Airport Experience® News - ACDBE & Small Business Issue 2024

As airports face a “silver tsunami” of executive retirements and ongoing labor shortages, the aviation industry is finding ways to both educate and inspire the next generation of professionals through university-airport partnerships. Bringing together real-world job training and scholarly research, academic-aviation collaborations are helping to build a solid bedrock of incoming talent and support cutting-edge innovation projects at airports nationwide. Some airports have begun the process by extending a commitment of cooperation with local universities. Tampa International Airport (TPA) has chosen to partner with the University of South Florida (USF) on a memorandum of understanding designed for the two organizations to explore research opportunities and talent pipelines. Having previously worked closely with USF’s Patel College of Global Sustainability (PCGS), TPA decided to “encourage future collaboration across many different lines of business” through an MOU, says

the airport’s sustainability and resilience program director Eric Caplan. The partnership has already led to several exciting research initiatives, adds Caplan, including projects focused on electrifying TPA operations, energy and growth management, and emissions reductions as well as research and analysis on EV transition plans, solar feasibility studies, LED lighting analysis and energy management systems. Other airports are working with neighboring universities to create specialized educational and research facilities. In February, the University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) and Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) launched The Charlotte Aviation Innovation & Research Institute (known as the Charlotte AIR Institute), a collaborative project between CLT and UNC Charlotte’s William States Lee College of Engineering. The partnership is designed to provide both practical research opportunities in civil

Opposite page, Above: Students from University of South Florida visit Tampa International Airport as part of an airport-university partnership currently in place. The partnership has led to multiple research initiatives, including projects focused on electrifying TPA operations, energy and growth management, and emissions reductions.

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AX NEWS JULY/AUGUST 2024