Ivy Tech leasing space to deal with growth

Some classes will be held at Liberty Drive site this fall as enrollment figures climb

By Steve Hinnefeld 331-4374 | shinnefeld@heraldt.com
July 13, 2007

Ivy Tech-Bloomington is leasing off-site space for classes this fall as enrollment at the community college continues its explosive growth.

It will lease 8,500 square feet in an office facility at 1907 Liberty Drive on Bloomington’s west side. The space will be configured into six classrooms, a student commons area and offices, officials said.

John Whikehart, chancellor of Ivy Tech-Bloomington, said the school’s five-year-old campus on Daniels Way west of Bloomington was already straining at the seams last year. And enrollment for this fall is running 17 percent ahead of what it was a year ago.

“We anticipated enrollment in the fall being over 5,000, and it looks like, from our early registration numbers, we’re going to see that happen,” Whikehart said.

The leased classroom space will primarily be used for general-education courses, Ivy Tech officials said. Enrollment in general courses is expected to increase as the campus starts offering two-year associate degrees in English and communications, foreign languages, history, mathematics, sociology and behavioral sciences and psychology.

The two-year lease with Bloomington’s Wininger-Stolberg property management company is for space in a building that’s also used by Bloom, a call center operated by the Finelight advertising firm.

Ivy Tech’s two-person life sciences department will move into the Liberty Drive facility from its rented space in the Depot building at Seventh and Morton streets.

The college’s work force and economic development offices will remain at the Depot, where they moved last November.

Whikehart said campus officials anticipated leasing additional space this fall and got the funding included by Ivy Tech’s central office in the current year’s budget.

He said college officials are working with Rural Transit to provide bus services between the Daniels Way campus and Liberty Drive.

When Ivy Tech-Bloomington moved to its current campus in 2002, it enrolled 2,600 students.

Last fall, it had 4,570 students. Officials expect to enroll more than 5,000 students this fall, four years earlier than projected at the time of the move.

The Indiana General Assembly this year appropriated $350,000 for architectural and engineering studies for a campus expansion.

Whikehart said officials hope to get the studies done, then make the case for construction funding when lawmakers approve the next state budget in 2009.

“We hope we can demonstrate a sense of urgency so we can move on to construction,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ivy Tech could move its life science department office and some laboratories to a Center for the Life Sciences that the Monroe County Redevelopment Commission is trying to build adjacent to the college campus.