Students from sixth grade through 10th will have the opportunity to get an up close look at aircraft Friday at the fourth annual Aviation Day.

Wallace Community College Selma in conjunction with the 75th anniversary of Craig Field will host the event at Craig Field from 9:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.

“Aviation Day was founded on the principle of bringing more aviation awareness to the Selma-Dallas County area,” said Jackie Smith, dean of business and finance at Wallace.

Giving students the chance to experience aviation up close and tour planes and use flight simulators will open their eyes to what all aviation has to offer, Smith said.

“Being a community college, we’re always looking for new educational opportunities and our president’s vision was that Wallace Community College will eventually launch some aviation-related programs,” Smith said.

“And we know in order to ever get to a point where we would have enough student interest, that we would have to make the community more aware of what all industries and careers are related to aviation.”

Ebony Rose, student success coach at Wallace, said the children always seem to have a good time at Aviation Day.

“Anytime you get a chance to experience something new, it’s always fun,” Rose said. “I think they have a blast actually going out there. Some of them have never been on a plane, never seen the ins and outs of a plane, and I think they have a lot of fun.”

The theme for this year’s event is “Up, Up and Away.”

“We thought up, up and away would be fitting for this year because we want our students to take information that they get and run with it and do whatever it is they want to do,” Rose said. “If they can dream it, they can be it.”

According to Rose, two students from the Selma area attended the Black Pilots of America Summer Flight Academy this past summer as a result of attending Aviation Day at Craig Field.

“Neither of them had any dreams or hopes or ideas that they would fly a plane until they came to Aviation Day,” Rose said. “We wanted our students and our community to be aware that we love our educators and our doctors and our lawyers, we wanted to let them know that they can be pilots and they can be air traffic controllers if they wanted to.”