Mechanical Engineering Students From A&T Set Sights on Exciting Career Opportunities Following Graduation

As the crowd filed into the First Horizon Coliseum for North Carolina A&T's 2026 graduation, the ceremony kicked off with the singing of the Black national anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” followed by a few words by Chancellor Frank Martin II.

“This is a defining milestone in the lives of every one of you graduating today,” Martin said. “It’s the culmination of years of academic challenge, intellectual growth and personal determination. The distance you have traveled is indeed inspiring.”

As the ceremony continued, class president Jarrod Mason said all the graduating seniors worked hard to make it to the finish line.

“We didn’t just reach this moment, we earned it through late nights, early mornings, with the strength to keep going when things felt uncertain,” Mason said.

Austin Burns, Robert Burks, and Keith Gabbidon are three graduating mechanical engineering students who know a thing or two about late nights.

The three are part of a 14-member team who competed in the SAE Aero Design competition building a model remote controlled plane that placed sixth in the world and third in the country out of more than 60 schools.

“There were weekends where we slept in the lab,” Burns, who was the team lead, said. "It got rough, you miss a lot of great holidays and parties and what not.”

Burns said it was remarkable how much the project came together and developed over time.

“Our first plane was a paper airplane, and then we get to a point where we had a 15-foot wingspan with multiple propellers,” Burns said. “Kind of seeing that growth is really inspirational and just where we started vs. where we finished.”

Gabbidon served as the structural lead for the project.

“I was in charge of designing the fuselage and working with my team to find out how strong it has to be,” Gabbidon said. “Working with my team to figure out how strong it has to be, how heavy it has to be, the types of materials we had to use.

The fuselage is the tube part of the plane that holds passengers. For this project, the fuselage held two liter bottles and the goal was to fit as many as possible into the fuselage and figure how much weight the model plane could hold and still fly.

Burks worked on the manufacturing side making parts for the plane.

“I foam cut the wing and helped play a part in building the fuselage,” Burks said.

He added that their plane was the only one at the competition that had a foam wing.

Burks said there were times when team members didn’t always see eye to eye.

“I’m not really a numbers guy, but we had three to four people who just loved the theory. Crunching the numbers down and saying we can’t ‘oh we can’t do this’ and the other side of the team saying let's just build it and see what happens,” Burks said.

Gabbidon said they were ultimately able to put their personalities aside and work together to achieve a greater goal.

“We saw 14 people come together and really dedicate themselves to greatness and dedicate themselves to actually creating more history,” Gabbidon said. “This is the second time in history that A&T has ever placed in a competition like that.”

Burns said after all the math classes it felt good to finally be at the finish line.

“I’ve played sports, joined fraternities, there’s been extracurriculars I’ve done all my life, but engineering is definitely one of the hardest things I’ve done,” Burns said.

As A&T’s 2026 graduation drew to a close, graduates moved their tassels from the right side of their caps to the left side and chants of Aggie Pride echoed through the coliseum.

Following graduation, Burns plans to work Siemens Energy in Orlando and aspires to get his pilot’s license.

Gabbidon will be moving to Fort Worth, Texas, to work for Lockheed Martin working on jets.

Burks will be moving to Virgina to work at Newport News Shipbuilding while also attending barber school learning how to cut hair.

Burks had the following advice for young aspiring engineers in A&T’s program.

“Don’t be afraid of failing,” Burks said. "You’re going to get 60’s on test you are going to get 50’s … every single quiz and test I took on circuits I failed, every single one, but somehow I managed to pass.”

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