Students from the Clearfield County Career & Technology’s precision machine program had the opportunity to visit Penn State University (PSU) for its annual Manufacturing Day.
Robert Livergood, precision machine instructor, said that PSU talked about what its college has to offer, specifically their engineering college.
He said they explained about the abundance of jobs in Clearfield, Jefferson and Elk counties, particularly in powdered metals and also the many jobs in the St. Marys for machinists.
He said they also mentioned that are not enough skilled workers to fill the jobs. One thing PSU mentioned was that they could take all the high school graduates from all the schools in three counties and there would still not be enough people to fill all the positions that are available.
The students were split into groups and sent to participate in a hands-on demonstration of different areas of the manufacturing program.
Some students used the Solid Works computer program to do a study on how different materials would hold up to intense pressures. Another group participated in a hands-on test of different materials and their density.
The third group studied the hardness of different materials and how to affect those properties for different applications. And the last group took materials and put them in a press to measure how much pressure it took to break the materials.
There were many manufacturing companies there talking to the students about doing co-op or summer internships starting out at $20/$25/hour.
