Photos: Tech Valley High School comes home
The Enterprise — Michael Koff
Founded in 2007, the innovative Tech Valley High School, meant to serve as a model for hands-on, project-based learning, has been peripatetic but, now, after two temporary homes, has a permanent place as part of the Albany NanoTech Complex.
The initial idea was that participating local school districts would each pay tuition — $12,990 this year — for interested students but, after the recession and as state aid to schools stagnated, many districts cut back.
The Enterprise — Michael Koff
Doing the honors with the shears are, from left, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy; Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan: SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher: Lieutenant Governor Robert Duffy, Alain Kaloyeros, the chief executive officer of the newly merged College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and the SUNY Institute of Technology, along with current students. Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new campus gave local educational and government leaders a chance to extol the virtues of the school and tour its new classrooms, labs and locker-lined hallways.
The Enterprise — Michael Koff
Nancy Zimpher, SUNY Chancellor: “This idea of Tech Valley High is really, really extraordinary… The notion of what are called ‘new tech high schools’ is a national phenomenon… a high-tech environment that leads to extraordinary STEM [science, technology, engineering, mathematics] graduates.”