A New Aviation Training Center for Kansas

The Sedgwick County Commission, in Kansas, is supporting a $54- million aviation training and research center at Col. James Jabara Airport. Commissioners unanimously approved the financing package for the technical education center after several proponents came to the commission with the same message, approve the funding, build the center. It was a message that county commissioners were only too happy to hear. In recent years, the county has engineered a virtual takeover of technical education, seeing it as the cornerstone of future development for the region's manufacturing-centered economy. Commissioner Tim Norton acknowledged that it's an unusual role for a county government to play, but likened it to state support of university-level education. "The truth is, folks that work in the aircraft industry, that build the planes, have every right to get the world-class training you get in our universities," Norton said. "Why don't we put them in great facilities and bring them up to the same level?” The technical training center will consist of 222,000 square feet of workspace to accommodate a minimum of 1,300 students. In addition, it will house an annex of Wichita State University's National Institute for Aviation Research. The idea is to meld the education program and the research capabilities of NIAR to bring cutting-edge technologies -- and workers trained to use it -- to the production floors of Wichita's aircraft factories.