There is a lot you may not know about Aaron.  Today, Aaron Smith enjoys active leadership of one of Virginia’s most visible and awarded STEM schools. He leads Newport News, Virginia’s Denbigh High School Aviation Academy, with classrooms and laboratories at the Newport News Williamsburg International Airport, a school with affiliations to major business and industry throughout the region. The magnet STEM school has received national recognition from hosting a live downlink with the astronauts on board the International Space Station to becoming a PRIME (Partnership Response In Manufacturing Education) School by the Society of Manufactured Engineers Education Foundation. Students can learn to fly, learn aircraft maintenance, airport management, air traffic control, and other aviation electives. Students are building an airplane in the terminal. Aaron’s books reveal his passion for STEM education and workforce development. His first book, Awakening Your STEM School enables educators and business leaders to take their current school and modernize it into an elite STEM site. Blank Check: What If You Were Asked To Reinvent Public Education is his Young Adult novel about a quest to build the perfect public school. A 2008 graduate of Old Dominion University with a Doctorate in Educational Leadership, Dr. Aaron L. Smith has over two decades of experience in the classroom as a mathematics teacher and administrator. His dissertation focused on comparing alternative teaching certification routes to that of traditional teaching certification in conjunction to SOL results. Aaron has developed a passion for workplace readiness and STEM where he has shared his knowledge as an adjunct professor at Old Dominion University and Christopher Newport University.

Selected On More Than One Occasion to Serve As A Peer Reviewer for the U.S. Department of Education

Consulting with Virginia’s Joint Commissions of Technology and Science (JCOTS)

Featured in the Society of Manufactured Engineers #MFGis Secondary Business and Industry Partnership State Award with NASA and Aviation Academy June 2015

ING Unsung Hero October 2014

Recognized in the Virginia Living Magazine for Aviation Academy as a Top High School and University 2013 (October 2013 issue)

Awarded over $1 million in grant monies from local to national entities such as the Arconic Foundation, Wal-Mart, The Kinder Morgan and The Virginia Department of
Education

2010 National Dropout Prevention Network Crystal Star Award recipient in Dropout Recovery, Intervention, and Prevention

SAFE Program is a national model for the National Dropout Prevention Center

2006 WHRO Technology Administrator of the Year Award