Class Gives Kids a Lift

SAN CLEMENTE —  Steve Struckmeyer was chewing gum in class when his teacher reminded him that he was breaking a rule. But the 16-year-old had a logical response for Celia Vanderpool, who teaches San Clemente High School’s aviation class.

“You’re supposed to chew gum in the cockpit,” the teen explained. “All the cool pilots do it. You have to chew it to pop your ears.”

That argument didn’t fly, but the aviation class, which Vanderpool began four years ago, is right on course. About 50 students a year are learning to apply math and science in preparation for such varied careers as airplane mechanics, airport designers, flight attendants, navigators, radio dispatch operators and pilots.

Experts say demand for such classes at high schools and community colleges could take off in the next few years as the strong economy fuels an increase in airline hiring.

“Aviation is a growth industry,” Hank Verbais, program manager and education outreach coordinator for the Federal Aviation Administration in Los Angeles, said.

The San Clemente High School program, the first of its kind in Orange County when it began in 1994, is one of a dozen in California and about 150 across the nation.

Buena Park High School started a similar, expanded program in 1996 and now has about 250 students enrolled.

Federal aviation experts project that the commercial airline industry will double from its current level of nearly 600 million passengers a year to about a billion passengers in 2010.

Phillip Woodruff, who works with education programs through the FAA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., said studies show that most young people can identify only four types of aviation-related careers: pilot, aeronautics engineer, flight attendant and air-traffic controller.

But there are hundreds of careers in the fast-growing field, he said, including jobs in airport design and computer technology.

“We are in the aerospace age,” he said. “It would be good if every kid had an opportunity to explore aviation and career opportunities in high school.”

The San Clemente program started as a one-semester class, then expanded to a full year. Its students can explore all aspects of aviation and aeronautics, including completion of the FAA ground school requirements for a pilot’s certificate. Some students move on to flight instruction during their own time. Others use the course to meet the school’s science requirement.

Teacher and founder Vanderpool, a certified flight instructor, said there are always students on a waiting list for the class. With help from NASA and a number of local businesses, she has gathered the flight instruments, maps, navigational tools, flight simulators and other materials needed to meet FAA ground school requirements.

This month, her students are drawing detailed runway maps of local airports and working on flight plans.

“They are just starting to learn the freeway system in the sky,” said Vanderpool, a winner of the Washington D.C.-based Women in Aerospace organization’s Anne Morrow Lindbergh Aerospace Education Award for her work with students.

Aviation is in her blood, she said. Her father, a B-26 bomber pilot during the Korean War, was shot down in 1952 and never found. Family stories of her father, whom she never knew, inspired her to earn her wings nine years ago.

The aviation program at Buena Park High School is broader in scope, requiring a two-year commitment from students and introducing principles of flight through science, math, social studies and English. The program aims eventually to graduate students with their pilot’s licenses through an affiliation with Fullerton Airport, Principal G. Thomas Triggs said. The program is funded through a magnet-school grant from the state.

At Oceanside Municipal Airport on Saturday, a dozen students from the San Clemente program stepped into the cockpit for the first time. The Orange County chapter of the 99s, a women’s flying club, furnished three four-seat planes and three pilots--including Vanderpool.

The opportunity to fly brings perspective to the classroom work, students said, and it beats driving on the freeway.

“I wish my car had this much power,” said Jeff Ross, 18, before taking off with pilot Patty Murray in her 1979 Piper Arrow.