The Collegio Pittsburg's student voice since 1916
Alyssa Tyler copy editor
Pittsburg State University’s School of Construction, College of Technology, and others invited over 100 different companies to talk to current Pittsburg State University students throughout a two-day event known as the College of Technology Company Day.
The event took place in the Kansas Technology Center (KTC) from Sept. 20 to Sept. 21. A variety of companies from industries such as construction to graphic design attended the first day.
“This is our annual company day, it’s for our College of Technology. We run two days, the first day is for the school of construction, graphics and imaging, and wood technology. And tomorrow is engineering technology and automotive technology. The big part of this is the school of construction, we have about 115 companies here today. So, the school of construction, that includes our safety program, our electrical two-year program, those are big pieces of this,” said James Otter, director of Pitt State School of Construction.
The now annual event started over two decades ago, when the School of Construction first moved to the KTC.
“We moved to the tech center in 1998, we did our first company day for the school of construction with four companies, then 12, then 16, then 18, pretty soon we were running 40-50 companies, then the college of technology decided they wanted to do the same thing and that’s when we created the two-day event,” Otter said.
Among the companies there such as CDL, there was a showing of a car wrapping by Renato Pinto, a graphics manager in the sign division. Another employee held a table at the event as well to showcase job and internship opportunities.
“So, we’re a local company, we started here in Pittsburg, and this is where our local office is at, and so we have worked with Pitt State a lot. In both a professional sense, like doing work for them and I would probably have to guess 30-40 percent of our local employees are Pitt State grads. Some of our best people, and we’re very involved in the community and like to stay that way. So, we really enjoy recruiting and talking with Pitt State students just to know that we’re here,” said Kailan Cloud, a HR specialist at CDL.
The event was open to all years, and was also used as a chance to show what students could do with their degree.
“Our goal is to connect students and companies. We want freshmen to understand what the opportunities are and why they are getting a degree. We want the companies to identify those respective employees early on. And we’re very much a management-based program, we’re not a vocational program. So, we’re preparing estimators, project managers, and field managers for companies. We want the students to understand that. We want them to see people that have walked their path and what they’re doing today. And they won’t know any of these companies, but after this, they see them all, and now we’ve put the student and company together early on, and whether they’re a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior, they’re connected at least by name. And then they see where they work, what they do, and how many awesome projects, and they’re told, ‘we were just like you guys when we were freshman,’” Otter said.