(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse".

Coming up little bit later in the show, we'll hear a musical performance from the Dan Brekke Band.

But first, our guest joining us now, is Dr. Elizabeth B. Bjerke, associate Dean and Professor of Aviation at UND Aerospace in Grand Fork.

Dr. Bjerke, thanks so much for joining us today.

- Thank you for having me.

- Well, as we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself, maybe your background and where you're from.

- Sure, well, I grew up in Western Wisconsin and I actually came to North Dakota in 1996, as a undergraduate student in the aviation program at UND.

And I guess you can say I fell in love with the winters 'cause 28 later, I'm still here in North Dakota, but I came for the aviation program.

I finished that degree up.

I was working on my master's degree in flight instructing, building time experience when 9/11 happened.

And at that time a lot changed in the world as well as within our industry.

And all of my friends, peers, were getting furloughed and education seemed very stable.

I love teaching in the classroom, I love teaching on the flight line.

And so I decided to make that my career.

- Well you're here to talk about a variety of subjects that you have expertise in, but first let's start with pilot shortages.

What's going on there and why is that such an issue?

- So it's an, you know, it's an exciting time in the industry.

That's a lot of opportunities for employment, whether it's from the pilot sector, there are traffic sector, the maintainer sector.

Because historically, if you look back in the 1980s, you know, the military provided a lot of the pilots that then went on for commercial careers in the industry.

Now we're looking at just about a third of the airline pilots have military backgrounds, putting that burden of training on the civilian sector.

So like collegiate programs like ours, you can see the effect of the pilot shortage locally.

I know in Grand Forks for example, we used to have five flights a day.

Now we're down to three flights a day.

So sometimes those rural communities are gonna be hit more so than other communities, if we're not able to attract more young people into the field of aviation.

- Well I understand you've co-authored research, research studies on aviation workplace shortages with pilots probably being the most notable, but also air traffic controller.

We hear about that from time to time.

Is that kind of the same issue or is it different?

- It's a little bit different.

So on the pilot side, the research we have shown, there's kind of two big variables that determine the supply of pilots.

So when the airlines are hiring like they are today, more young people get interested in a career in aviation and look to pursue it.

And then the biggest drawback is that cost factor.

Not everybody can afford to do the flight training to pursue that career in flying.

On the air traffic side, yes we're definitely seeing shortages there as well.

The FAA needs to hire about 1500 controllers this year and put them through their extensive training program about 2000 next year.

And with that they really had a backlog.

They couldn't do the training like they would need to during the Covid years.

And so that kind of delayed that pipeline.

And so we're definitely seeing a shortage.

The good thing is we have programs at the University of North Dakota that helps train aspiring aviation professionals in both of those fields.

So we're hoping that we can do our part to mitigate some of the shortages we're seeing.

- Well, so there you say, you know, my next question was gonna be, what and how is UND contributing to bridging those shortages?

And are there other universities or programs across the United States that help too?

Can you answer any of that?

- Yeah, so there's actually more collegiate aviation programs than one might be aware of, there's probably around 200 around the country and that's not the only way that pilots can get trained.

There's also quite a few flight academies throughout the country as well.

So if someone's looking to do a career change, for example, they already have a college degree, but they wanna be a pilot, there's other avenues for them to kind of accelerate their flight training.

At the University of North Dakota, we're also part of the FAA, Federal Aviation Administration College Training Initiative Program for air traffic controls.

So there is a number of these schools around the country.

UND was one of the first as well.

But we work with the FAA, train air traffic controllers so that they can go into the FAA system and be much more successful and hopefully expediate that training to being a certified controller with the FAA.

- Yeah.

Well can you expand a little bit more on some of the training that your students, what they get that prepares them for these careers?

- Sure.

Well it's exciting.

We believe strongly in experiential learning or hands-on learning within the aviation program at UND.

For example, when students come in that freshman year, whether they're a pilot student or an air traffic control student, they're gonna get right into flying airplanes, flying simulators, or controlling aircraft, in our air traffic control simulators.

And that kind of hands-on learning, coupled with the expertise that our faculty are able to deliver in their classrooms, really prepares them well for that career as an aviation professional, regardless of which track they go.

But again, it's exciting 'cause it starts, you know, semester one, year one in the program, they're getting that professional experience coupled with a great liberal arts education at UND taking all of the other required courses to make them that college graduate.

- When students come to the university or other universities, are they already pilot trained or had some flying?

Or what's a typical student like when they come to UND?

- So there's kind of two avenues when they come in.

We are structured to take someone with zero flight hours through our program in four years to get them ready for that professional career.

I know when I came into the program, I had done one intro flight, to see if I even liked a small airplane and I did.

So I pursued from, you know, day one, learning private pilot skills, working into your instrument rating commercial and so on.

Some students though, they're so excited about aviation, they'll actually get their private pilot certificate in high school.

You have to be 16 years old to solo, 17 years old to become a private pilot.

And we're seeing a growing number of young people coming in already with their private pilot certificate.

So then they just start out right away in our instrument rating and kind of work up through there.

So it's exciting to see we need pilots, so the younger that they can start flying and know that that's a passion of theirs, they come in that much more ready to succeed.

Air traffic control side a little bit different.

That's kind of one of those, I wanna say not hidden careers in the, you know, in the ecosystem, the aviation ecosystem.

It's hard to really get that experience controlling without having access to simulators like we do at on our campus.

- Let's talk a little bit about mental health issues among pilots, air traffic controllers, I think they've been in the news over the years we've heard that, and even airport workers for that matter.

How big a problem is this?

- This is definitely an issue and it's been an issue for a number of years.

Of course at the University of North Dakota, the Covid pandemic really highlighted this as a concern for us because it impacted, you know, that younger generation, even more so, pilots also and controllers, they're held to FA medical certification standards.

And so they have a series, series of steps that one would need to go through if they, you know, do have or are diagnosed with depression or anxiety or elements like that.

Which sometimes can be a barrier for pilots or controllers to seek help.

But we're working very hard first within our organization, as well as nationally, to make positive change in this arena.

'Cause we know it's needed.

- Yeah, in fact, I understand maybe you recently returned from a "National Transportation Safety Board Summit on Pilot Mental Health".

Can you tell us some about that and what, what all it did and what y'all talked about?

- Yeah, so the, the National Transportation Safety Board, they called to action sort of a summit to focus on pilot mental health.

It was spearheaded by the chair of the NTSB, Jennifer Homendy.

And she brought in experts from all over the industry, from airlines to pilots and controllers, who had personal experiences.

To mental health professionals to with the FAA as well.

And it was really just a day long full of panels, conversations, discussions, working together, to think about possible solutions for a better future.

And then that kind of spawned to the FAA recently announced and we're working diligently on an FAA aviation rulemaking committee looking at pilot mental health and medical certification standards.

And I'm happy to report that the University of North Dakota has quite a presence on that aviation rulemaking committee as well.

So we're hoping that we can be part of that conversation for positive change.

- Well, how many students are enrolled in UND Aerospace?

- So we have about 2000 undergraduate students in aviation.

What we also have online degrees and a master's in aviation and well as a PhD in aerospace sciences.

And those also have probably 75 students total in the graduate programs.

So it's a pretty big program for- - It is.

And with the new Space Force that's out there, are y'all associated with that at all?

- Absolutely.

'Cause in our College of Aerospace, we do have a space studies program and in fact we were the first university to be signed up as a university partner with the Space Force.

And this happened a couple years ago, under General Raymond was the general in charge of the Space Force at the time, and we were the first school to sign into this partnership and then they added on these other little schools like MIT and Virginia Tech and things like that.

(chuckles) - Well, you know, do you feel like the program can grow even more?

- So our flight program, we're kind of at capacity.

So, we have about 1600 commercial aviation students, that's our professional flight major.

And we look at that capacity.

There's only so much airspace, so many aircraft that can fly safely within that airspace.

And we wanna ensure that when students start the program, that they're able to continuously progress and be successful in the program.

And so we saw a large uptick in demand for our flight program and we actually had to end up capping enrollments for that program just because it was growing exponentially too fast than what we could handle.

Now, other programs on our campus, like our air traffic management program, we definitely have room to grow and we need to grow that program, because the nation needs qualified air traffic controllers.

We also have a program in unmanned aircraft systems that we have capacity that we would be happy to grow.

We have a atmospheric science, you know, weather's an important part of this industry as well that we'd love to grow.

So kind of depending on the program is how we can grow.

We can't grow more airspace very easily and we have great airspace in North Dakota, but that's kind of our limiting factor for the flight program.

- Maybe let's go back now, let's take a step back and talk about the history of UND Aerospace.

I mean it's probably, well it's very recognized across the nation.

UND probably known for two things, hockey and aerospace, the program.

But talk about the program and how it started and who started it.

- Great.

So yeah, a lot of people wonder, you know, why at the University of North Dakota do you have such a large aviation program?

You know, and we like to probably think why not?

But if you think about it, we have all of the right elements.

We have four seasons.

One season might be a little longer than the other three combined, but it is important as a aspiring pilot to have that experience in all four seasons.

We do have, you know, wide open airspace.

Again, it's not very congested in North Dakota.

We've got a great partnership with the Grand Forks Air Force base that provides some of our aircraft sequencing as we approach and leave the airport.

And really we just have that spirit of entrepreneurialship, why not attitude to make it happen.

And so our program was founded back in 1968 by John Odegard.

He was a Minot native, went to the University of North Dakota, was completing his accounting degrees, did his master's degree, and came up with the idea that, you know, UND should have an aviation program, and at the time Tom Clifford was the Dean of the College of Business, backed him on this idea and they kinda, he had an office and a closet, and then he started offering an aviation economics class and the College of Business that was really a private pilot class, but John was an amazing visionary and amazing salesperson.

So he filled that class up instantly, you know, every time it was offered.

And that one class slowly grew into a major, which then eventually came out to its own college of Aerospace.

I think he had a couple donated aircraft in the beginning.

And now we have a fleet of over a hundred aircraft at UND.

Unfortunately, we lost John way too early.

In fact, I never met him.

He passed away in 1998 due to cancer.

But his vision, his personality, his leadership definitely lives on with the program and where we're going today.

And I think he'd be proud of all we've accomplished.

- So how many professors teach in of course in the aerospace program?

- So the one nice thing about having a large student population, you need to have a large faculty as well to teach.

So we have about 45 to 50 faculty members in the program and they all have very different diverse backgrounds.

Many of them have come from industry, but they've come from different segments of the industry.

So for example, when we teach an aviation law class, it's gonna be taught by an actual lawyer who's practiced aviation law, our advanced aircraft operations class, they're gonna be taught by pilots who actually flew either for the airlines or the military.

Our air traffic control classes are taught by former certified air traffic controllers.

So that is nice to have that breadth of faculty expertise within the department teaching classes that really, they have a lot of personal experience in working with.

- You know, you talked about pilots, the military used to provide pilots for commercial airlines.

I mean, how are we filling those roles?

So where are the pilots coming from of today?

- So the military still does produce pilots, you know, but they're also short pilots as well.

Different segments of the military.

They were also leaning more on the unmanned aircraft for a lot of their missions as well.

And then other, again, just a lot of outreach, getting young people informed that there are careers, exciting careers in aviation.

Then of course combating that cost piece.

You know, we need to be creative on how we are finding scholarship dollars or pathway programs to assist with that financial cost of the programs too.

- Yeah, well we talked about teachers.

I should have asked what classes do you teach?

- So I teach a whole variety of classes.

So I teach everything from our freshman orientation, one credit class to advising our PhD students on their research proposals.

This semester I'm teaching, I think my favorite class is our class that teaches students how to become flight instructors.

So now we take our, their commercial pilots themselves, but we're teaching them how to teach, to train that next generation of pilots.

- Do you recruit students from all over the world?

- [Dr. Bjerke] We do have students from all over the world.

I won't say we necessarily recruit actively, but our reputation is pretty good.

So we do get students from all over the world and all over the country.

You know, we have students from, every 50 states, you know, our southern students, it's kind of fun to watch them come in.

They're all excited for that first snow and then they realize it doesn't melt till May, usually.

And then that's a little bit different.

And we also recruit a lot from North Dakota.

I'm happy to say that we probably had about 50 students from North Dakota enter the program last year.

So it's exciting to see so many young people interested in aviation.

- Are there any alumni that you could tell us about?

- Oh, we have amazing alumni in all segments of the industry from, you know, numerous, pilots, professional pilots, airline pilots, managers.

I would say one neat alum, we actually have coming to town, to Fargo this summer is Griffin Stangel.

He's the lead solo pilot for the Blue Angels right now.

And so that's always exciting when you see an alum make it to those heights.

- Sure it is.

Well, maybe tell us about some of the research that's going on, well, in your department, of course, in your program.

- So, we have a lot of exciting research happening.

We're part of two FAA Centers of Excellence for Research.

One is called Assure, and that's looking at all different aspects of UAS research and how to integrate UAS into the National Airspace system.

So many different projects focusing on that.

We also have research done with aviation safety.

We manage a flight data, flight data database for general aviation at the University of North Dakota that helps feed in and improve safety around the country.

Personally, I'm involved in quite a bit of research on pilot mental health right now in collaboration with our psychology department and with the Department of Defense taking a look at pilot healthcare seeking behaviors.

Why are they not going out?

Whether it's physical or mental health and seeking the help that they need to stay healthy.

So a lot of exciting things.

- And you know, we talk about mental health, in a lot of different things in the world for that matter.

But, it seems like air traffic controllers really have stress.

What causes that mental health issues for the most part, do you see?

- Again, I don't think that pilots and controllers are necessarily any different than the general public.

You know, and I think that's gonna be pretty common across the board.

The difference is the fact that pilots and controllers need to go in for that FA medical certification either every year, every two years, depending on their role.

And so that's where some of that stigma lies and what can they do and can't, they do.

There's a lot of misinformation out there.

We're trying to educate pilots and controllers and in fact, this aviation making committee that was formed is looking at both, both sets of those populations.

So I'm very hopeful that very soon we'll see some positive changes in that arena.

'Cause again, there should be nothing wrong with seeking help for either your physical or mental health.

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

Do you think pilot and air traffic control shortages will eventually be solved?

Or is this gonna be an ongoing issue always?

- Well, one thing I know about this industry after being in it for over 20 years, it's very cyclical, right?

There's good days and there's bad days, a certain event, the Covid pandemic, for example, I thought that was gonna be something that was gonna totally stop airline hiring and sort of be another 9/11 impact on the industry.

That wasn't the case.

The last two years, the major airlines, larger airlines have hired over 12,000 pilots a year, which is almost more than double what they had done previous to Covid.

Boeing aircraft puts out a forecast every year about pilot and maintainer supply.

And they're predicting the next 20 years worldwide.

We need almost 650,000 new pilots, in the US 124,000 new pilots in just 20 years.

And we only graduate about 200 a year.

That's a big number to fill.

- It is, sounds like a career if people are interested.

Finally, if people want more information, where can they go?

- Well, a lot of information's available on the web, so check out UND's website and search out the aviation program.

A lot of great information on there.

Also would like to invite everyone, we have an upcoming pop-up science museum, we like to call it, UND Aerospace Community Days on April 6th up on campus and at the airport.

It's for all ages.

All of our sims are up and running aircraft on display.

So hope to see some of you there.

- Okay, Dr. Bjerke, thanks so much for joining us.

- [Dr. Bjerke] Thank you.

- Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) Dan Brekke from Moorhead, Minnesota, found his passion for music at a young age, and throughout his career, he's had the good fortune to create music with his family, perform in Nashville for three years and travel the Midwest, sharing his gift of music and making people laugh.

(upbeat country music) ♪ Staring at your blond hair ♪ ♪ Wearing those (indistinct) everywhere 'round town ♪ ♪ Ain't telling where we'll go ♪ ♪ But there's one thing that I know ♪ ♪ And that's we're free ♪ ♪ To do anything ♪ ♪ So where do you wanna go ♪ ♪ Get of here get out of town ♪ ♪ Find that lake where the suns going down on the other side ♪ ♪ Sleeping underneath that big ol' moon ♪ ♪ Wrapped up in a blanket just me and you ♪ ♪ Doesn't matter where we go ♪ ♪ Doesn't matter what we do ♪ ♪ I've only got one question for you ♪ ♪ Where do you wanna go ♪ ♪ We look at me in them tight blue jeans ♪ ♪ You got my backwards ball cap on ♪ ♪ Turn down the back road ♪ ♪ Coming from the Stop-N-Go ♪ ♪ Gotta a 98 cent Big Gulp in my hand ♪ ♪ All the clouds are running away baby what do you say ♪ ♪ My baby what do you say ♪ ♪ Where do you wanna go ♪ ♪ Get out of here get out of town ♪ ♪ Find that lake where the suns going down on the other side ♪ ♪ Sleeping underneath that big old moon ♪ ♪ Wrapped with a blanket just me and you ♪ ♪ Doesn't matter where we go ♪ ♪ Doesn't matter what we do ♪ ♪ I've only got one question for you ♪ ♪ Where do you wanna go?

♪ (upbeat country music continues) ♪ Throw my hands up in the air ♪ ♪ 'Cause baby I don't have a care ♪ ♪ I'm sitting here right next to you ♪ ♪ So tell me where you wanna go ♪ ♪ Tell me where you wanna go ♪ ♪ Tell me where you wanna go ♪ ♪ Tell me where you wanna go ♪ ♪ Where you wanna go ♪ ♪ Oh get out of here get out of town ♪ ♪ Find that lake where the suns going down on the other side ♪ ♪ Sleeping underneath that big old moon ♪ ♪ Wrapped up in a blanket just me and you ♪ ♪ It doesn't matter where we go ♪ ♪ Doesn't matter what do ♪ ♪ I've only you got one question for you ♪ ♪ Where do you wanna go ♪ ♪ Where do you wanna go ♪ ♪ Where do you wanna go ♪ (guitar solo) (guitar solo fades) (upbeat country music) ♪ Drinking coffee in the morning ♪ ♪ And pour whiskey at night ♪ ♪ Hold her hand when she's happy ♪ ♪ And hold her tight when she cries ♪ ♪ Spend the day on a water and take her fish off the line ♪ ♪ And every chance you get ♪ ♪ Tell her babe you're lookin fine ♪ ♪ walk her home in the rain ♪ ♪ But don't let her shoes get wet ♪ ♪ Tell her something about herself ♪ ♪ That she doesn't know yet ♪ ♪ Give her all of your love ♪ ♪ And learn a little about ribbons and curls ♪ ♪ And that's all you need to know about girls ♪ ♪ If she's had a bad day ice cream is your friend ♪ ♪ If you take her out to a movie wake up before the end ♪ ♪ Walk her home in the rain but don't let her shoes get wet ♪ ♪ Tell her something about herself ♪ ♪ That she doesn't know yet ♪ ♪ Give her all of your love ♪ ♪ And learn a little about ribbons and curls ♪ ♪ And that's all you need to know about girls ♪ (guitar solo) ♪ If she falls asleep on your arm well you better not move ♪ ♪ She's your only life line ♪ ♪ And she can be the death of you ♪ ♪ But if you love her you love her ♪ ♪ And you put her at the center of your world ♪ ♪ You know all you need to know about girls ♪ ♪ Walk her home in the rain ♪ ♪ But don't let her shoes get wet ♪ ♪ Tell her something matter say that she doesn't know yet ♪ ♪ Give her all of your love ♪ ♪ And learn a little about ribbons and curls ♪ ♪ And that's all you need to know about girls ♪ (upbeat country music fades) - Well that's all we have on "Prairie Pulse" this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funded by, the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of "Prairie Public".