March 28, 2024

To Bohanan – Education is the Key to Prosperity

Posted for Del. John Bohanan
Pax Leader

To Delegate John Bohanan, education is the force that pushes and pulls individuals, families and entire communities higher. Even before joining the Maryland House of Delegates in 1999, this was John Bohanan’s mantra; top educational opportunities within St. Mary’s County, Maryland, are necessary to guarantee a successful future.

As the University System of Maryland stood-up a test site for unmanned autonomous development five miles north of the the Naval Air Station:Patuxent River, few failed to credit this accomplishment to the delegate and his pursuit of this vision.

“We are here, in part, because of John Bohanan’s vision,” said the Dean of the A. James Clark School of Engineering which will operate the test site and also a USM research classroom to be completed in 2018 next door at the Southern Maryland Higher Education Center. Dean Darryll Pines confessed he’d some years prior told Del. Bohanan this vision was impossible to accomplish.

Congressman Steny Hoyer, in remarks at the same stand-up, praised Del. Bohanan’s foresight to realize and implement educational and research opportunities to leverage the brain trust created by NAS:Pax River to grow and strengthen the region’s economy. “Making it in St. Mary’s, making it in Maryland, making it in America,” he said, echoing the name of a wide array of federal legislation he is developing and supporting to increase manufacturing and grow more jobs across the nation. “There are no limits to what we can achieve,” Rep. Hoyer said.

USM Chancellor Brit Kerwin took the opportunity to corroborate the years and years of Del. Bohanan’s dogged persistence to bring a bricks and mortar presence of the University of Maryland to California, Maryland. Acknowledging his approaching retirement, the test site stand-up “may be one of my last ceremonies,” the chancellor said, “but it’s one of my best.”

“John Bohanan,” he went on to say, “you embody what is best in public service.”

Upon joining the Maryland House of Delegates in 1999, Del. Bohanan set about working on education issues throughout the state. And in particular he began searching for ways to bring invest in greater educational opportunities to his home county, St. Mary’s. For the past dozen years those efforts became increasingly focused on bringing home an active, bricks and mortar presence of the University System of Maryland to California, Maryland.

When the agreement to do just that was signed in late 2013, it appeared an almost overnight legislative success. There had been less than two years of public analysis and negotiations to produce the agreement which will construct a University of Maryland research classroom building at the Southern Maryland Higher Education Center campus.

But the seeds were planted nearly a quarter century prior, before Del. Bohanan joined the House of Delegates. In the early 1990s Del. Bohanan, then as now a senior adviser to Congressman Steny Hoyer, helped found the Southern Maryland Navy Alliance. SMNA addressed the community’s needs in the 1990s in preparation for a Base Re-Alignment and Closure assessment of US military installations.

SMNA’s immediate charges were to make clear to the Pentagon the importance of the national missions advanced at theĀ  Naval Air Station: Patuxent River and to convince the community to invest in the infrastructure required for Pax to retain and expand its missions.

Education, pre-K through graduate-level engineering courses, was a primary tenet of the infrastructure needs demanded by a top-flight military base. The achievements in the near-quarter century since are lengthy and notable. Not the least of which have been the consistent ranking of St. Mary’s County Public Schools among the top in Maryland, the state itself among the top ranked for public schools in the nation and the construction and operation of the Southern Maryland Higher Education Center.

These efforts supported NAS:Pax River drawing a highly educated and well-paid workforce to Southern Maryland, making these three counties among the wealthiest in the nation. The resultant brain trust can now be leveraged by the addition of such new-technology fields as unmanned automated research, explains Del. Bohanan.

“What better economic growth plan than to avail ourselves of what any other community in America would envy,” said Del. Bohanan, taking his turn to praise the opening of the University orf Maryland Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Site.

 

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