Many people talk about job growth, but open positions mean nothing if applicants and employees don’t have the skills needed to do the work.
This is where Ivy Tech Community College comes in. While helping close the “skills gap” has always been part of its mission, Ivy Tech is stepping up efforts to make sure training meets the needs of employers through its Workforce Alignment division. This means an even greater emphasis on coordinating academics with job-based training.
“Ivy Tech is very much in the business of aligning our programs, be it credit classes or customized training, with industry,” said Mike Miller, Workforce Alignment consultant. “We are here to serve as a fundamental part of Indiana’s economic engine.”
Workforce Alignment offers contract training, in which the department works with employers to provide customized skills for their workers, and open enrollment training, which is available to the public, such as classes in basic computer skills and industry-specific continuing education courses. Classes may be credit or noncredit depending on the type of training.
“We address the skills gap,” said Miller, who is based at the college’s Crown Point site. “We want to align our college programs with the workforce and we’re aligning the workforce with the training they need. We talk to employers. We help bridge those relationships (for the college). We’re kind of Ivy Tech’s ambassadors to industry.”
A key open enrollment program is Ivy Tech’s truck driving school in LaPorte, where students can gain the knowledge and skills to test for a state Class A commercial driver’s license in just four weeks. This prepares them for promising careers in the logistics field, where there is a shortage of trained drivers. The pass rate for this program, operated in partnership with DriveCo, is 98 percent, with near-perfect placement rates.
Workforce Alignment also operates hand in hand with the state Department of Workforce Development’s SkillUp Indiana! Initiative, under which the college partnered with WorkOne and a coalition of manufacturers to offer training to address the skills gap.
Ivy Tech collaborates with employers to determine which academic paths would be most effective in providing the trained workers they need. In Ivy Tech’s Northwest region, a team of five staff members meets with prospective clients, addresses training needs, registers students, hires instructors, buys textbooks and secures classroom space.
Most of the time, contract training is customized for the employer, such as the electrical courses recently required by an area company or a recent Registered Medical Assistant refresher program. Workforce Alignment also develops assessments for employers and has offered technical writing courses and classes in soft skills such as leadership training, communication and resolving conflict.
“Ivy Tech has been a fantastic partner with the implementation of ArcelorMittal’s Indiana Harbor machinist training program,” said Roger Hughes, ArcelorMittal’s process manager of training. “They bent over backward with the administrative component related to training design, scheduling and pre-enrollment testing.
“This is the second time we have used Ivy Tech to conduct our machinist training program. We used them again because their program produced a superior machinist and this led us to believe they would deliver the same product again. There is no doubt in my mind that when we need to train additional machinists, our first call will be to Ivy Tech.”
To find out more about Workforce Alignment programs, contact Miller at 219-981-4947 or mmiller716@ivytech.edu.
Donna Kiesling is a marketing assistant at Ivy Tech Community College.
