Ivy Tech was founded in 1963 as Indiana Vocational Technical College and has expanded to offer more than 150 programs pertaining to health, technology, business and public services. Ivy Tech is committed to diversity and has a variety of programs and initiatives aimed at helping minorities and non-traditional students. One such program is the Achieve Your Degree initiative, a partnership between the school and local business that aims to help non-traditional students go to school with little or no cost to the student.
The Recorder recently spoke with Dr. Kathleen F. Lee, the chancellor of Ivy Tech Community College, to ask about the Achieve Your Degree initiative and other programs of interest.
Read on to see what Dr. Lee had to say:
Indianapolis Recorder: How would you explain the Achieve Your Degree program to someone who has never heard of it, and how does it differ from other tuition reimbursement programs?
Lee: Many employers have tuition assistance programs that work like this. Let’s say you and I are working at a company and we decide to go back to school to get a paralegal degree or computer certification. We want to improve our position in the company. You sign up for classes, and the college says it’s going to cost you $800 to take two classes. You say, ‘I don’t have $800 out of pocket, but my company says they will pay for it.’ Traditionally, you pay out of pocket and companies will reimburse you after you finish the class.
What Ivy Tech has done is come alongside companies who want to participate. If companies want to encourage employees to go back to school, we are willing to defer the cost of the class until the end of the semester when tuition assistance kicks in. This helps many folks, because they might make just enough money that they don’t get a lot of financial aid, so they really need their employer’s help. With this program, we say take the class and we will wait until your employer pays for it.
What are the requirements for this program?
It’s really up to the companies that partner with us and how they want to do it. Some companies have said, ‘We have tuition assistance for anyone who wants to study anything.’ Other companies have said, ‘We want to support employees who want to step from a level-one technician to a level-two technician, but we don’t want to support someone who wants to get a degree for something outside of the skills of our company.’ We work with the employers to ask how they want to support the employees.
What other resources do you have for people who are worried about the cost of attending college?
One of our key programs is our
Bowen Scholars. Private donors support African-American students at Ivy Tech and IUPUI. They support 20 students a year by providing a stipend and a mentor on campus. We also have the Center for Working Families and provide financial coaching. We help students get to their nearest neighborhood center if they need childcare or help paying bills. We want to be sure our students are aware of the full range of services here, and we encourage them to get involved. We have an incredibly diverse campus, which makes it a rich cultural experience; we have groups like 100 Black Men, Black Students United, softball, basketball, even a gamers club for board game and video game lovers.
Ivy Tech has a large population of non-traditional students. What advice would you give to people who want to go back to school but are worried about making such a huge time commitment?
I would say you just have to jump into the deep end and realize that the majority of students here are part-time students who are working, supporting family and taking one or two classes at a time. You are going to see people in the same boat as you are with the same concerns, questions and issues. There is this bond that develops. And if you just start one class at a time, you will see that our faculty love to help students realize they are capable of learning.
Do you help students find job placement after graduation?
We help any student find work, whether they finish the degree or not. Many students come for a certification. We have a career development office where we work with students on resumes and interviews and even hook them up with employers. Many of our faculty members work (elsewhere) during the day and teach in the evening with us, so they can help many of our students get internships or externships, and then they’ll get a job offer. We do our best to get them hooked into the industry right from the start.
