Story by TANNER MAWHIRTER Photos by BLAKE LUNA
Tiger Media Network
Hammond Hall hosted scores of visiting high school students on Monday for the annual Department of Computer Science and Informatics and Tiger Media Network Open House. Students from all over the state stopped by to get a look at all the possibilities available at FHSU. Some students were excited about the next step in their academic careers; others were just happy about the free lunch. Regardless, the event proved to be another success for CS-INF and TMN.
David Thompson, a student at Fort Hays Tech Northwest, shared his expectations for the open house as he checked in.
“The thing I’m looking forward to the most is probably just being able to hear about different stuff in the industry and learn more about the technology and everything else Fort Hays has to offer,” Thompson said. “Today I want to explore video production and photos as well as IT. I plan to go into the IT field and have a passion for video and photo making.”
After attending their first presentations, students had new feelings about things they likely had never heard of before. Abigail Herrera and Zoey Carter from St. John High School gave their opinions on what they enjoyed from Cameron Shoemaker’s presentation on audio.
“I really enjoyed the final thing he showed where it shows us the different pitches and how they make up everyone’s voices,” Carter said. “We took audio from Abi and took different sections and it went from nothing but noise and became her voice. It was really, really cool.”
Herrera said she would be interested in learning more about audio production when she goes to college.
“I would be interested in studying a little bit more in audio,” she Herrera said. “I think it was cool to learn what speaking tone I speak in, which was really cool.”
Shoemaker, the instructor giving a presentation on audio, gave his thoughts on why it’s important for students to attend the open house in order to spark interest in new things they might’ve never been interested in before.
“Learning is just the skill of life, which is a little deep. I think a little bit of interest in something will hopefully lead students down a whole path of discovering all the cool things there are within that certain thing,” he said. “And usually a lot of that path will branch off to other interests on the side. Eventually they will find where they really want to settle and find their creative oasis.”
As students neared the end of the open house day, Ryer Ward, another student at St. John, gave his thoughts on the open house.
“I really liked that I could see all the programs in the media section and get an understanding of what you guys do here,” he said. “I went to the announcement presentation and I really enjoyed it. It kind of made me want to go to FHSU for analytics. I only wish the presentations were shorter so I could explore more career fields.”
TMN and Computer Science/Informatics will host another Open House during the spring semester.