In response to the Journal Gazette’s Aug. 22 article, “Engineering career path retooled for local talent,” I applaud the efforts of the Questa Foundation and the Lilly Endowment-funded Talent Initiative to accelerate the training and retention of future advanced manufacturing and defense/aerospace engineers in northeast Indiana. Driven by such initiatives, local educational institutes are already experiencing a growth in the number of students interested in pursuing careers in engineering. Trine University’s total fall engineering enrollment of 640 this year is the highest since 1981.

But increasing engineering enrollment in the regional universities is not the end game. We must ensure that these and future engineering students will find gainful employment in northeast Indiana after graduation. Our students have an outstanding work ethic and solid academic credentials. Being part of the selection committee at Trine, I know from experience we continue to attract the best and brightest high school students to study engineering on our campus.

If we can provide challenging employment opportunities, retention of this exceptional talent would not be an issue. Trine University and other regional schools are now collaborating with the Northeast Indiana Defense Industry Association to help improve the local defense community’s ability to attract, train and retain the talent to execute business and interaction between the defense industry and regional suppliers.

But we need to do more to enhance other industry connections for engineering students. We need additional initiatives to acquaint engineering students with career opportunities beyond the defense industry, through cooperative employment, internships and senior projects, as strongly funded as this defense employment initiative.

Questa has done its job in requiring 1/2 Back Scholars to work in northeast Indiana for five years after graduation. But without employment opportunities in a broad range of industries, the best and brightest students could either leave the area after graduation, or worse, question enrolling in engineering studies at all. This issue must be carefully addressed in the Vision 2020 strategy. WorkOne Northeast is focusing on displaced employees; it should broaden its focus to include the needs of recent and future engineering graduates also.

We are excited to have the largest base of engineering students in our history, but northeast Indiana must offer our graduates many career opportunities – defense among them.

DR. VK SHARMA

Dean, Allen School of Engineering & Technology

Trine University

Angola