Northwest Aerospace News February | March 2019 Issue No. 7 | Page 57

CENTER OF EXCELLENCE UAS SPOTLIGHT
B
yron Noel, UAS operations
coordinator, Big Bend Community
College (BBCC) is one of the state’s
greatest assets in the development
of drone curriculum and program-
ming dealing with capturing data by
industry. The Center of Excellence for
Unmanned and Autonomous Systems
frequently partners with Noel as an
expert for building similar training in
the state.
Noel operates one of the only Pro-
fessional Remote Pilot Training,
Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)
programs in the state. He also has set
up the Washington State Unmanned
Systems Consortium, at Big Bend
Community College, Moses Lake,
Washington, to pull in partners from
the industry and other community and
technical colleges.
Big Bend has been known as an aviation training school for over 50 years, and it
was natural for them to develop curriculum and competencies in unmanned sys-
tems.
Noel shares the same sentiment as Stasney in that he doesn’t believe many drone
pilots, outside of cinematographer drone pilots making marketing videos, will get
the bulk of the possible work in this industry.
“You are very unlikely to get a job just as a drone pilot, without other training. The
drone is a data collection tool; if you don’t know what data is important to that
industry how can you be expected to collect the right kind of data?” Noel said.
That’s why BBCC has started offering a Certificate of Accomplishment with class-
es like geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing systems; UAS laws
and policies; mission planning; UAS ground school and flight labs.
These classes can be taken by anyone in BBCC’s other trade-related programs such
as agriculture, engineering, industrial systems technology or mechatronics. He said
that students who want this specialized training could add it to their other program
curriculum to earn certification.
Noel also noted that students, once they complete the certification classes, would
still need to sign up for and take the FAA Part 107 exam for Certified Drone Pilot.
Photo credit: BLMOregon on Foter.com / CC BY-SA
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