A laser maze.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm assuming there's going to be directions.
Yeah.
I am Zachary Gorman.
I'm from Deerfield Beach, Florida.
I grew up in Pompano Beach, Broward County area.
I always loved, like, LEGOs and Bionicles, anything
that had instructions or I could just
put together and take apart and put it back together again.
Let's see if you can see it.
[LAUGHS]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Before my parents got divorced, I
was a good A student, and then from there,
it kind of trickled down.
High school, if the weather was nice, [LAUGHS]
we would go fishing instead of going to school.
College wasn't my thing when I first got out of high school,
so I was a first mate for a while, fished, you know,
did some travel to the islands, I went to Mexico a little bit,
fished over there.
One day, I was sitting at home, and I was like,
what's the fastest way out of here?
I was like, well, military.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So I was in the Navy, and I was an aviation electronics
technician.
When I got out of the service, I did sales
and sold home improvement, actually, for a little while.
Some weeks, it was really good, you'd make money,
and other weeks, you'd drive for five hours in a day and make $0.
I was like, all right, well, I want to go back to school.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
My parents have been a motivating factor.
Neither of my parents went to college.
I just looked up engineering programs,
and Indian River popped up.
That's how it happened.
I am about a year and a half into the two-year program.
First class is Programmable Logic Circuits 2.
Control the opening and closing of the gripper,
and you can hear the [MIMICS SOUND].
ZACHARY GORMAN (VOICEOVER): It's just
learning its ladder logic and programming
different manufacturing robots to do certain tasks, and then
also laser technologies, which is just more advanced,
learning about different types of lasers, how they work,
crystals to manipulate certain light.
[CHATTER]
[LAUGHTER]
PAUL GODFREY: Zach was very methodical
in his acquisition of knowledge.
You could see the mental bricks being put into place,
and that organization and that connectivity,
that building of the skill.
OK, so we cut the air pressure,
so right now we're frozen in state 12.
We, as educators, we're not going to be successful
until we have a good product, a good graduate, who is going
to be sought after by industry.
So with the help of ATE, we're able to place
all of our students to fill the jobs that they have.
Chrys, I still don't understand how this National
Science Foundation works.
Well, the National Science Foundation is a federal agency.
They have a program which is called the Advanced
Technological Education program, which is supporting specifically
two-year colleges throughout the country
to improve their technical education
and produce more technicians to satisfy
the needs of US industry.
I want to make sure that people like Zach
find their way to those emerging technology fields.
So what you're doing here is you have two optical fibers.
It's super fun.
Sit there and turn a laser on and watch
it bounce around in all different kinds of directions,
and we could spray the fog, and what it's actually doing.
NATALIA CHEKHOVSKAYA: Success of laser tech
is actually the multiplication of all of the successes
like Zach has, all of those stories.
How many students are now enjoying a different life?
How many students now moved up socioeconomically?
So that impact that we make on people
makes us sleep better at night.
The projects such as laser tech
is not just in the educational equipment.
It's actually the equipment that's used by the industry.
ZACHARY GORMAN (VOICEOVER): I feel satisfied from the program
because I get to use it at work.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You're not getting in to work and not familiar
with the equipment that you're using.
We're on this end of things with this laser program
and the robotics program.
It's before you're even done with school,
you have companies looking at you
to make sure you're going to be hired.
So it's a great feeling, just knowing
that there's job security.
ZACHARY GORMAN: I could walk into any kind of photonics
or laser company and get hired on the spot just because
of the skill set that I've learned and also the background
that I have as well.
This young man who served the country, the veteran,
extremely motivated, he never missed a class,
and I'm actually very happy that he represents our program.
They put you in a position to you know, be successful.
I mean, the sky's the limit at this point.