Liam Rivera’s career in manufacturing can be traced back to seventh grade, when he dreaded hitting the books and spending time in a traditional classroom at Dunkirk City School District.
Around that time, his mother saw a Facebook post promoting the Western New York P-TECH STEM College & Career Academy, a multiyear program that prepares students for careers in advanced manufacturing beginning in ninth grade.
“She wanted me to go for a tour,” Rivera recalled. “I loved it. I came back in my eighth-grade year, loved it even more, and then I got into the P-TECH program that way.”
With P-TECH — short for Pathways to Early College High School — students remain enrolled in their home districts during high school, then continue at SUNY Jamestown Community College to complete an associate's degree in their chosen field.
Rivera graduated with high honors from JCC in May, earning a degree in Mechanical Technology. A few weeks later, he started his first job as a surface grinding machinist at Ring Precision in Jamestown.
Joe Spess, a JCC mechanical technology instructor and former Ring Precision employee, helped Rivera navigate the job-hunting process. During the spring 2024 semester, Spess approached him about an internship opportunity with the company.
“He came to me and was like, ‘I’ve been seeing how good you’ve been doing in your machining classes, and I’m sure they would love to have you as an intern there,’” Rivera said. “At that time I didn’t take the internship, but later on I talked to him more and more when I was looking for jobs in the year after that.”
Rivera and his classmates regularly toured local machine shops in Spess’ manufacturing processes class, including Ring, where Rivera connected with the company’s hiring personnel. His first day on the job was June 9.
Thanks to his hands-on experiences at JCC, Rivera said the transition from student to professional has been mostly seamless.
“It showed me what it would be like to be in a factory machining setting,” Rivera said of his courses. “It showed me how to use a lot of very popular machines like mills and lathes.”
During one class with Spess, Rivera and classmates designed and manufactured a product as part of a group project.
“It really put me in the setting of being in an actual machine shop, which, in my opinion, prepared me very well for the workforce,” he said.
In another class, led by adjunct instructor James Heinrich, Rivera said he worked with “machines hours on end,” which felt like “an actual shift at a shop.”
Rivera also credited JCC welding associate professor Brent Harkness and engineering assistant professor Tim Piazza for helping him succeed academically. Without Piazza, he said, he may not have passed physics.
In addition to graduating with high honors, Rivera made the dean’s list and earned JCC’s Machine Tool Technology academic award in 2024. While attending Dunkirk High School, where he graduated in 2023, he was named a JCC College Connections Student of the Year.
Rivera said his interest in machining began in high school.
“In my junior year there was an option where you could take a senior-year class,” he said. “It was my first machining class, where basically you’d be working on the machines and doing projects. As soon as I heard about that, I wanted to do it because I saw the machines out there. They interested me right away just by looking at them and then hearing how they function.”
Now, Rivera is focused on building his career at Ring Precision.
“I would definitely say that as long as I can work here it would be good,” he said. “I really like the environment here. I really like the people here. My goal would be to learn some more things about all the different types of machines, because one thing they do here that I really like is they don’t just stick you on one machine and leave you on there for years. They get you moving around so you’ll learn this machine, become really good with it, and then they’ll move you on to something else. One of my goals is learning how to use not only the surface grinding machine I’ve been using, but also all the dozens of other machines they have here.”