Okay-State leads in offering Kansas with engineers

Kansas State graduated 635 engineering college students in 2022 and 300 of them are working in Kansas. These numbers beat out another college in Kansas, in keeping with Okay-State At present. 

There are 148 registered engineering employers and Okay-State has been turning away employers after reaching capability a number of weeks in the past. Kerri Keller, govt director of the Profession Heart, mentioned employers’ response to the upcoming profession truthful on Feb. 14 and 15 is a testomony to the worth of a Okay-State diploma in engineering. 

“I consider there was over 300 corporations whole that got here [to the career fair] and employed engineering graduates,” Matthew O’Keefe, dean of the Carl R. Ice Faculty of Engineering, mentioned. “I feel roughly half of these are Kansas corporations. So we’re speaking, you understand, 150 corporations.”

Caleb Otto, director of mission engineering at NorthWind Technical Companies in Sabetha, Kansas, mentioned he has attended the Okay-State Engineering Profession Honest for the previous 12 years to rent for his firm.

“We’ve had some success and nearly all of our success has come from profession gala’s,” Otto mentioned. “Not solely have I attended profession gala’s and located success … however I additionally attended the profession truthful as a pupil the place I discovered my job.”

Otto mentioned Okay-State is a superb place to seek out workers.

“A Okay-Stater has an awesome work ethic,” Otto mentioned. “It’s not solely what they discovered at school, however they discovered easy methods to be taught. And what I imply by that’s in the event that they don’t know what to do, they know easy methods to learn the way to drawback resolve, how to consider fixing issues, after which the work ethic, additionally, to push them ahead to finish their process and to be engaged within the work.”

Keller mentioned it’s a problem to get college students to remain within the state as a result of Kansas doesn’t have giant metro areas.

“We’ve got smaller cities that … are perhaps somewhat bit extra restricted,” Keller mentioned, “However I feel it’s nonetheless very spectacular that our graduates are … staying within the state.”

Otto mentioned he wished to remain in Kansas after graduating from Okay-State in chemical engineering.

“I grew up in a small city, was raised on a farm, and I had a number of alternatives to really earn extra money straight out of faculty,” Otto mentioned. “However that was going to require me to maneuver to bigger cities like Houston or Cincinnati. I wished to remain in a small, rural group.”

O’Keefe mentioned The College Engineering Initiative Act, handed by the Kansas Legislature in 2011, gives funds to engineering applications at Okay-State, the College of Kansas, and Wichita State College.

“Every of the engineering applications underneath the Board of Regents obtained funding to extend the variety of graduates of their applications, recognizing once more, the state wish to have extra engineers, extra graduates and hopefully have extra of them employed within the state,” O’Keefe mentioned. “In order that was a ten 12 months program … the true goal was to graduate extra college students, however to try this, you want good amenities, good college, you understand, scholarships, all of the issues that go together with that.”

O’Keefe mentioned UEIA supported the development of the Engineering Corridor in 2015.

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Having high-quality amenities, which have been potential with state assist, helped to draw extra college students, O’Keefe mentioned.

The aim of the UEIA was for Okay-State, KU and WSU mixed to have 1,367 engineers graduate in 2021, O’Keefe mentioned.  

“So in 10 years, it ended up that there have been greater than 1,500 that have been graduating, so we had exceeded that goal of 1,367,” O’Keefe mentioned.

O’Keefe mentioned the colleges have been taken with persevering with the act after the primary 10-year time period.

“We went again to them and mentioned this labored out rather well. We expect we may use one other 10 years to proceed,” O’Keefe mentioned. “It was renewed and prolonged for an additional 10 years. So now we have now, you understand, a further 10 years to proceed this on, but in addition to assist attempt to improve the variety of college students that keep within the state.”

O’Keefe mentioned the advantage of Okay-State engineering graduates working in Kansas goes again to the founding of the college.

“I feel that goes again to the Morrill Act … attempting to assist the state and the residents of the state,” O’Keefe mentioned. “To have the ability to hold [graduates] within the state actually stays with that land grant mission of attempting to assist the residents of the state.”

Keller mentioned the 2023 Engineering Profession Honest is for all college students taken with engineering jobs and internships.