UND Aerospace: Reaching around the globe and into the heavens

NASA’s DC-8 research jet, centerpiece of the new National Suborbital Education and Research Center, arrives at the Grand Forks International Airport on Sept. 14.  It will be housed at the Grand Forks Air Force Base.

His was, indeed, a vision that launched a thousand ships.

The legacy of John D. Odegard has been fulfilled in ways that few could have imagined when he initiated UND’s aviation program nearly four decades ago.  It’s this demonstration of great possibilities that inspires President Charles E. Kupchella and top UND planners as they seek to expand research and partnerships across all of the University’s disciplines.

John Odegard completed his M.A. in accounting in 1967 with a thesis titled “Feasibility and Cost Analysis of Institutional Private Aircraft Transportation.”  His innovative work, which blended business and aviation, not only led to the establishment of an air transportation service for University of North Dakota officials within a year but also gave rise to UND’s Department of Aviation within the College of Business and Public Administration.

The program began with 12 students and two donated aircraft.  Now, 37 years later, it boasts more than 2,100 students in five departments (Atmospheric Sciences, Aviation, Space Studies, Computer Science, and Earth System Science and Policy) and has a fleet of more than 120 aircraft and facilities in six states.  The School is widely recognized as the world’s most technologically advanced environment for aerospace education, training and research.

How did it happen?  And more amazingly, how did it happen in a public institution here in rural North Dakota, a state better known for growing good things from the earth than from the sky?

Bruce Smith, dean of the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, leans back and smiles when he tells the story.

“When John (Odegard) built this place, he used the term ‘self-sufficient,’” says Smith.  “I wish he hadn’t done that,” he adds with a grin.

But the state’s fiscally conservative legislature held Odegard (and now Smith) to that promise.  To date, none of the money to pay for the school’s physical infrastrucure — its ultra-modern 13-building complex (four on campus and nine at the Grand Forks airport), the flight simulators, the research jet, the planes, the helicopters, the high-performance computer equipment — none of it came from the state’s tax revenues.

“Success came,” says Smith, “from determination and a dream.”

Making big dreams come true John Odegard joked that he had not “worked” a day since he began the UND aviation program in 1968.  His many colleagues and collaborators agreed that it was work — but exciting, rewarding work — just to keep up with Odegard as he would spin off idea after idea. In his 31 years as an educator, Odegard built UND aviation into a program recognized internationally not only for flight training but also for research and industry leadership.  Among its thousands of graduates have been airline presidents, the first female Boeing 747 pilot, a lead pilot of the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels precision flight team, and a regional director of the Federal Aviation Administration.  Odegard’s record of innovation and leadership won him numerous awards and wide respect within goverment and the aerospace industry. The aviation program attained full college status in 1984.  In April 1998, the Center for Aerospace Sciences was renamed the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, making him the first individual in North Dakota history to have an entire college named after him.  He died of cancer on Sept. 27, 1998, at the age of 57. Diane Odegard (second from right), wife of the late John D. Odegard, was among the group touring the interior of the NASA DC-8 shortly after its arrival at the Grand Forks International Airport.

The Foundation: partnerships

Of course, Odegard didn’t build the school alone, and his dream of creating the nation’s premier flight school wasn’t realized overnight.  Partnerships made it happen, says Smith.  For example, launching the flight school may never have happened if the dean of the business college at the time, Thomas Clifford (who went on to become the eighth president of UND), hadn’t help broker a partnership between Odegard and Ernie Fox, a Montana businessman who donated the School’s first two airplanes.

Whether it’s connecting government, industry, or individuals, leaders at UND Aerospace have long recognized that sharing both investment and reward is the best way to make big dreams come true.

Clearly, the catalyst for some of the most exciting partnerships at the Odegard School is the UND Aerospace Foundation.  A public non-profit corporation, it was established in 1985 to help connect with industry partners around the globe.

One of the early accomplishments of the UND Aerospace Foundation was the development of the innovative Spectrum pilot training program — a curriculum that emphasizes the human factors of flying.  The Foundation also provides customized Air Traffic Control training not only to American students but also to hundreds of flight students from around the world.

In the past 20 years it has established contracts with clients in 15 countries, the most recent of which is a four-year, multimillion-dollar deal to provide ground and flight training for students with Japan’s Tokai University and All Nippon Airways.

“As a separate corporation, the UND Aerospace Foundation is able to solicit and win contracts with industry partners that provide us with significant revenue.  But just as importantly, they make it possible for the School to purchase critical technological equipment,” said Chuck Pineo, Foundation sales and marketing director.

“Procuring state-of-the-art equipment enables us to fulfill the specific contractual requirements under which it is purchased.  Later, after the contract is completed, the equipment remains here for use by UND faculty and students, providing them an unparalleled environment for research and training,” Pineo explained.

“A remarkable display of airmanship” The UND Atmospheric Sciences Department’s Citation II research jet was lost Sept. 30 when both engines flamed out during a study of icing conditions in Alaska.  In what Aerospace Sciences Dean Bruce Smith described as “a remarkable display of airmanship,” pilot Paul LeHardy (above) guided the disabled aircraft from an altitude of 9,200 feet to a successful emergency landing 70 miles north of Fairbanks.  No one among the four crew members was injured. UND acquired the Citation II in 1979.  It was the sixth craft of its lineage to roll off the assembly line in Kansas.  In its quarter century of service, “N77ND” was contracted to conduct numerous weather studies around the globe.  As the emergency landing site was 60 miles from the nearest road, the aircraft was declared a total loss by the insurer.  Research equipment was retrieved, and the jet was cut into sections and removed by helicopter.

Airborne research

While the Foundation’s role in the growth of the Odegard School cannot be overstated, much of the scientific research conducted here over the last three decades has been paid for the old-fashioned way:  through competitively awarded government research contracts.

In the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, for example, a weather radar system purchased in 1974 for $50,000 through funding from the National Science Foundation was used to establish a new meteorological research program that has since generated more than $45 million in funded research.UND’s weather radar system has been updated twice since it was installed.  The department’s Doppler weather radar system was upgraded in 2004, making it state-of-the-art once again and in conformity with upgrades soon to be implemented across the National Weather Service’s network of radar systems.

Now UND is leveraging its investment in modern weather radar technology to create an innovative partnership with WSI Corporation, a weather information company that provides forecast products and services to clients such as television stations, airports, and universities for broadcast training.

“UND faculty and graduate student researchers will be   collecting data in collaboration with WSI as part of a program to develop advances in weather monitoring systems to augment capabilities within the federal government’s national networks,” explained Atmospheric Sciences Department Chair Mike Poellot.  “WSI, in turn, is providing graphics software packages that are used by our broadcast meteorology students working with Studio One, UND’s award-winning, student-produced television program.”

Although the primary purpose of research conducted at UND is not necessarily technology transfer and commercialization, in one instance research at the department’s Regional Weather Information Center led directly to the creation of one of the Midwest’s fastest-growing advanced technology companies.

In 1996, Atmospheric Sciences Professor Leon Osborne founded Meridian Environmental Technology, Inc., a company that offers a unique range of customer-specific environmental and operational forecasting products and services, including an internally developed system that delivers customized route-specific surface weather and road condition reports statewide across five states.

When Osborne recalls the early days of Meridian, he can’t help but step back a bit farther, to a conversation he had with Odegard several years before

“I went to John with a small idea, and when I walked out of his office it was a big idea,” said Osborne.

That particular conversation was about expanding the RWIC and moving it from a dusty basement to its present prime location in Odegard Hall, but Osborne explains that it changed the way he began to view what was possible.

“John taught me to dream bigger,” he said.  “Over the years, I’ve learned to dream really big.”

Flying even higher

While Osborne and his associates pursue technological advances on the vast horizon of surface weather research, his colleague Shan de Silva casts his gaze higher and farther, into the solar system.  As chair of the Department of Space Studies, de Silva is working to establish a university-industry partnership to develop a research and development facility for spacesuit and EVA (extravehicular activities) technologies.

This architectural rendering envisions a new observatory that could house the largest telescope in the Upper Midwest.  A feasibility study for the project was conducted by the firm of Widseth Smith Nolting & Associates, Inc., of Grand Forks.  The North Dakota Space Grant Consortium is advancing a “Dark Skies Initiative” through which the state could position itself favorably not only as a site for serious, professional research but also as an educational resource and as a destination for amateur astronomers and tourists.  The Department of Space Studies has initiated a fundraising campaign for the project. Rendering provided by Widseth Smith Nolting & Associates, Inc., Engineers, Architects & Land Surveyors.

An exciting research project moving that plan forward, says de Silva, is a new collaboration of students from the state’s two research universities, two-year and four-year institutions, and tribal colleges.  Sponsored by a $100,000 NASA Aerospace Workforce Development Grant, the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium (NDSGC), housed in the Department of Space Studies, has begun to build a prototype spacesuit to be worn on the surface of Mars.  Final testing of the spacesuit will occur in May 2006.  The project is being managed by UND Space Studies Research Associate Pablo de Leon with technical assistance being provided by Hamilton Sundstrand, which manufactures the Space Shuttle spacesuit, and the NASA Extravehicular Activities Office at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas.

“Currently, NASA spends approximately $20 million to design and build a planetary spacesuit,” said de Silva.  “We believe we can do it for a fraction of that cost.”

In fact, de Silva believes the spacesuit project, which involves college students from around North Dakota in cutting-edge research within a nascent high-tech industry, may turn out to have important economic development potential for the state.

Another new space-related project with economic development promise is the NDSGC’s Dark Skies Initiative.  Suezette Rene Bieri, assistant director of NDSGC, explains that this is a multi-dimensional effort to help the state market itself as a destination point for both serious astronomy research and for travelers who simply want to learn more about the subject.

For many, ecotourism brings to mind activities such as canoeing, backpacking and bird-watching.  But if Bieri and her colleagues are successful, in the near future the concept may also include stargazing in North Dakota.

The project calls for a new observatory to be built west of UND near Emerado, N.D.

“It will be used for serious research,” according to Paul Hardersen, assistant professor of space studies.  “It will house the largest telescope in the Upper Midwest.”

The telescope, which will be accessible via the Internet to college students and K-12 classes across the state, will also be used for educational purposes.  As the Dark Skies Initiative develops, the NDSGC will coordinate the installation of a series of smaller telescopes around North Dakota.

Those telescopes will give travelers from urban areas a chance to tour the darkest skies they may have ever seen, learning about not only modern-day astronomy but also how the skies have been used throughout history: by native cultures for timekeeping and storytelling and by explorers such as Lewis and Clark for navigation.

Flight research: safety aloft

As with the more recent additions to the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, including atmospheric science and space studies, new partnerships within the School’s original program of study, aviation, are being formed at a breathtaking pace.

For example, the Aviation Department (which includes flight training, air traffic control training, flight operations, and a master’s program) has developed customized flight training programs on college campuses in six states through contracts with the UND Aerospace Foundation.  They have established an agreement to train helicopter pilots for West Point.  Under still another contract, UND supplies factory-required pilot training for buyers of the Cirrus SR22, which is manufactured in Grand Forks and in Duluth, Minn.  And more are on the horizon.

“Because of advances in aircraft avionics, we know there will be an increasing demand for factory-required pilot training,” said Kent Lovelace, aviation department chair.  “Insurers will require it.”

Lovelace explains that many aircraft manufacturers are moving to new “glass cockpits,” flat-panel monitors that can provide pilots with critical data such as weather conditions and airport traffic information.

The Federal Aviation Administration has designated the School as one of the nation’s Air Transportation Centers of Excellence, collaborations dedicated to developing innovative aviation research partnerships with government organizations and industry affiliates.  Areas of inquiry within this Center of Excellence at UND include general aviation research and airworthiness assurance research.

In one FAA-funded safety project, UND researchers are leading a nationwide study of human factors that affect aircrew performance.  In another project, faculty from the School are collaborating with colleagues from UND’s Psychology Department to examine how factors such as personality and communication styles may affect pilot training.

The next generation of air transportation: a whole new world

Now, it seems, the amazing story of research-driven growth at UND’s Aerospace may be happening all over again, this time in a small start-up company being incubated in UND’s Ina Mae Rude Entrepreneur Center.

Exactly 35 years after Odegard completed his master’s thesis, another bright dreamer at UND was putting the finishing touches on his master’s thesis in aviation, and another forward-thinking dean was paying attention.

Just as Odegard’s dream altered the nature of flight training across the nation, as Smith sees it, John Boehle’s master’s thesis articulates a vision which may well revolutionize America’s next-generation air transportation system.Perhaps that’s one of the reasons this dean was eager to help.

Boehle’s thesis examined air service in rural North Dakota and looked at what it would take to make the state’s 63 commuter airfields as accessible as its eight commercially served airports. Were there technologies on the drawing board that could help?

In a quest for answers, Boehle and Smith made a personal visit to NASA’s headquarters in Langley, Va., to meet with officers of NASA’s Upper Great Plains Small Aircraft Transportation System Laboratory.  It turned out NASA officials were looking for university-based partners in rural states to research and develop regional deployment of next-generation air services.

“Our timing couldn’t have been better,” says Smith.

Another key partner in the project was a longtime friend of both Smith and Clifford, aviation venture capitalist and UND benefactor James C. Ray.  Ray funded the start-up of a new company, EASE LLC, to develop affordable air service throughout the region.  The strategy was to use advances in aviation technology and communications infrastructure to connect small communities and commercial centers.

Now three years later, Boehle is finalizing plans to launch Point2Point Airways, an air service plan developed by EASE LLC, which will enable customers to fly affordably to and from any of North Dakota’s 71 airfields.

“They’ll be able to purchase air-travel minutes in advance, create their own itineraries and even make reservations online,” says Boehle.