Q&A with Ivy Tech President Sue Ellspermann
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Ferdinand native Sue Ellspermann was named one of IBJ Media’s Indiana 250 in the not-for-profit and education category in 2023. The president of Ivy Tech Community College also oversees the Ivy Tech Foundation, which raises nearly $60 million each year to support students, services, programs and facilities.
Before coming to Ivy Tech, Ellspermann founded the Center for Applied Research and Economic Development at the University of Southern Indiana in 2006. She served as a state representative from 2010 to 2012 and presided as lieutenant governor from 2013 to 2016.
Ellspermann spoke with Inside INdiana Business about her time in public office and the role Ivy Tech plays in supporting the state’s workforce.
You are from the Evansville region. How did your upbringing influence your career?
My dad had a little jewelry store on Main St. [in Ferdinand], and as a daughter, I got to work there every night after school. So I learned a lot about taking care of customers and living in a small town. The responsibilities you have in a small town, serving a farmer the same way as you would serve a business owner and really appreciating everyone.
Tell me about the Center for Applied Research and Economic Development at USI.
USI was looking for a way to better serve southwest Indiana beyond academics. They approached me because of my consulting background, and it was really to engage faculty, staff and students in making a bigger difference in the community.
As the first founding director, I got to engage 600 faculty and staff in lots of projects, ranging from economic development studies to surveys to intellectual property to helping small businesses.
It was the most fun job I ever had because it was getting to leverage the expertise of business faculty, social work faculty and engineering faculty to support projects in southwest Indiana.
What did you enjoy most about your time as state representative and lieutenant governor?
Two things. One was getting to meet all the constituents that you would serve. I didn’t think I would like knocking on doors when I ran for state rep but getting to knock on all those doors in Tell City, Troy, Huntingburg and Boonville helped me understand people and what was important to them.
And then as lieutenant governor, getting to travel all 92 counties and learn what’s special about every community. What are they really good at? What do they aspire to? What are their challenges?
Even from 2013 to 2016, not all communities had come back from the Great Recession. So understanding where our challenges as a state still were, and that’s what’s really stuck with me, understanding that every community is unique and how we serve them is really important.
What drew you to Ivy Tech?
I knew Ivy Tech a little bit before I became lieutenant governor. I had done some consulting work with the Evansville campus. I had taken adult classes there … PowerPoint. But when I became lieutenant governor, I was named by statute as vice chair of the Indiana Career Council. We developed the first strategic plan for post-secondary higher education and workforce in 2013-14.
During that time, I became acutely aware of the importance of Ivy Tech. I had known the Evansville campus, but I didn’t realize this whole system, how it worked, and how it could make a huge difference in educational attainment in Indiana and helping Hoosiers skill up to the important, high-value, high-wage jobs. I really got to appreciate Ivy Tech at a much higher level and understand its importance to the state and even how much more we needed from Ivy Tech.
What makes Ivy Tech unique compared to other community colleges?
In most states, community colleges are unique. They cover a county or a few counties, and they all compete with each other across the state. They’re also funded differently. They’re funded one-third typically from the state, a third from local taxes and a third from tuition.
Indiana is unique in that we have one community college system. All 19 Ivy Tech campuses serve under a single accreditation, which means the nursing program in Evansville is the same nursing program as Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Lake County, etc.
We were already the largest nursing program in the nation, 1,300 associate degree registered nurses completing a year. But there’s a huge shortage of nurses, so we have expanded. We set a goal of 600 additional, which is huge and would make us almost twice the size of the next largest ASN nursing program in the country. It looks like we will exceed that goal, and we will top 2,000 graduates a year in nursing.
We are the nation’s largest single accredited statewide college. We will exceed 180,000 enrollments this year. That includes students who are taking dual credit in high school, traditional-aged students coming in and working adults, single parents, all those individuals coming back. It also includes the work we do with employers to skill up their employees. About 30,000 to 50,000 will be skilling up within a company to help support their workforce.
Another part that’s unique about Ivy Tech is the way we’re leaning into skills training. The world isn’t all about degrees anymore. Especially in areas like [information technology], high-quality certifications are even more valuable than a degree.
We are building skills training to be able to serve at scale the needs of employers and Hoosiers who want to scale up beyond a traditional degree. The Ivy+ IT Academy offers those high-demand, important certifications that the IT industry needs.
Tell me about the Ivy Tech Foundation.
The foundation primarily supports scholarships and what I’ll call wraparound services for our students. Whether that’s mental health, emergency aid, transportation. There are so many needs of our students who are more likely to be a nontraditional student, working adult, lower income than others. So scholarships, emergency aid, but also capital needs, infrastructure needs, updating of labs, etc.
We’re very pleased to have the nation’s largest community college foundation. We just completed our capital campaign with a five-year goal of raising $285 million. We actually raised $340 million to support our students, programs, faculty and staff.
What are the challenges in higher education right now?
The one that’s probably most apparent and in the news: Is college worth it? That’s the big question as we’ve watched traditional college-going rates decrease. College is worth it, but not as a blank check. You have to make sure that you have programs that are aligned to the high-demand, high-wage careers in the community, which Ivy Tech does. You also have to be aware of skills training and certification.
Ivy Tech, while we’re big, we’re still agile, and we are making those changes ahead of most institutions, certainly other community colleges, but I would also say four-year institutions as well. Our new strategic plan is “Higher Education at the Speed of Life,” which means we have to be agile to meet our students, employers, community and state where they are.
Our challenge is to serve all Hoosiers. It’s not just the top 50% of the high school graduating class. We’re here to serve the single parent, the incumbent worker who’s been laid off, the first-generation student. We’re here to serve students of color, Pell [Grant] eligible, low income. We have the Indiana Department of Corrections grant to serve adult, basic ed and vocational training in our correctional systems across Indiana.
We’re the place where someone comes and we help them get to their career goal, either through a credential at Ivy Tech or prepare them to transfer to a four-year institution where they’ll complete that degree.
It’s a big task … two million Hoosiers have no post-secondary credentials. Yes, we care about the 80,000 high school students who graduate every year, but we really care about two million Hoosiers who have yet to have that important credential that will help them find prosperity and a good career and help grow Indiana’s economy.
Any upcoming news to share about Ivy Tech?
At any point in time, there are lots of new things happening. Semiconductors, batteries. We’re at the table with the [Indiana Economic Development Corporation] as we’re recruiting these new industries to Indiana.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Eli Lilly and their growth. A $15 million grant to build a 1,000 talent pipeline for Eli Lilly as they’re continuing to grow … all the biopharma work is happening in Indiana. We’re just privileged to be at the front line of all of that work.
What are you most proud of in your career?
Every step of the way you appreciate things that happen and how blessed you are to be in a particular position at any point in time. But I would say absolutely Ivy Tech.
The way I believe we are serving all Hoosiers, making sure that every Hoosier who wants a great opportunity in Indiana has that opportunity to do that through us and through the generous programs that the state offers, the financial aid, the help of the foundation, the help of employers. It’s truly a great opportunity.
And knowing that in any given year, we’re serving 180,000 people. When we did our 60th anniversary this fall, we looked at the last 10 years, the number of students that we had touched, and it was over 900,000. So when you think about that, we’re a state of 6.8 million Hoosiers. That’s pretty incredible to have an institution that can help the upward mobility of a million of those Hoosiers in ten years. I hope we can continue to do that at an even larger scale.