Ohio Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel toured Kent State University’s College of Aeronautics and Engineering on June 12, seeing firsthand how the university is educating students for critically needed jobs in the aviation and engineering fields.
Tressel began his visit with a tour of the Kent State University Airport and was on hand to meet this year’s Flying Flashes competitors as they were about to depart for Alabama, the starting point for this year’s four-day race to Spokane, Washington. A Kent State team has won the competition for the past three years.
Tressel, who previously served as president of Youngstown State University, was appointed Ohio’s lieutenant governor in February and has devoted a great deal of time since then visiting Ohio’s educational institutions to examine their role in creating well-trained workers to meet the demands of the state’s growing workforce.
Tressel toured the facilities with President Todd Diacon, College of Aeronautics and Engineering Dean Christina Bloebaum, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Provost Melody Tankersley, Ph.D., and Nick Gattozzi, executive director of Kent State’s Office of Government and Community Relations, as well as numerous college faculty and administrators. They explained how Kent State has expanded its aeronautics and engineering programs to fill the gaps in offering education for Ohio’s aeronautics industry jobs that previously were not met by Ohio’s educational institutions, while at the same time not competing with or duplicating the programs of other state universities, particularly those in Northeast Ohio.
Tankersley credited Bloebaum’s leadership for initiating new degree programs that have led to increased enrollment at the college. Bloebaum stressed the hands-on nature of the college’s programs, so that students get the kind of experience they will need on the job.
The lieutenant governor toured the labs for the college’s various programs, including drone, digital engineering and design, virtual and augmented reality, and air traffic control, chatting with many students along the way.
“It’s so much fun going around and seeing all the great work our universities are doing,” Tressel said. “This morning, we were focused in at the Kent State University aviation program, one of the best in the country.”
Tressel praised Kent State for how it has expanded and grown its program over the past decade.
“Just to see how they are meeting the need in our aerospace industry and then coming over to the aeronautical engineering program just to see how they have pivoted to the needs to maybe an area where we haven’t had as a much impact in Ohio as we could and to see what they have built – and to see all the young kids here at camp all the way to the Ph.D. students doing research – it’s really amazing,” Tressel said.
“I grew up in northeast Ohio,” Tressel continued. “I’ve spent a lot of time around the universities here and had no idea the extraordinary program that has been built, just in the last seven or eight years, here at Kent State in this aeronautics program.”
Joycelyn Harrison, Ph.D., associate dean for research and graduate studies, showed Tressel the Digital Engineering and Design Center for Space Applications lab, where students majoring in engineering or engineering technology spend 20 hours per week getting hands-on practice to supplement their classroom learning during the academic year.
Tressel spent time with students who are working 40 hours per week over the summer as part of paid co-op programs with various companies to learn their software and work on digital designs. The students learn the actual industry software they will be using in the field, making them better prepared when they enter the job market.
“It helps us as student engineers to learn how it is going to be in the real-world industry,” said Pablo Castro, a senior aerospace engineering major from Brecksville, Ohio. Castro and Ryan Wojtowicz, a senior aerospace engineering major from Olmsted Falls, Ohio, will travel to El Paso, Texas, later this summer to work at their assigned company to advance their design projects.
The work through the co-ops helps to advance the work of getting new aerospace products into manufacturing sooner, Harrison said.
“They are going to go out in industry armed with capabilities that most of industry doesn’t have, so we can push the envelope,” Bloebaum said.
Tressel noted how industry leaders always want employees who are already trained on their company’s software.
While posing for photos with students, Tressel took the time to speak with each one and ask where they went to high school, impressing them with his perfect record for being able to name their high school mascots.
Tressel stressed the need to keep students in Ohio for their careers after graduation to fill Ohio’s ever-growing job market and said he was impressed with the number of high school students at the college who are there taking part in summer camp programs to learn about the college and future careers in aeronautics and engineering.
During his airport tour, Tressel learned of the university’s plans to expand the airport, to enhance operational capabilities, academic programming and industry engagement.
Plans call for an $8 million ramp expansion that will lay the groundwork for an additional $40 million of development, including a new maintenance hangar to increase the airport’s capacity to service its fleet of aircraft and open space to launch a new FAA-certified Aviation Maintenance Technician School. Additional plans call for a new structure for the Center for Advanced Air Mobility and a community-facing terminal to meet the growing demand by community aircraft owners and visitors to the region who want to use the airport. The university is currently engaged with industry, state and federal government, and foundations to enable the expansion.
Tressel also spent time with the Flying Flashes, who on Tuesday will begin their four-day competition in the national all-female flying competition, the Air Race Classic. The women fly two planes, each with a student and an instructor-student who are recent graduates of the college.
This year’s teams are Kelsey Buyansky of Independence, Ohio, a recent graduate, and Esther Kotyk, of Uniontown, Ohio, who is entering her senior year; and Alyssa Sheehan, from Lockport, Illinois, who graduated in 2024, and Kendal Schulte, a senior from Bath Township, Ohio. Tressel asked detailed questions about the competition and was impressed to learn that several of the women were hoping to pursue careers as commercial pilots for United Airlines.
Tressel said getting to meet the Flying Flashes before they departed to defend their national title was a highlight of his visit.
“Just to see real-life students, who are all from right here in Northeast Ohio, getting ready to represent Kent State against the rest of the world, that was pretty cool,” Tressel said.
The visit was Tressel’s second to Kent State this week. On June 9, he toured Kent State University at Geauga with an emphasis on the regional campus’s nursing program. He also held a roundtable discussion with local leaders from Geauga County to learn how Kent State and Berkshire Local Schools were collaborating with local employers to train and ready workers for their community.