UOG employees, local agency employees earn their wings to fly drones with UOG Drone Corps

UOG Drone Corps, along with partner 2cofly, celebrated its fifth cohort to complete the Knowledge Course portion of the program and attain a 100% passing rate on the Federal Aviation Administration’s Part 107b exam. Passing this exam gives participants a remote pilot certificate, which allows them to fly drones both recreationally and commercially. All 13 participants successfully earned their certificates this summer.

As a program of the UOG Land Grant system, which works to advance knowledge for the improvement of agriculture and natural resources in the region, the UOG Drone Corps this year opened its training program beyond students for the first time. Participants included natural resource managers and UOG faculty and staff, in addition to students from the university and the Guam Community College. The new pool of participants was the result of local agencies and organizations expressing a need for drone technologies in their line of work.

“Obtaining my FAA Part 107 certification and learning how to operate drones has increased my team’s capacity to perform large-scale, high-quality surveys of Guam’s shallow reef flat environments, watersheds, and coastal habitats,” said Natalie Scott, a reef restoration biologist with the Guam Coral Reef Initiative. “Aerial drone imagery will be used to inform our management and restoration strategies while also serving as a powerful science communication tool when sharing our work.”

The Guam Coral Reef Initiative, under the Guam Department of Agriculture, as well as the Northern Guam Soil and Water Conservation District, nonprofit Tåno, Tåsi, yan Todu, and Guam Environmental Protection Agency were represented among natural resource management participation. Other participants were selected within the UOG community, including UOG Sea Grant, the UOG Marine Laboratory, and the Horticulture Laboratory under the UOG Land Grant agInnovation Research Center, the Guam Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities Education, Research, and Service, or CEDDERS, and the NASA Guam Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR.

Drone services company 2cofly provided instructional time to prepare the participants for the certification exam. Javier Garrido, 2cofly project manager and a previous UOG Drone Corps member, served as a co-instructor for the course.

“2cofly has proudly instructed multiple Drone Corps cohorts. Each brought new challenges, but our instructors always prioritized students’ success. I’m honored to have led the first cohort to a 100% Part 107 passing rate and look forward to future cohorts meeting this standard. I would also like to thank my co-instructor, Deyan Lee, for his expertise and support,” Garrido said.

For students like Katherine Perez, the program has encouraged innovative methods and solutions to address local environmental challenges. Perez is working toward earning her master’s degree in the Sustainable Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources Program at UOG and is interested in using her newly obtained drone certificate to support local farmers.

“Drone technology can improve efficiency of capturing the details of the field, such as terrain mapping and measurements like length of row and the number of plants. Ultimately, the goal is to provide current or future farmers and natural resource managers with real-time data to make more informed decisions of their practices for the preservation of the natural resources we all rely on and for the economic sustainability of the farm,” Perez said.

The UOG Drone Corps program is co-administered by NASA Guam Space Grant and the NASA Guam EPSCoR under the UOG Land Grant agInnovation Research Center. The program has produced 55 federally certified remote pilots since its establishment in 2021, with the overall objective of training safe and responsible drone flyers in Guam’s airspace.