 Vincent Associates was awarded a $20,608 Wired scholarship allowing 16 employees to get advanced training and helping to better position the company for the future.
"We're looking to be more productive and more efficient but also having the training opens us up to potentially other business that would require it," says Stephen Pasquarella, Senior Vice President of Vincent Associates, a division of VA, Inc.
 The small privately-held corporation has 38 full-time employees and a 37- year history in the area. A member of the growing Rochester Photonics sector, Vincent Associates manufactures high precision, high reliability shutter systems that go in such things as high end digital cameras, x-ray systems and research instrumentation.
RochesterWorks! assisted the company in getting a Wired scholarship. The Wired scholarship helps companies offset costs to provide transferable skills and/or process improvement and productivity training to their employees, says Claudia Gately, Business Services Manager at RochesterWorks!
 RochesterWorks! and Vincent Associates started working together in November of 2006 and within two months on-site training had begun in soldering certification and more specifically on the acceptability of electronic assemblies. Eight employees also received extra training in American National Standards Institute inspection methodology for this type of certification.
"It's good transferable skills training that will help VA win more customers and will help them achieve their ISO certification," Gately says. 
Pasquarella agrees and adds Vincent Associates plans to introduce a new product line this year that "could open higher volume markets" in the instrumentation and even possibly consumer camera market.
Vincent Associates was able to train more employees because of the Wired scholarship, he says.
The Wired program will provide a grant for up 50% of the total costs of training. Any software, equipment or materials purchased as a requirement to conduct the training, and the costs of the participants wages during training may be used towards the required employer 50%  match, Gately says.
RochesterWorks! has done great job of streamlining the process to obtain such funds and making it easy for small companies to take advantage of, Pasquarella says.
The Wired program applies to organizations in a variety of sectors: Advanced Manufacturing, Alternative Energy, Biotechnology, Business Services, Engineering, Food & Agriculture, Health Care, Information Technologies and Optics & Imaging.
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