By Lisa Petty
Flying is a universal fascination. We conjure soaring, floating, and gliding in our earliest childhood dreams, and even the most world-weary grown-up will marvel as silver wings cut through misty clouds outside the window of a rising jet.
This sense of wonder comes to life —and captures new generations — at Dallas’s Frontiers of Flight Museum.
Since 1988, the Smithsonian Affiliate has amassed more than 35,000 pieces of aviation and space exploration history.
Each year, the 100,000-square-foot campus at Love Field Airport hosts some 160,000 visitors from across Texas and around the world.
On any given day, you’ll find children and families marveling at an F-18 Blue Angel or sliding a hand across the battered exterior of a real-life Apollo mission capsule. And, for a few weeks each fall, there is even more to learn and explore.
Neighborhood Spotlight
Park Cities
Where the Park Cities Stay Connected.
November 2025 marked the eighth anniversary of the STEM Career Days program, which brings a month of enhanced educational opportunities for North Texas students focusing on science, technology, engineering, and math.
Rosalie Wade, the museum’s director of education, has seen the program through from the start.
“We originally launched with a one-day event, and it was just a field trip,” she said, describing a day that included exhibitor tables and a STEM activity prepped for the students.
“Ultimately, we realized that if we opened it up throughout November and created a whole month of STEM career days, it would allow us to host more speakers from different career paths and serve more students, too,” Wade said.
More students, indeed. In fact, the most recent STEM Career Days hosted approximately 2,000 sixth through 12th grade students, more than four times the number served in year one.
Each day of the month brought an array of interactive challenges, tours, and career talks, thanks in large part to Amazon Prime Air, a first-time sponsor in 2025.
“They want to educate people about aerospace, how drones work, and how it will affect the community,” said Wade of the new partnership timed in advance of the debut of Amazon drone delivery in North Texas.
Additional presenters included representatives from H-E-B, Dallas College, and European aerospace giant, Airbus, each focused on a different part of the ever-expanding world of STEM careers.
For example, on a sunny morning before Thanksgiving, students were challenged to create their own gliders as a beginning lesson in aeronautics.
Later that day, a speaker in the museum’s auditorium took students on a deep dive — or, flight, that is — into the subject of helicopters.
No matter the specifics, it all served to spark the spirit of exploration through education.
“As the students create these things and they get to experiment, it’s fun to see the lights in their eyes,” Wade said. “That’s my favorite part.”
