ITCC To Bolster STEM Education
Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana this month received a $3.1 million grant from the state's North Central Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative. The grant will be used to enhance STEM education in K-12, higher education, and businesses and will train an estimated 44,000 people in North Central Indiana over the next five years.
According to ITCC, the program will focus on three pathways: emerging workers, incumbent workers, and new programs:
- The emerging workers pathway focuses on middle school, high school, and college students who have not yet entered the workforce and aims to "interest middle and high school students in STEM curricula with dual credit opportunities for high school and college courses, while better preparing college students to enter the workforce."
- For "incumbent" workers, the program aims to enhance, update, and expand their skills. Ivy Tech said the program will serve up to 1,000 such workers.
- Finally, in the category of "new programs," the initiative will create new academic programs in subjects previously unavailable.
"This new STEM initiative holds great promise for Indiana's future," said Teresa Voors, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. "It will ensure that more and more of our students graduate from high school with the necessary science, technology, engineering, and math competencies so critical for success in the workplace of the 21st Century. We look forward to continuing to work with the WIRED initiative and Ivy Tech as we collaborate on this and other initiatives which help grow our economy and workforce."
ITCC will focus on 14 counties: Benton, Carroll, Cass, Clinton, Fountain, Fulton, Howard, Miami, Montgomery, Tippecanoe, Tipton, Wabash, Warren, and White. These, according to Ivy Tech, will be used as a pilot for future efforts across the state.
Ivy Tech Community College serves more than 110,000 students annually on 23 campuses throughout Indiana. The WIRED program, which started in 2006, is overseen by Purdue University and funded through the United States Department of Labor.
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