Students at the Monongalia County Technical Education Center set about crafting their careers Friday morning.

The tech campus on Mississippi Street hosted a job fair featuring some 60 businesses from across the region.

“Our kids couldn’t have been more excited,” said Carrie Lacey, who teaches the careers in education course there and organized the event.

That’s because potential employers weren’t just talking about jobs, she said.

They were also talking about pension plans and health plans, Lacey said. They were talking about building careers and lives here at home in Mon.

“It’s our job to give the students all the opportunities that are out there,” she said.

That’s something METC is already pretty adapt at doing, Principal Greg Dausch said.

There’s that 98% attendance rate, he said, which is also in the same neighborhood of that job placement rate.

“Our kids get hired,” he said.

“And they come to school because they enjoy it. They’re engaged.”

If the bond measure passes for the Renaissance Academy, which would be a standalone high school for STEM (science, technology, energy and math), the mission of METC would change, just a bit.

The tech center would be reconfigured for midde-school students.

Either way, the place is expanding.

On Wednesday, it received $4.4 million from the state School Building Authority to add three classrooms for robotics and e-gaming instruction.

“Gonna go right there,” he said, looking out his office window.