There is a class where students and professors address one another formally. The students sit in white-collared shirts and ties with black shoes and black pants.
    The class is not caught in a time warp from the 1950s. It is another average day at K-State-Salina in Crew Resource Management, PPIL 416.
    "We are professional, but we are on a first-name basis with a lot of our students," said Thomas Karcz, assistant professor of aviation. "Some do stay fairly formal, though it's generally laid back."
    Karcz leads the class, which features a one-hour lecture and two three-hour labs per week. The first few weeks in the class are background to CRM, Karcz said; they also cover the standard-operating procedures for flying at K-State-Salina.
    The origins of crew resource management can be traced to NASA in the late '70s. Created as cockpit resource management, the program was meant to improve the decision-making process, communication and break common chains of human errors, Karcz said.
    When the concept developed into crew resource management, the focus became more team oriented.
    "In the early '90s, it started focusing on specific skills and behaviors," Karcz said. "It was incorporated through new training schemes, so that pilots could function better.”
    As the class progresses, students are presented with four different flight scenarios and must act out the flight scenario in a simulator during a three-hour lab.
    A scenario includes a flight plan, weather bulletin and other flight details. During each lab, one student functions as the pilot-in-command and the other as the co-pilot.
    When each group of students do their next lab, the roles are switched. When it comes time for the fourth scenario, which is developed by the students and assigned to another group, the teams are mixed.
    Each lab is videotaped and immediately burned to a DVD, which helps in the teaching process, Karcz said.
    "After their flight is over, we give them the disc and say, 'Prepare a briefing for Wednesday,'" he said. "They go through the flight and find key points of what they may have missed and worked on and what they did well. It's a great way for us to work together, so we can learn from one another and move forward with these scenarios."
    Each briefing - given the class period following a lecture - gives other students a chance to voice their thoughts on each crew's handling of the scenario.
    Karcz also presents case studies and scenarios that he has dealt with in his career as a pilot; this helps relate his lecture topics to situations students might encounter in the real world.
    "This class should help students recognize red flags out there and mitigate the problems rather than reaching the point of no return," he said.
    Mitchell Wagner, sophomore in professional pilot, said he recognizes the importance of effective crew resource management.
    "If you are going anywhere with aviation, this is the meat and potatoes of the airlines," he said. "CRM is about making two people who have never met before able to transport 200 people over the ocean safely. To get exposed to this at a young age puts us ahead."

Comments

1 comments

Brock Stein

Tue Sep 30 2008 08:06

I know Prof. Karcz, I'm sure he's imparting a great deal of wisdom on these young people that they'll use beyond the classroom in their daily lives.

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