The pre-apprenticeship course hosted by partners at the Salina Regional Airport graduated its first ever class of aviation maintenance students Thursday evening. The Aviation Innovation & Maintenance (AIM) Center of Excellence at SLN held an industry day and graduation ceremony for its first cohort of students and faculty.
The evening included a networking reception as well as a student showcase. Students also received their graduation certificates and micro-credentials from the faculty along with Ray Seif, who is the Director of Aviation of the Kansas Department of Transportation. “It’s important to get students into aviation maintenance careers.” said Seif. “They are very well paying and high in demand, and I’m happy to support such an amazing program”
The AIM Center of Excellence is a six-week pre-apprenticeship program that exposes interested participants to the dynamic world of aviation maintenance. During the course, students learned basic information about the different components involved in aviation maintenance.
Chad Robbs, the lead instructor of The (AIM) Center of excellence was very passionate about the program. “I think it was really successful. we had students that haven’t even flown before, much less touched tools, so we got to give them a lot of experience, especially through our instructors. They got a lot of hands-on time learning these new skills so we were super excited about it.”
AIM Students received competent education from well experienced instructors, and received Competency-Based Micro-credentials through Kansas State University-Salina. This is in hopes to open new doors with other potential career opportunities down the line for students like Dayton Linenberger. “Transportation maintenance grabbed my interest, it’s a career I want to keep on exploring to see if it’s right for me.” Says Linenberger. “It was a lot of long nights but my classmates were good to work with. There was a good mix of ages and experience that you could draw from. It was a lot of fun.”
The Next six-week cohort will start March 25th and end on May 3rd.
For those interested in enrolling go to www.aimcenter.aero.
