FAIRMONT — In skies achingly clear over north-central West Virginia 30 years ago, the late Rose Cousins, by all airborne accounts, was a woman content.
During those lofty, leisurely afternoons, when the crosswinds minded their manners and the clouds made just like a Bob Ross painting, Cousins would pay a visit to Frankman Field, the single-runway, municipal airport just outside her hometown of Fairmont.
Courtesy of her connections with the city and then-Fairmont State College, the city’s pioneering Black pilot who just missed the cut with the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II because of her gender, had access to a small plane.
She’d buckle in and scoot down the runway, just so she could keep current with her flight hours.
These days, Fairmont State College is Fairmont State University.
And coed pilots are now taking flight through the university’s School of Business and Aviation.
Just like Cousins’ plane all those years ago, the program is continuing to gain loft, as it recruits female fliers to an industry still dominated by men.
Five women students since 2017 have graduated and become certified pilots through the program, the university said.
A total of 12 more coed pilots are now enrolled in the process.
It’s not just about flying in the formation of gender, said Joel Kirk, Fairmont State’s director of the university’s Aviation Center of Excellence.
The program, said the administrator who is also a licensed pilot, is really the embodiment of that old-school aviator’s credo of having the “Right Stuff” to succeed.
Kirk called those enrolled “exceptional in every respect,” he said.
That its graduates can easily vector in on six-figure paychecks doesn’t hurt either, he added.
“This program is the best return on investment in any education program in the state,” he said, “and it leads to the most-exciting career one can imagine.”
It’s also a career option with plenty of job openings at present, he continued.
According to industry watchers, there’s currently a shortage of some 17,000 pilots across the nation.
Why shouldn’t the new hires be female with a Fairmont State diploma, university President Mike Davis asked.
Especially, he said, for those pilots who want to touch down to make the Mountain State home base.
“Fairmont State’s aviation program was the first of its kind in West Virginia and remains second to none,” he said.
“Aviation is a crucial, growth industry for the state, so it’s essential that we continue to create opportunities for women to excel.”
A lot of that altitude-growth is centered in north-central West Virginia. Neighboring Bridgeport in Harrison County is home to the state’s burgeoning aviation and avionics industries.
Fairmont State’s School of Business and Aviation, meanwhile, offers two bachelor’s of science degrees in professional flight and aviation management.
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