At a news conference held at the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne this morning, Lilly Endowment Inc. announced that it will provide a $20 million grant to accelerate the development of northeast Indiana’s workforce and talent resources.
The grant will be administered via a program, entitled Talent Opportunity Success (TOpS) 2015, which will develop education, training and talent initiatives in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. TOpS 2015 -- an unprecedented collaboration in northeast Indiana -- will better prepare the region’s workforce to capture the high- quality job opportunities available in the near term and those of the future.
"This grant comes at a pivotal time for our region," said Kris Foate, President & CEO of the Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce. "It enables us to provide the educational and training resources necessary to ensure that we can supply the 21st century workforce needed by Northeast Indiana employers. It will have a significant impact on the future economic success of our region."
Components of TOpS 2015 include support for the following critical initiatives:
Retraining at least 1,200 adult workers in northeast Indiana over the next three years;
Enhancement of the Advanced Manufacturing program at Ivy Tech – Northeast;
Expansion of the systems engineering and wireless technology programs at Indiana University-Purdue University- Fort Wayne (IPFW);
Creation of New Tech High Schools within school corporations in northeast Indiana, with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses.
TOpS 2015 includes significant and targeted educational and workforce programs for the aerospace and defense industries. One immediate goal of TOpS 2015 is to prepare workers to assume more than 4,000 projected new and replacement jobs in these industries. The programs also will be relevant to the workforce development needs of other advanced manufacturing sectors in northeast Indiana. Northeast Indiana is home to over 160 defense/aerospace prime contractors and suppliers. During 2005 and 2006 the six largest firms in this sector received a total of $2 billion in prime contracts from the Department of Defense.
The grant will be made to an affiliate of the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne, Community Partnerships, Inc. (CPI), which will govern and provide oversight for the program. CPI is a supporting organization of the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne. The grant is believed to be the largest single private foundation grant ever awarded in northeast Indiana. Management of the program will be conducted by the Northeast Indiana Foundation, which is a supporting organization of the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership.
During the past two years in response to the Endowment’s invitation, a broad coalition of regional partners, comprising business, economic development and government leaders, community foundations and representatives from K-12 and higher educational systems, came together to determine ways to align more strategically northeast Indiana’s workforce, education and worker training programs. Diverse interests collaborated to produce TOpS 2015, which will be a cornerstone of transforming the regional economy, providing economic growth opportunities and promoting high quality jobs in northeast Indiana.
Though the defense and aerospace industries will be directly impacted in the short-term, many project initiatives will have positive impacts across other regional target industries. Adapting to the world economy’s shift from industrial-based to knowledge-based markets, the effects of this broad-spectrum, skill enhancement effort will highlight the value northeast Indiana places on economic growth, innovation, lifelong learning and global competitiveness.
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