SEMO students can earn drone degree
by Paul Newton | pnewton@ruralmissouri.coop
The slight buzz from the spinning propellers rises and falls as a trio of drones passes. At the northeast corner of Cape Girardeau, students split into two groups, each carefully navigating their drones overhead along planned paths. They aren’t flying for fun though — this is drone school.
Equipped with thermal cameras, they are searching for deer. “In the fall there’s a managed deer hunt in these parks,” says Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO) instructor Andrew Chronister. “We’re trying to see how effective that hunt is. For the last three years, we’ve come out here to count the deer with our drones and we give that data to our biology department to process, which in turn works with the Missouri Department of Conservation.”
Andrew leads SEMO’s unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) program — the only bachelor’s degree of its kind in Missouri. The program prepares students for a broad range of careers in drone technology.
Before joining SEMO, Andrew spent 25 years as a video producer. While capturing aerial footage of buildings, he became fascinated with drones. His passion led him to build his own drone and eventually join the university as an advisor for agricultural drone technology. The UAS program was established at SEMO in 2017, and Andrew took over three years later.
“We’re trying to create well-rounded drone professionals,” Andrew says. “People who cannot just fly the drones, but manage departments and things like that.”
The curriculum covers a variety of other topics drone pilots need to know far beyond flying. Throughout their four years, students take classes on meteorology, GIS, basic circuits, microcomputer maintenance, technical communication, physics and more.
The first core drone class most students take is the fundamentals of aviation where they learn what makes an aircraft fly. Students start to become familiar with drones in UAS fundamentals where Andrew prepares them for their Part 107 FAA test so they can fly commercially. Another class focuses on remote sensing technology and students in the UAS design class build a drone from the ground up. Another class focuses on drone laws, policy and safety.
One of the final classes is UAS mission planning. “That’s where we take all the knowledge that we learned in the previous classes and we wrap it all up and go out and fly various types of missions, like counting the deer,” Andrew says. “We fly various missions like thermal, multispectral, hyperspectral and photography.”
A capstone course is personalized to each student who completes projects and missions. “There’s a physics student who’s researching light pollution on campus,” Andrew says. “Our capstone students have been flying missions around campus at various moon stages. Over the next few years, we’ll be expanding into agriculture spraying too.”
Currently, SEMO has a dozen students majoring in UAS, with more pursing it as a minor. Graduates have gone on to work for Boeing, inspect wind farms and even work for companies specializing in counter-drone technology.
“The diversity of what we can do after we graduate is incredible,” says Audrie Clark, a UAS major from Poplar Bluff. “Drones are in the baby stage and I think we’re going to see a huge growth in technology in the next five years. It’s exciting knowing there’s going to be new opportunities that come up.”
The most popular majors that minor in UAS are agriculture, construction management, professional pilot, law enforcement and communications, according to Andrew.
Austin Gross is a junior from Troy majoring in plant and soil science and minoring in UAS. He says he picked the minor to educate himself on drone spraying and land surveying. “I was completely new to drones in general,” he says after inspecting the area for deer. “Doing this program and flying in class has given me the confidence to know I can do this whenever I’m out of school.”
As drone and camera technology rapidly evolve, Andrew envisions them being used in more industries. First responders might put up a drone as soon as they arrive on a scene to survey the area, use thermal imaging to look for hot spots of a fire, search for possible criminals or to help with accident reconstruction. Quarry operators use drones to quickly measure piles of rocks. Electric cooperative employees use drones to help them inspect power lines.
“Package and food delivery are already happening in some places, but that will be big the next five years,” Andrew says. “I can envision someone in Marble Hill needing an auto part from a store in Cape Girardeau. They can order it and it gets loaded onto a drone and delivered to Marble Hill in 15 minutes.” By comparison, it would take 45 minutes one way to drive this distance.
Andrew says when people think about real-world applications of drones, they become increasingly interested in hearing about the UAS program. “Some people don’t realize there are professions specifically for drone pilots trained in all these things,” he says. “A lot of people just think of drones as toys, but there is so much more they can do.”
For more information on SEMO’s UAS program visit www.semo.edu.