PRCC’s big investment on the MS Coast means you can soon take class in a plane hangar

Pearl River Community College is opening a new academy in Hancock County to bring students into the aviation and aerospace industries, and they just received $2 million in RESTORE Act money to purchase the equipment needed to make it happen.

The college will also effectively close down their Waveland campus and move all degree tracks to their new campus across from Stennis International Airport, where they will also offer new programs including one that’s driven by the blue economy on the Mississippi Coast.

Funding for PRCC was announced by Gov. Tate Reeves last Thursday, along with 14 other projects on the Gulf Coast that will receive, in total, $49 million. These projects, subsidized by the state of Mississippi, will join the list of MDEQ coastal restoration projects which have received an all-time total of around $800 million.

The official name for this project is the PRCC Hancock Aviation Aerospace Workforce Academy, and it will include a 36,000 square foot academy adjacent to Stennis International Airport and an 18,000 square foot hangar located right on the flight line.

“It’s one campus, one academy, but it’s two separate facilities… because we needed flight access for some of the programs we’re going to be offering,” said Angie Kothmann, Director of Government & Community Relations and program manager for PRCC’s new Hancock campus.

The seed for PRCC’s new academy was planted in a 2014 conversation and has been years in the making. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic bringing aspects of the project to a near standstill in 2020-21, the project is back on track and the hangar is about 70% complete as of this week, Kothmann said.

She estimates that the hangar will be completed by March of 2023 and that the academy will be up and running for fall of 2024. Once complete, the new campus will take the place of PRCC’s small satellite campus in Waveland and will house all of the current programs operating out of the Waveland facility, in addition to new ones.

Equipment bought with the $2 million grant will be used for both the hangar and the academy, and will be a much needed infusion to help PRCC keep up with rising costs.

“We have had to shift our equipment budget money to construction to ensure that we had enough money to build our facilities, so that obviously left us with a deficit in the equipment area,” Kothmann said. “So this additional funding is huge to us right now because it allows us to provide all the equipment that we need at this time, and equipment is not cheap, especially for the types of programs that we will be offering.”

WHAT CLASSES CAN YOU TAKE?

Kothmann told the Sun Herald that three types of programs will operate out of the hangar. Those programs currently include Unmanned Aerial Systems (FAA Part 107 UAS Commercial Remote Pilots License), Aviation Maintenance Technology and Hydrographic Technology.

“For the Aviation Maintenance program, we will actually be the third community college in the state to offer it,” Kothmann said. “On another really exciting note, for the Hydrology Technician program, we will actually be the first community college in the nation to offer that program. We had to create the curriculum and we’re currently going through certification right now to be approved, just to get accredited for the curriculum. There are some similar programs, but nothing else like what we’re doing in a two year timeframe.”

The Hydrography Technology program will teach students about mapping the seafloor and will feed into blue economy efforts ongoing around the Coast, Kothmann said. “Everything UAS does in the air (with drones), that’s basically what they do in the water with the hydrography (program).”

Kothmann shared that PRCC’s new hangar and academy will not be offering a traditional pilot training program upon opening, but that it is something that is being kept on the back burner. For now, the programs being offered focus on aviation mechanics, which Kothmann says is a career in high demand.

WHY OFFER THESE PROGRAMS?

PRCC is developing this new academy and hangar with the goal of bridging the gap between a lack of educational opportunities and a growing demand in the aviation and aerospace industry. The academy is a means to help produce skilled workers that will establish and draw in new high-growth industries to Hancock County and greater Mississippi.

“We want to be that education gap between our high school graduating students and our industry that we have throughout the area, like over 5,000 employees at the space center,” Kothmann said. “We want to be that middle training ground for those industries for not only their needs today, but their needs in the future.”