North Carolina A&T State University innovates with new aerospace major

GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — As you’ve gone through life, someone or something has probably introduced you to the oxymoron that the only constant is change.

North Carolina A&T State University embraces that and is always innovating.

That latest iteration of that is how they’ve adapted their curriculum to create a new major they call Aerospace.

It fits well with the economic development wins in their home region of the Piedmont Triad, with companies like JetZero, Boom Supersonic, HondaJet and Marshall Aerospace all choosing the region for major job development.

A&T has reworked its academic offerings to reflect that.

“For the last 20 years, the mechanical engineering department has been having a mechanical engineering degree with an aerospace option, where some of our students take aerospace classes, and they get a mechanical engineering degree with aerospace,” A&T Professor John Kizito said. “Now, recently this year, we applied to get a full aerospace program prompted by our sponsors … out in industry like NASA and Boom Supersonic, and the name of the program we came up with was a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics. The combination of the two is what is referred to as aerospace. Aeronautics has to do with the air, and astronautics has to do with space.”

“Most people say the sky’s the limit, but we have far surpassed that,” A&T freshman student Kaleb Rawlings said.

And he’s right. Rawlings had attractive offers to attend other schools, including prestigious ones in his home state of Virginia, but felt A&T offered something different.

“I’ve always been in STEM programs … I recently just graduated from the center of engineering in my high school, so I knew I wanted to be an engineer. I just didn’t know which kind,” Rawlings said. “I was always just fascinated about like what’s out there and how can I get off the ground?”

A&T realizes top students like Rawlings have options, so they have to offer something different.

“Our program is unique. You are going to come over here, not only learn the fundamentals and theoretical, but also learn the hands-on,” Kizito said.

It’s a matter of thinking about how so much of academia is intertwined.

“They do help each other because most vehicles have to start off here on Earth, so they have to go through the air before they get to space,” Kizito said.

See more on how A&T is evolving in this edition of The Buckley Report.