Three Rivers offers great tech education
Editor:

With regard to the recent meetings and actions of our City Council concerning the relocation and possible loss of our community college, I would like to take this opportunity to note the importance of the technical graduates of the college to the well being of local industry, particularly Electric Boat.

As a retired chief of the Chemical and Non-Metalic Material Eng. Lab at E.B. during a time period when technical expertise was a necessity because of the stealth requirement of new submarine construction, the community college provided us with technical graduates in chemical and mechanical engineering. They worked on development projects in non-metallic coatings, foams, adhesives, sound absorbants, fire retardants, and buoyancy materials, all important subjects for the success of the new submarine design.

The laborotory was very fortunate at the time to be able to select for employment many of the graduates to successfully complete these R/D projects. To have an institution of this caliber in our midst to assist with industry's special labor requirements obviously is most valuable. More importantly, it offers unusual opportunities for area students to obtain a quality technical education at minimal cost.

It would be a huge mistake to allow the school to leave the area and subject future students with the only choice of abnormally high educational costs at a university or non-technical positions in local industries or the casinos.

Watching the council meetings on TV and reading the news stories, it was amazing to me that most if not all the negative comments presented were concerned with the possibilities of pollution, excess noise, safety, traffic or drainage. These are all items which must be addressed no matter what site is selected.

The obvious solution to the site selection would be a plan to resolve all these considerations as they should be and go on from there. That was not an option. Instead, a parade of homeowners, former councilmen,educators and representatives could only come up and reiterate the stated problems with no resolutions.

This should be about the students! Because of the council action the area most likely will lose a most valuable asset -- truly a shame. Yet the neighborhood will still have the unresolved problems of noise, safety, pollution, traffic, and drainage which otherwise could have been addressed.

D.E.LEONE SR.

Norwich

Originally published Monday, July 21, 2003
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