Bellefontaine High School graduate Jeff Wiley recently spoke to the BHS future engineers TEAMS Club about his journey to becoming an engineer at Walt Disney World.
Wiley graduated from Bellefontaine in 2001. He then earned his BSME degree at Ohio Northern University in 2007.
After graduating from ONU, Jeff moved to Orlando, Fla., for an internship at Walt Disney World. This quickly led to a full-time engineering role in the Modeling, Simulation & Training Tools (MST) team at Disney.
Wiley has been working on the MST team since 2008. He builds and utilizes computer models of attractions to ensure that new Disney Parks meet capacity and creative goals and find ways to improve the efficiency of existing attractions.
The area native has worked on many classic attractions like Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Matterhorn Bobsleds, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster.
He’s also been heavily involved in the design of Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Tron Lightcycle Power Run, Slinky Dog Dash, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.
Wiley shared a message with the BHS students that perseverance is important in all that they do. He reminded the pupils that they will hear “no” many times and to not be discouraged by it.
Finally, he stressed the importance of hard work as well as maintaining meaningful relationships through networking.
Kristy Mount and Nate Arbogast are the advisors of BHS TEAMS.