SAN ANTONIO – This fall semester the University of Texas at San Antonio is offering a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering that will prepare students for a successful career designing aircraft, spacecraft and more.
Chris Combs, Dee Howard Endowed Assistant Professor in Aerodynamics, said there are a lot of opportunities in the Aerospace Engineering industry.
“One thing that we really keed on when we developed this proposal for this aerospace masters program is that just in the last year there were 90 jobs advertised for aerospace engineers in the San Antonio area and there wasn’t a single program in the city that was addressing that need. So, we are really trying to fill that gap and help prepare the workforce that our city’s asking for,” Combs said.
Students part of the program have access to different labs, including the Hypersonics Lab where students conduct different tests using a wind tunnel capable of simulating air speeds of up to Mach 7, or seven times the speed of sound.
“This is a really unique national resource. We’re one of only a few schools in the country that has a hypersonic wind tunnel on campus,” Combs said. “This is a Mach 7 wind tunnel facility where we can do hypersonic aerodynamic testing for the Air Force, NASA, the Navy, all kinds of other sponsors and really understand how vehicles are going to behave in extreme speeds.”
Combs said students are learning different skills, while working in the labs.
“Students wear a lot of different hats when they work in this lab. Sometimes they are doing aerodynamics, and they are doing the hard core physics and the math. They are plumbers, they are electricians, they are writing code, they are doing data processing, image analysis, they are working with these cameras and learning how to use optics. There is a very broad skill set that they learn and they have a lot they can take with them to the workforce,” Combs said.
To read more about the program, click here.