Students in B.C. Rain High Schools Aviation and Aerospace Academy got a hands-on addition to their classroom this week: a retired Boeing 727 engine that once powered a FedEx cargo plane, unveiled during a ceremony at the Mobile schools Aerospace Training Facility.
Its a great day at B.C. Rain High School anytime we have an opportunity to have additional resources for our children to be successful and engage themselves in hands-on experiences, said Principal Marlon Firle. The engine previously flew aboard a FedEx aircraft before the shipping company began retiring older planes in favor of more fuel-efficient models. The engine last flew on Nov. 20, 2014, according to signature academy specialist Amanda Prowell.
The kids are so excited, Prowell said. With hands-on training they get to learn about different parts and physically touch them. Its not just a wasted experience.
The engine donation came together through a partnership between FedEx and the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals, known as OBAP. FedEx pilot and former OBAP chairman Capt. Albert Glenn addressed students and staff gathered for the unveiling, describing the retired engines and aircraft the organization has donated over the years as a way to spark interest in aviation careers among young people who might not otherwise picture themselves in the field.
Exposure to students provides the opportunity for them to see and have a vision about what they want to do, Glenn said, adding that the equipment given away by FedEx has helped foster that kind of thinking among students across multiple school partnerships. Glenn spoke from experience: he said his own fascination with flight began at age 3, when he broke away from his mother during his first plane flight simply to get a closer look at the aircraft. He still keeps the wings pin he received on a 1956 Pan Am flight, which he calls the beginning of a path that led him into a career as a commercial pilot starting in the 1970s.
Mobile County Public Schools Superintendent Martha Peek framed the donation as part of a broader effort to widen the range of career pathways available to students in the district. For our students to be exposed, to know what the opportunities are out there and that those opportunities are limitless, our students are ready to go, we just have to open those doors for them, Peek said. If we give our students the opportunity to learn, to be well-educated, to select the pathway that they really see the relevance of, the sky is truly the limit in Mobile, Alabama and in the Mobile County School System.
The donation adds to the growing hands-on resources available through B.C. Rains aerospace academy, which is designed to give students direct exposure to the kind of equipment and training pathways used by aviation and aerospace employers in the Mobile area, a regional hub for aircraft manufacturing and maintenance work.