Talent

Walk the floor at Caterpillar's Lafayette Engine Center or Evonik's Tippecanoe Laboratories and you'll find workers who came up through Ivy Tech Community College, through Purdue University, through a Career+ pathway that didn't exist 20 years ago. That pipeline didn't build itself.

Purdue University graduates more engineers than any institution in the United States. Its semiconductor degrees program — the first of its kind in the country — feeds directly into the advanced manufacturing and technology facilities operating and under construction in the region. Ivy Tech Community College runs the credential pathways beneath it, from CNC machinist to semiconductor technician, including an Industrial Career Academy that trains high school students from six regional counties before they ever enter the workforce.

The labor shed extends across nine Indiana counties on both sides of I-65. The average commute in Greater Lafayette is 25 minutes, among the shortest of any comparable Midwest manufacturing market. That fact shows up in retention numbers before it shows up anywhere else.

That system gets tested every time a major employer arrives with a skills gap and a timeline.

When Evonik Industries, a specialty chemicals company with a plant in Lafayette was facing a familiar problem — too few trained workers, too long a training timeline — Greater Lafayette Commerce convened the employers that draw from the same workforce: Evonik, Primient, Tate & Lyle, Cargill. It brought in Ivy Tech Community College, along with the Region 4 Workforce Board, a public agency that oversees workforce strategy across nine counties.

Together, they designed a 25-hour virtual micro-internship covering safety systems, process flow and plant operations — designed for high school students, stackable directly into Ivy Tech's chemical operations earn-and-learn program, where students work three days a week on-site and study two days toward an associate degree. The credential exists because the employers who need it helped build it.

That model is now being adapted for semiconductor manufacturing ahead of SK Hynix's arrival. The jobs are coming. The pipeline is already under construction.