Ivy Tech Community College has received one of 35 awards from NASA’s Office of Education, through the National Space Grant and Fellowship Program to increase student and faculty engagement in STEM-related programs (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) at community colleges and technical schools in the United States.

Six community college campus sites will participate in the Indiana portion of the partnership—four from Ivy Tech, including Ivy Tech Community College Northeast, and two from Vincennes University. Ivy Tech’s portion of the grant is $200,000, which will be divided among the four campuses involved. Regionally, the College will use its $50,000 to support completion scholarships and internship opportunities for students studying aviation maintenance technology and engineering.

For example, a number of students at Anthis Career Center take classes in aviation maintenance technology. When they graduate from Anthis, they have often completed their aviation coursework but are missing their general education requirements. Those students can earn these completion scholarships, enroll at the College, and take the classes they need to graduate. Upon graduation, they can find better-paying, associate degree-required positions. They can also take their associate degrees to a four-year institution to complete the final two years of their bachelor’s degrees.

“This is our first opportunity to work with the Indiana Space Science Consortium and to support NASA programs and missions,” says Karen Jones, Ivy Tech Northeast’s mathematics chair and the project’s writer. “This partnership is a rare opportunity, and we are humbled by it. We are thrilled at the potential this project has to connect Indiana’s citizenry to STEM fields.”