Mitchell Tech launches drone racing team to train future industry technicians

Mitchell Technical College has turned its Drone Aviation & Geospatial Technologies program into a race team, giving students a direct path from mapping labs and GPS work to the start gate in collegiate drone racing.

The move matters because Mitchell Tech is not treating drone racing as a novelty. The one-year program is built around mapping technology, GPS, CAD, GIS and UAS drone systems, and the college says it prepares students for jobs as GPS technicians, survey technicians, field technicians, mapping technicians, GIS specialists, drone operators and UAS managers. In its 2025-26 rack card, the program listed a 100% job placement rate, based on 2024 graduate-survey data.

That career pitch is tied to a real labor need. Mitchell Tech says advisory boards across industries have repeatedly reported a shortage of technicians who understand GPS, GIS and mapping technologies. In other words, the same skills that help a student build a competitive drone setup also lead directly to work in utilities, construction, transportation, mining and agriculture.

The program’s roots run deeper than the new racing team. Devon Russell, who helped create South Dakota’s first drone programs, launched Mitchell Tech’s Geospatial Technologies program in 2015 and later built the school’s state-first drone check-out program. By 2022, that fleet had grown to 10 drones, a sign that the college had already moved beyond theory and into a working drone pipeline long before the racing team was announced.

That infrastructure gives Mitchell Tech a real chance to matter quickly in collegiate competition. The Collegiate Drone Racing Association, working with MultiGP, runs a 2025-26 points series built around school chapters, with each team’s score based on its top three pilots. The championship was scheduled for April 11-12 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, placing Mitchell Tech into an established national pathway rather than forcing it to invent a circuit from scratch.

For Mitchell Tech, that is the larger test. If the new team can put competent pilots on the line, it will do more than add another campus club. It will show that a technical college can train students for the job market and field a racing team that belongs in the same competitive system as the sport’s other schools.