MURFREESBORO,
Tenn. — Middle Tennessee State University aerospace students are finally
getting the chance to receive hands-on training — and a leg up in the job
market — using a state-of-the-art aviation program donated earlier this year.
WSI Fusion is an aviation
operations management solution and was donated by Southwest Airlines and The
Weather Company, an IBM business, in the spring. The technology has been
implemented in the Department of Aerospace’s NASA Flight Operations
Center-Unified Simulation labs, better known as FOCUS labs.
A group of over a dozen
graduate and undergraduate students from the College of Basic and Applied
Sciences is the first to receive training for the software before it becomes
open to all aerospace and industrial organizational psychology majors.
WSI is the same
state-of-the-art technology Southwest Airlines uses currently and it allows
users to obtain real-time flight and aerospace data. The system can also
process data and enables users to make more precise operational decisions.
WSI also stores
information from all Southwest flights, meaning MTSU professors can use
information from these flights — such as weather patterns, altitude and detours
— to implement different training scenarios that wouldn’t be possible without
the technology.
This unique experience
and access to information is regarded as WSI’s most beneficial aspect to
students and has instructors excited about the possibilities.
“Before we received this
we had to use whatever weather would occur on that day. Now with this captured
weather, we can run them through thunderstorms, severe wind and other different
scenarios,” said associate professor Andrea Georgiou as students trained
recently at the FOCUS Lab inside the Business and Aerospace Building.
Georgiou also stated the
new scenarios introduced by WSI will improve research in the department as well
as increase the emphasis on teamwork for students throughout the program.
Graduate student Jordan
Gunn, who attended hands-on training for the program in Dallas with Georgiou,
said the learning curve wouldn’t be as steep as expected for students.
This is in large part due
to a very user-friendly interface that allows for students to customize their
versions of the program to their liking, he noted.
“I’ve been around weather
all my life, so getting used to the program was easy. It’s very user-friendly
and includes a help book that can honestly tell you how to do just about
anything,” said Gunn. “It’s a unique program, but one that most students won’t
have much trouble getting used to.”
While learning how to
operate the system may not be as challenging as expected, Gunn said the
situations will be rigorous and will test students’ knowledge like never
before.
“I think students will be
better prepared, because mostly they’re told what the weather situation is.
With this technology, now you can see how they react to certain random weather
phenomena and make them ask themselves how they can be better prepared for the
weather and other situations on this day,” Gunn said.
With MTSU being the first
school with this technology, Georgiou sees the aerospace department taking a
major step forward and the students reaping the benefits as a result.
“The industry is
beginning to find out about this and they love it. Now when employers see MTSU
NASA FOCUS Lab on resumes, our students are getting more jobs, internships, and
their careers are advancing quicker,” she said.
Training for the program
will continue throughout the semester and Georgiou said MTSU alumni are already
volunteering to return to campus to help assist students in their training.
For more information
about MTSU’s aerospace program, go to www.mtsu.edu/aerospace or call
615-898-2788.
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