Photos by Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Students from Craig County, William Fleming and Franklin County high schools listen Tuesday as Virginia Western Community College students demonstrate a computer-integrated manufacturing cell. VWCC's technology summit gave students the opportunity to explore career fields.

Dan Horine, an instructor in Virginia Western Community College's engineering technology program, speaks to high school juniors and seniors at the technology summit.

About 30 teenagers crowded into a training room at Virginia Western Community College for a rare peak at what an HVAC technology class would be like.

Some asked questions, some stared at their shoes. But it was the four African men -- all about two or three times the students' ages -- who didn't want to miss a moment of the tour.

In all, about 200 students from 10 high schools, along with some Virginia Western students and the four men from Virginia Tech, visited the third annual technology summit and career exploration fair at the community college Tuesday.

Evans Lampi, Luka Ngoyi, Bentry Nkhata and Joseph Mukuni left their homes in Zambia three weeks ago to become doctoral students in Virginia Tech's Career and Technical Education program. Attending the fair helped the men understand the "big picture" of how colleges form the connection between students and employers, said 56-year-old Mukuni, a former national director for vocational training and education in Zambia.

"The students are able to see what career opportunities they have, and it also makes colleges work closely with the labor market," he said.

Mukuni and his three colleagues, professors at the University of Zambia, hope to use what they learn in Virginia to improve the skill levels of professors back home.

The goal of the fair was to help students understand the career opportunities and training available to them in engineering, science and technology, said Leah Coffman, a Virginia Western administrator who worked with the attending businesses.

Ngoyi, 33, the youngest of the four Zambian students, noted that Optical Cable Corp.'s booth helped him visualize the specifics of fiber-optic cables, something he had understood primarily through textbook descriptions. The table displayed a handful of foot-long, multicolored cable bundles and a row of cord jacks.

Representatives from 25 other local companies, colleges and professional associations had booths in the gymnasium.

Although human resources Vice President Phil Peters and process engineer Aaron Plaski from Optical Cable weren't there to recruit students, they touted the event as an opportunity to show students what the Roanoke County-based communication cable manufacturer does.

The technology professionals, perched behind stacks of company pens and buckets of penny candy, had to compete with old-fashioned college recruiting for the students' attention.

Old Dominion University coaxed students outside the gym's back door. There the school parked a race car, half its engine exposed, from the motorsports engineering technology program in Martinsville.

Virginia Tech's culinary program lured hungry wanderers with the rich aroma of a pasta saute, cooked at the table near the entrance and ladled into plastic cups for tasters. Virginia Western's faculty plugged their programs in separate guided tours to vocational technology classrooms.

"This was an eye-opener," 18-year-old Colby Boone said. The Franklin County High School senior said he now puts Virginia Western on his short list of possible colleges for next year, along with James Madison University, Virginia Tech and Old Dominion, after seeing the technology the school teaches. He wanted to be an engineer before the fair, he said, but now he's specifically interested in a career in mechatronics, an engineering specialty combining electronics and mechanics.

"This is part of learning how the American system teaches about prospective careers," Lampi said.

"When we go back home, we'll be training teachers in a college like this," his colleague Nkhata said, gesturing to the bustling hallways inside Virginia Western.