Ivy Tech Community College will be the site of the U.S. Department of Education’s third regional community college summit on Wednesday, March 23. The all-day meeting will bring together 150 participants from 13 surrounding states to identify promising practices for improving college. Participants will include representatives of community colleges, business, labor, industry, philanthropy, state and local governments, and students. In addition to Indiana, representatives will come from Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.
U.S. Under Secretary Martha Kanter will give the summit’s opening remarks. Brenda Dann-Messier, assistant secretary for vocational and adult education, will moderate the lunchtime panel, entitled “Unique Industry Partnerships with Community Colleges.” Roberto Rodriguez, special assistant to President Obama for Education, will give the closing remarks. Additional speakers include Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Ivy Tech’s president, Thomas Snyder, who will address the summit during the morning session.
During the summit, Skills for America’s Future, the initiative launched by President Obama last October to improve industry partnerships with community colleges, will announce a new corporate partner. Several companies affiliated with Skills for America’s Future have formed partnerships with community colleges to ensure that skills learned in school match the needs of business and industry.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has called community colleges the linchpin for meeting President Obama’s goal to increase the number of college graduates by 50 percent and once again lead the world in college completion by 2020. The Indiana meeting is the third of four regional summits convened as follow-ups to the White House Summit on Community Colleges, held last October and hosted by Dr. Jill Biden. The first two summits were held in Philadelphia and Houston, and the fourth will be held in San Diego next month.
NOTE: The morning (9 a.m. – Noon) and closing (3:15 – 4 p.m.) sessions will be livestreamedand available tomorrow morning at: www.ivytech.edu