Shelbyville, Indiana

SHELBYVILLE, INDIANA work opportunities and our industrial invest- ment. The majority of our jobs are automotive related, however, we are starting to see diver- sity now in consumer electronics and medical devices.” Because of its growing industrial base, DeBaun says that the city’s focus, lately, has been on building, attracting, and maintaining a talented workforce, as well as creating the amenities that that workforce desires in order to keep them in Shelby County. “We’ve created pro- gramming in the last five years that goes all the way from zero to end of life,” he reports. “We have an early learning coalition that deals from zero to five; we have a program called Advantage Shelby County, which will allow all of our high school graduates to go to Ivy Tech, which is our state college, for free.” Advantage Shelby County, a partnership be- tween the City of Shelbyville, Shelby County, and Ivy Tech Community College, is a two-year college scholarship program specifically aimed at raising educational attainment and work- force readiness in Shelby County. It provides gap scholarship funding to Shelby County students to pay tuition costs not covered by state, federal, or institutional aid. In exchange for local support, students agree to perform 10 hours of community service per semester, or fulfill a program work requirement with a Shelby County company. In addition, quali- fied students are assigned a local mentor to guide them on their educational path. “We’re the last dollar in after they go for their finan- cial aid package,” says DeBaun. “And then they can qualify for up to 16 different cohorts that range from automation and robotics, to cu- linary arts, and lot of things in between - all transferable to a state, four-year university.” “We created a charter school for adults who don’t have a high school diploma,” DeBaun