The Indiana Career Council is hoping community colleges in other states will yield new, innovative suggestions for improving Indiana’s community college systems.
The Indiana Career Council – a recent creation of the General Assembly that’s tasked with coordinating the state’s diverse economic development efforts – is establishing a task force that will examine community college best practices from around the country.
Career Council member and Ivy Tech President Tom Snyder says his institution already has a best practices committee, but he’s hoping the new task force will help Ivy Tech connect with other key organizations in the state.
“It will also bring more business voice to this. We have a lot of business advisory teams but this kind of transparency’s really good. Still a lot of people in this state don’t fully understand the community college and its role and this will help.”
Council member Joe Loughrey, who will lead the task force, says Ivy Tech is rather unique in its status as a statewide community college – something he says could make it more difficult to apply lessons learned from other states.
“While the process for getting going may be a little bit slower, if you really do get it moving across the state, it can have a more pervasive, powerful, positive impact in the state than you would in other states where it doesn’t have such that system.”
The Career Council officially created the task force at its meeting Monday.