Carbondale leaders said a plan to expand SIU’s popular aviation program to Springfield is in its early stages, despite reporting in the Illinois Times that said SIU had “committed” to expanding SIU Aviation to the capital.
Following the Aug. 22 article, Carbondale leaders said the expansion plans are in their early stages. Though the Illinois Times story quoted SIU President Daniel Mahony and SIUC College of Health and Human Sciences Dean Robert Morgan discussing details for the expansion, the same leaders told the Daily Egyptian that it’s not a done deal. According to Illinois Times, Morgan said that SIU plans to partner with Lincoln Land Community College and that the program would start with two airplanes, three employees and 10 to 15 students.
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“The article put us ahead of our skis and we really just tried to slow things down and help anybody that had concerns understand that we’re still a long ways away,” Morgan — whose college houses SIU Aviation — told the Daily Egyptian in an interview following the article. “We don’t know if this is a done deal. We’re doing a feasibility study here to assess rather this is practical. Can we manage it? Can we do it safely? Can we do it with the quality that we want to ensure, the same quality that we expect here on our Carbondale campus?”
The conversation began in 2016 when the Springfield Airport Authority reached out to the university about a potential expansion for one of the university’s most popular programs, Morgan said. Preliminary discussions between the Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport, the interim school director and chief flight instructor occurred for over two years, until COVID halted the proposal. The dean and the Springfield airport revisited the plan in spring 2023, and it has been in a feasibility assessment since, according to Morgan.
“It’s premature to say there’s an expansion to Springfield. We’re not there yet,” Morgan said.
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On Aug. 20, the Springfield Airport Authority Board of Commissioners voted to spend $480,000 to renovate a space to accommodate the proposed program, which is an independent decision from SIU’s decision process on the matter, according to SIU System Executive Director of Marketing & Communications Catie Sheehan.
Documents provided to The Daily Egyptian in response to a FOIA request included build-out plans for an SIU Aviation facility at the Springfield airport that showed classroom space and offices as well as a timeline for the build-out.
Morgan told The Daily Egyptian that the plans were hypothetical and were designed with input from SIU faculty so that if the program expands, facilities would be laid out the way they want.
The Illinois Times article raised concerns for members of the southern Illinois area, including 58th District Illinois Sen. Terri Bryant. A meeting occurred that included Mahony, SIU Board of Trustees Chairman Phil Gilbert, Carbondale Chancellor Austin Lane and multiple local legislators.
“I guess we were a little bit taken aback whenever we heard that all of a sudden that it was going to be expanding to Springfield with no, you know, we didn’t get a heads up or any kind of explanation, not that the school has to do that, but no, we’re responsible for oversight and also for making sure that the funding is available,” Bryant said.
Local legislators learned about the potential expansion through the Springfield-based Illinois Times a week before the meeting was called, Bryant said.
“I sent it out to the other legislators down here, and said, ‘Does anybody know anything about this? Because this is the first I’m hearing of it,’” Bryant said. “So not one southern Illinois legislator knew anything about it.”
Mahony was the lead source in the article that many interpreted to be a confirmation on the expansion.
“There’s a process we have to go through and we haven’t finished that process yet, and I can’t completely control how things are perceived by people who read articles.” Mahony said.
Though this article was news to many in southern Illinois on the possibility of an expansion, it was not the first the Illinois Times had reported on it. A similar article announcing the possibility came out a year prior in May of 2023 and mentioned that while the proposal was in the “earliest phase” the Springfield Chamber of Commerce was expecting a formal announcement from SIU within two months.
Springfield became a potential partner for the university’s flight program for a number of reasons including the nationwide need for pilots, according to Morgan. The potential Springfield expansion plans to target a group of students who wouldn’t or are unable to relocate to Carbondale. The state’s capital was not the first location to take interest in the campus.
“So, we get a lot of people every year that want us to expand into their areas. I can’t tell you how many we’ve turned out because we just thought, no, we don’t want to do that,” Lane said.
Mahony told the Illinois Times that Springfield was a candidate for expansion because there is a lack of space in southern Illinois to accommodate the growing rate of students looking to earn a degree in one of the most popular programs at the university. However, a growing program that stays rooted in southern Illinois is still open for discussion.
“We just had a meeting this week,” Morgan said. “The aviation team met with [Southern Illinois Airport Director] Gary Schaefer and his colleague, Alyssa Connell, out there about possible expansion for the program here. They’re looking at doing some joint fundraising efforts, submitting grants to develop some funding for additional hangar space. So we’re engaged in expansion at both the local and at least for now, potentially, the Springfield area.”
Aviation has been on a steady enrollment increase since 2015, having nearly doubled its enrollment numbers to 680 for the 2024-2025 academic year. Since the spring of 2023, the program has engaged in a feasibility assessment on the possibility of expansion.
“When an institution or a group reaches down, we’re always willing to look at it and see what can we do to serve students,” Morgan said. “You know, we’re an accessible university, and sometimes that means taking our education to students, as opposed to being accessible to them here.”
Mahony wrote to Springfield Airport Authority Board of Commissioners Chair Frank Vala on Dec. 18, 2023 that the intention is to have a program ready for “soft launch” by fall of 2025. This included having anywhere from five to 12 students in the program come next year.
“I’m not involved with that process on a regular basis, but I know it needs to go through faculty approval processes, state approval processes,” Mahony told the Daily Egyptian. “Whenever you’re expanding a program to a new location, there’s extra approvals that you have to have to do that.”
Bryant, who serves on the Illinois Senate’s higher education appropriations committee, believes that financing is an issue for aviation on their expansion. Every university took major line item cuts, according to Bryant, and she said she thinks SIU took a 12% cut in state funding.
“They were first saying that this was going to happen like in the school year, ‘25-‘26 so next school year, I don’t even know how that would be possible to make that happen,” Bryant said. “Somebody’s gonna have to show me as they start to actually move this idea forward where that money’s gonna come from, because they’re not going to get more funding from the state. There isn’t any.”
In a March 25, 2024 email to Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport Director Mark Hanna, Morgan wrote “We are continuing to move forward on our end. I know Stellar (Aviation) was still trying to locate a couple of planes for us given the state isn’t coming through on those requested planes.”
Morgan told The Daily Egyptian that the city of Springfield through the Chamber of Commerce requested from the state unused airplanes on SIU’s behalf. He said that if the program expands, two airplanes would need to go to Springfield, however Morgan said he has not spoken to the chief flight instructor regarding how the planes would get there or where they would come from.
To stay on track to soft launch the program next fall, the aviation program has to ensure that faculty is on board and they have the correct combination of revenue, according to Lane.
For the expansion to happen, the plan needs to first go through the faculty, the Faculty Senate, SIU System office, the SIU Board of Trustees and then the Illinois Board of Higher Education, Morgan said.
Mahony said he thinks there is some concern that the expansion is a bigger move away from Carbondale than it really is. Carbondale will remain the main location for SIU aviation, Lane said.
“Carbondale will always be the home,” Lane said. “It will always be the marquee program. It will always be the program that we support financially. And it’s a traditional age aviation program.”
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