Dinwiddie, RBC join with statewide economic initiative to create drone certification, associate’s degree
DINWIDDIE – While the county prepares for construction of new executive-plane hangars at Dinwiddie Airport, it also has plans with a local college on a project that everyone hopes will soon be airborne, also.
The county and its school system, have joined forces with Richard Bland College and economic-development initiative GO Virginia to create a drone certification and associate’s degree in aeronautics at RBC.
“That’s the end game, we think, as far as going forward,” said District 2 Supervisor Mark Moore, who also serves on the county Airport and Industrial Authority.
The first piece of the puzzle, Moore said, is a request for a $50,000 grant from GO Virginia to start working on the certification and degree program.
If the planning grant is authorized for the project, the educational program would offer a certificate with stackable credit to students who complete it – it would be an associate degree in an aeronautics program very similar to what is already being offered by Liberty University in Lynchburg and Averett University, which has a branch campus in Dinwiddie.
“Right now, the area that we would first be going into would be more applicable to the operation and the uses for drones – it would not be a program [for] people to come and learn how to fly drones and get [their] license – it would be much more than that,” said Joanne Williams, director of communications at the public junior college.
RBC is looking at several areas of industries that are already using drones, and students would be trained to use drones in those specific areas. Dominion Energy already uses drones to survey utility lines and other startups in the area aim for similar measures.
One startup in Christiansburg called Wing, which is an affiliate of Google’s parent company, Alphabet That company is going to be performing drone deliveries. FedEx, Walgreens and local retailer Sugar Magnolia are going to be Wing’s first three clients.
There’s going to be a strong demand for either startups or the companies that are using drones, and Williams said the college sees that demand.
She said the program would teach students the basics of aeronautics and the areas of how to repair planes, and even as far as getting their pilot’s license and being a controller.
“So, there’s a lot of pathways that [they] could take through that degree,” Williams said. “Amazon is one of those companies that is looking at drones. This region, which we’re in GO Virginia’s region four, [there’s] a lot of logistics companies, so we do think that this will be under the logistics umbrella and it will be applicable to a lot of businesses in our area.”
GO Virginia is an initiative led by the commonwealth’s senior business leaders to encourage job creation and private-sector growth state incentives for regional collaboration by government, business and education.
Williams said the college hopes to have phase one of this project ready in the fall of 2020.
Dr. Tyler Hart, the chief development officer at RBC, will lead the program.
“Richard Bland College is excited to partner with Dinwiddie County, the Dinwiddie Airport and other localities to create a business plan to build an ‘Unmanned Aerial Systems (Drone)’ program to spur economic and workforce development in the Crater Region. Drone technology is rapidly evolving, creating efficient and effective ways to capture information and utilize data in many fields including agriculture, logistics, utilities and emergency services,” Hart said.
By Logan Barry, Progress-Index Staff
Logan Barry can be reached at lbarry@progress-index.com.