La Crosse Tribune: More than 2,000 area high school juniors hit the La Crosse Center on Thursday for the annual Career Expo.

The students, who came from more than a dozen western Wisconsin and southeast Minnesota school districts, spent their morning alternating between a college fair and breakout sessions about different career fields.

Western was one of the sponsors of the expo, Director of Recruitment and K-12 Relations Deb Hether said. The expo gives students a chance to learn more about different career fields and options, and it connects students with recruiters from colleges and universities from all over the Midwest.

“It gives students a really great opportunity to learn about different careers,” she said. “They can explore and learn more about their interest areas.”

More than 100 college recruiters were at the expo, which is part of the Wisconsin Education Fair program that brings campus representatives to communities across the state. In another room at the center, students were able to choose among 17 career clusters, with breakout sessions in each field.

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La Crosse Tribune: Students from La Crosse’s Lincoln and Logan middle schools learned that it isn’t as easy to program a machine as they thought, Wednesday during a visit to Trane.

About thirty eighth-graders were at the Trane Engineering and Technology Building as part of National Engineers Week. During their visit, they met engineers from Trane, Dairyland Power Cooperative and other local businesses, toured Trane’s acoustics lab and tried their hands at creating a list of instruction for making a jelly sandwich.

“We want to look at how we are going to bring in the next generation of engineers,” said Kristin Sullivan, a development engineer and student activities chairwoman for professional engineering organization ASHRAE. “We want to share this profession with these students.”

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A class of 52 juniors is getting a lesson on cell division and tissues as part of the La Crosse School District’s Health Science Academy.

“The academy provides thematic instruction in health care, in science, like anatomy and physiology, medical termonology, psychology,” said Annette O’Hern, director of the La Crosse Health Science Academy. “But it also provides hands-on opportunities to learn about health care and health care careers.”

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A La Crosse Logan High School electronics class is partnering with Trane to design and build an autonomous vehicle. The vehicle will be capable of sensing its environment and navigating without human input. AVs sense their surroundings with such techniques as radar, lasers, GPS, and computer vision. Read more.