Portland Community College's Ernst: Eliminate Barriers For Prospective Students

Portland Community College (PCC) Vice President, Academic Affairs Dr. Jennifer Ernst is urging aviation technician educators to lower barriers as part of a broad recruitment effort required to meet demand for skilled employees.

Addressing 2026 ATEC Annual Conference attendees in Portland, Ernst shared that reducing obstacles between the prospective talent pool and educational opportunities should be at or near the top of every school's to-do list.

"My challenge to you this week is to find one new way to lower a barrier for a student who might not see themselves in the audience this morning," Ernst said during a keynote address "It may be somebody who didn't have such a great experience in high school. Maybe it's a recumbent worker that just found out they need to change their skills in order to have a really meaningful job.

"Those are the people we need to be bringing into our program. Those are the lives we can be changing right now," Ernst continued. Your creativity and commitment will deepen our talent pool, create generational opportunities and keep America's aviation industry thriving."

Portland Community College (PCC), home to 120 students and seven full-time faculty in its aviation maintenance technician (AMT) program, served as host sponsor for this year’s annual conference, alongside presenting sponsor Alaska Air Group and its airlines.

The school has a partnership with Horizon Air that includes a pathway to full-time work at the regional carrier. Horizon also donated a Bombardier Q400 to the school to serve as a real-world training aid. More recently, it added virtual reality-equipped computer stations. Ernst credited the school's broad outreach and advanced training aids for keeping the AMT's completion rate at around 80%, "which is one of the highest among our [career and technical education] programs," she said.