Few are louder than Jerry LeMieux, a retired Air Force colonel, commercial airline pilot, college lecturer and, most recently, the founder of the world’s first university dedicated solely to unmanned systems education.

“At the end of the day, I’m just trying to do something good for the unmanned systems community,” he said at the drone sector’s Las Vegas trade show earlier this month.

“It’s something that I look at as very important. What’s my motivation for doing this? Everybody has a little bit of a teacher in them. Now, I’m finally able to do it on a larger scale.”

Col. LeMieux’s school is one of several trying to get off the ground, literally and figuratively, with colleges and universities across the country seeking a piece of what is expected to be a business boom in the drone market in the coming years.