Human Capital

In today's economy, jobs go where the skilled people are, not the other way around. While Central Indiana offers a skilled incumbent workforce and excellent public and private universities, Indiana as a state has lagged behind the nation in key measures of educational attainment.

The Central Indiana Corporate Partnership is involved in several initiatives designed to strengthen our human capital:

Building a World-Class Manufacturing & Logistics Workforce

Today's manufacturing jobs demand more education and greater technical skills than ever before. A recent survey by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) shows that 80% of manufacturing companies list employee recruitment as a top concern.

CICP's Conexus Indiana initiative is helping to rebuild the state's pipeline for manufacturing and logistics workers by making sure that the right educational and training programs are available to meet employer needs; these efforts have led to a restructured advanced manufacturing curriculum for Ivy Tech and support for supply chain management degrees at the IU Kelley School of Business.

Conexus is also focused on changing the image of manufacturing and logistics to interest young people in these careers. Conexus is the statewide licensee of NAM's Dream It. Do It. campaign, a grassroots marketing effort focused on educating young people, their parents and teachers about the high-tech, high-growth manufacturing and logistics jobs available today.

Science, Technology and Engineering Education

The U.S. has fallen behind other industrialized nations in educating workers in the technical fields – science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This has become a serious economic hurdle, and it starts with K-12 education.

In Indiana, CICP's BioCrossroads initiative is focused on reversing this trend through its I-STEM initiative. The I STEM Resource Network is dedicated to measurably improving K-12 student achievement in the STEM disciplines. Through a network of higher education institutions around the state, the Resource Network provides easily accessible, superior quality professional development for teachers; access to existing, practical, and exciting hands-on learning opportunities for students and families; and grassroots support for better STEM education policies across all Indiana communities.

IN-STEP AP Project

Another priority in improving science and math education in Indiana is providing more challenging classes to high school students, to help get them on the right path early on to exciting careers in industries like the life sciences and advanced manufacturing – and earn college credit in the process.

CICP's BioCrossroads initiative has partnered with the University of Notre Dame in a project to add more of these "advanced placement" (AP) courses to K-12 curricula around the state. The IN-STEP AP initiative is focused on providing more professional development for teachers to become certified to teach these classes, and pursuing federal grants to help high schools pay for implementation.

A state's stock of knowledge is the main factor explaining its relative level of per capita income. If state policymakers want to improve their state’s economic performance, they should concentrate on effective ways of boosting their stock of knowledge.
- "State Growth Empirics," Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland