Featuring Kenan Habibic

Kenan Habibic serves as Director of Community Engagement at Ivy Tech Community College, where he focuses on building relationships between the college, employers and community organizations. His work centers on expanding access to education, strengthening workforce pathways and helping community partners connect residents with training opportunities that support long-term career growth.

Connecting Education to Community Needs

Community colleges are always located in between education and workforce development. The task, however, is to ensure that the provision of education is aligned with the requirements of the workplace.

Such are the tasks associated with Habibic's job position. They involve the development of employer partnerships, involvement in the activities of the local community and informing organizations on how Ivy Tech's offerings can contribute to addressing workforce shortages. While traditionally such jobs are about attracting more students, the key issue here is an understanding of the local environment and challenges preventing citizens from pursuing education.

Collaboration with various stakeholders including businesses, nonprofit and governmental agencies enables workforce shortages identification while providing an opportunity for local residents to acquire qualifications and degrees needed in the area.

Making Career Advancement More Accessible

Many adult professionals will be hindered in pursuit of further education by such practical issues as tuition fees, scheduling problems and financial insecurity, which may prevent employees from obtaining further qualifications even though there is a possibility for career progression.

In this context, the research carried out by Habibic may be regarded as his attempt to lower some of the barriers. In fact, Habibic has participated in employer engagement linked to Ivy Tech's Achieve Your Degree program, aimed at educating employees by means of employer-sponsored tuition assistance programs. The goal is to increase workforce accessibility to education opportunities while assisting employers to create their own talent pool.

Employer partnerships demand close collaboration between educational organizations and companies. As community engagement leaders, individuals such as Habibic need to consider both workforce needs and challenges employees have in regard to educational aspirations amidst other workplace obligations.

Building Relationships That Extend Beyond Programs

Partnerships, which are used as measures of community engagement, do not provide long-term benefits in terms of community development. However, the importance of collaboration and trusting relationships lies beneath each partnership. Educational programs can evolve, but trustful and collaborative relations will always be crucial.

This idea is embodied in Habibic's research. For instance, when developing community engagement activities at Ivy Tech, cooperation with employers, civic associations, and other relevant stakeholders is necessary to identify issues and come up with proper solutions. Community engagement cannot be viewed solely in terms of promotion of educational programs. Creating links that can lead to future workforce development is also very important.

Moreover, this aspect is crucial in light of the great responsibility that community engagement leaders have to face in this case. In a university that serves various communities within Indiana, it is extremely important to promote educational activities in a manner that would contribute to workforce development.

This process is impossible without collaboration since it presupposes creation of educational links between educational programs and jobs provided by employers.