Ivy Tech elevates interest on workforce and economic development to meet needs

Posted: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 2:05 am

By Peter Adelsen Perspective staff writer padelsen@kokomoperspective.com | 0 comments

Ivy Tech Community College has a new vision. Tom Snyder, president of the college, came to Kokomo on Monday to talk about the college's new vision.

After being inspired by the book titled "Good to Great and the Social Sectors," Ivy Tech has changed its motto from "Changing Lives" to "Changing Lives, Making Indiana Great."

The college is now elevating its interest on workforce and economic development to meet the needs of employers in business and industry in training employees and dislocated workers. The three targets are employers and their employees, existing workers, dislocated workers and workers soon to be dislocated, he said.

"The key part that we have is that we have a role to communicate to businesses, to communicate to the workers within those businesses and to communicate with dislocated workers," Snyder said.

The school wants to help every student no matter his or her age with their skills.

"We want that traditional student that's right out of high school and we want to help the nontraditional student," he said. "We want to help him in his workplace if he has a job and it is going to be there a long time by helping him and his employer get more training. We want to help him if he his dislocated, or we want to help him if he is employed but he wants to change his skill on his own."

According to Snyder, Ivy Tech is the largest training facility in the state with more than 25,000 people. He also said that the college is the largest testing agency in the state with more than 20,000 people.

"If you are required to be tested at a certification center, we do that," he said.

Ivy Tech offers more than 2,000 certifications through the Department of Workforce and Economic Development, executive director Jan Bailey said.

Snyder said that the college is there to provide continuing education and their intent is not to compete with other the larger schools when that activity is offered there.

"We think that this is important because it gives people some exposure to the campus, to some of the faculty and they get comfortable with it," he said. "People can reengineer their lives."

The college works with WorkOne to help students afford the schooling.

Snyder said that many people may not know that Ivy Tech a leader in the state in nurses and IT grads.

"We are graduating the bulk of the nurses of the state, about 1,200 nurses a year," he said. "It's also pretty common now that we are the leader in providing IT grads. We have 3,500 enrolled and graduating 500 to 600 a year as the largest IT school in the state."

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