In a Bennington workshop, a handful of high school students are engaged in an unconventional afterschool activity: building a small airplane. Their mentor is Jim Sharkey, a recently retired aerospace engineer who launched Bennington STEMworks, a new nonprofit aimed at sparking young people’s interest in aviation through hands-on learning.
Sharkey, an amateur pilot, is originally from Scotland but has lived in southern Vermont for three decades. In the early 2000s, he built a small plane from a kit and thought it would be fun and educational to embark on a similar project with teens.
Southwest Tech, the region’s career and technical center, offered to host the program, which officially got off the ground in September. Students and community volunteers are fabricating plane parts from sheet metal and will eventually delve into more advanced work in electrical systems.
Sharkey estimates it will take around two years and $140,000 to build the plane, a two-seater from Van’s Aircraft, a company based in Oregon. The project is being funded by donations and grants. But once the plane is finished, inspected and tested for airworthiness, Sharkey said he hopes to sell it and use the proceeds for another plane build, making it a “self-sustaining” endeavor.
Any student from Southwest Tech’s catchment area — including Bennington, Manchester and surrounding towns — is eligible to participate. So far, four students attend consistently, Sharkey said, but he’s trying to spread the word.
Austin Bortell, a 17-year-old senior at Mount Anthony Union High School, is a regular. He attends Southwest Tech’s manufacturing program and said the unique extracurricular opportunity piqued his interest.
“I really like working with my hands,” Bortell said, and “I’ve always been a fan of aviation.”
He’s hoping the skills he develops through the program — including reading blueprints and documenting his work in a logbook — will help prepare him for a career as a machinist, or perhaps even an aircraft maintenance technician.
The original print version of this article was headlined “High Fliers”
This article appears in Dec 10-16 2025.
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