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RALEIGH — Students in Guilford and Forsyth counties would begin studying for careers in the aviation industry as early as middle school under a program developed by GTCC and funded by a Golden LEAF grant of $1.45 million.

“The overall goal is to develop a pipeline of students that starts young ... and then targets the right kind of academic curriculum to prepare them for the job force needed in the aviation industry,” said Ed Frye, who leads GTCC’s aviation programs.

A separate part of the program will aim to retrain unemployed or under-employed manufacturing workers for potential jobs in aerospace.

The idea, Frye said, is to develop an immediate source of workers who would be attractive to aviation companies looking to move into the area as well as a long-term supply of workers interested in aviation.

“There are several other (aviation companies) looking at this area right now,” Frye said. “We want to prove to them that we have the ability to generate workers.”

Companies in this sector build and service airplanes. The state would like to develop an aviation “cluster” in places like Greensboro, said Golden LEAF President Dan Gerlach.

Clusters are high concentrations of a particular industry that snowball, attracting similar and related companies.

“We had some local people go out and talk to the aerospace companies,” Gerlach said. “What they said is we don’t quite have the culture of aerospace yet. We’re cluster-ready, but not quite a cluster yet. This will be a difference maker.”

Golden LEAF is a trust fund fueled by money from the master settlement agreement that settled multiple state lawsuits against the tobacco industry. The foundation focuses on making grants that can help create jobs to replace those lost in traditional industries such as tobacco growing and manufacturing.

The grant to GTCC was one of four focused on aviation the foundation board made this week, Gerlach said.

New businesses such as Greensboro’s HondaJet have provided a bright spot in the state’s down economy, he said.

“Given that strength, we wanted to invest to make sure the growth we’ve seen in the aerospace sectors continues,” Gerlach said. “That’s the kind of manufacturing we think will be much more durable.”

Frye said he could not talk specifics about the GTCC program because he had not notified the partners in the project about the award or discussed which parts of their overall proposal received funding and which did not.

But he did say that in Guilford County students from Weaver Academy and High Point Central High School likely would be involved. And he added that the Workforce Development Board, which runs JobLink, would eventually provide funding for worker retraining.

Not only are aviation jobs desirable in their own right, Frye said, but they could help state policy makers meet another goal. Gov. Bev Perdue has said she wants to land more military contracts, an area where North Carolina is not overly strong, despite being the site of major military bases.

“Having a better aviation industry would make a big difference in that area,” Frye said.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com