By Tu-Uyen Tran
Herald Staff Writer
Al Palmer retired from UND at the start of April, but was called back to serve in an interim capacity about 20 days later and, on Friday, he was made the more-or-less permanent director of the university's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center.
He joked that he got "unretired."
The one who unretired him was Gov. John Hoeven, his old boss when he was commander of the state's Air National Guard. The governor congratulated him on getting the job at the UAS Action Summit, an economic development-focused conference that ran Thursday and Friday.
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Problem was, there had been some miscommunication. UND had kinda, sorta wanted to do a search for a new director, officials said.
But there was really no harm done because having been deeply involved as Air Guard commander and having been the longtime director of flight operations at UND's School of Aerospace Sciences, Palmer is plenty qualified, UND Aerospace Dean Bruce Smith said.
"If we did a search, I don't know how it would be done differently," Smith said. There are other executive positions at the university that have been more or less filled without a national search process, he said, and, if that were required, UND Aerospace could wait until the other executive searches were done first.
Not that Palmer had really wanted to retire.
He said he'd started a new consulting company called Al Air not long after his last day at UND. The next day, he said, Smith asked him to fill the UAS Center director position.
Former director Jeff Kappenman had resigned to move closer to where his children would attend college.
Smith said he'd read the Herald story about Palmer retiring and remembered that Palmer had said he wanted to stay involved in developing the state's unmanned aircraft industry.
Now that he's back in academia and not in business for himself, he said his goal is to bring UND's unmanned aircraft program to where its manned aircraft program is now.
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Reach Tran at (701) 780-1248; (800) 477-6572, ext. 248; or send e-mail to ttran@gfherald.com .
