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 FEBRUARY | MARCH 2019 ISSUE NO. 7 57