Curriculum offered through a partnership between Purdue Polytechnic Institute and Ivy Tech Community College will create a new group of workers to fill an emerging need in the regional workforce.
The co-enrollment program begins this year and connects aviation curricula at Purdue Polytechnic Institute's School of Aviation and Transportation Technology and the Ivy Tech Community College, Lafayette campus, Aviation Program.
John Mott, clinical associate professor and interim head of the School of Aviation and Transportation Technology, said Ivy Tech in Lafayette initially was motivated by General Electric's 2014 announcement of a final assembly plant in Lafayette to produce LEAP jet aircraft engines.
"The plant has the potential to employ a large number of graduates from the Ivy Tech/Purdue program," he said. "In addition, the aerospace industry in Indiana is very large."