Elkhart Area Career Center partners with local organizations to launch surgical tech facility
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The Elkhart Area Career Center recently launched its surgical technology facility to address a growing need for sterile processing and surgical technology professionals in the region.
The new facility also fulfills the center’s desire to expand the possibility for students interested in a health science career by providing opportunities for kids to explore lesser known pathways and for adult learners looking for a career pivot.
“What we’re doing and what is important is exposure. A number of high school students will look at a medical career and the first thing they’ll say is, ‘I want to be a nurse or I want to be a doctor,’” Director of Career and Technical Education Brandon Eakins said. “They really don’t know much about the other fields. There are a number of fields out there, specifically these associate tech roles; it just takes an associate degree.”
Eakins speaks about the importance of providing this learning opportunity to kids in the area.
The Career Center sees the program providing various routes for students and adults to explore as they consider their future.
“It’s a great entry point into the medical field. We’ve got multiple on-ramps and off-ramps and that is hugely important when we talk about anything with careers,” he added. “I think about the parent raising small children; we’ve closed that gap so that now it’s much more doable.”
After sustained declines in its certified nursing assistant program, the Career Center was looking to pivot its offerings and stumbled upon a new pathway that the state of Indiana had recently added for its career and technical education programming: central service tech/surgical technology.
“So I reached out to the state of Indiana and said we were interested in this pathway. Only to find out that the state somewhat misrepresented that pathway and it was more of sterile processing and not surgical technology,” Eakins said. “We decided to make it both sterile processing and surgical technology because that’s what our community needed and that really started us on our mission.”
Since 2021, EACC has handled instruction for its sterile processing classes since no college credits are required. However, students still needed to attend clinicals locally among Goshen Medical Center, Elkhart General Hospital and Saint Joseph Health System.
Previously, people who pursued a surgical tech education had to travel to Valparaiso, Kokomo or Fort Wayne for clinicals.
“That’s what we were trying to eliminate,” Eakins said. “There’s no reason that working families should be driving an hour and 15 minutes one way, twice a week to finish those trainings. That’s why it was vital that this had to be 100% local.”
Ivy Tech Community College South Bend-Elkhart will now oversee the surgical technology instruction and clinicals in the same region. Students will begin training in the new facility and stay local for clinical placement.
“Back in 2021, Elkhart Career Center started sending their sterile processing students to us for clinicals and we were discussing how surgical tech is a need in our community,” Elkhart General Hospital Director of Surgical Services Melissa Clark said. “All of our area hospitals are struggling with hiring surgical techs, also finding our sterile instrument tech as well.”
Students begin the two-year program in their junior year of high school, and by senior year, they are placed at a sterile processing unit of surgery centers for 400 clinical hours. Upon graduation, students now have the option to enter into the associate’s track for their surgical technology degree with Ivy Tech.
“Our high school students are now in their third year of doing the sterile processing programming,” Eakins said. “Ivy Tech is slated to begin their first surgical technology offerings the second eight weeks of this fall semester.”
EACC convened with Ivy Tech Community College, Beacon Medical Group, Goshen Hospital, Saint Joseph Health System and the Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Center of Northern Indiana in March 2023 to discuss the need and the set expectations for the new surgical tech program, Eakins said.
Along with contributions from Beacon and Goshen, EACC applied for and was awarded a grant from the Community Foundation of Elkhart County to execute the project.
“It cost right around $1 million when it was all said and done. The renovation wasn’t as bad as we had anticipated but we still have some equipment that we’ve identified, so we’re still finishing it up,” Eakins said. “Equipment was ridiculous. We have remaining dollars, so we’re not worried about it. We will get this thing to full completion and implementation.”
The state-of-the-art building provides additional lab spaces, complete with a full-scale model operating room and a classroom. Designing the facility to meet industry standards was top of mind for the EACC in order to shorten the learning curve for students when they get into the workplace.
“This project here, the most important thing is offering programming, ensuring we have a comprehensive lab and that a student can walk out of that lab into the real world and not miss a beat,” Eakins said. “Our equipment vendor provides equipment for surgical centers all across the United States and he can verify that we could walk into a surgery center in Chicago and it would look just like the room we just set up. For us, that’s invaluable.”
High school students will attend classes led by the EACC’s instructor during the day while the adult learners will attend classes led by Ivy Tech at night. The center is working on securing automatic admittance into Ivy Tech’s surgical tech program for interested students who go through its sterile processing program.
“I see this as a positive change. This is going to open up different pathways for students in our community, whether they’re working adult students, high school students or students that have graduated and decided to stay local and pursue a career in surgical technology,” Clark said. “And if they choose that, they can do that here locally. It helps close that gap of the shortage of surgical tech needs because they’re able to get that right here in our community.”
Despite being under the umbrella of Elkhart Community Schools, the EACC serves about 1,400 juniors and seniors from 10 school districts, four private schools and homeschool students.
What started in 1971 following generous donations of land and money from influential businesses in the area for folks that were not college-bound has led to over five decades of impact at the EACC.
The school has continued to see an uptick in enrollment and is in its fifth consecutive year of increased enrollment. While this highlights the relevance of EACC’s programs, it also poses a challenge.
“We are at capacity in a number of programs. So we actually have a building project that starts next Monday on our transportation campus, and we’ll have another building project that starts in October here at our main campus,” Eakins said. “Those are to address programs that are at capacity, meaning that we have a wait list that we can’t serve on an annual basis. It’ll also help us identify spaces where the labs are not where we would like to see them and build out lab spaces.”
Students interested in enrolling in the sterile processing program from across the county fill out a blind application and are assessed based on academic performance, attendance and their career statement. Adult learners will go through Ivy Tech’s application process.
“Multiple times it looked like it wasn’t going to happen but we kept pushing and pushing,” Eakins said. “There were variables that we couldn’t control but the ones that we could control got us there. Now to be quite honest with you, I’m just looking forward to the next project.”