Recruiting Rural Students and Veteran Populations into an Aviation Maintenance Associate Degree Program

The goal of this project is to address a documented regional and national need for Aviation Maintenance Technicians. Maysville Community and Technical College (MCTC) will develop enrollment strategies and a certificate program designed to attract rural students and veteran populations into MCTC’s Aviation Maintenance associate degree program. MCTC will partner with area high schools offering Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association or STEM programs, airport boards, Experimental Aircraft Association chapters, and aviation maintenance employers to create an aviation maintenance educational pathway through outreach activities and by aligning existing high school programs to the MCTC Aviation Maintenance Technology associate degree program. This project has two goals: 1) Address the documented needs of the aviation industry for maintenance technicians by aligning and streamlining secondary, postsecondary, and adult education pathways into the workforce 2) Address the documented needs of rural populations matriculating to technician programs through the creation of engagement and outreach activities for regional community exposure to educational and career opportunities in the aviation maintenance industry. Program evaluation includes both formative evaluation for refinement of project activities and summative evaluation to establish outcomes that will be used to improve the recruitment of rural student and veteran populations into aviation maintenance technician programs. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation's economy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.