Drones Go to College

Advanced Flight Technologies

By Patrick Sherman | [email protected]

As seen in the January 2024 issue of Model Aviation.

IN CASE YOU NEED ANY MORE EVIDENCE that drones—and remote piloting, more generally—are going mainstream, you need to look no further than Warren Community College (WCC) in Washington, New Jersey. The institution launched a UAS training program after a member of its board of trustees had an unsettling close encounter with a drone.

Adam Kyle, a recent Embry-Riddle graduate and an instructor at WCC, shows off one of the college’s latest acquisitions: SPOT, the robotic dog, developed by Boston Dynamics. "We’re proud of the fact that we got our start in uncrewed systems in aviation, but since then, we’ve branched out to terrestrial and maritime systems," said Will Austin, WCC president.

A Close-Up Look

Will Austin, the president of WCC, explained that the school established the program after a member of its board got a much closer look at a small UAS than he really wanted.

"He was out flying in his single-engine airplane and he flew right past something," Will explained. "When he got home, he Googled it and decided that it must have been a DJI Phantom. After that, he called me up and said that we should put together a drone program so that people could learn to use this technology safely."

That was in 2017, shortly after the FAA established Part 107. Will figured it would be easy enough to set up a program by simply hiring some qualified faculty. "Pretty quickly, I discovered that it wasn’t going to be nearly that easy because there weren’t any qualified people to hire," he said.

Will decided that it was incumbent upon himself to learn more about the subject so that he could understand the technology and the industry and set up a program that would give his students the best chance of success after graduation. "I had done some strategic planning consulting with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) years before, and I figured if anybody would understand this stuff, it would be them," he recalled. "So, I enrolled in a master’s degree program through the worldwide campus."

If You Build It …

That initial decision had a profound impact on the development of the WCC program. "If it hadn’t been for that existing connection with ERAU, I might very well have picked a different school, one with a focus on engineering or agriculture, for example," Will explained. "At ERAU (no surprise), the focus was entirely on aviation. Because of that, our whole program took on that professional aviation mindset, which means putting safety first."

With the program established, the floodgates opened and new students started pouring into classes. However, as Will soon discovered, many of them were not traditional community college students.

"Some of them come straight out of high school," he said. "However, many of them already had bachelor’s or master’s degrees—and we even had a few with Ph.D.s enrolling. They are coming back, looking to begin a second career. For example, one came to us after retiring from a career at AT&T. We also have a lot of women in the program who are looking to reenter the workforce after raising their families."

The presence of all of these older students had a hidden benefit. Will explained, "They really lift the level of life experience for the entire classroom because you’ve got a 16-year-old kid sitting next to somebody in their 50s. That younger cohort, coming out of COVID, didn’t have the opportunity to develop those soft skills, like how to talk to people. Having that mixed-age classroom has really helped them develop those important social skills."

Thanks to a series of grants and congressional appropriations, WCC is able to provide its students with access to state-of-the-art UAS technology, such as the Wingtra vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, which was developed for mapping and surveying.

An Emerging Industry

According to Will, the current demand for new UAS pilots in the local area is outstripping the number of students graduating from WCC, making his program a viable path to immediate, gainful employment. However, he can already see change on the horizon.

"Right now, you can break into this industry with a two-year degree. However, as it continues to mature, employers will be looking for people with a bachelor’s degree," he said. Anticipating this change, WCC has entered into a matriculation agreement with ERAU. Students with an associate degree can enroll in the university as a junior, allowing them to earn a bachelor’s degree in just two additional years.

Of course, one problem with training students to work in an emerging industry is knowing exactly what skills and experiences will be relevant for them in the future. "For me, the hardest thing is trying not to be on the cutting edge of tomorrow’s outdated technology," Will said. "Hardware is a big cost driver for a program like this, so you really want to be sure you are selecting systems that not only work today but also reflect what the students will be using in industry after they graduate."

Helping students achieve success also means providing them with real-world experience. Will explained, "As part of our program, we’ve had students work with the New Jersey Department of Transportation, including one project that had them mapping the roof of Penn Station. That’s an extremely challenging environment because it’s directly under the final approach to Newark [Liberty International Airport], so they have to be very careful to maintain a safe altitude."

Other projects have involved using an Elios 3 to create a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) map of a transit tunnel, and even identifying crop circles in local farmers’ fields, although these ultimately had an entirely terrestrial explanation.

"It turned out that the damage was being caused by bears," Will said. "Thanks to our students’ work, the farmers were able to receive compensation for their losses."

Lessons Learned

Today, WCC offers a comprehensive, twoyear curriculum that begins with flight simulators and includes preparing for the Part 107 knowledge test and passing the exam, writing a safety management system (SMS) operations manual, and obtaining an FAA waiver. After that, students learn about photogrammetry, multispectral imaging, thermography, geographic information systems (GIS), electronics, 3D printing, and additive manufacturing. Students learn how to design and build their own aircraft, maintain and repair it, and program its flight control system.

"We also do a class in crew resource management, and most of our students get the opportunity to visit a working control tower at an airport so that they really gain an understanding of how the broader aviation industry works," Will explained. "Then they’ll fly a UAS right there on the tarmac at the airport—with appropriate permissions, of course—so that they can see how airspace integration really works."

At the conclusion of the program, a capstone project gives the students an opportunity to qualify for an Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) Trusted Operator Program credential and work on their own projects to build a portfolio to show prospective employers.

For Will, the need to educate competent, qualified drone pilots doesn’t end at WCC’s property line. While starting up his own program, he was also serving as the president of the American Association of Community Colleges, which provided him with the opportunity to share the lessons he was learning nationwide.

"We pushed out a lot of material, like our curriculum, through the association," he shared. "There are only 1,000 community colleges in the country, so pretty soon I got tagged as ‘the drone guy,’ so I’ll often get a call when a college or university is trying to start up a program.

Sai Sanker, a teaching administrator at WCC in robotics and artificial intelligence, stands in the college’s new electronics lab, where students gain hands-on experience with building, as well as modifying and repairing the electromechanical systems that allow small UAS to fly.

"I think this is probably some of the most important work that I do. To make this industry a success, we need a lot more trained pilots and a lot more professionalism. Warren can’t do it alone. ERAU can’t do it on its own. We need great programs all over this country.

"My biggest concern is that when a UAS program starts in some other department, like GIS or agriculture, they don’t end up thinking like aviators, and they don’t even understand that they should be thinking like aviators. That could lead to serious problems down the road and ultimately create a crisis for this whole industry, especially as these aircraft get larger and more powerful."

SOURCES: