Vaughn students attended the 91st annual American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE) conference and exposition in June and entered the poster competition for the first time.

Marcia Gomez ’19, Lina Londono ’19 and Salvatore Pitino ’19 presented their thesis project on airport way finding and achieved a third-place finish in the competition against other universities from around the nation.

The research project was a first-of-its-kind partnership that included three industry partners who helped advise and guide the project in addition to Vaughn faculty adviser Dr. Maxine Lubner, management department chair, and eight Vaughn undergraduate and graduate students.

Edward Mandell, program manager, airport security, Thales USA Inc. was instrumental to the project. He spent a great deal of effort mentoring for two semesters and participated in weekly meetings. Mandell was joined by Vaughn alumnus and Management Department Industry Advisory Council Member Jeffrey Time ’03, who works at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as manager of landside operations and customer service at JFK, as well as Gavin Beharry, security manager, JFK Intenrational Air Terminal.

“As a faculty adviser for the student chapter of AAAE, I’m very proud of our student researchers for their excellent work in addressing a practical problem in airport management,” said William Farrell, assistant professor in the management department.