381 STEM to the Skies: How Aviation Inspires Rural Students with Dr. Victor Vogel
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Would you like to inspire the next generation of pilots, engineers, and aviation professionals? Dr. Victor Vogel shares how he launched Susquehanna STEM to the Skies, a nonprofit using aviation to transform STEM education for rural students. And you'll also learn how you can start a similar aviation-based STEM program in your community. We also have two late-breaking news stories and a personal update on my unexpected surgery this week.

Hello again and welcome to Aviation News Talk where we talk in general aviation. My name is Max Truscott. I've been flying for 50 years. I'm the author of several books and the 2008 National Flight Instructor of the Year. And my mission is to help you become the safest possible pilot.

Last week in episode 380, we played my interview on Dr. Tony Kern's Only Human podcast in which we talked about aviation safety. So if you didn't hear that episode, you may want to check it out at aviationnewstalk.com slash 380. And if you're new to the show, welcome. So glad you found us. Now, if you would take a moment right now in whatever app that you're using, touch either the subscribe key or in Spotify or the Apple podcast app, the follow key so that next week's episode is downloaded for free.

And if you feel like you've been getting some value from this podcast, well, I'd like to invite you to take a moment, stop what you're doing. And I'm sure you've thought about this before, but go ahead and do it. Sign up to become a member to support the show. To do that, go out on the web to aviationnewstalk.com slash support.

And just a few quick notes before we get to Dr. Vogel. I'm not going to be flying for a bit, as on Monday, my doctor sent me to the emergency room at the local hospital to be admitted. On Tuesday, my gallbladder came out, and that has slowed me down quite a bit. So I may be slower than usual to get to people who try to contact me.

Speaking of which, I'd like to give a shout out to Dr. Ivan Korolev, who called me earlier today asking if he could do some mountain flying with me when he visits the San Francisco Bay Area later this month. Unfortunately, that's not going to work out for very obvious reasons. Ivan is an assistant professor in the economics department at Binghamton University in upstate New York. He said he loves to teach and he loves to fly. So he's thinking of starting to work on his CFI certificate.

Now, in the past, I've heard from a number of you who've said that you were inspired by this show to get your CFI. So I'm glad to hear that. And for anyone else who's listening who loves to fly and likes to share the joy of flying with others, well, consider getting your CFI. Now, we've had a lot of aviation news in the last week, but due to my surgery, I'm sorry I haven't had the time to curate the news and present it to you. I hope I can get back to doing that soon. But I do want to mention two stories that broke today on Friday.

USA Today reported that on Thursday, ATC gave instructions to two regional airliners to perform go-arounds at the Washington National Airport at around 2.30 p.m. due to a priority military air transport helicopter in the vicinity. And on Friday afternoon, aviation reporter Pete Munteen tweeted on X, damning new information on Thursday's near misses involving two DCA flights and an Army Blackhawk.

FAA says helicopter, quote, did not proceed directly to the Pentagon and instead, quote, took a scenic route around. Closest distance to one airliner was 0.4 miles and 200 feet.

And he continues, this involved the very same Army unit involved in the fatal DCA midair collision. Now from the radar screenshot he included, you can see that it involved PAT-23. PAT-25 was the accident helicopter involved in the Potomac midair collision. Also, the NTSB preliminary report is out on the crash that killed air show pilot Rob Holland just eight days ago at the Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia.

Multiple witnesses stated that they observed the airplane on approach to land on runway 8. The airplane made a normal approach to the runway, and when it was over the end of the runway, it leveled off about 50 feet above the runway and flew straight down the runway for several hundred feet. The airplane then porpoised twice, pitched straight up, rolled 90 degrees to the left, and descended to ground impact.

The pilot collaborated with the manufacturer to modify the airplane to his specifications, which included an access hole on the left and right elevator to insert counterweights to adjust elevator feel depending upon the aerobatic routine performed. An aluminum threaded plug was used to access the counterweight hole.

The left elevator counterweight plug was not installed and was located about 10 feet behind the wreckage in the grass. Dirt consistent with that found in the vicinity of the accident site was identified on the elevator as well as in the counterbore and threaded area where the counterweight plug would have been installed.

The counterweight plug threads were intact and also contained similar dirt contamination consistent with that found on the elevator. Additionally, about half of the circumference of the left elevator counterweight plug displayed gouging and there was evidence of paint transfer. The horizontal stabilizer structure adjacent to the elevator position where the counterweight plug would have been installed displayed dents and paint scrapes consistent with contact with the counterweight plug.

Now the report includes a photo and what you can see is the right plug which is inserted from the side near the leading edge of the elevator and if that plug were to back out it would cause the plug to contact the horizontal stabilizer greatly limiting the travel of the elevator until the plug came out.

Now, this leads me to wonder how this screw and plug was to remain secure. Was it just screwing it down hard that secured the plug, or was there some type of threadlock compound which was to be used, and if so, had it been used? So, a very unusual accident that appears related to a modification that had been made to the plane. In a moment, we'll be talking with Dr. Victor Vogel, but first... And now here's a Headset Minute by Lightspeed with Derek Schmidt.

Derek, my favorite feature in the Lightspeed Delta Zulu is hearing acuity. Tell people what that is. It's a favorite of a lot of pilots. Hearing acuity is a program that's available through the Lightspeed Delta Zulu headset, which can help compensate for hearing loss and enhances hearing at different frequencies for pilots up in the air.

So tell us exactly how that works and how does one set up a custom profile? It's all done through the Lightspeed app. When you first get the headset, you can download the Lightspeed app and connect the app to the headset via Bluetooth.

From there, you take a 12 tone hearing test, starting at 125 Hertz and going through 12,000 Hertz. Tones are played on first the left and then the right ear, and you just move a volume slider till you can barely hear the tone. It's similar to what you would do at an audiologist's office when they tell you to press the button when you hear the tone. The custom profile that is created when you finish the test is then stored in the headset. And from there, you don't have to open the app up to get the hearing acuity benefit.

Yeah, the reason it's my favorite feature is that it really does help me hear ATC just a little bit more clearly. So talk about the profiles. Are you limited to just one profile per headset? Our engineers added a firmware update recently, so no, you can get more than one custom profile now on the Lightspeed Delta Zulu headset.

Love it. Derek, thanks so much for joining us here today. It was a pleasure. And just a reminder that when you buy a new headset from Lightspeed, they will send us a check to help support the show, but only if you first go out to the link we've set up for you, which is aviationnewstalk.com slash lightspeed.

And now let me tell you about Victor Vogel. He's an MD who's been a pilot for 45 years. He's also a CFI and CFII and a member of the National Association of Flight Instructors Board of Directors. He founded and is president of Susquehanna STEM to the Skies, an educational public charity that promotes science and math education in our public schools. And now here's our conversation with Dr. Victor Vogel.

Victor, welcome back to the show. So great to have you back here again. It is a pleasure to be back with you, Max. I'm looking forward to this. Me too. We started talking about this over four years ago, and you introduced the program called Susquehanna STEM to the Skies. We need to start with the important part. Tell people what Susquehanna is and what STEM is. Now, I grew up close to you, so I know what Susquehanna is, but a lot of people probably don't.

Yeah, so a little bit of American history and our Native American predecessors. So the word Susquehanna most likely comes from the Lenape term, and Lenape is the Delaware Indians. And it's an anglicized version of Siskiwahani, and that literally means muddy river.

And it's got two parts. It's got a western branch that starts out in western Pennsylvania and flows past places like Clearfield and Lock Haven. And then it's got a northern branch that starts up in New York and comes down. And they join together down in a place called Shemokin Dam. And then it flows down to the Chesapeake Bay.

And as a toddler, I lived on the North Branch, first in North Waverly, New York, and then in Sayre, Pennsylvania. And then most of my formative years were close to Pine Creek, which is the largest tributary that flows into the West Branch. So Susquehanna was just part of my life in growing up. So fairly rural area throughout central Pennsylvania.

And just to end this discussion of the river, in 1968, I was a Boy Scout and I floated down the West Branch from Clearfield to Lock Haven in a canoe and spent four nights on the river with my Boy Scout troop. It was a wonderful experience. That's great. One of my first cross-country flights was to Lock Haven. I'm sure that'll come up in our conversation a little later. So for folks that are unfamiliar with STEM, tell us what that is.

So STEM is an acronym that stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Sometimes now it's been enlarged to STEAM. And STEAM adds the letter A, and A is the arts. So not only do we have the scientific, science, technology, engineering, and math components, but the arts as well. And many programs incorporate STEM concepts into

into education that starts as early as elementary school. Yeah. So you've started essentially an educational program in your area that's going to encourage people to learn some of these things. And I'm just kind of curious, was there any particular moment where you thought, man, I've really got to start this or any motivation you had to start this organization?

Well, you may recall, Max, that at the tender young age of 67, after flying for 40 years, I became a flight instructor, very much like your helicopter rating in your 60s. And I was coming to the end of an academic oncology career. I was a clinical researcher in breast cancer.

and I just love to teach. And I said, well, you know, here I am. I become a flight instructor because I like to teach flying, but I also like to teach didactic things and

especially science. And it occurred to me that there was a need. I was reading about the decline, particularly after COVID, the performance of our school students started to decline. And if you look at the years from 2019 through 2021 or so, in some particularly rural school districts, like the ones I live in and next to, there were significant declines in

in the performance of science and math scores. And so seeing all that and wondering how could I incorporate my love of teaching with my love of aviation, could I get involved with STEM education in a way that would satisfy both of those passions that I had? And it turned out that yes, teaching

STEM concepts with an aviation foundation was the way to do it. And the reason we chose aviation was because there are so many concrete examples that to us pilots seem, you know, almost trite or trivial like time, speed, distance problems or weight and balance problems or navigation problems, solving the wind triangle. Those things give real practical visibility to,

to science and math concepts. And then we also got the notion, well, what about the engineering part? So if we build things, we can use those science and math concepts to help students understand what it's like to build something or to be a mechanic or to repair something. So all of this sort of came together and it seemed like an aviation-based STEM program to teach

science and math concepts with practical examples from aviation was something that would work. And fortunately, it works. So that's a great explanation. I'm curious, what are some of the challenges in what I'll call our part of the country that convinced you that a program like this was really needed? The first mistake I made, Max, and I made many, was to believe that what I needed to drive this program was pilots.

And what I really needed was educators. I needed people who were familiar with elementary, middle school, and secondary education. And initially, when I constituted my board of directors for my nonprofit, my 501c3, I

I had a DPE, an aviation medical examiner, a couple of local pilots, and what I really needed was educators. So now my board of directors includes a retired school superintendent,

a woman who works for an intermediate unit. An intermediate unit sponsors and supports school districts, and it educates both students and teachers with grants from the federal government and from the state government. And now I have a board member from our Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit who has helped me greatly understand the

how to reach middle school and high school students. It's very different than teaching postgraduate medical education. When I taught residents and fellows, interns, I could stand up and show PowerPoint slides and be didactic for 45 minutes.

That doesn't work when you're doing school-based STEM education. You have to get them engaged with problem solving and building things and seeing things that put this all into context and give it real life and shape.

And so that was the early mistake I made. And now that I have educators as well as pilots on my board and this connection with these entities like the intermediate unit, it's really moved the program forward. I'm glad you mentioned the board of directors because that was something I was going to ask you later. And I think a key thing is people need to understand is you can't do things like this alone. You need to get other people involved to make a program like this successful.

That is exactly correct. And so, you know, one of the first things I realized, fortunately, was that I needed to form a nonprofit entity. So a 501c3 corporation. And I did that with the help of an attorney, of course. And we had to get registered with both the Internal Revenue Service and

and the Pennsylvania Bureau of Businesses and Corporations to make it all legal. And why? Because if we became a registered nonprofit, then we could accept grant funds.

And one of the first things I said was, well, what's going to be the hook? How are we going to get people to see and hear about and visualize our program? And the hook, which came through two very generous donations, was our Redbird FMX simulator, a full motion AATD advanced aviation training device. And that simulator is the hook that brings kids and their parents together

to the airport and then we've got them. They're then a captive audience and we can then use that simulator experience to build on all of these STEM principles. So,

All of that was made possible by forming this nonprofit entity that we call Susquehanna STEM to the skies. Give us a sense what students end up doing at one of your STEM camps or when you're doing an airport field trip. It sounds like the simulator is a key part of that. Anything else that really makes the whole day memorable for them?

Yeah. So we have two broad kinds of activities. One activity is a half day visit to the airport where a school group or come or a scout group will come. And at that visit to the airport, the promise is you're all going to get to fly for at least 15 or 20 minutes in the simulator. Wow.

But we are blessed at the Penn Valley Airport in Sealands Grove to have one of the Geisinger health systems, one of our large integrated healthcare system. Geisinger has eight Life Flight helicopters. And the Life Flight crews love to talk to the kids and their parents about Life Flight. And it's very interesting to see which kids are interested in the front of the helicopter. They like to talk to the pilots first.

But there's also those kids that are interested in the back of the helicopter, which is essentially a flying emergency room. So that's the beginning of our showing, you know, aviation is more than just being a pilot. Yes, you could be a helicopter pilot for Life Flight. And most of those pilots came from the military. So they talk about their military experience there.

But there's also this part of aviation for critical care nurses and emergency medical technicians who fly in the back of the helicopter. And that's aviation and its stem culture.

Because those folks have to know a lot of science and technology. And we try to open the minds of the people that come and see the STEM program that things like Life Flight Helicopter are a very real opportunity. And then after we hook them with the Life Flight Helicopter, we walk them to the adjacent hangar.

And we have an A&P mechanic who just loves his job. He just loves to talk about being a mechanic.

And when we go to the maintenance hangar, there's always airplanes in various states of disarray. And they also have a paint booth. And so then all of a sudden, kids are seeing, oh, well, I like to work on my dad's car with him. And you mean I could do this on airplanes? And we show them the paint shop. And this paint shop does fabulous work.

And then, so then they see that here's yet another possibility in aviation broadly defined. And then finally, we give them a very brief slide presentation of all the other opportunities, like being a drone operator or being an airport manager or being an air traffic controller. So that's the kind of the,

half-day experience where they have all those individual exposures plus getting to fly in the simulator. Now, in addition to those, we have four or five-day long STEM camps. And the first one we did was with an entity called the Sun Technical Institute. Now, Max, when you and I grew up, we grew up and we called them vocational technical schools.

But now, these schools that teach the trades, you know, whether it's plumbing or electricity or carpentry or diesel mechanic, these schools are now called CTCs, Career Technical Centers. And RITC,

Our first grant opportunity was to partner with the Career Technical Center 10 miles away from the airport called SunTech. And Sun is an acronym for Snyder Union in Northumberland counties. So those three counties send kids to this school to learn the trades. Well, the metalworking instructor had in companion with us

a week-long metalworking camp, and they made in their precision metal shop, they made everything

airplane paperweights. And then they came to the airport and they saw all those things that I talked about. And I went to the school and talked to them about aviation careers. And someone from the nearby Textron Lycoming factory that makes piston engines for general aviation aircraft is just in Williamsport, which is in our backyard. So we brought those people to this camp

and told these students, you know, right here in our backyard, if you're interested in being an engineer or being an aircraft engine manufacturer, a technician, these opportunities are present in our own backyard.

And then we have every summer, we're about to do our third annual STEM camp where we bring rising high school students. So they have to be in the fall entering grades nine to 12. And we do all of those things that I've mentioned. Plus we have them do a hands-on engineering project. We build robots, robots,

This year, we're going to build a Mars rover with a solar panel, and we're going to do drone instruction. One of our board members is a very accomplished drone pilot, and we have drones that are on loan from the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit, and we're going to use those drones in

the camp. So we will have a four day camp in which they've got hands-on building and flying experiences with their drone building the Mars Rover, uh,

flying in the simulator, talking to our aviation maintenance people. And it was from one of those camps last year that this young man is headed to the Air Force Academy. So those are the effects that we're starting to see as these planned events and this

Interaction with groups like the Sun Technical Center are growing our program. I was impressed when I saw your schedule. It had eight different events for the months of April and May this year. For example, I saw things like birthday parties. Tell us a little bit more about some of the different kinds of events that you're involved with.

So one of the things that we tell everyone is anything the boys can do, the girls can do, and the girls can probably do it better. So I have had girls come and do the aviation merit badge for the Girl Scouts. I've had girls come, four or five girls come for a girl's birthday party. I've had boys' birthday parties. We have those kind of events. We have scouts, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, who come to do the aviation merit badge and

the STEM engineering component of that is that we make something called the FPG-9 glider from a styrofoam dinner plate and

And we fabricate that, we fashion it, we put it together, and then we actually have little flying contests, flying it through hula hoops or landing it on a hula hoop on the floor. And those kinds of hands-on things show these kids, yeah, I can actually make an airplane that flies and I can do it in about an hour with this styrofoam dinner plate project.

And then we've been asked to go to career fairs. This spring of the year seems to be when students and their teachers are thinking about, well, what can we do in terms of thinking about a lifelong occupation? So in the last three weeks or four weeks, we've done two career day events, one at the middle school for seventh graders here in Lewisburg, where I live,

And then another very large one in a town not too far from the airport called Middleburg, and that's the Midwest school system. And Midwest is...

had hundreds of students that came to a number of career tables in their gymnasium. And we were at one of those tables and showed them all of the possibilities of aviation-based careers and how they could use STEM that they learned in school in these careers. And then in about a week from today, we're going to go to a sixth grade class

mathematics class. We've been invited by the math teacher to come and talk about how mathematics applies to STEM activities. So I'm going to talk about mathematics in both aviation and adult medicine. And my wife, who's a retired pediatrician, is going to talk about mathematics for children and infants.

which is absolutely fascinating. And, you know, we adults, we talk about things in kilograms and liters. And the neonatologists talk about, you know, milligrams and centimeters. So there's this whole opportunity to show kids that, yeah, if you think you want to

Get involved with medicine. First of all, you don't have to be a doctor. You could be a physical therapist or a laboratory technician, or you could be a nurse anesthetist. There's a lot of things you can do in medicine, just like aviation is not all about pilots. Medicine is not just all about being a doctor. And so we show in these career fairs this experience.

expansive things that are career related, that use STEM principles, and we give them practical problems to solve, simple mathematical things. And I've been impressed that this current generation of students, of middle school and high school students,

They're too reliant on things like their iPads and their calculators, and they can't do simple math in their head. So we try to teach them a simple approach to mathematics that they can do to solve math problems quickly, like converting centigrade temperatures to Fahrenheit or doing time-speed distance problems quickly. And

And so we now have this opportunity by invitation with these schools that were near. There are 17 school districts in the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit. And in February, we got an invitation from as far away as Belfont, Wisconsin.

which is near State College, which is over an hour away from our home base in Sealands Grove. So those kind of ripples are going out there and the word is getting out that there's opportunities. And the last thing I want to mention is that I saw an opportunity in the Civil Air Patrol because...

one of the cornerstones of the Civil Air Patrol is aerospace medicine, or not aerospace medicine, but aerospace technology. And

So I joined the Civil Air Patrol, and now I'm a captain, and I'm now the aerospace education officer for the Lock Haven Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol. And in that squadron, there are at least a dozen different school districts represented. So through those cadets,

cadets that are in the Civil Air Patrol, the world will get out to their school districts that we have this program available. And I know that that squadron is located in Lock Haven. For folks who don't know, take just a moment and tell people about that historical connection that Lock Haven has to general aviation.

So Lock Haven is the home, the original home of Piper Aircraft. And the venerable Piper Cub, the yellow cub that we all know and have seen, was built for decades at the

Piper Aircraft Factory in Lock Haven until 1972 when Hurricane Agnes flooded the factory and caused Piper to move its manufacturing to Florida. But the museum is still there. It's a marvelous museum and

And we meet, that is the Civil Air Patrol meets every week, every Wednesday in the museum building. And we have a very close relationship with Lock Haven and the Piper Museum. And at our airport in Sealands Grove, we have a rather large model. It's got a wingspan of almost three feet of a Piper Cub that I bring out to expeditions.

explain the parts of an aircraft and show people what a tail dragger looks like and so forth. So we have this connection between

to Piper and to the museum. And I tell the teachers that, you know, if you're looking for a great field trip that's only an hour away from most of the districts here in central Pennsylvania, a trip to the Piper Museum in Lock Haven is a great way to kind of pique kids' interest and let them know that aviation was a part of Pennsylvania history for decades.

And do they still hold the annual sentimental journey flying in the summertime? They do. And I'm embarrassed to say I have not yet made it out there, but one of these springs I'm going to go. And they had one this year, yes. Over 30 years ago, I flew into that with my mother, who always loved to fly with me at small airplanes. And I

bought a print that hangs on my wall to this day that is of a Piper Cub in the air over the skies of Lock Haven. And it's very identifiable because you can see the river and there's even a rock slide that's very well known along one of the hills there. So I have that connection to Lock Haven in my family room.

Well, it's a scenic airport. I've flown my Cirrus there. I've landed there. And they've got an interesting setup. They've got a long asphalt runway. I think it's about 3,000, 3,100 feet. But right next to it, they have a parallel grass runway.

which when they have sentimental journey and all the cubs migrate to Lock Haven, they all land on that parallel grass runway. So it's very, very historic and somewhat romantic as far as I'm concerned. Oh, definitely. Well, so tell us a little bit about some of your success stories. One of our pilots who actually built his own home-built aircraft

He has a daughter who was in her mid-20s, and she was flying as a flight attendant for one of the major airlines. And he came to me one day and he said, Victor, I think my daughter is seriously thinking about becoming a pilot.

And I said, well, send her to me. So a couple of years ago around Christmas time, she was home on Christmas vacation and we brought her to the airport and put her in the simulator. And I said, well, this isn't quite a 737, but flying is flying and the principles are the same. And let's

Let's just see what you think. Well, Max, she flew that airplane like a pro. And you could tell very quickly that she really enjoyed seeing that she could, she had the necessary abilities to fly an airplane.

And the other beauty of the simulator is, you know, if we fly these students who come to see us, we have to get all kinds of, if we fly them in airplanes, we have to get parental permission. And, you know, some of the funders for our STEM camps won't allow those flights during the camp and we have to do it after the camp.

But in the simulator, I always tell people, you cannot die in the simulator. It just cannot happen. So we can put anyone in there and they can fly and there's no risk. And I think in part,

They're not being risk makes it easier for someone to pay attention to actually flying the airplane and not worrying about doing something that would put them or the instructor at risk. And so this young lady, the daughter of this pilot of ours, she, she has now completed private commercial instrument, multi-engine CFI double I, and she's well on her way to being a professional pilot. And all she needed was a pilot.

20-minute demonstration that she had the ability to fly an airplane, and that's what we accomplished in the simulator. And do you have some other folks who've gone through the program who've moved on to professional pilot training? We have three students who have come through. One is, he's already flying for one of the regionals. He flies a regional jet out of Harrisburg for one of the major airlines. We have two other students. She's actually the daughter of

of the man in our neighborhood who cuts our grass. And she came to me and she said, you know, I think I might want to be a pilot. And this was another opportunity, put her in the simulator room,

give her the controls, and she is now in a flight school in Arizona, well on her way to becoming a professional pilot. So these are the sort of things that are happening. Now, what I want to do, we keep names and contact information, email addresses, is to go to these kids, and we've now had –

almost three dozen kids, and there'll be another 16 next month or in June, rather, who come to the camp. I'd like to follow up with them in a year or two and see what they're doing and ask them to tell us what effect

the STEM camp or the airport experience had on their decision about career opportunities. And I think you've also helped one or more teachers attend some aviation STEM conferences. I think, for example, the AOPA STEM Symposium in Atlanta. So you never know how this is going to go. So I got approached by, of all people, the band director at one of the local high schools.

And I said, really? Band director? But, you know, he's very interested in STEM. And we offered him, because we had been the recipient of some very generous grants, the opportunity to attend the annual AOPA STEM symposium, the high school STEM symposium that moves around the country. And this past November, it was held in Atlanta. So we paid his airfare fee.

his hotel and the registration fee to go to the STEM symposium. And Max, he came home. He was highly enthusiastic. I think this experience, the three days at this AOPA high school STEM symposium was life-changing for him. And what he's done is he came home. He started an aviation club at the school. He fully intends to get the school district to adopt the

the AOPA, Aviation-Based STEM Curriculum, which is free of charge. And we gave him additional funds. He's building his own simulator with a computer and a screen and controls in the school for his aviation club.

And so this is the kind of thing that we know is going to have other far-reaching implications because while we do these school visits and we go see some of these invitation programs like these career fairs and going to a math class,

But if we can get teachers like this gentleman to say, well, this is a real opportunity and he as a teacher can demonstrate these opportunities and the joy of flying and the simplicity of flying to his students, that goes far beyond what we can do in our airport-based STEM program. And I look this up, the next AOPA High School STEM Symposium is going to be held in

This year in Indianapolis on November 16th to 18th. And I noticed that it features Sean Tucker, who we had on episode 247 and who started the Bob Hoover Academy High School in Salinas, California, which is nearby. So as you think about building nonprofit and forming partnerships and securing funding opportunities,

What have been some of your biggest challenges and how did you overcome that? Or are there still challenges that you're trying to still overcome? Well, I think the biggest challenge is finding volunteers. We don't pay anyone to be on our board and to seek those people who have an interest, particularly in secondary and elementary education, who can guide us

and lead us. Now, I have recruited, I have a retired airline captain who's on my board, and he's also a graduate of the Air Force Academy and spent, I think it was nine years in the Air Force as a helicopter instructor. And I think he was a

T38 instructor as well, but he loves to get students into the FMX simulator. And he, you know, he's a retired Air Force guy and an airline captain, and he just has the best time and enjoys being with these students. So the challenge is to find more people like that. The people that see this opportunity as not

not a burden or a responsibility, but as the joy that it really is. And this pleasure we all take in seeing these students have their eyes open up and, you know, when they successfully build a robot or they, you know,

successfully land the simulator and go home from these experiences, or they go home saying, I was in the maintenance hangar today, and I think that's a really cool thing to do. Those are the kinds of experiences we need. So I've been fortunate to have an A&P mechanic who just loves his job and loves to have the kids come. We have, with the Sun Technical Institute, we have an apprenticeship that we've set up

in the A&P maintenance hangar for kids to come from SunTech to spend time seeing an airplane mechanic do his or her trade. And we're working on connections with things like air traffic controllers. Our local facility is in Harrisburg, which is about 50 miles away. And we're going to hopefully expand so we have the opportunity for kids to see that side of aviation as well. So

That's right now the biggest challenge is identifying those people that we know are out there who would be willing to work with us. And I'm of the mind, Max, that most people are just waiting to be asked questions.

And so what we need to do is identify those people who are waiting for that invitation, those retired mechanics or pilots or retired teachers, like I have the retired school superintendent on my board. And when we ask these people to help us, we rarely get a no.

because people are just waiting to be asked and we know they're out there. And one of the ways we're trying to do that is we worked, we have in Seals Grove where our airport is, we have Susquehanna University.

And last spring, one of the seniors who was in the marketing department and about to graduate and was from Northeastern Pennsylvania, she took on as a required senior project. She helped design and expand our website. And so visibility through things like website, and we're at

stem2skies.org and social media, those kinds of visibilities help a great deal. And on May 31st, in just about five weeks, we're going to have our fourth annual airport open house. And at the open house, we will have visibility from SunTech and from our STEM to the Skies program. And I should mention one of the projects we did with SunTech, we...

There are, I saw at AirVenture at Oshkosh last year, there was a Southwest Airlines captain who had made a pedal plane, a plane that, you know, is three or four feet long, has a three foot wingspan and built,

for the size of a toddler to get in there and pedal this airplane. Well, it occurred to me that making a pedal plane would be a great idea for SunTech. And when I went to SunTech and said, would you be willing to do that? They all jumped at the idea. So SunTech has, we got a kit for a Piper Cub,

And SunTech is making a Piper Cub pedal plane that we will then raffle off at the open house. And half of the proceeds from the raffle will come to STEM to the Skies. Half will go to SunTech. And the winner of the raffle will get to take home a Piper Cub pedal plane. So those kinds of opportunities are out there. And, you know, it was fortuitous that I encountered this possibility.

pilot at Oshkosh last year at AirVenture with his pedal plane. And it's grown into something that I think is going to be very successful and may turn into an annual event at our open house. I'm going to ask you in a moment what the listeners who are interested in doing this in their own hometown might want to do to get this ball rolling. But I want to take us back maybe five, six years when you and I first started talking about this.

And you've got a lot of successes now, but it was kind of slow going in the beginning. Tell us about how you were able to get through that challenging slow times and get the ball rolling to start having some of the successes that you've just talked about. Max, my timing could not have been worse.

We were incorporated as a nonprofit, as a 501c3, in December of 2020. And if you'll remember back to those days of yesteryear, that is when the COVID-19 pandemic was just heating up. And there we were. We had the legal papers. We had the IRS entity identification number. We had the 501c3 paperwork.

And there was silence because people were cloistered. They were shuttered home. They weren't out. They weren't out in public. And Lord knows we weren't being invited to visit anyone during those early days. And in early 21, during the winter of 21, so from February through about April, I kept a journal. I kept a 90-day journal. And every day I wrote down

a Bible verse and what I was doing that day and what I was hoping for and what were my concerns. And

There were times in early 2021 when I said to myself, this is never going to work. It's not moving. It's not growing. It's not moving forward. But then I had to remind myself, oh, yeah, yeah, we're in the middle of a pandemic. This too shall pass. And so when I wrote that journal, it then occurred to me about two years later that I should –

create a book. And so I wrote a book called Pains and Planes. And at the time, I was still working as a full-time medical oncologist. And the pains that I write about were the challenges and the agonies of patients with cancer who not only had to face their cancer diagnosis and treatment, but had to live through this pandemic. So

So that's the pains part. And every day there's a mention of people I saw and the concerns and the struggles we had and the very serious concerns about giving cancer chemotherapy during the pandemic and so forth. And then the planes part of pains and planes is creating this nonprofit entity during the peak of the COVID pandemic. And so I published this book a few months ago and it

it really recounts my doubts and my concerns about whether Stem of the Skies was ever going to be successful. But by God's grace and by good luck,

It has been, and it's really so far exceeded my expectations. Yes, it's just wonderful when you talk about the many different things that you've got going on there. So for people who are inspired and say, oh my gosh, there's a need like this in my community, someone's got to address it. Oh, it might be me. How would you suggest that they go ahead and get that ball rolling?

Well, the first thing not to do is not to go to the pilots first. The first thing to do is to go to the teachers. Find either an active teacher, and there are many teachers who are working every day who are interested in getting involved in something like this. Find retired teachers or superintendents or school administrators and get those people willing to

to commit some time. Our board only meets once a month. It's a hour and a half, two hour meeting once a month and get them committed to doing that. Find a location. You have to have a locus. So it's best if it's, you know, an airport, but it could be at an entity, a business that is involved in aviation in some way. And, and,

have regular meetings, and then find a way to advertise what you do. When we've had these open houses and we've had these school programs, we call the media. We call the local newspaper, the local television stations, and we say, this is going on, and they're very interested in these sorts of things. And so if you get media exposure, then that creates those ripples that get the word out that this is something that can happen. So I'm

find interested people, get media coverage, and then...

If you're so fortunate, as we have been blessed, find donors. Because if you have a hook like a simulator, and I should say, we had the good fortune of having two various generous gifts that allowed us to buy our FMX simulator. But in the past six months, we bought a Redbird J simulator, which was, you know, cost $1

10% of the cost of the FMX. And now we have this smaller simulator that has very good graphics. Obviously, it doesn't have motion. It's a desktop simulator. But we now have that simulator available. And

Several weeks ago, I had a group of handicapped students, special needs students from one of the local high schools. And those students, some of them could get into the crawl up into the FMX simulator, but some of them were in wheelchairs and they were physically challenged. And the J simulator for them was a perfect fit.

perfect way to introduce them to aviation. And it was a delightful day, even with those seriously challenged students. So community involvement, ask people, people are waiting to be asked, have a vision. Why are we doing this? Trying to improve science and math scores in our schools.

trying to open up kids' eyes and their parents' eyes to the wealth of employment opportunities that are going to be available in the next 20 to 30 years in aviation, broadly defined, well beyond pilots. And the community then can buy in, and that's the kind of commitment you need for this to be successful.

Well, I hope we've spread some of those ripples around the country and maybe even around the world and some people are inspired to replicate what you've been doing there. Remind us again where people go out on the web to find out more about you.

So our website is www.stem2skies.org, and they can contact me at vvogel, V-V-O-G-E-L, at AOL.com, and I'll be glad to send them information and materials that can help get them started.

Victor, congratulations on your success, your perseverance, your persistence in making all this happen. And thanks so much for sharing the story with us here today. Well, and thanks for your interest, Max. And I appreciate the opportunity to spread the word. Thank you very much. And my thanks to Dr. Victor Vogel for all of his great work and for joining us here again today. You can find out more about Susquehanna's STEM to the Skies at STEMtoskies.org.

And just a reminder that I love hearing from you and I read many of your emails on the show. If you'd like to send me a message, just go out to aviationnewstalk.com, click on contact at the top of the page. That's absolutely the best way to send me a message. And of course, I also want to thank everyone who supports the show in one of the following ways. We love it when you join the club and sign up at aviationnewstalk.com slash support to

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coming down. Wait until your silence baby sliding upside down. You can all