Ivy Tech center’s pact with NWSC Crane good for both

The Herald-Times
OPINION
Posted: Sunday, August 3, 2014 2:00 am

Ivy Tech Community College’s Bloomington campus once again has showed how it can provide value in this area, formalizing a partnership last week with Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane. Ivy Tech will promote a vast array of technologies developed at Crane to the small business community of Bloomington and the surrounding area for commercial uses.

The partnership is between Crane and the Gayle & Bill Cook Center for Entrepreneurship at Ivy Tech. Steve Bryant, the center’s executive director, said Friday the two organizations have worked together well in the past, but this agreement formalizes the relationship. He said the center stands ready to do anything it can with its faculty members and business relationships to help NWSC Crane connect its portfolio of technologies with commercial users.

The reality of what happens at NWSC Crane is far different from and much more extensive than many people realize. Most people know it’s a Navy facility about an hour south of Bloomington, and some know it shares space with a smaller Army facility that stores a lot of ammunition. Fewer still realize just how high-tech it is: “a Federal Laboratory of the U.S. Department of the Navy, providing multipurpose research and development, manufacturing technology, engineering, testing, manufacturing, and fleet support,” as described in the news release announcing the formal partnership.

It’s a huge economic driver in southern Indiana and its relationship with Ivy Tech will help it turn its large portfolio of technology developed for the military into other valuable uses. Bryant said Crane does a great job of categorizing what it has, but he hopes Ivy Tech will help it connect those products to business opportunities in the private sector.

The agreement is the first of its kind between Crane and Ivy Tech, positioning the Bloomington campus once again as a leader in Indiana’s community college system.