YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Youngstown State University electrical engineering technology major Devin Ramhoff is looking for a summer internship.
He attended the College of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics Spring 2025 Expo on Thursday hoping to find one.
In his second year at YSU, Ramhoff seeks an internship to help him grow his experience in his field and learn what he wants to do in the industry.
“I’ve talked to different companies here,” he said. “I want to go into the automation and PLC [programmable logic controller] side of things. I want to be able to program that and do different things with that.”
Shortly after arriving at the expo, he found an Aurora company that piqued his interest, but he planned to continue to visit other potential prospects as well.
Ramhoff is one of what organizers expected to be about 500 students and alumni to come through the expo, which is conducted each fall and spring semester.
More than 90 employers attended the event.
Sherri Hrusovski, YSU’s executive director of STEM professional services, said the expo is an opportunity for employers and students and alumni to meet and network for internships, co-ops and jobs.
“Some employers have been with us since the onset,” she said. “We’ve been doing the expo since fall 2012, and then some of them just keep coming back.”
Prospective employers from across the country attend the event. The expo has grown so much that it’s moved around campus a few times to find space to accommodate all who attend. Thursday’s expo was in the gymnasiums at Stambaugh Stadium.
Companies looking for employees in any STEM discipline attend, Hrusovski said.
“Any company who’s looking for a STEM major is more than welcome to attend,” she added.
The expo has been successful in facilitating connections that help students get hired and help employers find employees, Hrusovski said.
“If you go around, and you see there’s a lot of alumni who are here,” she said. “A lot of the companies who hire our students as full-time employees or even interns and co-ops, they’ll bring them to the expos to help market to the incoming students who might be interested in the internships, co-ops or even full time.”
Ajax Tocco Magnethermic representatives have been attending the expo since the beginning.
Craig Canens, general manager of service for the Warren company that builds custom equipment for industry, said the company likes to hire from within the Mahoning Valley.
“There’s a lot of people who want to stay here because of family, and we have a great engineering college here,” he said of YSU. “We have a pretty extensive internship program where we bring them on for two years prior to them graduating.”
They work with the company’s engineering group, training them. Canens estimates that 70% of those students stay with the company.
FirstEnergy is another company that’s been attending YSU’s STEM Expo for many years.
Tony Solic, general manager of project management for the company, is a YSU alumnus.
“We have a lot of openings at FirstEnergy, and we have a lot of growth going on at the business. So we really are seeing about 9% growth year-over-year, just based on the need for the reliability of the system,” he said. “But we also need people for that.”
And they need to be highly qualified.
“We’ve had a lot of great talent come out of YSU … and we’re here to try to fill our pipeline of need that we have,” he said.
This marked the first YSU STEM Expo that Cosmos Technologies, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh, attended. It’s a civil engineering firm specializing in site civil design; water resource modeling; green infrastructure and stormwater management; environmental, health and safety management; structural/transportation engineering; and construction management/inspection.
“We hired a CAD person from here that we are just over-the-moon with,” said Holly Douglas, company vice president. “We called to ask about speaking to their class and they said, ‘Well, we have this.’”
The company is looking to hire civil, mechanical, transportation and environmental engineers.
Alexis Antal of Poland is in her second year at YSU, studying biochemistry with an emphasis on food.
“I’m looking for an internship for spring of ’26 in a food business of a chem lab or biochem lab or something of that nature,” Antal said.
Kendra McCusker of New Springfield, who is studying exercise science, accompanied Antal to the expo to provide support. She’s planning to pursue her master’s degree with an eye on a career in athletic training.
Antal wasn’t having much luck. Two companies at the expo were looking for biochemists, but neither focused on food.
“I want to be a food flavorist – to work in a biochem lab, creating flavors of food, working with the chemicals to maybe make things healthier for people,” Antal explained.
Hrusovski, the STEM professional services executive director, said a lot of the attending companies are looking for engineers, and computer technology is always popular.
“We have science, though, for biology and chemistry here,” she said. “There’s not as many of them right now, but it goes back and forth. It changes each semester. It depends on the demand.”
Pictured at top: YSU students Kendra McCusker and Alexis Antal.