Portal:Capital District/Selected article/5
Tech Valley is a marketing moniker for the eastern part of the US state of New York. It includes the Hudson Valley and Capital District, along with portions of the Mohawk Valley and North Country. Originated in 1998 to promote the greater Albany area as a high-tech competitor to regions such as Silicon Valley, it has since grown to represent the counties in New York from IBM's Westchester County plants in the south to the Canadian border to north. Tech Valley encompasses 19 counties.
At first the name Tech Valley was derided as over-enthusiastic self-boosterism, even if the area was already home to science and engineering schools like Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Union College; incubators like the Rensselaer Technology Park; or world-class research and development sites like the Benét Laboratories, GE Global Research, and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory. But SEMATECH's decision in 2002 to put its new plant at the University at Albany began Tech Valley's rise in the public's perception. In the 2000s, the area saw notable growth in the high-tech sector, including the addition of SUNY Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, the opening of the Luther Forest Technology Campus, and most recently, the decision by GlobalFoundries to open a chip manufacturing plant near Saratoga Springs.
In an effort to empower the upcoming generation, local leaders and educators saw it fit to open, in 2007, Tech Valley High School, an innovative project-based learning public high school populated by students from across the two BOCES surrounding Albany. Somewhat humorously, in 2004, when Bill Gates was asked by a Times Union reporter what he thought about Tech Valley, Gates responded that he had no idea where it was; two years later, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would donate $400,000 to fund the new high school. Additionally, Hudson Valley Community College will be opening a semiconductor and alternative energy education center in time for the fall 2010 semester, a move that may have been a deciding factor for President Barack Obama to host a speech about higher education, and specifically community colleges, on HVCC's campus in September 2009.
