Happy Saturday!

I received a blog from my son Marc that says he is coming up here from Texas with his family. It interesting this blog technology: First it was email, then Instant Messengers and now blogs. OK, OK I have to admit it saves a telephone call and spending that money, which it seems in not in great supply these days, but is life becomming to impersonal? Well, I liked the movie Tron and then Matrix so I know what my desired path will be. However, life does not always deal the expected so who knows!

The doughnut shop was cool today – literally & figuratively – but the talk centered around shallow thinking of Steuben County business people. I seems like confrontational approaches work best here: a point to prove the point. Tri-State University essentially closed the Aero Department and made it part of the Mechanical Engineering circula. However, do they really try to grow the Aero program? I do not think so because several avenues were not even explored. For example, we have a great airport in this county, we have a good engineering college and we have a great community in the heart of “the lakes district”. Could we attract students – for sure and here is how:
1. Have a booth at EAA Oshkosh convention and tout NE Indiana and Tri-State.
2. Throw in a private pilot certificate (this costs about $3K-4K) with admission to Aero Department.
3. Partner with EAA on some good scholarships ( EAA already has some for general aeronautical programs).
Everyone benefits in the community this way. But no we have to close the Aeronautical Engineering program for lack of students. Yep, it is the confrontational approach – do not co-operate on anything, tough it alone and ,above all things, if it did not work in the past certainly NEVER, NEVER try it again.