SAN ANTONIO – A new exhibit is now open at the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology, giving families and students an inside look at aerospace.
It is a big-picture strategy to help prepare the future generation for thousands of jobs set to come to the Alamo City.
“I just feel a lot of inspiration walking through the entire exhibit,” Siddhi Raut said.
Meet Siddhi Raut, a Ronald Reagan high school student, was one of the many captivated at Port San Antonio Tuesday morning.
That is the point of this investment: to inspire the next generation no matter where they are from.
“This exhibit is devoted to trying to create an opportunity where the larger San Antonio population, the future generation, can get a little bit of an insight into what the possibilities are for a career in aerospace,” Ed Onwe, a senior site manager with Boeing said.
Ed Onwe said this could be a foot in the door to these students’ futures.
“We want them to walk away with a notion and an understanding that they could be part of it,” Onwe said.
“In the past five and a half years, we’ve added 8,000 jobs to this campus. Great jobs, career types of jobs,” Jim Perschbach, President of Port San Antonio said. “We think we’re going to add 12 to 18,000 jobs in the next 7 to 10 years. And we want to make sure that our young people are the people who are going to take those jobs.”
This new exhibit is not just the history of autonomous vehicles but also a chance to communicate with San Antonio Boeing employees through an interactive kiosk.
“It’s the ability to interact with Boeing employees, hear their stories and [hear] how they rose from the same backgrounds as our young people,” Perschbach said. “[It] doesn’t matter where you come from. Rocket science isn’t rocket science.”
This investment is to prepare local students and the future workforce equally.
“Our objective is to make sure that everyone that comes here walks away with a feeling that, indeed, they could be part of our future,” Onwe said.
For students like Raut, the sky is the limit.
“After this whole event, I might look into aerospace engineering because that’s also very cool,” Raut said.