PSU College of Technology welcomes students with open house

Around 200 high school, community college, and technical college transfer students visited the PSU College of Technology for their Open House event. Students in attendance were able to tour the facilities, talk with faculty and current students, and take part in demonstrations to show what the College of Technology students are doing. 

The open house took place on March 1. from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and transfer students were encouraged to especially stop by from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., during which a brief FAQ session was provided.  The event was held in the Kansas Technology Center on campus and gave students a chance to learn about PSU’s technology programs.  

“I think a lot of the demos that we’ve got going on today are pretty interesting because they help give students a kind of sneak peek for what’s going to happen in the classroom,” said Madison Wooldridge, senior in graphic communications, who ran a booth giving information about PSU graduate school. “Letting them get more of a hands-on involvement rather than just listening to professors talk about what they do every day is nice.” 

Most demonstrations were put on every 30 minutes from the beginning of the event until 1 p.m., including presentations over photography, electrical machinery, and high-pressure water cutting, in addition to others. 

“I hope that they just take away how great of a program that we have offered here at the College of Technology,” said Wooldridge. “Being a student at this building has definitely opened my eyes to a lot more career paths that I didn’t anticipate when I first came in, so I just hope that they get excited about coming to Pitt State.” 

Students in attendance were able to meet with representatives from graphic design, plastic engineering, automotive technology, architecture, construction, and electrical technology, as well as other fields.  

“I wanted to help out for two reasons: for one part, it’s really cool to be able to show off and let students see what we do here at Pitt State in our program,” said Meredith Wolfe, senior in mechanical engineering technology with an emphasis on design. “Another reason why we did this is for our senior design project, we’re doing this for a competition for NASA, and NASA requires us to do community outreach projects, just to let them know what we’re doing in engineering technology and teach them what we’re doing and raise awareness for it.” 

Wolfe and her team of mechanical and manufacturing engineering technology students created a human powered lunar rover. If the rover is selected to represent PSU, it will compete on a course with steep inclines, sharp turns, and large obstacles. 

“It’s really great to just show students that everything you learn in the classroom is actually going to be applied in this project,” said Wolfe. “We take it from square one in the research phase all the way to manufacturing it, so it’s really cool to see that with something you learned about in the classroom, you can then built it and put it out there and show it to the world.” 

One station at the event gave students information on scholarships, job opportunities, ROTC, and transfer guidelines.  

“I thought it’d be really interesting to come down. Scholarships can help, there’s some companies here that can see you’re interested, and can help with basic knowledge for any job or internship,” said Will Clark, tudent from Har-ber High School. “My engineering teacher, he does drafting design and electrical engineering and stuff like that, so I signed up.” 

The event was also open to teachers and administrators, and some coursework and lesson plans were offered for those in attendance, in addition to mentoring opportunities. 

 “I wanted to see the different classes and opportunities because I’m thinking about coming here,” said Dawson Mock, student from Neosho High School. “These events are nice because you can talk to the instructors and students and see, you know, more than your teachers might know because they aren’t around it every day.”