Mumen Alzubi ’12
TAKES OFF BY JOHANNA LEE ’13
F
or as long as he can remember, Mumen Alzubi ’12 has wanted to fly. The high cost for lessons — around $200 per hour — as well as having protective parents who were “very afraid of even elevators” kept him from pursuing his passion until a paid internship at General Electric afforded him the chance to take a training flight at a nearby gliding association. He decided not to tell his parents to prevent them from worrying. “After my first training flight, I was hooked and addicted,” he says. “I spent all my weekends at the airfield, from 7 am to 8 pm.” Alzubi completed his glider training and solo flight in near-record time, 88
BEYOND KING’S
building up the necessary experience over two months of flying on the weekends while working full time. On his first solo flight, he took a video of himself flying the glider alone and sent it to his parents. “I got a very angry phone call from my mom!” he laughs. While his parents were worried about his hobby at first, they’ve come to be Alzubi’s biggest supporters. After graduating from King’s in 2012, Alzubi enrolled in a dual degree engineering program between Skidmore College, where he studied physics, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where he studied industrial and management engineering. RPI awarded Alzubi a scholarship to continue his studies
with a Master of Engineering in Systems Engineering and Technology Management. Throughout his studies, Alzubi’s aeronautical aspirations were temporarily put aside. “When you’re in high school, the only thing you can really think about is getting into a good college,” he says. “Then when you’re in college the only thing you can think about is maybe getting into a good grad school or getting a good job. Then you get that good job, and you’re like, ‘What’s next?’” For Alzubi, flying was the clear answer. Not long after his first solo flight, he took the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) flight exam to become
a
certified
glider
pilot,