Indiana Mills and Manufacturing, Inc. honored for work with students

By Mark Ambrogi

Westfield High School’s partnership with IMMI has been a great benefit to engineering and technology teacher Michael Marley’s students.

“My students are getting real life experiences,” Marley said. “If they are interested in technology or manufacturing, there is only so much I can give them in class, textbook or online videos. Conexus connects us with a business partner and gives us dual credit through Ivy Tech Community College. If they go through the two-year program, they can come out with I believe 12 Ivy Tech credits. They also get industry certificates that can be used to go into the manufacturing program after school.”

Conexus Indiana, the state’s advanced manufacturing and logistics (AML) initiative, recently honored the Westfield-based IMMI with a 2016 Conexus Indiana Touchstone Award, recognizing the company’s excellent relationship with its partner school, WHS. Part of the award was earned for the way IMMI integrates students into the company culture at its global headquarters in Westfield.

IMMI is one of 220 Conexus Indiana A+ Partners, companies committed to bringing  AML awareness, learning opportunities and experience to the classroom of their local high schools and career centers.

IMMI works with WHS students enrolled in the Hire Tech program, a two-year turn-key high school curriculum, which was developed by Conexus Indiana along with the Indiana Dept. of Education and Ivy Tech Community College.

“One of our core values is to serve people, and working with Hire Tech enables us to help these students really figure out what path they want to take with their lives,” stated Mark Campbell, Westfield plant manager and global operations manager at IMMI, in a press release. “Our employees enjoy working closely with Hire Tech students. Students job-shadow our employees, which gives them valuable one-on-one time with our employees who explain and show them what they do each day.”

Marley said a couple of students that have interned with IMMI over the summer are now working with the company after school. The students are working with IMMI work on quality control measures. One of those summer interns continuing at IMMI is junior Sydney Spears.

“Before I came to IMMI, my perception of advanced manufacturing was just people on an assembly line putting things together,” Spears said. “I didn’t know how much there was in actually designing things in AutoCAD, and combining robotics and people putting things together.”

Spears said before Hire Tech, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go into mechanical engineering. After working with IMMI, Spears said her mind was made up that she does want to pursue that field.