Apstein, Barbara

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Bridgewater ReviewVolume 21 | Issue 2 Article 14Dec-2002Faculty Profile: Veronica CôtéBarbara ApsteinBridgewater State CollegeThis item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts.Recommended CitationApstein, Barbara (2002). Faculty Profile: Veronica Côté. Bridgewater Review, 21(2), 31.Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol21/iss2/14BRIDGEWATER REVIEW                                     DECEMBER 2002 31Why does a young woman choose to become an air-plane pilot? Veronica Côté, Assistant Professor ofAviation Science, confesses that as a girl she had no spe-cial interest in flying. When she was a Brockton HighSchool junior, her father, the late Peter A. Bizinkauskas,who was at the time a professor of ElementaryEducation at BSC, told her that the College had startedan Aviation Program and suggested that she might wantto consider becoming a pilot. Something clicked: “I’dalways had an interest in space exploration and in mywildest dreams I was an astronaut,” says Professor Côté,who grew up watching the space shuttle flights of theearly 1980’s. Although she had never been inside an air-plane, she applied to BSC, was accepted, and startedflight training during her freshman year.As soon as she began flying, Professor Côté was con-vinced that she had made the right decision. “Pushingup the throttle in my little Piper Tomahawk at theNorwood Airport, I felt as though I belonged in the air,”she recalls. “I flew  three days a week, I soloed onNovember 22, 1982 in Piper Tomahawk N23222 (mostpilots remember the day and plane of their first soloflight in the same way people remember their birth-days), passed my Private Pilot license the following June and commercial license and instrument rating inAugust, 1985 and became a certified flight instructor byNovember of the same year.”After graduating from BSC, Professor Côté worked as aflight instructor and charter pilot and later for Brock-way Airlines (a regional partner for Piedmont), flying aBeech 1900, a 19-passenger commuter plane. Althoughmany passengers disliked the cramped seats of theBeech 1900, Professor Côté recalls, she loved it.“It’s agreat airplane—fast, powerful for its size and a joy tofly,” she says. “I learned as much about flying in my firstmonth for the airline as I had in all my experience up tothat point.” Professor Côté also recalls that it was a hec-tic, exciting time to be involved in the industry.“Deregulation was less than ten years old and the air-lines were making up the rules as they went along.Executives were trying to figure out how to run an air-line when the old rules no longer appIied. I considered itpost graduate education at its finest.”After a brief teaching stint at BSC, Professor Côtéreturned to Brockway, where she received a promotion:she now flew a larger aircraft, the SAB 340,  “a revolu-tionary regional airliner at the time,” which carried 34passengers as well as a flight attendant. A year later, shewas upgraded from First Officer and became theyoungest Captain at Brockway Airlines.Unfortunately, the Persian Gulf War of 1991 and thespike in fuel prices, along with decreased demand,forced Brockway into bankruptcy. “I like to say that Iwas forced into early retirement,” says Professor Côté.Sadly, thousands of other experienced pilots lost theirjobs at the same time.Forced to re-think her future, Professor Côté remem-bered how much she had enjoyed teaching. Members ofthe BSC Aviation faculty, with whom she had main-tained contact, urged her to work on a Masters degree,and the following year Professor Côté—now married toa fellow pilot—applied to Embry-Riddle AeronauticalUniversity in Daytona Beach, Florida. She was acceptedand moved to Florida for a year. In 1995, on her daugh-ter’s first birthday, she defended her Master’s thesisand was awarded the Master of Aeronautical Sciencedegree. The following fall, she accepted a full-time posi-tion at BSC as Aviation Coordinator, and when the newSchool of Management and Aviation Science wasfounded a few years later, she became Chair of theAviation Science Department. Teaching aviation, shediscovered, was in its own way just as enjoyable as fly-ing: “I loved to help students discover the joy of flightand to share my experiences and insight with them.”Professor Côté strongly believes in the value of a liberalarts degree for aviation students. “The well roundededucation offered by BSC’s liberal arts curriculum,” shenotes, “helps shape the students’ ideas and providesthem with the opportunity to look inward to discoversomething about themselves and outward to discoversomething new about their world.” She points out thatFaculty ProfileVeronica Côtéby Barbara ApsteinHANGOVER FLYTied to imitatea fat, white nymph, the hair of the dogdead now four yearsstill takes trout.Its wet bristles criss-cross my thumb like scarsbarbed wire inscribeswhen I shake loosethe hook boned in the rainbow’s jaw.Afraid I couldn’t do itafter, I dug her gravein the rainwhile she watched,half-blind and deaf,nosing the slick clodsuntil the clay stained her muzzle rusty.Her damp fur clottedon my hands when Ilifted her into the truck.All day I have followed my nymph downstreamto where the river braids,spills to one sound,and disappears in shadows.My legs are gone to the cold. My backcast,collapsing in tired loops,threatens to bury my hoodpast the barb in the loose, graying folds of my neck.Don Johnson, who was an English department facultymember at B.S.C. from 1971–1983, currently teaches atEast Tennessee State University where he has served asboth department chair and dean of the College of Artsand Sciences. He lives on the banks of the WataugaRiver in a house that was built in 1791.“These poems came from several different sources. The New Zealand poem came out of a trip to the SouthIsland about ten years ago. I was struck by how simi-lar the landscape was to the area in West Virginiawhere I grew up. It was also amazing to me the extentto which American culture had become so much a partof the day-to-day lives of the Kiwis—old rock and rollsongs on the car radio, American cars from the fiftiesand sixties, etc. It was strange driving an oldAmerican car on the left side of the road, however.“Scatology” is pretty straightforward. It originated ina conversation with a high school friend at our 30threunion. I had not seen him since the night we hadgraduated from high school. He went on to Princetonand a good job with IBM, and I drifted into the studyof English literature. A few years after the reunion Iheard that he was dying of cancer and then that hehad died in Atlanta. His passing led to the otherthoughts on death and vulnerability. The poem aboutthe fishing fly is true. I do have a fly tied from the hairof a dog I had put down just before the trip to N.Zealand. She literally nosed around the grave I wasdigging for her before I took  her to the veterinarian.“Lost in New Zealand, Lost in the Fifties” and “Scatology”appeared in Graven Images: Studies in Culture, Law and the Sacred, Vol.#3, 1996.Hangover Fly” appeared in Louisiana Literature 15.2 (Fall, 1998).POETRYDONALD JOHNSON““Photograph by Greg Thomas

Faculty Profile: Veronica Côté

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Faculty Profile: Veronica Côté

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