This is our avionics hangar.

It's part of our aviation maintenance program.

Uh, avionics is aviation electronics and avionics technicians repair and install communications and navigation systems in aircraft.

Here at Broward College, we train students to repair all sorts of different navigation radios, communication radios and other electronic systems in the aircraft.

And so there's a great demand in the field for avionics technicians.

And we provide that training here at Broward College.

All of the training programs and aviation that we offer here at Broward College lead to careers that are high wage and high skill.

Our avionics program and our aviation maintenance program, um, graduates will typically start out in the $3,035 per hour range, but with wages going up, we've seen that increase quite a bit.

And then we have other programs such as our air traffic control program, named by Forbes as one of the best paying careers for students with an associate's degree.

And our pilot program.

Pilots are very well compensated, and even today, pilots that are starting their first airline job are making upwards of $100,000 per year, and it's certainly only goes up from there.

I was introduced to Larry Rothman with happy, um, about six years ago, and their mission is to help adults with autism find employment.

And Larry was very interested in the programs that we had here in our aviation Institute, and we brainstormed which programs might be suitable for autistic adults.

And we came up with the partnership program specific for our avionics program.

And that's where we've had a couple of really nice success stories.

Happy is a non-profit organization founded in 2016, in Western, and is solely focused on finding meaningful and sustainable employment for people on the autism spectrum.

Why is that important?

Well, the unemployment underemployment rate for people on the autism spectrum is purported to be 80 to 90%.

And what becomes very difficult for us to comprehend is we're dealing with a workforce crisis.

In the United States, there are 5 or 6 million autistic people who have the skill sets, have the ability, and certainly have the desire to work and have over and over again demonstrated that in the right jobs, they can not just do as well, but do far better.

When we started this partnership program with happy, we very early on in the conversation, wanted to think through how to accommodate autistic adults in the program and be sensitive to their specific needs.

Students are still held to the same high standards as neurotypical students, so there's no changes or watering down of the curriculum.

What changed was our approach to serving the students.

Perhaps they need additional time.

Perhaps they need assistance with note taking.

Perhaps they need assistance with study skills.

But at the end of the day, they're still learning the material.

They're still being assessed in the same way as neurotypical students would, and they're still learning the skills necessary to get employment out in the field.

I first met Zac when he was at the graduation ceremony from his Associate of Arts degree.

He was already a student here at Broward College, and so we were really happy to have him as the first student formally as part of this partnership.

A little bit of a poor timing because Covid hit right as he was starting the program.

And so that added an additional layer of challenge for all of us, of course, because avionics program, you really need to do a lot of hands-on learning.

And so we had to struggle through that, especially for those first few months until we could develop a plan to come back in person.

Well, not only was it a new opportunity to learn something, but it was also supposedly a good paying job, and I just wanted to have a stable job that didn't pay minimum wage and that I could be able to go to on my own.

A little bit.

Older aircraft too.

But interesting though I didn't exactly realize the 16 was like 50 years old.

I thought it was newer, to be honest.

Yeah, we're very proud of Zach Hopkins.

He really represents that, which we hope everybody will be.

He went on to find a job at Summit Aerospace.

He started his in the avionics area.

He did such a good job that now summit has employed several additional people on the spectrum and other jobs that they have.

And so if we can keep replicating this, we will have enormous success.

And we're really, really happy for Zach's personal success.

Officially, I'm under the designation of a CSD IDG tester, but I would put it down under stress testing airplane engine generators.

My favorite thing about working with all this is that I'm able to do something I'm trained at, and I get paid while doing so, and it also helps me because the money I get it helps make me financially independent.

There are organizations, after organizations who talk about productivity gains, sometimes as much as over 100%.

In other words, they're great employees.

Not only that, their loyalty is second to none.

Average retention rates across the industries and businesses that employ people on the spectrum are over 90%, and it has a tremendous impact for the organization itself that employs them.

If we look at the three counties South Florida area, we have calculated that hiring 5% of the existing autistic population results in a $650 million a year benefit to the economy of the three counties.

And so it isn't just a good thing to do.

It is a very good business thing to do.

It is a great thing to do for the community and the economy of the community.

My goal is to eventually be able to live out on my own, and to be able to do so without a lot of assistance from my parents.

I want to be able to prove that I can live by myself without a crutch.

You slowly start to notice a change in the student's demeanor, just because they are learning skills that they know are directly applicable to employment.

And so I think that it it shows them a way forward, potentially.

It gives them a little bit of hope that they can achieve their goals or perhaps achieve new goals that they hadn't even thought of in the past.

So it's it's great to see that.

And we're really proud to be part of that partnership with happy.