these other companies in the State of New York - not somewhere else.

The future's not happening somewhere else. It's happening right here in New York. And we make these investments with the Sydor family and $35 million from the State of New York, which I think is smart money being spent here for this.

It says we believe in the future. Now, to go back down memory lane even further, back in 2011, when I was proud to represent much of this area in Congress, I came to MCC. I went to these centers to see how we were connecting opportunities for direct career training with the jobs. And I had a roundtable with business leaders. I said, "I want to know this. I want you to tell us, with academic leadership in the room, what skills you need, not now, but five to 10 years down the road. What jobs are going to be out there five to 10 years down the road?" This was in 2011. Because I knew if we listened to the business community, we'll be training young people in skills that are actually transferable to a career and that's what we're seeing here today.

So we announced this three years ago. I could not imagine this building would look so spectacular, but have been proudly part of the journey of not just lifting up this campus and these opportunities for more than 150 students this year and many more to come, but also those in the future.

And I hope you feel this as I do. Upstate New York is on fire. It truly is. This is the place you'll want to be, to build a family, to build a business, to live their lives. And all of you have been the ones who are the true believers who never gave up. Who never gave up during all the swings of the economy.

Bethlehem Steel left my hometown. We lost a lot of major industries here. We know that. We know that. But you know what? Monroe County, Rochester, found its way back, and we're back. We're back stronger than ever. So congratulations on this magnificent facility which is going to propel young people who maybe didn't know exactly what they wanted to do at a young age into careers and perhaps even business owners someday in the future because of what happened here today.

You were here when it happened. Where would you rather be than right here, right now, watching this transformation occur at MCC? Thank you very much, everybody

Let me bring up our great County Executive, Adam Bello.