Students learn about STEM with record-setting pilot at Kentucky State University
Posted on June 15, 2018
Middle school students participating in the Verizon Innovative Learning Program had
the opportunity to learn from the youngest person and the first black pilot to fly
solo around the world in a single-engine plane.
Captain Barrington Irving and the Flying Classroom visited students in the Verizon
Innovative Learning Program recently at Kentucky State University.
The Verizon Innovative Learning Program (VIL)
seeks to empower a new generation of minority men by giving them lifelong technology
and entrepreneurship skills to build future innovations and create brighter futures
for themselves and their families.
Irving shared his incredible story and the students later participated in a drone
obstacle course, a rubber band helicopter activity, autonomous engineering and coding
with a ramps course and an activity where they printed a 3D biomechanical hand.
Irving shared how he turned a negative of growing up in some of the harshest neighborhoods
of Miami into the positive of becoming a pilot, educator, Guinness Book of World Records
record holder and an entrepreneur.
He’s gone on adventures to bring STEM subjects to life. Adventures like HALO jumping,
handling a highly venomous cone snail, highlighting food waste by eating food out
of dumpsters for 48 hours, handling sea snakes and performing oral surgery on a tiger.
He uses the material and the things he learned to captivate his young audiences, in
this case, a room full of middle school students.
Afterward, the room was abuzz, and hands were raising faster than Irving could answer
questions.
“Why would you eat food from a dumpster?”
“When you were finished with the surgery did the tiger become fierce?”
“Why didn’t you keep the tiger tame during surgery instead of putting it to sleep?”
Shawn Cecil, 14, of Louisville, said Irving’s message taught him he could do anything
and that nothing could hold him back.
“He’s a great inspiration, coming from a difficult place and doing so much,” Cecil
said.
Camryn Kelly, 10, said Irving was an inspiration to her.
“He inspires me to be a bigger person,” Kelly said.
Derrick Gilmore, director of the Office of Research, Grants and Sponsored Programs,
said
Irving has worked with the VIL program for the past two years.
“Our students’ initial encounter with Captain Irving took place at the VIL Summit
in San Francisco, California in 2016,” Gilmore said.
Irving, Gilmore said, can inspire students by his tenacity to achieve his goals. Students
can also gain insight into pathways to careers in STEM, Gilmore said.