During his visit to southern Illinois Tuesday to sign Molly's Law, Governor Bruce Rauner toured SIU's Transportation Education Center at the Southern Illinois Airport.
Rauner spoke with Jeffery Armit - a meteorological aide in the Department of Aviation Management and Flight -about the Department's fleet of 36 aircraft.
RAUNER: "And they're the small prop planes, as well as you got jets?"
ARMIT: "We have no jets. We have five multi-engine aircraft; two we use for the charter department, three for training, and then balance are all single-engine aircraft."
Governor Rauner also learned about SIU's highly ranked and unique Automotive Technology Department from department chair Mike Behrmann.
BEHRMANN: "SIU has one of the very few bachelor's degrees in automotive technology actually in the world."
RAUNER: "Yeah, I was going to say, I'm not familiar, I've never heard that."
Behrmann told Rauner the students in the SIU Automotive Technology Department are highly recruited as engineers by auto companies.
The number of students in the department is currently capped at 280, but Behrmann says he'd like to expand that in the future with the hiring of more faculty.
