New SIU-C facility advances automotive career opportunities
December 26, 2012
Carbondale, Ill.-When one sees the gleaming new Transportation Education Center at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIU-C), which houses the Automotive Technology four-year degree program, with its large classroom spaces, 95 donated vehicles to work on, brand new lifts and equipment and more, a question comes to mind.
In these days of fiscal challenges to higher education, how did this get built?
“There is high demand for graduates from this program so we have great industry support,” said Mike Behrman, chair of the Automotive Technology program at SIU-C. “We have more job opportunities than graduates coming out of this program, so there’s huge demand, which indicated to the State of Illinois we need to support a program like this so that maybe we can get more companies to bring more jobs to the state.”
Behrman said it took 20 years to get the project done. “Our program was located 16 miles from campus in facilities built as temporary military structures when it started in 1952. Our industry advisory board pushed for new facilities starting 20 years ago and we spent 10 years planning the current facility.”
The building, which opened officially Oct. 26, 2012, combined automotive and aviation program needs into one unique transportation campus built near Southern Illinois airport.
Construction funding came from the first capital bill passed by the Illinois legislature in 10 years, and the money went for shovel-ready projects. It took about two years to complete the facility, which is an LEED-certified building — a great achievement given the amount of air exchange required due to vehicles running in facility, Behrman said.
Students use equipment from Hunter, Rotary Lift, OE and aftermarket scan tools from Snap-on, Launch scan tools, Pico oscilloscopes, Fluke electrical meters, and Robinair A/C diagnostic equipment. Some equipment is donated, but most is bought, he said. Automotive Technologies Inc. (ATI) installed the Rotary lifts while Nichol Marketing Group (NMG) installed the Equipto work benches, Behrman added.
The Automotive Technology program can accommodate 200 students at a time with approximately 40-45 new freshmen entering each year. The program also accepts approximately 40 transfer students from community colleges each year, he said. Graduating students in both May and December helps keep the maximum number of students possible in the program. A number of students come from the Chicago area, as well as St. Louis, south and central Illinois, and from all over the U.S with some international students.
Ten full-time instructors are ASE certified in areas in which they teach, Behrman added. They are also published, contributing technical articles to industry publications. He said all instructors have some form of industry experience.
Students spend about 16 hours each week in technical classes, divided evenly between classroom theory work and hands-on learning in the labs. “It is crucial that they understand the product,” Behrman said. “This program prepares students to take several different paths in an automotive career, from running a service facility to training countermen about parts to being a serviceability engineer. It’s a very flexible program.” He said he talks about that career flexibility when visiting prospective students at high schools and community colleges.
Behrman, a native of Belleville, Ill., is a graduate of the SIU-C program and started as an instructor immediately after graduation. He has been at SIU-C for 24 years, and chair of the program for two years.
Incoming freshmen are told to come ready to interview because companies come to SIU-C looking for paid interns starting six to eight weeks after they arrive. “Companies come here looking for future leaders in the automotive industry and they want to identify them early,” Behrman said. “We tell new students, ‘Don’t leave your interview suit and your resume at home — you’ll need them here right away.’” He said there are more intern opportunities than students to fill them.
“Companies of all types are recruiting our students,” Behrman said. “Sherwin-Williams recruits our students to be retail managers, and NAPA and AutoZone need store managers, district managers, and regional managers. On the diesel side of the business, Cummins, Caterpillar, and International Trucks recruit managers from this program and Enterprise hires for its fleet management programs.” More than 50 transportation-related companies recruit SIU-C graduates, he added.
SIU-C has a summer exchange program for two students with Nagoya University in Japan. According to Behrman, Nagoya is “the Detroit of Japan, with Toyota, Mazda, and Mitsubishi all located in or around Nagoya.” Classes are taught in English while technical classes are taught by Japanese automotive executives. At the same time, SIU-C exchange students learn conversational Japanese and about the Japanese culture, he said.
The Automotive Technology program also runs a retail parts and service operation that allows locals to bring their cars, usually no more than seven years old, to the university for service. “This is a training operation so a brake job might take two to three days,” Behrman said. “The first day is to diagnose the problem, the repair is done on the second day and the vehicle is road tested on third day — or our students might dismantle and reassemble the whole repair!”