What Is Your Region's Economic DNA? Lessons for CTE from an Aviation High School - Adam Snoddy, Principal of Butler Tech Aviation Center - The TechEd Podcast

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TechEd Podcast Intro (00:09):
Announcer, this is the TechEd podcast,
where we feature leaders who areshaping, innovating and
disrupting technical educationand the workforce. These are the
stories of organizations leadingthe charge to change education,
to rethink the workforce and toembrace emerging technology.
You'll find us here everyTuesday on our mission to secure
the American Dream for the nextgeneration of STEM and workforce

(00:32):
talent. And now here's yourhost, Matt Kirchner,

Matt Kirchner (00:36):
welcome to the TechEd podcast. I am Matt
Kirkner. I am your host. And forwhat it's worth, I have for a
long time, TechEd, my wholelife, in many ways, been
fascinated by aviation, whetherit's heading off to Washington,
DC and going to the National Airand Space Museum. Used to love
going down near the airport nearMilwaukee, where I grew up, and

(00:56):
watching planes take off andland. Love that I cannot let a
plane go over my head nowwithout going onto my flight
radar 24 app and seeing whereit's coming from and where it's
going and what kind of plane itis and all that exciting stuff.
Fascinated fascinated byaviation. Imagine being a high
school student that wasfascinated by aviation and
having that be almost yourentire high school journey.

(01:18):
Everything that you're learningis centered around the magic of
aviation. Believe it or not,there's a high school that is
doing exactly that, expanding,by the way, in really cool,
really, really cool ways. And Ishould also add Whether you're
into aviation or not, whetherthis is a model that would work
in your district or your regionor not, all kinds of lessons for
those of us working in andaround career and technical

(01:39):
education, for how we set upworld class, innovative,
engaging programs for students.
My guest to talk about all ofthat this week is Adam Snoddy.
He is with the butler techAviation Center. In fact, he is
the principal at that school.
Adam, so awesome to have youwith us, and thanks for spending
some time.

Adam Snoddy (01:58):
Yeah, thanks, Matt.
I appreciate the opportunity andlooking forward to the
discussion

Unknown (02:02):
I am as well. And you know, let's start here. You
know, you've got a whole programbased around high school
aviation. I think this is thefirst high school program we've
seen, technical and communitycollege programs around
aviation, certainly, certainlyadvanced education university
programs around that discipline.
But a whole high school, a wholecampus all around aviation. And
so you're sitting in one of themost aviation dense regions,

(02:24):
where you are in western Ohio,super dense from an aviation
standpoint. Talk a little bitabout the culture of aviation in
that area and in the region, andwhy there would be a need for an
entire high school program, andan entire high school, as a
matter of fact, centered aroundthe idea of aviation,

yeah, sure. So for quick context, Butler Tech is a
career tech school district. Weserve students from 11 different
traditional K 12 districts thatare affiliated with us, and
we're in Butler County, Ohio,which is between Cincinnati and
Dayton in the southwest cornerof the state, little closer to
Cincinnati, but definitelyrelevant to both, because

(03:03):
they're only about an hour apartin total, and that whole area
has a huge history of aviationindustry, from literally the
beginning of aviation up topresent day. Of course, the
Wright brothers were from theDayton area, so aviation, Ohio
is known as the birthplace ofaviation. Is probably the

(03:23):
starting point for aviationculture. It's ingrained in this
corner of Ohio statewide, butespecially this region, from the
outset. And one of the thingsthat amazes me, I was at an
event over the summer that was aworkforce development, aviation
education event, just to bringpeople together. And one of the

(03:45):
things that was emphasized inthat is they had put a map up on
the board, and basically theyhad a map with a variety of
aviation or airportinstallations. If you put a pin
on Greater Cincinnati and draw acircle that represents a two
hour driving distance fromCincinnati in almost any
direction, there are as manyaviation related jobs or

(04:07):
industry opportunities as thereare in any similarly sized
geographic area anywhere inNorth America. And I think that
that may be better than anythingelse describes why aviation is
such a hotbed right here, rightnow

that, yeah, that's, that's so fascinating.
You think about, I mean, when wethink about aviation, you think
about, you know, maybe peoplethink about Boeing or the
Pacific Northwest. You know,certainly, I think the first
thought when people think aboutthe Wright Wright Brothers is
Kitty Hawk in North Carolina.
But if my history is correct, Ithink they moved with their
family from like Richmond,Indiana to to the state of Ohio,
to that area where you aresometime in like the 1870s or

(04:44):
so. And really that influencethat that had on the Wright
brothers, and then, of course,their influence on the birth of
aviation, just incredible,incredible impact. And to think
that here you are, right here inthe central United States. And
you've got this hugeconcentration of aviation
opportunities, aviationemployment, but it makes perfect
sense. And so that really wouldfollow that you would have a

(05:07):
career tech center that would befocused so heavily on the on the
aviation space. So you initiallylaunched the program in 2019
What were you hearing at thattime from employers, students,
the community? How did you knowthat you needed to have a
program like this at the CareerTech or the high school level?
The

industry in the region is so prevalent that it's
not just let's have aviationbecause it's interesting, it's
let's have aviation because it'sinteresting for students. But
there's also a ton ofopportunities. We've got the
Cincinnati airport that's 45minutes to the south. That's
where Amazon has one of theirlargest cargo air hubs in the

(05:48):
world, the Dayton Airport's gotJoby aviation, which is
investing half a billion dollarsin advanced Air Mobility. Wright
Patterson Air Force Base inDayton is the single largest
employer in the state of Ohio.
The UPS world hub for theircargo operations is two hours
south in Louisville, and thatdoesn't even factor in all the
other smaller regional airportslike the one where we're at. So

(06:08):
that combination of economicopportunity, student interest
and local community interesthelped to put together the
emphasis on let's start to workour way to getting more students
interested in this at anearlier, younger age.

Unknown (06:24):
First of all, that concentration of aviation, and
those are all things, frankly,that I hadn't, hadn't thought
about. And then you think about,you know, when we think about
aviation, maybe the first thingthat comes to mind are, you
know, folks that are buildingaviation assets, building
airplanes and so on. But, but,of course, the you know, the
obvious application is all thefolks that are using them, and
whether that's for distribution,logistics, national defense,

(06:46):
this picture is becoming really,really clear to me in terms of
the why for locating a programlike yours, where it's located,
and the huge amount of jobs andopportunities that are available
to your students. Let's talkabout those students a little
bit. You know, initially, 2019what was the student experience
in terms of the program and howare some of the ways that it's
evolved over the course of time?

Yes, so the student experience has changed a lot,
and it's going to change farmore as our new facility opens
up here in the next littlewhile. The way that the program
was designed initially and haslargely operated for the past
several years, is the aviationcoursework takes place in a
couple of classrooms that werent a space at the Middletown

(07:30):
airport attached to theircommunity hangar, so that those
students have access to some ofthe hands on opportunities in
the aviation world. But studentsalso still complete their
academic courses, English, math,science and social studies
during their school day with us.
So we would bus them midday,either from our main campus for
academics to the airport for labor vice versa. And that lab

(07:52):
experience, it really kind ofhad that one room schoolhouse
dynamic, where it was kind of onan island. There weren't a lot
of other regular schooloperations up there. So that's
really kind of what it lookedlike initially, but as it's
changed, we we've moved it towhere it's always been a two
year program where studentswould come in as 11th graders,

(08:15):
and they would spend their 11thand 12th grade school years with
us doing their aviation program,and we would have roughly 25
students a year, so 50 in total.
But what we're doing now withour new facility, which is going
to be a 20,000 square footstandalone high school building,
plus an 8500 square foot hangar

Unknown (08:37):
that those will be right there. Yeah, yeah.

So that's going to allow us our academics, our
aviation coursework, lunch, allthose other aspects of the
school day. We'll all move intothat one facility. And because
of that additional space, thisyear in the program, we're up to
about 80 students, and weanticipate doubling that again
over the course of the nextcouple years, to where we're
over 150 inching our way,hopefully toward 200 within the

(09:04):
next couple of years. Amazing.

So is demand outstripping the capacity right
now? Do you have more studentsinterested in this than you have
space for them? Or how is thatworking?

Yeah, one of the driving factors for the
development of the program aswell is not just the workforce
need, but the student interestaspect, which is exactly what
you just described, we have hadto turn students away because we
only have a limited number ofspots versus the number of
students applying. So byexpanding the program, dropping
it from 10th grade, or from 11thgrade down to 10th grade,

(09:35):
bringing students in a yearearlier, that's another aspect
that we've tweaked with theprogram. By doing that
combination of things, we'reable to get a lot more students
in to where our supply of seatsmight not perfectly fit the
demand, but it's far closer thanwhere we've been able to be for
quite some time.

When I just think about, and we talk about on this
podcast all the time, Adam thewhole idea that I was thinking.
They couldn't sit still inschool. And, you know, learning
in a traditional classroom, in atraditional model, I did it. I
got through it, you know,whatever. I graduated, and life
went on. But, but, boy, if youhad given me the chance in high
school to go to a program likethis versus the traditional high

(10:15):
school experience, I would havebeen all over it, because, as
you mentioned, you know, you'renot. It's not an either or.
You're still teaching all whatwe might traditionally call gen
eds, and all your you know, alot of states have state
standards required for whetherit's math or English, but you're
still meeting all therequirements of a traditional
high school, but you're doing itin a way that's a lot more
engaging for at least a certaintype of student. Is that, is

(10:37):
that part of the thesis here,100%

that's a good description, and I think that's
that's something that ButlerTech, we try to do with all of
our programs, is to get studentsmore connected to hands on
opportunities to real worldpractice, real world problem
solving, things that give themskills that are attuned to
employer needs, so thatregardless of what path they
want to take after High School,they're ready to do it. And we

(11:02):
also want to push our academiccourses in the same type of
direction, so that even if it'smore abstract academic concepts,
how can those be translated in ahands on, in a practical in a
project based methodology that Ithink really helps students that
are more hands on connect withthose things in a way that they
might not do so as effectivelyin a traditional setting.

(11:24):
Totally.

Unknown (11:24):
I think so many times people think, well, you know, if
we're taking students out of atraditional classroom and we're
just giving them these hands onexperiences, you know, are they
really learning the samelearning outcomes, and is that
going to be as valuable? And myanswer is always, for certain
students, it's going to be morevaluable. Because if you're that
student that does learn hands onlearning math, learning
communication, learning sciencein a hands on environment is

(11:46):
going to make it stick in a waythat I think is even more
valuable. So I really, reallycommend you for what you're
doing, Adam, and especiallyusing this whole concept of
aviation, as I mentioned in thein the intro, something that's
fascinated me for pretty much myentire life. And I guess, who
among us isn't fascinated by theidea that we can, you know,
create an aircraft to make itfly. And it still kind of
boggles the mind that all ofthat works. You're doing that

(12:09):
with this aviation model. And asI mentioned earlier, I'm not
sure I've heard of another highschool at the secondary level
that's delivering learning inthis fashion. Are you one of a
kind? Is there anybody elsedoing this?

There are some other schools that offer things
of this nature. They're few andfar between, especially at the
high school level. There aresome examples. I know there's
one in New York, there's one outin Washington State. There are
some here and there, but webelieve that we're going to be
in a very unique spot,especially in our part of the
country, where we have thislarge aviation industry and a

(12:42):
significant population that hassome connection to an aviation
background, but there's not adedicated High School aviation
standalone facility like whatwe're doing in the general area,
and we think that that'ssomething that really will will
help set us apart as we continueto grow our program. There's no

Unknown (13:01):
question that it'll set you apart, and there's no
question that that it'ssomething super unique, whether
you're the only one or one ofonly a handful. We spend a lot
of time in education, as you canimagine here on this podcast,
and this is the first I've heardof a program like this at the
secondary level. And what you'redoing now is amazing, and as you
suggested earlier, getting evenmore amazing as we move into the
future with a 8000 square foothangar, 20,000 square foot

(13:24):
education facility, I don't knowthat we've mentioned yet, a $15
million investment. I mean,that's no small amount of money
in the world of secondaryeducation. I want to dive into
that a little bit. You've got tobe so excited about this new
campus. In fact, I know throughsome of the conversations that
we've had that you have membersof Congress, you have other
thought leaders and publicpolicy leaders that have toured

(13:45):
the facility that are super,super interested in the work
you're doing. $15 million that'sa lot of money. Where do you go
for that money? Who are some ofthe partners that you worked
with in terms of generating thecapital you needed to engage in
an endeavor like this one?

Yeah, it's a great question, and this project
wouldn't have been possiblewithout all the different
parties that came to see boththe need for it and the vision
for it. I think first andforemost, our district
leadership deserves a lot ofcredit for years ago having the
vision to establish somethinglike this and create it, but in

(14:19):
order to do it, you're rightthat there's no way that Butler
tech, by itself, could fund afacility of this nature. It's
just not a practical fiscalreality. So in that $15 million
approximately, Butler Tech hascontributed somewhere in the
range of 7 million of thatthrough our own funds. Another 7
million came through grantfunding through the Butler

(14:42):
County commissioner's officethat originally started as
federal funding through theAmerican rescue plan act after
the pandemic, that could be putinto various economic and
community development projectsto help spur growth and
development. So a big chunk camethat way. Another. $1 million
came through jobs Ohio, which isa nonprofit in the state of Ohio

(15:05):
that tries to help attractbusinesses and economic
development to the state. Andthen the city of Middletown also
contributed $500,000 becausethey saw the potential value of
not just what this could do forstudents in the near term, but I
think they and all of us on thebutler tech side, we all keep
asking the question of, whatmight this look like in three

(15:27):
years, five years, 10 years,what else might this have
contributed to spurring in anarea that hasn't had a ton of
new economic development likethat in quite some time?

Unknown (15:38):
So tremendous amounts of a benefit that's going to
flow from that incredibleinvestment. You've got to get
people excited about thosethings too, right? I mean, so
it's one thing to have an idea.
It's another thing to havesomebody who's got a $7 million
amount of money that they canput to work, and have probably
have a lot of different optionsfor where they put that money to
work. How do you inspire andcreate a vision big enough for

(15:58):
folks to want to invest in. Talkabout the messaging to your
stakeholders.

It's about thinking big and bold. The Aviation
Program, when it started, in away, it was big and bold because
we hadn't been doing it, andthere just weren't a lot of
aviation programs around littlebit here and there. That, in its
own right, was a step. But tosay, You know what, let's take
this program from being one ofmany to being its own standalone

(16:24):
campus and truly letting it takeoff in all kinds of other
directions. I think it's thatthat visionary thinking that
helped propel that, and ithelped spur a lot more interest
and buy in from some of thosegovernment stakeholders, from
some of the industry and at theend of the day, a lot of the
work there is, it's just aboutestablishing those

(16:45):
relationships, so that peoplecome in and they understand,
here's what Butler tech is,here's what we offer, here's how
we can benefit. Yes, students,obviously, that's our first and
foremost priority, and alwayswill be. But how can that have a
domino effect into communityrevitalization, economic
development, other opportunitiesthat go even above and beyond

(17:08):
just the students that comethrough our doors. And I think
it's laying that groundwork anddoing all of that communication
and kind of the education partof here's what can be, here's
what's possible, and you'reready when the stars align.
Because I don't think any of uscould have us could have
predicted covid, and we wouldn'thave predicted that those ARPA
funds, necessarily. But it wasall of that, all that legwork

(17:30):
that had been done leading up tothat point that put us in a
position to say, you know, what,if there's money that's
available for this type of aproject, we think we've got the
perfect answer for somethingthat could really create and be
a catalyst for a lot of otherthings.

And I want to pause on that for just a moment,
because we spend a lot of timetalking with folks, whether it's
people in secondary education orother levels of education, and
then you can almost puteverybody in one of two baskets,
and the first basket is thepeople who lament that there's
never any money that you know,we'd be doing much bigger
things, but nobody has showed upwith a check. And then you have
this group of people that say,You know what, if we create a

(18:06):
vision so big that nobody cansay no to it, we're not sure
where that money is going tocome from, but when that
opportunity comes, we're goingto be ready for it. We're going
to have that idea. We're goingto have that message that is so
big that people can't help butgo along with it. Now we've got
a good friend, Michael frona. Heused to be the CEO of Junior
Achievement of the state ofWisconsin, but his his line is
always, if you want a milliondollars, you need to have a

(18:28):
million million dollar idea. Orin your case, if you want $15
million you need to have a $15million idea. Credit to you for
coming up with a $15 millionidea. By the way, I'm not going
to lose sight of the fact thatwhen you were going through and
talking about vision and talkingabout funding and talking about
building relationships, you saidthat's where your ideas take
off. To paraphrase you. I don'tknow if the words take off were

(18:50):
on purpose, but it's a perfectline. There are

so many opportunities in aviation that
I've come to find where the punsjust occur naturally. Like,
we're trying to get the programoff the ground, it's time to
take off. It's time to land theplane and get this thing
underway. Like there are so manydifferent ways you could take
that. It's I've tripped over itmyself the last several months,
guys, I've been in this role.
And yeah, it's definitely athing, yeah.

Well, I'm super glad that we put our seats in
the upright, locked position andput our tray tables away for
this episode of The TechEdpodcast, because having so much
fun we could, by the way, beinga 57 year old dad, I could go on
with this line of thinking herefor probably the entire episode
of the podcast. We'll move onfrom the from the from the silly
puns and back into theincredible work that you are
doing as it's taking flight anddoing amazing, amazing things

(19:34):
for your students. I want totalk about those students a
little bit. You know, when wethink about a aviation program.
I'll be honest with you, Adam,the first thing that comes to
mind is we've got, like, atechnical college here in my
area that's got an amazingaviation program for for pilot.
It's a flight school, andthey're doing really, really
great things there. And when,you know, I was talking to our

(19:55):
producer, Melissa, and gettingstarted on this, this this
episode, and coming up. Of speedon it. The first thing that came
to mind is, oh, they're teachingstudents to fly planes. That's
cool. Well, that's part of it,right? But then you think about
all these other careeropportunities in and around
aviation, whether it'smaintaining the planes, whether
it's, you know, engineering,around aviation technology,
you're tackling all of those.
And I want to talk about thosecareer pathways make sure that

(20:18):
our audience is fully familiarwith those. So you know, in this
particular case, they can theycan choose flight, they can
choose maintenance, they canchoose engineering. So talk
about those three careerpathways and why they're in
there, and also why you startwith this intro to aviation
experience, to get the studentsstarted as they're as they're
entering the program. Yeah.

So as I said, previously, the program was
typically a two year programwith students coming in as 11th
graders, but as part of thisexpansion, we've dropped it down
to 10th grade. And so whenstudents come to us as
sophomores, we give themessentially the same year one in
the program experience wherethink of it as aviation

(20:58):
exploration or intro toaviation, whatever term you
would use, and where they'regetting a little bit of the
career exploration part.
Because, as you pointed out, alot of people, when they hear
aviation, they're just thinkingflying planes. But there's so
much more to the industry thanjust that, and we want to help
students understand there's alittle bit they're going to
learn in that year, they'regoing to get some of the intro

(21:19):
to flight on the pilot or thedrone side. They're going to get
some of the intro to maintenanceside of that, a little bit of
the intro to engineering side,because we want them to have a
well rounded foundation of allthose aviation concepts. But not
only that, at the end of thatfirst year, we then ask them to
pick one of those three pathwayswhere they want to specialize

(21:41):
more their junior and senioryear. So if they pick the flight
pathway, they're going to spendfar more time working toward
their part 107, UAScertification for commercial
drone operation, or theirprivate pilot written test and
the ground school aspect ofthat. If they pick the
maintenance side, they're goingto start going through the part
147 general maintenance writtencurriculum, and then moving into

(22:05):
the airframe or power plant partof being an aviation mechanic,
the engineering side has asimilar start to the
maintenance, because there's somuch overlap between the two.
And then it branches off towhere then they start to do
things that are a little more onthe design or aerospace aspect.
So we really like that designbecause we feel like it gives
students the opportunity to comeinto the program and learn about

(22:27):
the industry at large, getfundamentals of flight
maintenance and engineering, andthen they're able to make a far
more educated decision aboutwhich of these routes do I truly
want to go and pursue morediligently in those final couple
years of high school?

That's the beauty of career exploration and of
having options. Really, reallyimportant. I want to, I want to
dive into each of these pathwaysin a little bit more detail,
Adam, and kind of, kind ofunderstand what's all entailed
you mentioned on the flight. Onefirst question that everybody's
going to have is, all right,these, these high school
students, are they up in the airin planes? Are they just, are
they doing things in simulationand and on the ground? Is it

(23:08):
both? Talk to us about that fromthe from the standpoint of the
flight pathway,

okay, so on the flight side, they're doing
things with aerodynamics. Andhow does an airplane fly? How is
it built? The core things, thatif you're going to do anything
in aviation, you need tounderstand those types of
basics. But once they go intothat junior year and that senior
year on the more specializedelement of it, that's when they
have the opportunity to worktoward so the private pilot

(23:36):
license, there's the groundschool aspect of things, and
then there's the in flighttraining hours, so the ground
school part, which is more aboutthe written test itself, that's
what we specialize in to workstudents. To get to that point,
we don't have the in flighttraining hours ourselves at this
point, to where, if a student isready for that they pass that

(23:57):
written test, we can try toconnect them and get them
connected with a third partythat does provide those things.
Yeah, so well. So the otherthing so as part of the ground
school training, we do haveflight simulators that students
are able to utilize, and thatgive them as much of a real
world experience as we canwithout actually going up in the
air. And that's a key elementtoo, because some of the things

(24:20):
that students are able to do,it's good practical experience.
But if they're able to work on aflight simulator that's FAA
rated, some of the time thatthey spend working on that and
getting hours can actuallyreduce some of the in flight
training hours that are requiredto get their actual license, and
as a result, that can take asignificant amount of cost

(24:41):
reduction for them. And whenyou're talking about in flight
training, that might run in therange of a couple 100 bucks an
hour, even if you shave three tofive hours off, you might be
talking about up to $1,000 justfrom that. So that's a key part
of that experience. And thenthat 107 UAS drone cert.
Education, that's one that a lotof students, they might be

(25:03):
interested in drones, but theydon't realize the broad
applications that can exist withit in this of you don't have to
work in aviation to see thebenefit to that. You might work
in real estate, you might workin construction, you might work
in all kinds of differentindustries, where being able to
operate a drone in aprofessional, full time manner,

(25:24):
is, is a highly valuable skillto have,

for sure, search and rescue, agriculture, all
kinds of applications on thedrone side.

Yeah, absolutely, all of those things are real.
There's, there aremunicipalities that are starting
to test out the use of drones infirst responder like for fire,
police, EMS, all of thosethings. So that's that opens up
other opportunities to wherestudents that, if they don't
pursue a full time aviationcareer, that's another one of
those skills that they couldacquire through our program that

(25:52):
could easily transfer intosomething else that they might
want to go into

absolutely so, you know, I learned, learned an
interesting fact a couple yearsago, you know, I landed my space
shuttle simulator on my iPad. Ihad 500 successful landings with
the space shuttle simulator onthe iPad, and then I learned
later that that was the samesystem that the space shuttle
astronauts had to do 1000landings before they could
actually become a space shuttleastronaut on that simulator. The

(26:19):
power of simulation. So I was, Iwas, I was actually proud to
explain to my wife, not toolong, be long, not too long
after that, that I was halfwayto becoming a space shuttle
astronaut, believe it or not,just by using my iPad to land
the space shuttle. Like a littlebit, a little bit of a an
extension of logic there, but,but I love the idea of
simulation, and obviouslythere's so many things that we
can learn in a simulatedenvironment. It never gets us

(26:41):
all the way there, but itcertainly can cut out. Can cut
out, to your point, Adam, atremendous amount of the time
that might otherwise be requiredto gain those skills and those
competencies. So reallyimportant. So that's the flight
path. Talk about the maintenancepath a bit.

So the maintenance path is probably a little more
scripted than the flight path,because students that go down
the maintenance route they'reworking toward their general
maintenance written test. That'skind of the foundation of the
part 147 which is the the FAAregulation that governs Aviation
Maintenance Technician schoolsand all that curriculum. That's

(27:15):
the the foundational part. Theystart there, and then once they
complete that, then they couldgo into airframe or power plant,
which are the different ratingsthat are necessary to work on
various types of aircraft. Andthat curriculum is really
rigorous, because the FaaS we'rein the middle of of completing
our FAA approval processes,we're adding this part of the

(27:37):
program in this new facility, aswe're going through that what
they're asking for is asignificant amount of curriculum
evidence and what projects, whatequipment, what kinds of hands
on experiences are you going touse to teach students about
these skills and this riskmanagement and this type of task
and this type of knowledge sothat is far more regimented in

(27:59):
terms of the progress throughthat curriculum, we're pretty
confident that from a timelinestandpoint, we can get students
to their general written test,and then we can get them either
all the way or very close to allthe way through one of airframe
or power plant. And what thatdoes is similar to that flight

(28:19):
simulator discussion we just hadby pushing some of that into the
high school level, all of thethings that students are able to
complete with us before theygraduate that comes with no
extra tuition cost. Sure wedon't charge them anything above
and beyond normal, annual typeschool fee stuff. There's
nothing beyond that. It'stuition free, essentially at

(28:41):
that point, whereas if you dothat at a post secondary
institution, that easily couldrun into five figures when
you're talking about airframeand power plant. So that's the
crux of the maintenance side. Isvery hands on, with the obvious
exception of there's a lot ofbook work that comes with
understanding the regulationsthat the FAA has in place to

(29:03):
make sure that the aircraft aresafe at the end of the day. We
don't want to turn out mechanicsthat don't understand the safety
element of that, but we alsowant to get students to
understand that so they can getto those hands on things as much
as possible.

Probably a good time for me to ask as far as as
far as dual credit orarticulating credit, to
institutions of highereducation, two and four year
institutions. Do you have formalarticulation or transfer
agreements in place? Or where dothe students take those credits,
and how do they

transfer them? That is very much a discussion we've
started to have internally. Andwe do have a number of partners
in the area that have either amaintenance program or a flight
program that they have interestin further discussions on, okay,
how can we make this work sothat our students are able to do
dual credit or dual enrollment,things of that nature? So that

(29:50):
falls into the category of onour radar, but lots of other
things that we got to get to asthe new building opens before
we're going to be able to fleshthat. On out. I think in more
detail, you

didn't just say on our radar, did you? I did
awesome. I love that. So, youknow, as I'm thinking about this
maintenance pathway, and youknow you think about, and I
don't, certainly not an expertin that area, but the kinds of
technology students would belearning control systems,
mechanical drives, fluid power,obviously, principles of
aviation, electrical systems andrelay control, if I didn't

(30:23):
mention it, I mean, those arethe I'm guessing that a lot of
the content is similar in natureto those types of competencies,
and also that that has thatlearning has application beyond
aviation as well. So a studentlearning those kinds of things
if they're going to go intomanufacturing or go into the
energy or national defense or Imean, whatever career path they

(30:43):
they're gaining competenciesthat certainly apply to aviation
but apply beyond. Is that right?

100% correct that that is the type of thing that
we really want baked into theprogram that at the end of the
day, we would love for everysingle student that goes through
our program to have a successfuland prosperous career in
aviation, but we know that thereare going to be students that
simply they maybe they gothrough the program and they

(31:08):
just decide, You know what,aviation is cool, but it's not
what I want to do forever. Andthey're able to take things that
they've learned from us, many ofthe skills that you just
mentioned, and they can applythose to other industries as
well, because there is so muchtransferable overlap between
what we're able to offer them,teach them, help them gain hands

(31:28):
on experience with to where itworking on an airplane and
working on a car. Yes, they'redifferent, but the skill set is
very similar there, and all ofthose types of applications,
tons of overlap in the middle ofthat Venn diagram. Yeah. The

point being that you the none of these are dead
ends. You have all kinds ofoptions. And, yeah, if you
choose a career in aviation,awesome. That's that's kind of
the goal. But if, for whateverreason, you decide that's not
for you, you're not startingover. You've got all these
competencies. You can takecompetencies you can take in
another direction. I've got tobelieve engineering, same thing.
Let's talk about that pathway,the engineering path.

So that engineering pathway, it's the newest of the
pathways to us. When they makethat pathway decision, whether
they choose maintenance orengineering, they're going to
have a similar experience for alittle while, because a lot of
the engineering pathway has astrong maintenance foundation.
One of the things that we'veheard from our industry,
partners routinely as we'velooked at developing our

(32:26):
curriculum is that the bestengineers have some type of
maintenance background andtraining. They understand how
the systems work, so whenthey're designing them, they can
very easily identify potentialflaws or correct things
proactively, and so as a result,we've we've largely kept
maintenance and engineering in asimilar spot, at least to a

(32:49):
certain point before engineeringwill will branch off and do some
different things.

It's so curious, because I spend a lot of my time
in and around in themanufacturing space, and it's
exactly what we hear frommanufacturers, which is the best
engineers in manufacturing,industrial engineers,
mechanical, electricalmanufacturing engineers are the
ones that had some version ofhands on experience, and whether
that was a two plus two programthrough a technical college,
whether it was, you know, TechEdprograms in high school, whether

(33:15):
it was going to a polytechnicuniversity. You know, I've even
heard manufacturing leaders say,Look, you know, if I hire an
engineer out of a theory basedengineering program, it's a good
couple of years before they'rereally adding, you know, a
significant amount of value forus, because, yeah, they're great
with calculus and physics andtrig, but, but they, you know,
they don't know how to, how towork with their hands, and how

(33:37):
things work, necessarily, on anintimate basis. So I think, I
think you make a really, reallystrong point there. And also
this whole idea that you know,regardless of which path they're
on, maintenance or engineering,so many of the fundamentals are
are the same. And givingstudents that that hands on
experience really, reallyimportant, that students are
getting that kind of experienceregardless of what they do
through the when they're donewith the pathway, whether

(33:58):
they're going to go on to be apilot, a maintenance technician,
an aeronautical engineer and soon. Let's hit on that a bit. So
students are wrapping up theprogram. They're starting their
sophomore year. They're gettingdone senior year. And now what's
next? Where are your studentsgoing and what are they doing
when they get

there? The answer is a little bit of everything.
We have some students thatthey're interested in pursuing
either two year or four yeardegrees beyond high school,
their our goal is that they'rethey're ready for that if they
want to go straight into theworkforce. Our goal is that
they're prepared to do that ifthey want to pursue a military
career. Our goal is, is there todo that at the end of the day?

(34:37):
We simply want them to be readyfor whichever of those pathways
they go down because the programwas rooted more on the pilot
side of things. We've had morestudents historically that have
gone that go into full timeaviation industry careers. I
think one of the things that weprobably can reasonably foresee

(34:58):
is that as we add more. More ofthe maintenance and more of the
engineering side of the program,moving forward that we will
probably see an additionalnumber of students that want to
go straight into the workforce,that they're much more
interested in. I'm hands on. Idon't necessarily love school,
but I don't necessarily hate it,but I'll do it to get to where I

(35:19):
want to be, and where they wantto be is making money, being
employable, having a good,steady career. And I think that
there's a definitely a uniquesubset within the population on
the maintenance side that will,for sure pursue that. So I think
we'll see things start to shifta little bit in that direction,
probably the next two to fouryears, as more students graduate

(35:41):
from that program, you

just exactly explained my mindset as I was
coming out of high school. It'slike, you know, I'll do what I
have to do. I don't hate school,but yeah, let's get out there
and make money and make thingshappen and make a difference in
enough of this education stuff,at least in my case. So I can
relate to that really, reallywell, not to say that every
student is the same way as Iwas, because many of them are
not, but that was kind of theway that I looked at the world

(36:03):
at that age. Do you have a storyof a student, Adam that really
resonates with you? You don'thave to give us their full name
or anything, but you know, youhave a story or two of, Wow,
this is a student that we reallyput them on a career path that
they never would have been on ifit hadn't been for the work that
we did one

of our students, our instructor, who started the
program and one of his formerstudents who graduated, I don't
remember the year two or threeyears ago. I think they are both
actually going to be doing ajoint presentation at the
aircraft owners and PilotsAssociation conference later in
November this year to talkabout, essentially, their

(36:39):
experience of getting theprogram started going through
it, that student is nowcertified flight instructor, and
he's gone that direction. Hewants to pursue those types of
things. And that is, to me, areally good example of a success
story, of a student who wasinterested in the program,
gained everything that he couldwhile he was with us, and then

(37:01):
took that and pursued thingsfurther beyond high school, and
now is in a position to wherehe's in a successful spot. He
wants to continue to advance anddo other things, and wants also,
I think, is important, to sharethat experience and give other
students and and otherprofessionals in the industry
some insight into here's what'spossible. Here's what can

(37:21):
happen. If you're trulyinterested and you put your mind
to going down this path,

absolutely it's a great ambassador for the kinds
of careers. And I'm sure thosetypes of stories really resonate
with your students, where it'sone thing for a teacher, an
adult, a principal, a parent orwhatever, saying, think about
this and imagine what could be,and then seeing someone that's
maybe just a few years olderthan they are, who actually made
that happen and and shows showsthem that, look, this isn't just
about going to high school in adifferent building or with a

(37:49):
different set of of curriculum,but rather, it's all about what
you can be and what the futureholds for you. So love, we love
to hear stories like that at theTechEd podcast. It's the magic
of CTE. It's the magic oftechnical education. And I want
to get into just the general CTEand technical education mindset
here for a little bit Adam,because in as much as what

(38:09):
you're doing is reallyimpressive and really cool. And
I think there are probablydistricts and regions around the
country that could, could reallylearn from it in terms of
creating a pathway to aviationcareers, a lot of schools that's
not in reach, or maybe notreasonable, or not something
that they would consider, butyet, so many lessons that they
could learn from your experienceand from the work that you've

(38:29):
done. Let's start with this onewe talked already about this
full year of exploration comingin the sophomore year and really
considering all these differentcareer opportunities, and not
just necessarily puttingourselves on one trajectory.
What can CTE learn from that? Isthat a good idea, regardless of
of the of the discipline, shouldwe be doing more career
exploration in CTE, in thesecondary level, early on? Yes.

I think the short answer, the easy answer, is,
yes, more career exploration isvery beneficial, at least in my
view, for every student, I thinkof it as it not so much that it
allows students to betterunderstand what they want to do,
but it also helps themunderstand what they don't want
to do, and they get to exploreall of those different potential

(39:15):
things that maybe pique theirinterest, and they try a little
bit of it, and they're Like, Oh,that's not really what I wanted
at all. And they're doing thatduring their secondary education
career. Because if they do thatin middle school and high
school, they're making thosedecisions and learning those
types of things before itreaches the point of, I just

(39:36):
spent $10,000 on tuitionsomewhere. And now I really
can't stand this, and I don'twant to do it for 30 or 40
years, so I've just thrown moneyaway. That, to me, is one of the
core values of that. But theother thing that I really like
about it is in aviation, but Ifeel like this has to be true in
almost every other industry, thebreadth. Growth and the scope of

(40:01):
the industry is so much morethan what the average person
would think. And when you havethat exploration year, in our
case, it's still specific to theaviation industry, but that year
helps students understandeverything about the pilot side,
the drone side, the maintenanceside, the engineering side, and

(40:23):
they start to learn all of thosethings we we have a couple of
students that are in thataviation exploration year with
us right now that they've beenhired at the Middletown Regional
Airport, fixed based operator tohelp with some of the airports
operations. That's a whole otherelement of the aviation industry
that the average person's notthinking that well, even at a

(40:43):
smaller installation likeMiddletown, there's a whole
little, almost a little citythat has to operate to keep that
place running, and all the jobsthat are related to that. So I
think between figuring out kindof what you're not interested
in, but also figuring out justwhat all's out there. Those two
things alone feel to me likethey're beneficial in any type

(41:05):
of career pathway background,let alone just aviation. And

really cool example that you just gave
there. And I think a lot offolks, if they're, you know, if
they're super accustomed toflying in and out of commercial
airports, and you see one set ofcareers there, and then there's
always that other building onthe other side of the airport,
where the, you know, the smallerprivate jets are sitting. And
there's a whole set of careersthat are going on over there as
well, from the people that arerunning the FBOs to the people
that are handling air trafficcontrol and so on. So this, this

(41:32):
whole separate set of careersthat a lot of times, we don't
think of, is just one example ofthe wide, wide, wide variety of
different career opportunitiesavailable to our students. So
that's true in aviation. It'strue in a lot of different
market spaces. How did you goabout deciding that aviation was
the career path that made themost sense for this really
specialized in some ways, CareerTech Center that your students

(41:54):
are involved in, and for peoplethat are operating in maybe
other market spaces, what wouldbe good advice for them to say,
All right, here's a good way foryou to explore what career
pathways might be appropriate ifyou're going to try and do
something similar, but not inaviation.

Yeah, I agree that in our case, aviation is unique,
because we're in an aviationhotbed. It's aviation is one of
the five jobs Ohio super sectorsfor the state. But I feel like,
for any career program, ifyou're going about like trying
to find what's, you know, insouthwest Ohio, it might be

(42:28):
aviation, but in other parts ofthe country, it might be some
other industry. And to go aboutthat, to me, there's a couple
things that are really importantthere. One, it's engaging all of
the relevant partners, early andoften, to where it's, speaking
with your local businesspartners and industry to get a
sense of where they're at, whatthey need and where they think

(42:49):
it's going. But also speakingwith your elected officials and
your your public officials aboutwhat are the needs that they're
seeing in the community, what'sdriving potential concern,
what's, what's a potential areaof growth and understanding,
like, what's that? Cultural,regional, economic DNA? Is it
the tech sector? Is it inagriculture? Is it in aviation?

(43:11):
It's, it reminds me, there's a,there's a quote that was
attributed to Wayne Gretzky fromyears ago that was essentially
someone asked him about hissuccess, and he said, Well, my
success is I skate where thepuck is going, not where it has
been. And I think that that's areally good methodology for any
career tech or workforcedevelopment organization to

(43:33):
pursue. Is okay, it's great thatthis is a thing right now, but
where is it going to be in fiveyears? 10 years, 20 years. And
to look at that data, look atwhere things are headed. And
even then, in our case, aviationstarted pretty small, but we
were ready to grow it and scaleit when the opportunity arose.
And I think that that's part ofit too, is maybe it's dipped the

(43:54):
toe in the water initially, butonce you see that you're on the
right track, now it's time tostart thinking big and be ready
when the stars align to dosomething more.

Understand what your region's economic DNA is. I
really like the way that youcharacterize that, what
industries are there that reallymake the region grow and go and
move where the where are thecareers, where are the
opportunities, not just today,but where that puck is going to
be. As Wayne Gretzky famouslysaid in the years, to the
future. So looking to thefuture, and I think that's great

(44:26):
advice, by the way, for our CTEleaders around the United States
of America, in terms of buildingthose relationships with
stakeholders, and not justcompanies, but also anybody
that's forming economic policy,to understand where industry is
now, and also where it's going.
And then, you know, maybe onceyou create that vision, Adam, if
somebody has the answer to thatquestion, what are a few things

(44:48):
they should be thinking about asthey figure out their strategy
to make that vision a reality? I

want to frame especially in our context with
aviation, but I really thinkthis is applicable to a lot of
other. Programs. We want ouraviation program and our new
aviation facility, we want itfirst and foremost, to be for
our current and future students.
Certainly, that's always theprimary target, but we have made
it clear that we want to reachout and make it something that

(45:17):
is also an opportunity forCommunity and Civic Engagement
to where we want otherorganizations to come in,
because we believe we can bebeneficial for them, and we
believe that by having them inour facility and around our
students, they will help ourstudents learn, and our students
will have new opportunities thatwe might not have thought about

(45:38):
or be able to offer ourselvesquick example, we've partnered
with a couple of organizationslocally. One of them is the
library district. Well, thatokay, schools and libraries
might go together, but you don'tnecessarily think of the library
when you think aviation, butwe've partnered with them
because their staff has a lot ofhistory about the aviation
that's existed in the Middletownarea in the industry for

(46:01):
basically almost a century now,from the early stages of flight,
they can provide opportunitiesfor our students and the greater
community to learn, whilebringing additional people into
our facility so they understandmore about us, and it's building
a lot of those overlappingconnections. So I think that's a
key. I think the other thingthat's undoubtedly to me is one

(46:23):
of the things that I thinkcontinues to make our program
successful and will benefit ourstudents greatly, is identifying
transferable skills thatoverlap, not just in aviation,
but could be taken to otherthings as well, because some
students, they might loveaviation, and they might work in
aviation for 510, 20 years, butthen they have a career change.

(46:47):
They maybe they like somethingelse better. Maybe they've
worked at a company and thecompany downsizes, and they're
in desperate need to find a newjob. What do they already have
the ability to do that caneasily help them transition into
something else, given thesituation. So I think both of
those are key aspects that anycareer tech program or or

(47:08):
education program of this naturecould easily align themselves

with. It's a perfect, perfect roadmap. You
know, number one make sure thatwe're putting students first.
That's why we're educating inthe first place. Is to create
opportunities and futures forour students. Number two, as you
mentioned, civic and communityengagement. Super, super
important, so that the communityis part of what this these
students experiences, that we'regetting the support, that we're
helping everybody understandwhat the career paths are, how

(47:36):
economic development is 100%incumbent on our ability to
create talent, regardless of theregion. And then I do, of
course, love that, that allusionto to transferable skills as
well, and making sure thatwhatever we're teaching students
in high school is giving themoptions, not, you know, pigeon
holing them or putting them on aspecific career path. Great if a

(47:56):
student knows, when they're asophomore in high school or a
freshman in high school, thatthey know exactly what they want
to do and they're pursuing thatpathway, but we also want to
make sure that they recognizethat, and I believe actually,
that we'll get more studentsinto STEM and CTE pathways if
they recognize that it's they'regoing to have options on the
back end, that they're notmaking a decision as a 14 or 15

(48:17):
year old young person, that thisis what the rest of the career
is going to look like. That'sone of my paradigms about
education. And as we get intothe last two questions we have
for Adam Snyder here on theTechEd podcast, I want to ask a
little bit about your paradigmsfor education, Adam, and the
whole idea that I think everyone of us, regardless of what
version of education we wentthrough, and how deep we went in
our formal education versus ourinformal education, we all have

(48:40):
these paradigms or beliefs abouteducation. What's something you
believe about education thatmight surprise our listeners?

I'll phrase it this way. It's something that when I
started my career in teachingyears ago, I'm not sure that I
understood the importance of andit would be this, you have to
find ways to make whatever it isyou're trying to help someone
learn, you have to find ways tomake it relevant to them as an
individual. And what I loveabout career tech is, of course,

(49:09):
students are choosing a programthat they have an interest in,
but I think this goes far beyondthat, to where, if a student
chooses aviation, they probablyhave a greater natural
inclination to enjoy that topicand that content already, but
they also still need to takeEnglish or math or science or
social studies, so in coursesthat are more academic in

(49:32):
nature, what could be done tolayer in those types of relevant
connections? Can those be tiedinto the career program that
they're pursuing, in this case,aviation, or are there ways to
give them hands on, real world,practical problem solving,
opportunities that connect withthem, that actually make a
difference in their life, or thepeople that they know? It

(49:54):
increases their desire to learn.
They get more engaged. They'remore interested. I. Saw this as
a classroom teacher over time,where, when you're teaching a
very abstract concept, andyou're teaching it purely from
the academic standpoint, theonly students that really get
interested about it are the onesthat just really enjoy the
academic element of school. 100%the reality, the reality on the

(50:16):
career tech side, is most of ourstudents are interested in a
career tech program, at least inpart, because they don't really
love just the academic side ofschool. They want other things.
They want hands on. They wantprojects. They want to do things
that are practical. So what arethe ways that you can take that
connect it to their background,connect it to their interests,

(50:36):
get them doing things it's I'mnot sure that it's easy to
understand until you start tosee it, and then you do it in
the classroom, you see it inyour school, and all of a sudden
students start to come to lifewhen you're able to pull things
into their own personal orbit ofinterest, you

know. And I think we still have a long way to go
in the greater world ofeducation, to do exactly what
you just talked about, and in aworld where we're still doing so
much education one to many andone size fits all, and assuming
that every student learns, Ishouldn't say assuming, but at
least presenting the learning insuch a way that we believe that
every student is going to learnexactly the same way. And the
truth of the matter is that weall learn differently. And in

(51:17):
your whole point about Yeah, wecan present information and
learning in a real academic wayand a traditional kind of theory
based lecture way. And that'sgoing to that's going to
resonate with a certain group ofstudents, primarily the ones
that are more probably academicand intellectual in nature to
begin with. And then we've gotthis whole world of CTE where it
is different, and we are meetingevery every learner, to a much

(51:39):
larger extent, where they arerecognizing that they're going
to learn a little bitdifferently than everybody else,
and then allowing them to learnin that regard, in many cases,
the same or very similarlearning outcomes, but getting
there in different ways. And I'mjust a huge believer, not only
that that's the right way todeliver education, but in the
future, it is going to be theway that we deliver education.
We could probably talk for anhour, or not another hour about

(52:01):
just how technology is going tochange technical education and
education across the board, butBut you and I are 100% aligned
that the closer we can make thelearning resonate with the
learner, and they're all goingto be a little bit different,
the more successful we're goingto be, not just in delivering
learning and creating learningoutcomes, but inspiring students
towards really, really coolcareers, which is exactly what
these you're doing for thesestudents starting in their

(52:23):
sophomore year of high school atthat age. And with our final
question, I want to take youback to that age, Adam, to that
sophomore year of high school.
You're a 15 year old youngperson. You have your whole life
ahead of you. And if you couldgo back in time and give that
young person one piece ofadvice, what would you tell that
young Adam, snotty?

I think I would say you need to be more willing to
try more things, even if you'renot sure about it or comfortable
with it. You need to go back andexplore some of the different
opportunities that are out therethat you weren't totally sure
the rest of your friends weren'tthat interested. So you decided
not to or for whatever reasonyou came up with an excuse to

(53:04):
not do it, I would go back andsay, take advantage of all of
those experiences andopportunities. Because if you do
it, you may fall in love with itand want to do more of it, and
you would never find outotherwise. But if you do it, and
you find out that you don't likeit much like that career
exploration year, you found thatout early on, and now you can

(53:24):
make better decisions movingforward for things that you know
you really do or don't enjoy,and just taking advantage with
especially when you're in highschool, explore all the
opportunities that are there,because those opportunities
might only come once. Those

opportunities might only come once, and you
have those opportunities whileyou're in high school to explore
so many different disciplines,so many different areas. And if
Adam could give one set, onepiece of advice to his 15 year
old self, it would be to takeadvantage of more of that. I
think that's great advice to allof our high school students, and
especially those in their firstyear or two of high school and
even in middle school, exposeyourself to as many different

(54:00):
opportunities, differentteachers, different learning
environments, different careerpathways. As you can you never
know what you might find that isgoing to inspire your future and
allow you to do great things.
Certainly, Adam's future hasbeen inspired and he's been
allowed to do great things. AdamSnoddy, principal of the butler
tech Aviation Center. It's beena wonderful time having you here
on the TechEd podcast, andthanks so much for

being here. Thank you very much appreciated the
conversation, and we

appreciate our audience being with us as well
as we do every single week. Sowe'll make sure we put some
great information about the workthat Adam is doing in the show
notes. We do have the best shownotes in the business, and you
will find all kinds of linksthere. We will put those at
TechEd podcast.com/butler tech.
TechEd podcast.com/butler tech,when you're done there, come

(54:47):
check us out on social media.
You will find us everywhere. Weare on Instagram. We are on tick
tock, we are on LinkedIn, we areon Facebook. Say hello. Let us
know how much you love the workthat all of us are doing. It is
it can. Community here at theTechEd podcast, including you
let us know how much you lovethe work that we are doing
together in changing the livesof the future generation, and in

(55:08):
the process, hearing theAmerican Dream for the next
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What Is Your Region's Economic DNA? Lessons for CTE from an Aviation High School - Adam Snoddy, Principal of Butler Tech Aviation Center

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}What Is Your Region's Economic DNA? Lessons for CTE from an Aviation High School - Adam Snoddy, Principal of Butler Tech Aviation Center