For fourth-year student Jonathan Smith, coming to Penn State was a no-brainer. His parents attended Penn State Harrisburg, and he lived in the Berks County area, so he knew early on where he wanted to continue his education.

As for his major, though, the path he followed took him by surprise, he said. In his first year at Penn State Berks, he took an engineering class that would shift his priorities — and launch a startup that has given him clear goals for a future in architectural engineering.

“At the end of the semester, there was a competition for sustainable energy charging. So my team pitched an idea to put solar panels on the side of a building, and it powered an electric-vehicle charging station,” Smith said. “We didn’t win that competition, but the four of us continued working on the idea as an independent study.”

The team went back to the drawing board and focused on research. They started talking to electric vehicle customers through a program focused on customer discovery, Smith said, and the input they collected helped them to rework their ideas for charging ports.

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