Published: July 14, 2009 06:55 pm         

Lilly grant to establish Rose-Hulman, Ivy Tech collaboration program

TERRE HAUTE — Lilly Endowment Inc. has awarded Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology a $375,000 grant to support a collaborative education program between Rose-Hulman and Ivy Tech Community College’s Wabash Valley regional campus. The program will explore ways to provide internships and professional experience to students, faculty and staff to work on projects at Rose-Hulman Ventures.

Administrators from both institutions believe that Rose-Hulman, with an engineering/innovation focus, and Ivy Tech, with a technology/workforce focus, will create a collaborative partnership that emphasizes student and faculty development while providing work force and economic development support to Indiana-based companies through innovative product development.

“This is a unique opportunity to create a learning environment that closely resembles a real-world experience with clients, engineers and skilled technicians working to prepare a product for the marketplace,” stated Art Western, Rose-Hulman’s vice president of academic affairs and dean of faculty. “We have been in constant contact with our colleagues at Ivy Tech and they continue to be very excited, as we are, about setting this program in motion.”

Jeff Pittman, chancellor of Ivy Tech’s Wabash Valley regional campus, agreed, noting, “the partnership will place engineering and technology students in a collaborative working unit focused on innovative product development and design.

This is a triple win for Rose-Hulman, Ivy Tech and the Indiana companies working on product improvement with Rose-Hulman Ventures at this time.”

With more than 130,000 students enrolled annually, Ivy Tech Community College (www.ivytech.edu) is the state’s largest public post-secondary institution and the nation’s largest single-accredited statewide community college system Ivy Tech has campuses throughout Indiana. It serves as Indiana’s engine of workforce development, offering affordable degree programs and training that are aligned with the needs of its community along with courses and programs that transfer to other colleges and universities in Indiana. The Wabash Valley Region serves more than 6,500 students from Clay, Parke, Putnam, Sullivan, Vermillion, Vigo and Greene counties.

Rose-Hulman (www.rose-hulman.edu) is a 1,900-student private college that specializes in undergraduate engineering, science and mathematics education. For 10 consecutive years, Rose-Hulman has been ranked the number one college or university that offers the bachelor’s or master’s degree as its top degree in engineering. The ranking is based on a national survey of deans and senior faculty conducted by U.S. News & World Report.

Objectives of the Rose-Hulman/Ivy Tech collaboration include engaging Indiana technology-based businesses in project work, providing quality internship and educational opportunities to Rose-Hulman and Ivy Tech students; preparing engineering and technical students in the skills demanded by employers today to face the challenges of a more complex and competitive workplace; developing a model of the “technical workplace of today,” including project-based activities involving the seamless connection of engineering and technical work components; and including faculty, staff and students from each institution in project work. Through faculty involvement, it is believed that outcomes from the program will transfer back to the traditional classroom curriculum.

The program will build upon the existing Rose-Hulman Ventures program, located at Rose-Hulman’s South Campus (along Indiana 46) that leverages the unmet technological needs and engineering challenges of companies as an innovative way to educate engineering undergraduate students. At any time, the RHV program supports 15 staff members, five faculty, 70 students and 20 client companies. More than half of RHV projects involve technical elements which could be expanded to include internships for Ivy Tech students.

Bill Kline, Rose-Hulman’s associate dean for professional experiences who administers RHV, stated Ivy Tech students would also be hired to work in internship positions, much like Rose-Hulman students. When a client project is secured, a work plan is developed and students — from Rose-Hulman and Ivy Tech — with corresponding majors and skills are hired in internship roles reporting to project managers to perform the work. Ivy Tech faculty would join Rose-Hulman staff and faculty in serving as project managers.

“Ivy Tech students bring skills and ideas to the project development process that could be invaluable to prospective clients and further enhance the educational experience at Rose-Hulman Ventures,” Kline said.

RHV (www.rhventures.org) was involved in a trial collaboration involving Ivy Tech last summer. Two Ivy Tech faculty members worked at RHV, providing technical support on a range of projects. That summer experience was successful with over 50 percent of ongoing projects at RHV involving engineering and technical work.

In the first year of the collaboration, the program will focus on RHV-sourced projects with work performed primarily at RHV. In the second and third years, the range of project work may be expanded to include projects sourced by Ivy Tech, including automotive- and manufacturing-related or competition projects at Rose-Hulman or Ivy Tech.

The program could serve as a model and be expanded on a statewide level to include other Ivy Tech campuses with greater impact. Also, the continued operation of the RHV program and collaboration with Ivy Tech will create stronger Indiana businesses and Indiana graduates with career opportunities in the state.

Western pointed out that the Lilly Endowment-supported initiative builds on collaborative educational programs between Rose-Hulman and Indiana State University, through the Terre Haute Innovation Alliance.

Lilly Endowment is an Indianapolis-based, private philanthropic foundation created in 1937. More information about the Endowment is available at www.lillyendowment.org.