November 6, 2007

Cowley students tour Cessna Aircraft Company

Two different groups of welding and automotive students from Cowley College’s Career and Technical Education Department in Mulvane had an opportunity to tour the Cessna Aircraft Company in Wichita last Thursday.

A group of 26 Cowley students toured the facility in the morning, while a group of 18 students took the tour in the afternoon.

“We had a chance to tour their main assembly plant where they assemble the planes,” Brett Butler, instructor in the Career and Technical Education Department said. “We toured the entire facility from the very beginning of assembly to the installation of the jet engines. We also got to see the beginning of the interior phase and witnessed nine different product lines, from relatively crude prop-planes that they sell for two million dollars all the way up to the Cessna Citation that has a sale price of 17 million dollars.”

Each of the students are currently taking an Industrial Mathematics class at Cowley.

“This gave them a chance to get out on the floor at a production facility and show them where math is being used by people in the workplace all day long,” Butler said.

The tours lasted roughly one and a half hours.

“I think getting the students out of the classroom is always beneficial,” Butler said. “We had a chance to ask about benefits, starting wages and opportunity for advancement. No matter what industry it is just having the students be able to ask somebody those type of things in a local labor market is a good thing.”