AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2016 - 61

YOU CAN FLY SUCCESS STORIES
STANDUP MORNING meetings

keep You Can Fly staff up
to date and energized (left).
Clockwise around the room,
Les Smith (foreground, blue
shirt), Senior Vice President
Katie Pribyl, Meghan
McCutcheon, Donald Mackay,
Cindy Hasselbring, Joe Kildea,
Chris Moser, Amber Kite, and
AOPA Pilot Editor Ian Twombly
listen as Mike Woods shares
news. Reimagined Cessna
150s and 152s serve as aerial
work vehicles for the staff
of the You Can Fly
Ambassadors (above).

Each You Can Fly program
targets a separate and distinct
problem: getting young people interested in aviation, the
recruitment and retention of
student pilots, getting pilots
to form a strong bond in the
community, and bringing back
those who have fallen through
the cracks. This multi-channel approach, along with a
healthy dose of businessbacked analytics, is new, and
AOPA is deeply committed to
getting meaningful results.

MIKE FIZER

HIGH SCHOOL

Exposing young people to aviation, especially potential careers
in aviation, is one way to grow the community from the ground
up. Aviation-related topics are a natural fit for today's STEMbased (science, technology, engineering, and math) approach to
learning, an approach designed to prepare students for jobs in
a high-tech economy. Some high schools already offer aviation
STEM programs, but far more say they want to bring this often
dynamic, real-world learning into the classroom. To make that
possible, AOPA is breaking new ground. In partnership with
Purdue University, the association is developing comprehensive
four-year curricula for aviation STEM education. When complete, there will be 12 to 16 full-year courses, focusing on four
different career and technical education pathways-pilot, aerospace engineering, aviation technology, and unmanned aircraft

Walter Tegeler flies from Clearview Airpark, a grassroots airport
in Maryland with a runway so short they boast about it on coffee
mugs. Tegeler heard about You Can Fly at Sun 'n Fun and, after receiving encouragement from AOPA President and CEO Mark Baker,
he was convinced Clearview could benefit from a flying club-and
he was the person to make it happen. Just a few months later, the
Clearview Flying Club is up and running with a Cessna 150 on a
leaseback arrangement, more than a dozen members, and plenty of
community-building social events. The club has also hosted a Rusty
Pilots seminar and "Max Fun, Min Cost," a seminar on the benefits
of flying clubs.
"We are trying
to bring back
the heyday
of aviation by
getting
younger people
out to learn to
fly and older
pilots back
in the skies,"
Tegeler said.
Indiana-based lawyer Ros Stovall has
taken advantage of two of You Can Fly's
four major initiatives. He has recently
renewed his flying passion, "which lay
fallow for 30 years while raising a family,"
he said. After attending a Rusty Pilots
seminar at one of AOPA's regional fly-ins,
Stovall is now back in the left seat and
has joined Flying Engineers, a flying club
with a Cessna 150 based at Indianapolis
Regional Airport. Stovall said he recently celebrated his return to
aviation by flying with his first passenger in 30 years-his daughter, who was also celebrating her thirtieth birthday.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2016