Day one of the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technical Education conference spanned technical education disciplines, including IT, biological technologies and agriculture, with Center Executive Director Jason Petrait attending advanced manufacturing presentations as part of the Building Equity for Aerospace Training grant. One poster session from Virginia was especially helpful, providing insight that could grow Washington state’s drone industry.At the morning’s poster session, Jason met with representatives from GeoTEd-UAS to learn how they are improving pathways into the geospatial and uncrewed aircraft systems technician workforce. A partnership of the Virginia Space Grant Consortium, Virginia’s community colleges and Virginia Tech, the group has developed courses in geospatial tech, integrating GIS and small uncrewed aircraft systems (sUAS), training faculty, conducting student outreach and coordinating student service-learning projects.Some of the outcomes and impacts they’ve seen to date include creating sUAS courses in Virginia’s community colleges, more than 900 student course completions, developing industry credentials and cohort-based faculty institutes.
The group also completed a DACUM (Developing A Curriculum) occupational analysis for Small Unmanned Systems Operations Technicians. Like the Center of Excellence’s recent Avionics Technician DACUM, the group engaged industry to understand the duties and tasks, knowledge and skills, tools and equipment and behaviors needed for a successful sUAS Operations Technician.
Jason queried program staff to find out how much industry needs they’re seeing on the repair side of sUAS. Principal Investigator Chris Carter shared that for smaller drones, more students are using kits to build to their own specifications, so repair comes as part of the knowledge of building a drone. For larger uncrewed aircraft, more specialty is required for repair.
Find more on the program including instructional videos here. The Advanced Technical Education conference concludes Friday.
