Month: January 2019

Alfred University is offering its first cross-disciplinary class between its College of Business and Engineering School on entrepreneurship and drone technology.

At the end of the course and lab, AU students will be able to take their drone commercial pilot licenses, and are eligible to assist in flying their drones over local farmland this summer in an effort to gather data that will be used to help local farmers increase their crop yield and health.

We thank the Appalachian Regional Commission for their $150,000 grant and Alfred University for matching that grant.  This is an opportunity to attempt a daring and new and exciting inter-disciplinary program. 

The Appalachian region faces well known and significant challenges to its economic growth, and the effectiveness of using experiential learning activities to teach technical skills and entrepreneurship is well documented. Within this context, the purpose of this grant is to promote economic growth in the Appalachian region by educating its workforce in drone technology and entrepreneurship in order to increase their current skills, develop new skills, and motivate the workforce to develop new business opportunities. Program graduates will then reinforce their new skills in the summer of 2019 by flying drones over local farms in order to gather data with the goal of increasing crop yield and health.

This project proposes to create programs at Alfred University that is expected to engage students in the Engineering and Business schools in: 1) Drone (UAV) Repair/ Maintenance; 2) Drone (UAV) Pilot Training and licensing; and, 3) Innovation Enterprise Entrepreneurship. These programs are credit-bearing for Alfred University students and provide certifications for non-students.