Cache Makers event teaches young girls about aviation
The Women in Aviation Club is gearing up to host their upcoming six-week-long Cache Makers event, starting on Feb. 14.
WAI is a female-led chapter club at USU focused on bringing together women who may be interested in aviation. They hold fundraisers, hangouts and study sessions for their members, but the focus is on having a community of women within the world of aviation.
Maizy Abbott, the vice president of the club, is in charge of hosting the event this year.
“We’re all about supporting women in aviation, because it’s a pretty male-dominated field,” Abbott said.
Elle Roylance, the club secretary, hosted the event last year.
“When I was a sophomore coming up here, and I heard about it, I was so pumped because in my very first class, I was the one girl out of like 25 boys,” Roylance said.
Roylance said she found a community to relate to within the club, and she wishes this was something she had available to her when she was younger.
“Just being there for one another, and supporting other girls to join the industry,” Abbott said.
The club focuses on younger female students interested in aviation, and it encourages them to get into the field.
“Inspiring younger girls to become pilots is probably our main focus,” Roylance said. “Just getting a higher step forward at a younger age is what we all love to do for those younger girls.”
Once a year, Cache Makers, a 4-H nonprofit youth organization, partners with WAI to hold the six-week-long program at USU.
Roylance said Cache Makers is like a larger version of their Girls in Aviation Day event in September, designed to give girls more experience than they would get from a single-day event.
Once a week for six weeks, young girls interested in aviation careers will take part in hands-on activities and workshops. These activities include learning about plane maintenance, drones, aerodynamics and how to operate a plane. The girls will be able to use flight simulators, and they will even have the option to take a real flight at the end of the week.
Abbott said the program focuses on younger girls, and this year is no exception.
“We have ages from fifth grade to 12th grade this year, which is the biggest range that we’ve had, so that will be super exciting,” Abbott said.
According to Abbott, the club is trying to make the event more interactive this year, and focus less on PowerPoints.
This year, the girls will have the opportunity to explore planes and their engines hands on. They will learn about how to do maintenance on planes, including how to rivet. They will also be running their own flight simulator and will have control over the weather and flight path, teaching them how to operate the instruments within a plane during a flight.
The six-week journey will end on a high note, as the girls will even have the opportunity to use the campus’s CRJ simulator, or jet sim.
According to the university’s Fleet and Training devices webpage, “The RJ FTD offers a precise replica of the Bombardier CRJ 700 cockpit with flight controls and performance that emulate the actual jet.”
“They’ll get to pick where they want to go to and from, and get to like move the aircraft and everything, so they’ll get that full experience,” Abbott said.
At the end of the six weeks, the girls will even have the option to pay an extra fee to take a flight in a Utah State aircraft.