Engineering program gets boost from endowment

Engineering student Connor Wood studies in the state-of-the-art engineering lab at Ohio State Mansfield.

Engineering student Connor Wood studies in the state-of-the-art engineering lab at Ohio State Mansfield.

Ohio State Mansfield is a step closer to offering a four-year engineering degree with a $75,000 endowment from the Hire Family Foundation, as well as a national technical assistance grant from the Ohio Board of Regents to help bolster science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs. Ohio is one of five states to receive the national Complete College of America Award from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

The endowment will fund the Jack Hire Engineering Scholarship, the first engineering scholarship to be awarded at Ohio State Mansfield.

To enhance student retention and retain talented graduates in north central Ohio, the Business & Industry Internship Program for Ohio State Mansfield and North Central State College is in its second year of placing students in area industries, including Stoneridge, formally Hi-Stat, which was founded by Jack Hire. A growing number of engineering students entering the four-year degree program locally will benefit from the newly established scholarship fund .

The regional campus is in its third year of offering freshman- and sophomore-level Fundamentals of Engineering, the same core courses engineering students take at the Columbus campus. Thanks to support by Kokosing Construction Company and others, the courses are taught in a state-of-the-art laboratory classroom. Students build upon a pre-calculus and calculus foundation to develop fundamental technical skills to prepare for advanced coursework in any engineering major.

In the near future, Ohio State Mansfield expects the program to expand to allow local students to complete a bachelor’s degree in at least one specific engineering field from start-to-finish on the Mansfield campus.

Through the technical assistance grant, NC State advisors will help students identify and be successful in essential STEM courses in order to advance in their engineering major and then continue toward a bachelor’s degree at Ohio State Mansfield.