For months, administrators at Ivy Tech Community College have been feverishly working with Indiana state officials to parse which of their programs might be eligible for Workforce Pell. The policy took effect July 1, and they are eager to start the flow of new federal dollars to low-income students in short-term training programs.
After weeding out existing programs that didn’t meet the federal requirements—some were too short; others hadn’t existed for a year or more—they settled on one program to advance to the U.S. Department of Education for approval: a certified clinical medical assistant program. The move is part of Indiana’s pilot approach to the first year of Workforce Pell. The state is prioritizing programs at Ivy Tech and Vincennes University in five key industries: advanced manufacturing, building and construction, health and life sciences, IT and business services, and transportation and logistics.
“We want to be one of the first Workforce Pell programs in the country,” said Colby Shank, the college’s vice president for financial aid and student accounts. He’s hopeful Pell dollars might be available to students in the CCMA program as early as this fall, depending on ED’s review process. But the college plans to wait and see how this year goes before proposing additional programs. Indiana is “taking the approach of being slow and deliberate with our rollout of Workforce Pell, because we want it to be successful.”
