What Is Your Region's Economic DNA? Lessons for CTE from an Aviation High School - Adam Snoddy, Principal of Butler Tech Aviation Center

How can CTE listen to regional economic and workforce needs and build a vision so big that others can't help but support it?

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 Matt Kirchner sits down with Adam Snoddy, Principal of the Butler Tech Aviation Center, to explore how one district used its regional economic identity to design a world-class CTE program. Located between Cincinnati and Dayton—home to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Amazon’s CVG air hub, a web of regional airports, and one of the densest aviation job markets in North America—Butler Tech built a high school aviation program directly aligned to its region’s workforce DNA.

Adam walks us through how the program launched in 2019 and quickly outgrew its original model. Today, Butler Tech is opening a 20,000 sq. ft. aviation high school and 8,500 sq. ft. hangar, backed by $15 million in district, county, JobsOhio, and city investment. Students begin with a full sophomore-year “Introduction to Aviation” exploration before choosing pathways in Flight, Maintenance, or Engineering, with engineering intentionally grounded in maintenance fundamentals to create stronger systems thinkers and safer future engineers.

The real story? This aviation program is a template. Whether your region is built on advanced manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, energy, agriculture, or something entirely different, Butler Tech’s approach offers a roadmap for building CTE around local industry, future workforce demand, and transferable technical skills.

Listen to Learn:

• How regional economic DNA shaped Butler Tech’s aviation program and why every CTE district should start here
• What a $15 million aviation campus means for students, industry, and community partners 
• Why Butler Tech begins 10th grade with a full exploration year before pathway selection
• How flight, maintenance, and engineering pathways work, and why engineering starts in the maintenance hangar
• What every CTE leader can take from this model, even if their region has nothing to do with aviation

3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:

1. CTE should be built around regional economic DNA. Southwest Ohio’s aviation ecosystem—CVG, Wright-Patt, Joby, UPS, regional airports—creates unmatched demand for aviation talent. Butler Tech aligned its entire program to that reality, proving CTE is strongest when built around local industry needs and future workforce trends.

2. An exploration-first model helps students make smarter pathway decisions. Every student begins with “Intro to Aviation,” experiencing flight, maintenance, and engineering pathways. This helps students discover interests—and eliminate misaligned ones—long before making postsecondary commitments.

3. Hands-on systems training creates better technicians, engineers, and pilots. Butler Tech’s engineering pathway starts with maintenance fundamentals because employers consistently stress that engineers must understand the systems they design. Students build real-world intuition early, leading to safer, more capable graduates in any technical field.

Resources in this Episode:

• Learn more about Butler Tech's Aviation progra

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Transcript

TechEd Podcast Introduction: 0:09

Announcer, this is the TechEd podcast, where we feature leaders who are shaping, innovating and disrupting technical education and the workforce. These are the stories of organizations leading the charge to change education, to rethink the workforce and to embrace emerging technology. You'll find us here every Tuesday on our mission to secure the American Dream for the next generation of STEM and workforce talent. And now here's your host, Matt Kirchner,

Matt Kirchner: 0:36

welcome to the TechEd podcast. I am Matt Kirkner. I am your host. And for what it's worth, I have for a long time, TechEd, my whole life, in many ways, been fascinated by aviation, whether it's heading off to Washington, DC and going to the National Air and Space Museum. Used to love going down near the airport near Milwaukee, where I grew up, and watching planes take off and land. Love that I cannot let a plane go over my head now without going onto my flight radar 24 app and seeing where it's coming from and where it's going and what kind of plane it is and all that exciting stuff. Fascinated fascinated by aviation. Imagine being a high school student that was fascinated by aviation and having that be almost your entire high school journey. Everything that you're learning is centered around the magic of aviation. Believe it or not, there's a high school that is doing exactly that, expanding, by the way, in really cool, really, really cool ways. And I should also add Whether you're into aviation or not, whether this is a model that would work in your district or your region or not, all kinds of lessons for those of us working in and around career and technical education, for how we set up world class, innovative, engaging programs for students. My guest to talk about all of that this week is Adam Snoddy. He is with the butler tech Aviation Center. In fact, he is the principal at that school. Adam, so awesome to have you with us, and thanks for spending some time.

Adam Snoddy: 1:58

Yeah, thanks, Matt. I appreciate the opportunity and looking forward to the discussion

Unknown: 2:02

I am as well. And you know, let's start here. You know, you've got a whole program based around high school aviation. I think this is the first high school program we've seen, technical and community college programs around aviation, certainly, certainly advanced education university programs around that discipline. But a whole high school, a whole campus all around aviation. And so you're sitting in one of the most aviation dense regions, where you are in western Ohio, super dense from an aviation standpoint. Talk a little bit about the culture of aviation in that area and in the region, and why there would be a need for an entire high school program, and an entire high school, as a matter of fact, centered around the idea of aviation,

Adam Snoddy: 2:41

yeah, sure. So for quick context, Butler Tech is a career tech school district. We serve students from 11 different traditional K 12 districts that are affiliated with us, and we're in Butler County, Ohio, which is between Cincinnati and Dayton in the southwest corner of the state, little closer to Cincinnati, but definitely relevant to both, because they're only about an hour apart in total, and that whole area has a huge history of aviation industry, from literally the beginning of aviation up to present day. Of course, the Wright brothers were from the Dayton area, so aviation, Ohio is known as the birthplace of aviation. Is probably the starting point for aviation culture. It's ingrained in this corner of Ohio statewide, but especially this region, from the outset. And one of the things that amazes me, I was at an event over the summer that was a workforce development, aviation education event, just to bring people together. And one of the things that was emphasized in that is they had put a map up on the board, and basically they had a map with a variety of aviation or airport installations. If you put a pin on Greater Cincinnati and draw a circle that represents a two hour driving distance from Cincinnati in almost any direction, there are as many aviation related jobs or industry opportunities as there are in any similarly sized geographic area anywhere in North America. And I think that that may be better than anything else describes why aviation is such a hotbed right here, right now

Matt Kirchner: 4:22

that, yeah, that's, that's so fascinating. You think about, I mean, when we think about aviation, you think about, you know, maybe people think about Boeing or the Pacific Northwest. You know, certainly, I think the first thought when people think about the Wright Wright Brothers is Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. But if my history is correct, I think they moved with their family from like Richmond, Indiana to to the state of Ohio, to that area where you are sometime in like the 1870s or so. And really that influence that that had on the Wright brothers, and then, of course, their influence on the birth of aviation, just incredible, incredible impact. And to think that here you are, right here in the central United States. And you've got this huge concentration of aviation opportunities, aviation employment, but it makes perfect sense. And so that really would follow that you would have a career tech center that would be focused so heavily on the on the aviation space. So you initially launched the program in 2019 What were you hearing at that time from employers, students, the community? How did you know that you needed to have a program like this at the Career Tech or the high school level? The

Adam Snoddy: 5:25

industry in the region is so prevalent that it's not just let's have aviation because it's interesting, it's let's have aviation because it's interesting for students. But there's also a ton of opportunities. We've got the Cincinnati airport that's 45 minutes to the south. That's where Amazon has one of their largest cargo air hubs in the world, the Dayton Airport's got Joby aviation, which is investing half a billion dollars in advanced Air Mobility. Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton is the single largest employer in the state of Ohio. The UPS world hub for their cargo operations is two hours south in Louisville, and that doesn't even factor in all the other smaller regional airports like the one where we're at. So that combination of economic opportunity, student interest and local community interest helped to put together the emphasis on let's start to work our way to getting more students interested in this at an earlier, younger age.

Unknown: 6:24

First of all, that concentration of aviation, and those are all things, frankly, that I hadn't, hadn't thought about. And then you think about, you know, when we think about aviation, maybe the first thing that comes to mind are, you know, folks that are building aviation assets, building airplanes and so on. But, but, of course, the you know, the obvious application is all the folks that are using them, and whether that's for distribution, logistics, national defense, this picture is becoming really, really clear to me in terms of the why for locating a program like yours, where it's located, and the huge amount of jobs and opportunities that are available to your students. Let's talk about those students a little bit. You know, initially, 2019 what was the student experience in terms of the program and how are some of the ways that it's evolved over the course of time?

Adam Snoddy: 7:08

Yes, so the student experience has changed a lot, and it's going to change far more as our new facility opens up here in the next little while. The way that the program was designed initially and has largely operated for the past several years, is the aviation coursework takes place in a couple of classrooms that we rent a space at the Middletown airport attached to their community hangar, so that those students have access to some of the hands on opportunities in the aviation world. But students also still complete their academic courses, English, math, science and social studies during their school day with us. So we would bus them midday, either from our main campus for academics to the airport for lab or vice versa. And that lab experience, it really kind of had that one room schoolhouse dynamic, where it was kind of on an island. There weren't a lot of other regular school operations up there. So that's really kind of what it looked like initially, but as it's changed, we we've moved it to where it's always been a two year program where students would come in as 11th graders, and they would spend their 11th and 12th grade school years with us doing their aviation program, and we would have roughly 25 students a year, so 50 in total. But what we're doing now with our new facility, which is going to be a 20,000 square foot standalone high school building, plus an 8500 square foot hangar

Unknown: 8:37

that those will be right there. Yeah, yeah.

Adam Snoddy: 8:41

So that's going to allow us our academics, our aviation coursework, lunch, all those other aspects of the school day. We'll all move into that one facility. And because of that additional space, this year in the program, we're up to about 80 students, and we anticipate doubling that again over the course of the next couple years, to where we're over 150 inching our way, hopefully toward 200 within the next couple of years. Amazing.

Matt Kirchner: 9:06

So is demand outstripping the capacity right now? Do you have more students interested in this than you have space for them? Or how is that working?

Adam Snoddy: 9:12

Yeah, one of the driving factors for the development of the program as well is not just the workforce need, but the student interest aspect, which is exactly what you just described, we have had to turn students away because we only have a limited number of spots versus the number of students applying. So by expanding the program, dropping it from 10th grade, or from 11th grade down to 10th grade, bringing students in a year earlier, that's another aspect that we've tweaked with the program. By doing that combination of things, we're able to get a lot more students in to where our supply of seats might not perfectly fit the demand, but it's far closer than where we've been able to be for quite some time.

Matt Kirchner: 9:54

When I just think about, and we talk about on this podcast all the time, Adam the whole idea that I was thinking. They couldn't sit still in school. And, you know, learning in a traditional classroom, in a traditional model, I did it. I got through it, you know, whatever. I graduated, and life went on. But, but, boy, if you had given me the chance in high school to go to a program like this versus the traditional high school experience, I would have been all over it, because, as you mentioned, you know, you're not. It's not an either or. You're still teaching all what we might traditionally call gen eds, and all your you know, a lot of states have state standards required for whether it's math or English, but you're still meeting all the requirements of a traditional high school, but you're doing it in a way that's a lot more engaging for at least a certain type of student. Is that, is that part of the thesis here, 100%

Adam Snoddy: 10:39

that's a good description, and I think that's that's something that Butler Tech, we try to do with all of our programs, is to get students more connected to hands on opportunities to real world practice, real world problem solving, things that give them skills that are attuned to employer needs, so that regardless of what path they want to take after High School, they're ready to do it. And we also want to push our academic courses in the same type of direction, so that even if it's more abstract academic concepts, how can those be translated in a hands on, in a practical in a project based methodology that I think really helps students that are more hands on connect with those things in a way that they might not do so as effectively in a traditional setting. Totally.

Unknown: 11:24

I think so many times people think, well, you know, if we're taking students out of a traditional classroom and we're just giving them these hands on experiences, you know, are they really learning the same learning outcomes, and is that going to be as valuable? And my answer is always, for certain students, it's going to be more valuable. Because if you're that student that does learn hands on learning math, learning communication, learning science in a hands on environment is going to make it stick in a way that I think is even more valuable. So I really, really commend you for what you're doing, Adam, and especially using this whole concept of aviation, as I mentioned in the in the intro, something that's fascinated me for pretty much my entire life. And I guess, who among us isn't fascinated by the idea that we can, you know, create an aircraft to make it fly. And it still kind of boggles the mind that all of that works. You're doing that with this aviation model. And as I mentioned earlier, I'm not sure I've heard of another high school at the secondary level that's delivering learning in this fashion. Are you one of a kind? Is there anybody else doing this?

Adam Snoddy: 12:20

There are some other schools that offer things of this nature. They're few and far between, especially at the high school level. There are some examples. I know there's one in New York, there's one out in Washington State. There are some here and there, but we believe that we're going to be in a very unique spot, especially in our part of the country, where we have this large aviation industry and a significant population that has some connection to an aviation background, but there's not a dedicated High School aviation standalone facility like what we're doing in the general area, and we think that that's something that really will will help set us apart as we continue to grow our program. There's no

Unknown: 13:01

question that it'll set you apart, and there's no question that that it's something super unique, whether you're the only one or one of only a handful. We spend a lot of time in education, as you can imagine here on this podcast, and this is the first I've heard of a program like this at the secondary level. And what you're doing now is amazing, and as you suggested earlier, getting even more amazing as we move into the future with a 8000 square foot hangar, 20,000 square foot education facility, I don't know that we've mentioned yet, a $15 million investment. I mean, that's no small amount of money in the world of secondary education. I want to dive into that a little bit. You've got to be so excited about this new campus. In fact, I know through some of the conversations that we've had that you have members of Congress, you have other thought leaders and public policy leaders that have toured the facility that are super, super interested in the work you're doing. $15 million that's a lot of money. Where do you go for that money? Who are some of the partners that you worked with in terms of generating the capital you needed to engage in an endeavor like this one?

Adam Snoddy: 13:59

Yeah, it's a great question, and this project wouldn't have been possible without all the different parties that came to see both the need for it and the vision for it. I think first and foremost, our district leadership deserves a lot of credit for years ago having the vision to establish something like this and create it, but in order to do it, you're right that there's no way that Butler tech, by itself, could fund a facility of this nature. It's just not a practical fiscal reality. So in that $15 million approximately, Butler Tech has contributed somewhere in the range of 7 million of that through our own funds. Another 7 million came through grant funding through the Butler County commissioner's office that originally started as federal funding through the American rescue plan act after the pandemic, that could be put into various economic and community development projects to help spur growth and development. So a big chunk came that way. Another. $1 million came through jobs Ohio, which is a nonprofit in the state of Ohio that tries to help attract businesses and economic development to the state. And then the city of Middletown also contributed $500,000 because they saw the potential value of not just what this could do for students in the near term, but I think they and all of us on the butler tech side, we all keep asking the question of, what might this look like in three years, five years, 10 years, what else might this have contributed to spurring in an area that hasn't had a ton of new economic development like that in quite some time?

Unknown: 15:38

So tremendous amounts of a benefit that's going to flow from that incredible investment. You've got to get people excited about those things too, right? I mean, so it's one thing to have an idea. It's another thing to have somebody who's got a $7 million amount of money that they can put to work, and have probably have a lot of different options for where they put that money to work. How do you inspire and create a vision big enough for folks to want to invest in. Talk about the messaging to your stakeholders.

Adam Snoddy: 16:02

It's about thinking big and bold. The Aviation Program, when it started, in a way, it was big and bold because we hadn't been doing it, and there just weren't a lot of aviation programs around little bit here and there. That, in its own right, was a step. But to say, You know what, let's take this program from being one of many to being its own standalone campus and truly letting it take off in all kinds of other directions. I think it's that that visionary thinking that helped propel that, and it helped spur a lot more interest and buy in from some of those government stakeholders, from some of the industry and at the end of the day, a lot of the work there is, it's just about establishing those relationships, so that people come in and they understand, here's what Butler tech is, here's what we offer, here's how we can benefit. Yes, students, obviously, that's our first and foremost priority, and always will be. But how can that have a domino effect into community revitalization, economic development, other opportunities that go even above and beyond just the students that come through our doors. And I think it's laying that groundwork and doing all of that communication and kind of the education part of here's what can be, here's what's possible, and you're ready when the stars align. Because I don't think any of us could have us could have predicted covid, and we wouldn't have predicted that those ARPA funds, necessarily. But it was all of that, all that legwork that had been done leading up to that point that put us in a position to say, you know, what, if there's money that's available for this type of a project, we think we've got the perfect answer for something that could really create and be a catalyst for a lot of other things.

Matt Kirchner: 17:45

And I want to pause on that for just a moment, because we spend a lot of time talking with folks, whether it's people in secondary education or other levels of education, and then you can almost put everybody in one of two baskets, and the first basket is the people who lament that there's never any money that you know, we'd be doing much bigger things, but nobody has showed up with a check. And then you have this group of people that say, You know what, if we create a vision so big that nobody can say no to it, we're not sure where that money is going to come from, but when that opportunity comes, we're going to be ready for it. We're going to have that idea. We're going to have that message that is so big that people can't help but go along with it. Now we've got a good friend, Michael frona. He used to be the CEO of Junior Achievement of the state of Wisconsin, but his his line is always, if you want a million dollars, you need to have a million million dollar idea. Or in your case, if you want $15 million you need to have a $15 million idea. Credit to you for coming up with a $15 million idea. By the way, I'm not going to lose sight of the fact that when you were going through and talking about vision and talking about funding and talking about building relationships, you said that's where your ideas take off. To paraphrase you. I don't know if the words take off were on purpose, but it's a perfect line. There are

Adam Snoddy: 18:52

so many opportunities in aviation that I've come to find where the puns just occur naturally. Like, we're trying to get the program off the ground, it's time to take off. It's time to land the plane and get this thing underway. Like there are so many different ways you could take that. It's I've tripped over it myself the last several months, guys, I've been in this role. And yeah, it's definitely a thing, yeah.

Matt Kirchner: 19:12

Well, I'm super glad that we put our seats in the upright, locked position and put our tray tables away for this episode of The TechEd podcast, because having so much fun we could, by the way, being a 57 year old dad, I could go on with this line of thinking here for probably the entire episode of the podcast. We'll move on from the from the from the silly puns and back into the incredible work that you are doing as it's taking flight and doing amazing, amazing things for your students. I want to talk about those students a little bit. You know, when we think about a aviation program. I'll be honest with you, Adam, the first thing that comes to mind is we've got, like, a technical college here in my area that's got an amazing aviation program for for pilot. It's a flight school, and they're doing really, really great things there. And when, you know, I was talking to our producer, Melissa, and getting started on this, this this episode, and coming up. Of speed on it. The first thing that came to mind is, oh, they're teaching students to fly planes. That's cool. Well, that's part of it, right? But then you think about all these other career opportunities in and around aviation, whether it's maintaining the planes, whether it's, you know, engineering, around aviation technology, you're tackling all of those. And I want to talk about those career pathways make sure that our audience is fully familiar with those. So you know, in this particular case, they can they can choose flight, they can choose maintenance, they can choose engineering. So talk about those three career pathways and why they're in there, and also why you start with this intro to aviation experience, to get the students started as they're as they're entering the program. Yeah.

Adam Snoddy: 20:37

So as I said, previously, the program was typically a two year program with students coming in as 11th graders, but as part of this expansion, we've dropped it down to 10th grade. And so when students come to us as sophomores, we give them essentially the same year one in the program experience where think of it as aviation exploration or intro to aviation, whatever term you would use, and where they're getting a little bit of the career exploration part. Because, as you pointed out, a lot of people, when they hear aviation, they're just thinking flying planes. But there's so much more to the industry than just that, and we want to help students understand there's a little bit they're going to learn in that year, they're going to get some of the intro to flight on the pilot or the drone side. They're going to get some of the intro to maintenance side of that, a little bit of the intro to engineering side, because we want them to have a well rounded foundation of all those aviation concepts. But not only that, at the end of that first year, we then ask them to pick one of those three pathways where they want to specialize more their junior and senior year. So if they pick the flight pathway, they're going to spend far more time working toward their part 107, UAS certification for commercial drone operation, or their private pilot written test and the ground school aspect of that. If they pick the maintenance side, they're going to start going through the part 147 general maintenance written curriculum, and then moving into the airframe or power plant part of being an aviation mechanic, the engineering side has a similar start to the maintenance, because there's so much overlap between the two. And then it branches off to where then they start to do things that are a little more on the design or aerospace aspect. So we really like that design because we feel like it gives students the opportunity to come into the program and learn about the industry at large, get fundamentals of flight maintenance and engineering, and then they're able to make a far more educated decision about which of these routes do I truly want to go and pursue more diligently in those final couple years of high school?

Matt Kirchner: 22:47

That's the beauty of career exploration and of having options. Really, really important. I want to, I want to dive into each of these pathways in a little bit more detail, Adam, and kind of, kind of understand what's all entailed you mentioned on the flight. One first question that everybody's going to have is, all right, these, these high school students, are they up in the air in planes? Are they just, are they doing things in simulation and and on the ground? Is it both? Talk to us about that from the from the standpoint of the flight pathway,

Adam Snoddy: 23:12

okay, so on the flight side, they're doing things with aerodynamics. And how does an airplane fly? How is it built? The core things, that if you're going to do anything in aviation, you need to understand those types of basics. But once they go into that junior year and that senior year on the more specialized element of it, that's when they have the opportunity to work toward so the private pilot license, there's the ground school aspect of things, and then there's the in flight training hours, so the ground school part, which is more about the written test itself, that's what we specialize in to work students. To get to that point, we don't have the in flight training hours ourselves at this point, to where, if a student is ready for that they pass that written test, we can try to connect them and get them connected with a third party that does provide those things. Yeah, so well. So the other thing so as part of the ground school training, we do have flight simulators that students are able to utilize, and that give them as much of a real world experience as we can without actually going up in the air. And that's a key element too, because some of the things that students are able to do, it's good practical experience. But if they're able to work on a flight simulator that's FAA rated, some of the time that they spend working on that and getting hours can actually reduce some of the in flight training hours that are required to get their actual license, and as a result, that can take a significant amount of cost reduction for them. And when you're talking about in flight training, that might run in the range of a couple 100 bucks an hour, even if you shave three to five hours off, you might be talking about up to $1,000 just from that. So that's a key part of that experience. And then that 107 UAS drone cert. Education, that's one that a lot of students, they might be interested in drones, but they don't realize the broad applications that can exist with it in this of you don't have to work in aviation to see the benefit to that. You might work in real estate, you might work in construction, you might work in all kinds of different industries, where being able to operate a drone in a professional, full time manner, is, is a highly valuable skill to have,

Matt Kirchner: 25:26

for sure, search and rescue, agriculture, all kinds of applications on the drone side.

Adam Snoddy: 25:30

Yeah, absolutely, all of those things are real. There's, there are municipalities that are starting to test out the use of drones in first responder like for fire, police, EMS, all of those things. So that's that opens up other opportunities to where students that, if they don't pursue a full time aviation career, that's another one of those skills that they could acquire through our program that could easily transfer into something else that they might want to go into

Matt Kirchner: 25:56

absolutely so, you know, I learned, learned an interesting fact a couple years ago, you know, I landed my space shuttle simulator on my iPad. I had 500 successful landings with the space shuttle simulator on the iPad, and then I learned later that that was the same system that the space shuttle astronauts had to do 1000 landings before they could actually become a space shuttle astronaut on that simulator. The power of simulation. So I was, I was, I was actually proud to explain to my wife, not too long, be long, not too long after that, that I was halfway to becoming a space shuttle astronaut, believe it or not, just by using my iPad to land the space shuttle. Like a little bit, a little bit of a an extension of logic there, but, but I love the idea of simulation, and obviously there's so many things that we can learn in a simulated environment. It never gets us all the way there, but it certainly can cut out. Can cut out, to your point, Adam, a tremendous amount of the time that might otherwise be required to gain those skills and those competencies. So really important. So that's the flight path. Talk about the maintenance path a bit.

Adam Snoddy: 26:53

So the maintenance path is probably a little more scripted than the flight path, because students that go down the maintenance route they're working toward their general maintenance written test. That's kind of the foundation of the part 147 which is the the FAA regulation that governs Aviation Maintenance Technician schools and all that curriculum. That's the the foundational part. They start there, and then once they complete that, then they could go into airframe or power plant, which are the different ratings that are necessary to work on various types of aircraft. And that curriculum is really rigorous, because the FaaS we're in the middle of of completing our FAA approval processes, we're adding this part of the program in this new facility, as we're going through that what they're asking for is a significant amount of curriculum evidence and what projects, what equipment, what kinds of hands on experiences are you going to use to teach students about these skills and this risk management and this type of task and this type of knowledge so that is far more regimented in terms of the progress through that curriculum, we're pretty confident that from a timeline standpoint, we can get students to their general written test, and then we can get them either all the way or very close to all the way through one of airframe or power plant. And what that does is similar to that flight simulator discussion we just had by pushing some of that into the high school level, all of the things that students are able to complete with us before they graduate that comes with no extra tuition cost. Sure we don't charge them anything above and beyond normal, annual type school fee stuff. There's nothing beyond that. It's tuition free, essentially at that point, whereas if you do that at a post secondary institution, that easily could run into five figures when you're talking about airframe and power plant. So that's the crux of the maintenance side. Is very hands on, with the obvious exception of there's a lot of book work that comes with understanding the regulations that the FAA has in place to make sure that the aircraft are safe at the end of the day. We don't want to turn out mechanics that don't understand the safety element of that, but we also want to get students to understand that so they can get to those hands on things as much as possible.

Matt Kirchner: 29:15

Probably a good time for me to ask as far as as far as dual credit or articulating credit, to institutions of higher education, two and four year institutions. Do you have formal articulation or transfer agreements in place? Or where do the students take those credits, and how do they

Adam Snoddy: 29:30

transfer them? That is very much a discussion we've started to have internally. And we do have a number of partners in the area that have either a maintenance program or a flight program that they have interest in further discussions on, okay, how can we make this work so that our students are able to do dual credit or dual enrollment, things of that nature? So that falls into the category of on our radar, but lots of other things that we got to get to as the new building opens before we're going to be able to flesh that. On out. I think in more detail, you

Matt Kirchner: 30:01

didn't just say on our radar, did you? I did awesome. I love that. So, you know, as I'm thinking about this maintenance pathway, and you know you think about, and I don't, certainly not an expert in that area, but the kinds of technology students would be learning control systems, mechanical drives, fluid power, obviously, principles of aviation, electrical systems and relay control, if I didn't mention it, I mean, those are the I'm guessing that a lot of the content is similar in nature to those types of competencies, and also that that has that learning has application beyond aviation as well. So a student learning those kinds of things if they're going to go into manufacturing or go into the energy or national defense or I mean, whatever career path they they're gaining competencies that certainly apply to aviation but apply beyond. Is that right?

Adam Snoddy: 30:48

100% correct that that is the type of thing that we really want baked into the program that at the end of the day, we would love for every single student that goes through our program to have a successful and prosperous career in aviation, but we know that there are going to be students that simply they maybe they go through the program and they just decide, You know what, aviation is cool, but it's not what I want to do forever. And they're able to take things that they've learned from us, many of the skills that you just mentioned, and they can apply those to other industries as well, because there is so much transferable overlap between what we're able to offer them, teach them, help them gain hands on experience with to where it working on an airplane and working on a car. Yes, they're different, but the skill set is very similar there, and all of those types of applications, tons of overlap in the middle of that Venn diagram. Yeah. The

Matt Kirchner: 31:43

point being that you the none of these are dead ends. You have all kinds of options. And, yeah, if you choose a career in aviation, awesome. That's that's kind of the goal. But if, for whatever reason, you decide that's not for you, you're not starting over. You've got all these competencies. You can take competencies you can take in another direction. I've got to believe engineering, same thing. Let's talk about that pathway, the engineering path.

Adam Snoddy: 32:03

So that engineering pathway, it's the newest of the pathways to us. When they make that pathway decision, whether they choose maintenance or engineering, they're going to have a similar experience for a little while, because a lot of the engineering pathway has a strong maintenance foundation. One of the things that we've heard from our industry, partners routinely as we've looked at developing our curriculum is that the best engineers have some type of maintenance background and training. They understand how the systems work, so when they're designing them, they can very easily identify potential flaws or correct things proactively, and so as a result, we've we've largely kept maintenance and engineering in a similar spot, at least to a certain point before engineering will will branch off and do some different things.

Matt Kirchner: 32:54

It's so curious, because I spend a lot of my time in and around in the manufacturing space, and it's exactly what we hear from manufacturers, which is the best engineers in manufacturing, industrial engineers, mechanical, electrical manufacturing engineers are the ones that had some version of hands on experience, and whether that was a two plus two program through a technical college, whether it was, you know, TechEd programs in high school, whether it was going to a polytechnic university. You know, I've even heard manufacturing leaders say, Look, you know, if I hire an engineer out of a theory based engineering program, it's a good couple of years before they're really adding, you know, a significant amount of value for us, because, yeah, they're great with calculus and physics and trig, but, but they, you know, they don't know how to, how to work with their hands, and how things work, necessarily, on an intimate basis. So I think, I think you make a really, really strong point there. And also this whole idea that you know, regardless of which path they're on, maintenance or engineering, so many of the fundamentals are are the same. And giving students that that hands on experience really, really important, that students are getting that kind of experience regardless of what they do through the when they're done with the pathway, whether they're going to go on to be a pilot, a maintenance technician, an aeronautical engineer and so on. Let's hit on that a bit. So students are wrapping up the program. They're starting their sophomore year. They're getting done senior year. And now what's next? Where are your students going and what are they doing when they get

Adam Snoddy: 34:14

there? The answer is a little bit of everything. We have some students that they're interested in pursuing either two year or four year degrees beyond high school, their our goal is that they're they're ready for that if they want to go straight into the workforce. Our goal is that they're prepared to do that if they want to pursue a military career. Our goal is, is there to do that at the end of the day? We simply want them to be ready for whichever of those pathways they go down because the program was rooted more on the pilot side of things. We've had more students historically that have gone that go into full time aviation industry careers. I think one of the things that we probably can reasonably foresee is that as we add more. More of the maintenance and more of the engineering side of the program, moving forward that we will probably see an additional number of students that want to go straight into the workforce, that they're much more interested in. I'm hands on. I don't necessarily love school, but I don't necessarily hate it, but I'll do it to get to where I want to be, and where they want to be is making money, being employable, having a good, steady career. And I think that there's a definitely a unique subset within the population on the maintenance side that will, for sure pursue that. So I think we'll see things start to shift a little bit in that direction, probably the next two to four years, as more students graduate from that program, you

Matt Kirchner: 35:42

just exactly explained my mindset as I was coming out of high school. It's like, you know, I'll do what I have to do. I don't hate school, but yeah, let's get out there and make money and make things happen and make a difference in enough of this education stuff, at least in my case. So I can relate to that really, really well, not to say that every student is the same way as I was, because many of them are not, but that was kind of the way that I looked at the world at that age. Do you have a story of a student, Adam that really resonates with you? You don't have to give us their full name or anything, but you know, you have a story or two of, Wow, this is a student that we really put them on a career path that they never would have been on if it hadn't been for the work that we did one

Adam Snoddy: 36:17

of our students, our instructor, who started the program and one of his former students who graduated, I don't remember the year two or three years ago. I think they are both actually going to be doing a joint presentation at the aircraft owners and Pilots Association conference later in November this year to talk about, essentially, their experience of getting the program started going through it, that student is now certified flight instructor, and he's gone that direction. He wants to pursue those types of things. And that is, to me, a really good example of a success story, of a student who was interested in the program, gained everything that he could while he was with us, and then took that and pursued things further beyond high school, and now is in a position to where he's in a successful spot. He wants to continue to advance and do other things, and wants also, I think, is important, to share that experience and give other students and and other professionals in the industry some insight into here's what's possible. Here's what can happen. If you're truly interested and you put your mind to going down this path,

Matt Kirchner: 37:26

absolutely it's a great ambassador for the kinds of careers. And I'm sure those types of stories really resonate with your students, where it's one thing for a teacher, an adult, a principal, a parent or whatever, saying, think about this and imagine what could be, and then seeing someone that's maybe just a few years older than they are, who actually made that happen and and shows shows them that, look, this isn't just about going to high school in a different building or with a different set of of curriculum, but rather, it's all about what you can be and what the future holds for you. So love, we love to hear stories like that at the TechEd podcast. It's the magic of CTE. It's the magic of technical education. And I want to get into just the general CTE and technical education mindset here for a little bit Adam, because in as much as what you're doing is really impressive and really cool. And I think there are probably districts and regions around the country that could, could really learn from it in terms of creating a pathway to aviation careers, a lot of schools that's not in reach, or maybe not reasonable, or not something that they would consider, but yet, so many lessons that they could learn from your experience and from the work that you've done. Let's start with this one we talked already about this full year of exploration coming in the sophomore year and really considering all these different career opportunities, and not just necessarily putting ourselves on one trajectory. What can CTE learn from that? Is that a good idea, regardless of of the of the discipline, should we be doing more career exploration in CTE, in the secondary level, early on? Yes.

Adam Snoddy: 38:51

I think the short answer, the easy answer, is, yes, more career exploration is very beneficial, at least in my view, for every student, I think of it as it not so much that it allows students to better understand what they want to do, but it also helps them understand what they don't want to do, and they get to explore all of those different potential things that maybe pique their interest, and they try a little bit of it, and they're Like, Oh, that's not really what I wanted at all. And they're doing that during their secondary education career. Because if they do that in middle school and high school, they're making those decisions and learning those types of things before it reaches the point of, I just spent $10,000 on tuition somewhere. And now I really can't stand this, and I don't want to do it for 30 or 40 years, so I've just thrown money away. That, to me, is one of the core values of that. But the other thing that I really like about it is in aviation, but I feel like this has to be true in almost every other industry, the breadth. Growth and the scope of the industry is so much more than what the average person would think. And when you have that exploration year, in our case, it's still specific to the aviation industry, but that year helps students understand everything about the pilot side, the drone side, the maintenance side, the engineering side, and they start to learn all of those things we we have a couple of students that are in that aviation exploration year with us right now that they've been hired at the Middletown Regional Airport, fixed based operator to help with some of the airports operations. That's a whole other element of the aviation industry that the average person's not thinking that well, even at a smaller installation like Middletown, there's a whole little, almost a little city that has to operate to keep that place running, and all the jobs that are related to that. So I think between figuring out kind of what you're not interested in, but also figuring out just what all's out there. Those two things alone feel to me like they're beneficial in any type of career pathway background, let alone just aviation. And

Matt Kirchner: 41:09

really cool example that you just gave there. And I think a lot of folks, if they're, you know, if they're super accustomed to flying in and out of commercial airports, and you see one set of careers there, and then there's always that other building on the other side of the airport, where the, you know, the smaller private jets are sitting. And there's a whole set of careers that are going on over there as well, from the people that are running the FBOs to the people that are handling air traffic control and so on. So this, this whole separate set of careers that a lot of times, we don't think of, is just one example of the wide, wide, wide variety of different career opportunities available to our students. So that's true in aviation. It's true in a lot of different market spaces. How did you go about deciding that aviation was the career path that made the most sense for this really specialized in some ways, Career Tech Center that your students are involved in, and for people that are operating in maybe other market spaces, what would be good advice for them to say, All right, here's a good way for you to explore what career pathways might be appropriate if you're going to try and do something similar, but not in aviation.

Adam Snoddy: 42:08

Yeah, I agree that in our case, aviation is unique, because we're in an aviation hotbed. It's aviation is one of the five jobs Ohio super sectors for the state. But I feel like, for any career program, if you're going about like trying to find what's, you know, in southwest Ohio, it might be aviation, but in other parts of the country, it might be some other industry. And to go about that, to me, there's a couple things that are really important there. One, it's engaging all of the relevant partners, early and often, to where it's, speaking with your local business partners and industry to get a sense of where they're at, what they need and where they think it's going. But also speaking with your elected officials and your your public officials about what are the needs that they're seeing in the community, what's driving potential concern, what's, what's a potential area of growth and understanding, like, what's that? Cultural, regional, economic DNA? Is it the tech sector? Is it in agriculture? Is it in aviation? It's, it reminds me, there's a, there's a quote that was attributed to Wayne Gretzky from years ago that was essentially someone asked him about his success, and he said, Well, my success is I skate where the puck is going, not where it has been. And I think that that's a really good methodology for any career tech or workforce development organization to pursue. Is okay, it's great that this is a thing right now, but where is it going to be in five years? 10 years, 20 years. And to look at that data, look at where things are headed. And even then, in our case, aviation started pretty small, but we were ready to grow it and scale it when the opportunity arose. And I think that that's part of it too, is maybe it's dipped the toe in the water initially, but once you see that you're on the right track, now it's time to start thinking big and be ready when the stars align to do something more.

Matt Kirchner: 44:04

Understand what your region's economic DNA is. I really like the way that you characterize that, what industries are there that really make the region grow and go and move where the where are the careers, where are the opportunities, not just today, but where that puck is going to be. As Wayne Gretzky famously said in the years, to the future. So looking to the future, and I think that's great advice, by the way, for our CTE leaders around the United States of America, in terms of building those relationships with stakeholders, and not just companies, but also anybody that's forming economic policy, to understand where industry is now, and also where it's going. And then, you know, maybe once you create that vision, Adam, if somebody has the answer to that question, what are a few things they should be thinking about as they figure out their strategy to make that vision a reality? I

Adam Snoddy: 44:54

want to frame especially in our context with aviation, but I really think this is applicable to a lot of other. Programs. We want our aviation program and our new aviation facility, we want it first and foremost, to be for our current and future students. Certainly, that's always the primary target, but we have made it clear that we want to reach out and make it something that is also an opportunity for Community and Civic Engagement to where we want other organizations to come in, because we believe we can be beneficial for them, and we believe that by having them in our facility and around our students, they will help our students learn, and our students will have new opportunities that we might not have thought about or be able to offer ourselves quick example, we've partnered with a couple of organizations locally. One of them is the library district. Well, that okay, schools and libraries might go together, but you don't necessarily think of the library when you think aviation, but we've partnered with them because their staff has a lot of history about the aviation that's existed in the Middletown area in the industry for basically almost a century now, from the early stages of flight, they can provide opportunities for our students and the greater community to learn, while bringing additional people into our facility so they understand more about us, and it's building a lot of those overlapping connections. So I think that's a key. I think the other thing that's undoubtedly to me is one of the things that I think continues to make our program successful and will benefit our students greatly, is identifying transferable skills that overlap, not just in aviation, but could be taken to other things as well, because some students, they might love aviation, and they might work in aviation for 510, 20 years, but then they have a career change. They maybe they like something else better. Maybe they've worked at a company and the company downsizes, and they're in desperate need to find a new job. What do they already have the ability to do that can easily help them transition into something else, given the situation. So I think both of those are key aspects that any career tech program or or education program of this nature could easily align themselves

Matt Kirchner: 47:14

with. It's a perfect, perfect roadmap. You know, number one make sure that we're putting students first. That's why we're educating in the first place. Is to create opportunities and futures for our students. Number two, as you mentioned, civic and community engagement. Super, super important, so that the community is part of what this these students experiences, that we're getting the support, that we're helping everybody understand what the career paths are, how economic development is 100% incumbent on our ability to create talent, regardless of the region. And then I do, of course, love that, that allusion to to transferable skills as well, and making sure that whatever we're teaching students in high school is giving them options, not, you know, pigeon holing them or putting them on a specific career path. Great if a student knows, when they're a sophomore in high school or a freshman in high school, that they know exactly what they want to do and they're pursuing that pathway, but we also want to make sure that they recognize that, and I believe actually, that we'll get more students into STEM and CTE pathways if they recognize that it's they're going to have options on the back end, that they're not making a decision as a 14 or 15 year old young person, that this is what the rest of the career is going to look like. That's one of my paradigms about education. And as we get into the last two questions we have for Adam Snyder here on the TechEd podcast, I want to ask a little bit about your paradigms for education, Adam, and the whole idea that I think every one of us, regardless of what version of education we went through, and how deep we went in our formal education versus our informal education, we all have these paradigms or beliefs about education. What's something you believe about education that might surprise our listeners?

Adam Snoddy: 48:46

I'll phrase it this way. It's something that when I started my career in teaching years ago, I'm not sure that I understood the importance of and it would be this, you have to find ways to make whatever it is you're trying to help someone learn, you have to find ways to make it relevant to them as an individual. And what I love about career tech is, of course, students are choosing a program that they have an interest in, but I think this goes far beyond that, to where, if a student chooses aviation, they probably have a greater natural inclination to enjoy that topic and that content already, but they also still need to take English or math or science or social studies, so in courses that are more academic in nature, what could be done to layer in those types of relevant connections? Can those be tied into the career program that they're pursuing, in this case, aviation, or are there ways to give them hands on, real world, practical problem solving, opportunities that connect with them, that actually make a difference in their life, or the people that they know? It increases their desire to learn. They get more engaged. They're more interested. I. Saw this as a classroom teacher over time, where, when you're teaching a very abstract concept, and you're teaching it purely from the academic standpoint, the only students that really get interested about it are the ones that just really enjoy the academic element of school. 100% the reality, the reality on the career tech side, is most of our students are interested in a career tech program, at least in part, because they don't really love just the academic side of school. They want other things. They want hands on. They want projects. They want to do things that are practical. So what are the ways that you can take that connect it to their background, connect it to their interests, get them doing things it's I'm not sure that it's easy to understand until you start to see it, and then you do it in the classroom, you see it in your school, and all of a sudden students start to come to life when you're able to pull things into their own personal orbit of interest, you

Matt Kirchner: 50:55

know. And I think we still have a long way to go in the greater world of education, to do exactly what you just talked about, and in a world where we're still doing so much education one to many and one size fits all, and assuming that every student learns, I shouldn't say assuming, but at least presenting the learning in such a way that we believe that every student is going to learn exactly the same way. And the truth of the matter is that we all learn differently. And in your whole point about Yeah, we can present information and learning in a real academic way and a traditional kind of theory based lecture way. And that's going to that's going to resonate with a certain group of students, primarily the ones that are more probably academic and intellectual in nature to begin with. And then we've got this whole world of CTE where it is different, and we are meeting every every learner, to a much larger extent, where they are recognizing that they're going to learn a little bit differently than everybody else, and then allowing them to learn in that regard, in many cases, the same or very similar learning outcomes, but getting there in different ways. And I'm just a huge believer, not only that that's the right way to deliver education, but in the future, it is going to be the way that we deliver education. We could probably talk for an hour, or not another hour about just how technology is going to change technical education and education across the board, but But you and I are 100% aligned that the closer we can make the learning resonate with the learner, and they're all going to be a little bit different, the more successful we're going to be, not just in delivering learning and creating learning outcomes, but inspiring students towards really, really cool careers, which is exactly what these you're doing for these students starting in their sophomore year of high school at that age. And with our final question, I want to take you back to that age, Adam, to that sophomore year of high school. You're a 15 year old young person. You have your whole life ahead of you. And if you could go back in time and give that young person one piece of advice, what would you tell that young Adam, snotty?

Adam Snoddy: 52:40

I think I would say you need to be more willing to try more things, even if you're not sure about it or comfortable with it. You need to go back and explore some of the different opportunities that are out there that you weren't totally sure the rest of your friends weren't that interested. So you decided not to or for whatever reason you came up with an excuse to not do it, I would go back and say, take advantage of all of those experiences and opportunities. Because if you do it, you may fall in love with it and want to do more of it, and you would never find out otherwise. But if you do it, and you find out that you don't like it much like that career exploration year, you found that out early on, and now you can make better decisions moving forward for things that you know you really do or don't enjoy, and just taking advantage with especially when you're in high school, explore all the opportunities that are there, because those opportunities might only come once. Those

Matt Kirchner: 53:39

opportunities might only come once, and you have those opportunities while you're in high school to explore so many different disciplines, so many different areas. And if Adam could give one set, one piece of advice to his 15 year old self, it would be to take advantage of more of that. I think that's great advice to all of our high school students, and especially those in their first year or two of high school and even in middle school, expose yourself to as many different opportunities, different teachers, different learning environments, different career pathways. As you can you never know what you might find that is going to inspire your future and allow you to do great things. Certainly, Adam's future has been inspired and he's been allowed to do great things. Adam Snoddy, principal of the butler tech Aviation Center. It's been a wonderful time having you here on the TechEd podcast, and thanks so much for

Adam Snoddy: 54:23

being here. Thank you very much appreciated the conversation, and we

Matt Kirchner: 54:26

appreciate our audience being with us as well as we do every single week. So we'll make sure we put some great information about the work that Adam is doing in the show notes. We do have the best show notes in the business, and you will find all kinds of links there. We will put those at TechEd podcast.com/butler tech. TechEd podcast.com/butler tech, when you're done there, come check us out on social media. You will find us everywhere. We are on Instagram. We are on tick tock, we are on LinkedIn, we are on Facebook. Say hello. Let us know how much you love the work that all of us are doing. It is it can. Community here at the TechEd podcast, including you let us know how much you love the work that we are doing together in changing the lives of the future generation, and in the process, hearing the American Dream for the next generation of STEM and workforce talent. My name is Matt Kirkner. This is the TechEd podcast. Thanks so much for being with us. You