Clark Vilardebo
palmettoreport@gmail.com

(Rock Hill, SC) — Winthrop University will soon be the first public school in South Carolina to give students an opportunity to earn their degrees and become pilots.

The school will partner with ACES Flight School to give students the opportunity to earn a Bachelor of Science in aviation and business management, while also certifying them as pilots.

The program is currently slated to begin in fall 2026.

Kevin Kyzer, the owner of ACES Flight School, said he has noticed an uptick in traffic at Rock Hill Airport and in the development of the airport itself.

“There are several new hangars, new facilities even being built there — besides my own at ACES. But ACES will absolutely have to grow,” he said.

Kyzer was a guest on the Palmetto Report TV to discuss the new program.

The new Winthrop aviation degree program will require more facilities at the airport and Winthrop and ACES will be a big part of the airport’s growth, Kyzer said. The program will also feature flight simulators for future pilots to train with.

Kyzer said the new program could bring in international students and that, in turn, will “bring money into the economy for Rock Hill and the greater area.”

The university follows in the footsteps of Charleston Southern University, which became the first private school to offer a similar program in fall 2021.

“We are very fortunate in our location here in Rock Hill, that we are near a major city and an airport with a major airline hub, so it just made sense for us to look at ways that we could do this and address the pilot shortage that’s in the United States right now,” Winthrop President Edward Serna said at a ceremonial ribbon cutting event for the program last fall.

“Winthrop University is a university on the rise, folks, and we’re on the rise, because academic innovation is the engine that drives a thriving institution, and we challenged ourselves recently to be innovative, to drive that academic innovation,” Serna said.

“We’re staring down the runway, the boundless blue skies, the potential for this region and the entire state of South Carolina, and very soon we’ll get those last approvals to be cleared for takeoff,” Provost Sebastian van Delden said at the event.

“We’re going to gun it, and Winthrop and ACES will be roaring towards an exciting future of opportunities, opportunities that will shape the lives of generations of students and their families,” van Delden said.