Ever since Mary Elizabeth Harden was little, her dream was to fly. Now, she made that dream come true. Over the summer, Harden attained her pilot’s license at Delaware State University, a college in Dover, Delaware, in order to expand on what she has learned in NJROTC.
The program is designed for students who have a desire to grow in their aviation skills. Additionally, the program is based on a scholarship that students had to apply to in advance.
“There was 27 of us there, all 27 of us are in the Navy, Marine Corps, or Air Force NJROTC, and we all applied for the scholarship,” Harden said. “The 27 out of 500 who applied were accepted, and the Navy paid for us to get our private pilot’s license.”
There was also an entrance exam on top of the application, which heightened the selectivity of the program.
“There was a knowledge test, it was off a curve basis,” Harden said. “There was an athletic portion, which I think was what carried my score. There was an academic portion, and then a personal essay.”
Commander Brian Morrill told Harden about this opportunity first. However, Harden was unsure about the commitment. “My whole summer?,” Harden said.
The program functioned with a fully-immersive college setting, including dorm rooms. “I had a roommate, her name was Alexis, and she was from Georgia,” Harden said.
The program was led by group, with groups A and B. Group A would practice flying first while Group B would learn things in a traditional classroom setting.
“So in the morning, me and Alexis would fly,” Harden said. “It was like that for two weeks, and once we got to night flying, we all rearranged partners because everyone was on different levels.”
From this training, Harden is now a certified pilot and can fly specific private planes.
“I can fly a single engine land,” Harden said.
With these types of planes, Harden has traveled up and down the Mid-Atlantic region.
“I’ve flown to Maryland, so from Dover, Delaware to Maryland by myself,” Harden said. “That was about a 30 minute flight there and back, and I’ve flown to New Jersey by myself, so that maybe was like 40 minutes there and 40 minutes back.”
However, to attain this license, there were many rules and regulations attached to it.
“There were a bunch of visibility requirements and cloud requirements,” Harden said. “It’s kind of confusing, and it’s apart of the test. In certain airspaces, I have to be at certain altitudes and certain distances away from clouds, and have certain visibility requirements.”
Overall, the program was challenging for Harden.
“I had no aviation exposure going into it, so the learning of how everything was worded was the most difficult,” Harden said. “The flying was easy for me for some reason, which is good. It was all the the classroom stuff, having to memorize everything.”
Harden notes how her favorite part of camp were the people in it.
“All 27 of us clicked,” Harden said. “At the beginning, even though we were all in ROTC, we were all still normal kids.”
Even though she knew what to expect, she was also surprised about some aspects of the program.
“I went into it thinking it was a military program thing, but we were chaperoned by college kids who were only like a year older than us,” Harden said. “Whenever we went somewhere, it was them driving us, so it was like a fun trip with friends.” “It was just fun.”
Harden intends to take what she’s learned and apply it towards her future goals.
“Flying is expensive, there’s no way I could’ve gotten my pilot’s license without the scholarship,” Harden said. “They gave me a check for 600 dollars so that should be enough to get me two flights, hopefully.” “And after that, every paycheck I get from work I’ll put towards being able to fly.” “The ROTC scholarship won’t cover me doing aviation, but if I
go to a school with aviation, I can apply for scholarships to just fly for free.” “We’ll try that.”
