New engineering programs paying off

Gabe Slocum is proof that internships pay off – literally.

Slocum, a mechanical engineering technology student who graduated Dec. 13 served as a manufacturing engineering intern at W.R. Case and Sons Cutlery Co. in Bradford during his last semester. The folks at Case were so impressed by his performance that they offered him a job – which he accepted and starts next month.

Slocum, who is from Holland, N.Y., south of Buffalo, is one of the first graduates of Pitt-Bradford’s four-year mechanical engineering technology program, which began alongside a new program in energy engineering technology in the Fall semester of 2022. The first few graduates have been those who were able to transfer into Pitt-Bradford from other programs. 

Most of those other first few graduates have also found employment in the area – at Napoleon Engineering Services in Olean, N.Y., and Allegheny Bradford Corp. in Lewis Run. Behind them are now 65 students in the two four-year engineering technology majors, including 25 students from McKean, Elk and Warren counties in Pennsylvania and Cattaraugus, Allegany and Chautauqua counties in New York.

The payoff is coming for the area industries that invested in the program in hopes of creating a supply of young engineers who want to work and live in a rural area. A few, like Case, have been able to host Pitt-Bradford engineering interns.

For Slocum, that internship became an intensive hands-on education in manufacturing engineering – and a pathway to his first job.

“Most of my internship was learning the machines in the area and diagnosing and fixing problems,” he said, “whether it was miscellaneous issues or larger reworkings of the machine and fixtures.”

Slocum used the CNC (computer numerical control) skills he learned in Pitt-Bradford’s mechanical engineering technology program to help on a capital project to replace outdated CNC machines on the production line. He wrote programs to retrofit the old programs so they work on the new CNC machines. 

He also redesigned most of the dust collection system to meet the demands of Case’s production line so it could accommodate a larger flowrate within a very tight space. For that project, Slocum used 3D printing and design prototyping, which he learned in his classes at Pitt-Bradford.

He worked on smaller projects in other areas of the factory to learn how the various areas worked together and the inner workings of more manufacturing processes.

“The most fun I’ve had was being able to work on self-guided projects to build the trust in myself and to correctly solve engineering problems with my own critical-thinking skills, which has been one of the biggest benefits of this internship.” 

One of his favorite experiences was helping with Case Manufacturing Day, when he showed “the cool technology” he had been working on to local high school students.

Slocum said most of the projects he worked on during his internship were related to a specific class in his engineering program, from CNC programming to manufacturing and machine design.

“I have used much of my degree in only three to four months,” he said. “The engineering program at Pitt-Bradford has definitely prepared me for a career by teaching the necessary fundamentals as well as having staff who have guided me along this tricky, long path to succeed in an engineering space on my own.” 

“I enjoyed my internship a lot,” he said. “The people and projects worked I with were really cool, and it was an inviting atmosphere for a young engineer starting a career.”

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