New Ivy Tech president sees campuses meeting workforce needs of the future

Ivy Tech Community College
By Steve Hinnefeld 331-4374 | shinnefeld@heraldt.com
May 7, 2007

Tom Snyder doesn’t take over as president of Ivy Tech Community College until July, but he’s already diving into the job.

And he likes what he’s seeing, he said last week on a visit to Bloomington.

 “This is a great story to tell,” he said. “I wouldn’t have stepped onto this train if I didn’t think it was heading someplace.”

Snyder, 62, is chairman of Flagship Energy Systems in Anderson. He follows Gerald Lamkin, Ivy Tech’s president for the past quarter century.

A former auto industry executive, Snyder said he embraces Ivy Tech’s dual role of being a gateway to higher education and training workers to help boost the state’s economy.

“We’ve got to be a bridge between the high schools and the four-year institutions — from the Commission for Higher Education, that’s the focus,” he said. “And we have a unique role the Legislature has given us in workforce and economic development.”

Ivy Tech trustees chose Snyder in March to serve as president of the fast-growing college, which has more than 100,000 students on 23 campuses. It offers two-year degrees, skills certifications and custom job training.

Lee Marchant, an Ivy Tech state trustee from Bloomington, was initially skeptical that Snyder, without a background in higher education, was the right choice. But he said he supports Snyder fully.

“I think that he’s off to a great start,” Marchant said. “He’s very bright and a quick learner. I think he has digested an incredible amount of material in a short period of time.”

If nothing else, Snyder brings a different style. Lamkin has old-fashioned charm and friends in every corner of the state. Snyder is a quick multitasker — in an interview, his muted cell phone hummed constantly near a black PDA and a thick file of briefing papers.

He said he’s been closely involved with Ivy Tech from a business standpoint, and he likes the way its campuses create programs that match their employment markets. “It’s in the culture,” he said.

But he also is comfortable with Ivy Tech’s transition to a community college system, an accessible and affordable point of entry for high-school graduates.

“We just didn’t have that,” he said, “perhaps because we didn’t need it. We had so many good-paying jobs from the Otis Elevators and GEs and GMs, we just didn’t feel we needed it.”

Snyder said he welcomes the trend in which Indiana University and other four-year schools are becoming more selective in admissions, directing first-year students to Ivy Tech.

“I think that’s smart for all of us,” he said.

At the same time, he said, Ivy Tech needs to reach out to workers who haven’t earned college degrees. He wants to develop and test a “college for working adults” for that market segment.

“It’s like an executive MBA at the associate’s level,” he said. “They want to know what night it is, and that it’s the same night every week and I’ll just build my life around that.”

Snyder said one challenge is to tell the Ivy Tech story, to let potential students know an associate’s degree can be a ticket to a better-paying job or to admission to a four-year university.

“I think, based on what I’ve seen — and I’m an old brand guy — people are starting to recognize Ivy Tech and think community college,” he said. “The young people think that today.”

Tuition increase at Ivy Tech?

Ivy Tech Community College is proposing to increase student tuition by 3.9 percent each of the next two years.

A public hearing on the proposal, required by state law, will take place at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in the President’s Board Room of Ivy Tech’s North Meridian Center, 50 W. Fall Creek Parkway, Indianapolis.

Under the proposal, students will pay $91.30 per credit hour in 2007-08 and $95 per credit hour in 2008-09. The current rate is $87.75 per credit hour.

The technology fee will remain the same: $40 per semester.