Taking Flight
Story: Rob Biertempfel, Photography: Liz Palmer
About a year ago, Guy Davis, the longtime archivist at Saint Vincent College, was asked to put together an icebreaker presentation for a meeting of the College’s Board of Directors. One of the artifacts Davis pulled out of storage was an airplane headlight, a reminder of SVC’s pioneering but short-lived pilot training program of nearly a century ago.
The battered yellow lamp was an appropriate yet entirely accidental selection—Davis had no idea that one of the items on the Board’s agenda was a proposal to revive Saint Vincent’s aviation program. “Just a coincidence,” Davis said.
Perhaps. Yet, Dr. Jeff Mallory, C’06, G’13, Saint Vincent’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, wondered if it wasn’t a sign from above. “When [Davis] plopped that headlight onto the table, I looked at it and said to myself, ‘This has to be divine,’” Mallory said with a smile. “A year later, here we are.” Beginning in the fall 2024 semester, Saint Vincent will offer a Bachelor of Science in Aviation Management – Professional Pilot. A unique three-way partnership will enable students to get a pilot’s license and gain a well-rounded business core to succeed in administrative roles in aviation. Saint Vincent will deliver the business curriculum and its College Core based on the Liberal Arts. Community College of Beaver County (CCBC) will handle the aviation component via online courses that culminate in an associate’s degree. Students will log flight hours with Laurel Highlands Aeronautical Academy at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport to earn their wings.
This is not the first time Saint Vincent has served as a runway to the wild blue yonder. In August 1919, less than two years after the Wright Brothers made their historic first flight, a pair of U.S. Army pilots seeking shelter from a thunderstorm landed their Curtiss JN “Jenny” biplane on a patch of clover where Rooney Hall now stands. The pilots, part of a squadron of Army “Pathfinders” who mapped air routes, were put up for the night by the Benedictine monks at the Archabbey. That led the Army to designate the makeshift airstrip on the Saint Vincent campus on its aeronautical charts as an emergency landing field. SVC later bought its own training biplane, dubbed the Spirit of Saint Vincent, and in 1929 became the first college in America to offer flying instruction. The Great Depression put an end to SVC’s student aviation program in 1930, but during World War II, the College trained hundreds of Army airmen to fly prop planes and gliders.
By the 1960s, the Spirit of Saint Vincent was a broken-down heap that sat unused and rusting on the outskirts of campus. There are whispers that the plane’s original propeller was salvaged and is still stashed somewhere nearby. “I’ve been searching the basements and attics of our old buildings for it, but so far I have not come across it,” Davis said wistfully. A brochure from the 1980s urged prospective students to “fly into (what then was called) Westmoreland County Airport…and stay four years!” But without an active aviation program, SVC students who wanted to touch the clouds had to hire off-campus flying instructors.
“I always thought aviation would be cool to have here,” said Dr. Michael Urick, dean of the Alex G. McKenna School of Business, Economics, and Government. “We have a history of it, and we have a strategic advantage with the airport right across the street. So, we should be doing it, but how? It wasn’t until I talked with CCBC that I saw a path forward. I found there is expertise in the region; students can take their classes while living in our dorms and basically go across the street to fly. This is a win-win-win.”
Will the McKenna School give its graduates a set of pilot’s wings along with their diplomas?
“That would be cool,” Urick said with a grin. “I told my assistant we should order t-shirts that say ‘Saint Vincent McKenna School’ with the ‘Top Gun’ logo or something. Hmm…maybe next year.”
One afternoon, while Urick was working on the details of piecing together the aviation program, his five-year-old daughter walked up to him and said, “I want to be a pilot someday.” It was a misty-eyed moment for Urick, whose father, Richard Urick, C’77, took flying lessons while he was a student at Saint Vincent but never completed his pilot’s license. “I think this program will be good for our students,” Urick said. “It will be a way to get them exposed to traveling, going to new places and seeing new things, and expanding their horizons.”
There’s also an important practical motivation for SVC to relaunch the program: jobs. Commercial air travel, which declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, is surging again. Over the next fifteen years, however, the number of active pilots is expected to decrease by fifty percent, but the job growth potential for women is healthy. Currently, women account for only nine percent of commercial pilots.
Having a bachelor’s degree allows aspiring pilots to earn their license with 1,250 flight hours instead of the usual 1,500 hours. It also lowers the minimum license age from 23 to 21, which is a plus for students who begin their pilot education while in high school.
Graduates will be able to work as a flight instructor and fly charter flights and sightseeing tours, but won’t yet have enough flight hours to pilot a commercial airline. However, students will be equipped to use their business degrees in the aviation industry to make a living while they earn additional flight hours to become a commercial pilot.
If Saint Vincent becomes a factory for the aviation industry, it would boost Arnold Palmer Regional Airport—more pilots in the area might lead to more private and/or public flights in and out of Latrobe—and could spur economic growth in Westmoreland County. “Starting a [pilot training] program at Saint Vincent is a big deal for this region and for the state when it comes to dealing with the pilot shortage,” said Gabe Monzo, executive director of the Westmoreland County Airport Authority.
Jim Arnold, administrator of Laurel Highlands Aeronautical Academy, fell in love with flying about twenty years ago when he was in high school. He went on to Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire, which was one of the top aviation schools in the country until it shuttered its program in 2017. The past few years, Arnold lobbied for Saint Vincent to fill the void. “I lost my alma mater, and it really hurts,” Arnold said. “My hope is we can make Saint Vincent’s program even better than what Webster had. I would love to see us filling those shoes. If we’re able to carry the prestige of Saint Vincent into aviation, wow, that would be incredible.”
Aviation Management – Professional Pilot
Bachelor of Science
