At a university with over 900 student organizations, you would assume that Penn State would have a club for just about anything. Knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to take flight lessons while I was at Penn State, I wanted to find a way to stay involved with aviation during school. Naturally, I looked to see if there were any aviation clubs on campus.

I found an aviation club listed in the student directory but unfortunately it hadn’t been active since 2016. With over 40,000 students on campus, I figured there had to be more people out there who had some interest in aviation. I decided to reach out to the club’s old faculty advisor Ed Dudley and get more information on the old club and what it would take to start it back up again.

After talking with Ed and reaching out to students on Facebook, I found a few more students who were on board with the club. Once I knew there more people out there that really wanted to see this club start back up again, we decided to start getting all of the necessary qualifications to get the club back up and running on campus.

One of the first people to reply to my messages, Reid, was also hoping to be a commercial pilot after graduating from Penn State. Reid decided to take on the role of vice president for the club and I took on the president role.

Reid and I have already made some amazing connections through the club and we haven’t even been officially reinstated as an organization on campus. We have met with many pilots and professionals at the University Park airport through the weekly ground school that Ed invited us to. Yesterday, I was invited out to the Bellefonte Airport to meet with the owner and talk about the ways that he thinks he could help out the club.

I think this club has so much potential to open students’ eyes to all of the opportunities that are available in the aviation industry. I really hope that throughout the rest of my senior year at Penn State, that I will be able to get more students interested in aviation related jobs and help to connect those who already are interested.