Marietta College has earned a global reputation for its program in petroleum engineering, drawing students from as far away as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and China to this liberal arts school in southeast Ohio. In the past, nearly every one of the program's graduates has scored a good job in the surging energy field. But not this year. As the price of oil has plummeted, companies are cutting back on production and expansion, and cutting into Marietta's placement rate. Katie Plas, scheduled to graduate in 2017, thinks she'll be OK. Her grades in the petroleum engineering program are top-level, and her freshman summer internship — a key element of the program — was exceptional. It's like a gold star on a resume. She worked as a roustabout in Arkansas. Plas says it was dirty work, and sometimes dangerous. "I wore flame-retardant clothing, all day long. And it gets rather hot especially when it's a hundred degrees." She was 19, using a sledgehammer, grateful for the growing-up work on her family
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