|
Current
news
News archives
Media
Guide
Audio
reports
Achievements
Perspective
-- Webzine
K-Statement
-- Newsletter
K-State
news links
About
us
Forms
Site
map
Search
Media
Relations and Marketing
9 Anderson Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506-0117
Phone: 785-532-6415
Fax: 785-532-6418
Questions?
Contact media@k-state.edu
Get
news releases by e-mail.
Information
provided by K-State Media Relations, K-State's news service, may
be reproduced without permission. The marks and names of Kansas
State University are protected trademarks and may not be used in
any commercial or private endeavor without the approval of the university.
|
Sources:
Terry King, 785-532-5590, tsking@k-state.edu;
Mo Hosni, 785-532-5610, hosni@k-state.edu;
Ken Shultis, 785-532-5626, jks@k-state.edu
News release prepared by: Tim Lindemuth, K-State Alumni Association
Sidebar:
IT'S COOL TO MAJOR IN NUCLEAR ENGINEERING AGAIN
MANHATTAN
-- A long-range plan to allocate new funding for nuclear engineering
at Kansas State University enabled the department to try again at
attracting top faculty, reequip the labs and classrooms, and communicate
the professional opportunities to potential students.
"We
found that we weren't doing enough to tell our story, so we've put
a lot of effort into communicating to students that the nuclear
industry needs graduates," said Mo Hosni, head of the department
of mechanical and nuclear engineering. He said starting salaries
for new graduates are as high as $50,000 to $60,000.
Industry
leaders say they need 550 newly trained nuclear engineers annually,
but U.S. schools are graduating approximately 350 each year. K-State's
nuclear engineering students, which number more than 60, are in
high demand.
These
jobs go beyond the typical nuclear power plant operations to include
biomedical fields and research activities using radio isotopes.
Several
K-State students now train to be nuclear reactor operators and obtain
their federal licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before
they graduate, Shultis said. They also work side by side with faculty
and technicians on teams doing graduate research.
"Once
they are licensed, we put them to work at the reactor," he
said. "The hands-on experience makes graduates ready for the
industry."
One
of those students, Clell Solomon, master's degree student from Wichita,
Kan., recalled his three-hour written test and the walk-through
in the reactor control room with an NRC examiner.
"You
show that you know everything about the reactor and the control
console. What it does, how to control and monitor it," he said.
Solomon
credits this experience for helping him obtain a summer internship
at the Sandia National Laboratories in summer 2004 and for the offer
to intern at the Los Alamos National Laboratory last summer.
Comparing
his freshman and senior years at K-State, Solomon sees a marked
increase in the number of students in his classes and increased
student worker activity around the reactor.
"It's
wonderful that people are taking more interest in nuclear engineering,"
he said.
|
