Ivy Tech revamps plans for training center on feedback from Elkhart employers, donors

Area employers say they’re having trouble just finding people who can consistently show up for work and adequately perform basic assembly line jobs.

That seems to be the consensus that Ivy Tech Community College North Central/Northwest Chancellor Thomas Coley has found. After trying unsuccessfully this year to raise money from area employers for the Elkhart campus’s proposed World Class Lean Advanced Manufacturing Training Center, Coley recently said he’s had to recast his vision. The school has changed the proposal’s name to, simply, the Center for Workforce Training.

Coley first announced plans for the center in July 2012, when the school bought 43 acres behind its existing Elkhart campus for a proposed $15 million, 55,000-square-foot facility. Mervin D. Lung, former owner of RV and manufactured housing supplier Patrick Industries, had offered $4.5 million as a challenge grant for the community to match.