Ivy Tech South Bend — the Working College, in a Studebaker Plant and a Retired High School

1968 to the present — West Sample Street to 220 Dean Johnson Boulevard, January 2000 — about 15,000 students a year

The founding in borrowed buildings: Ivy Tech’s South Bend course is the web’s argument in one institution: twice over, the college began inside the buildings of the city’s other schools and industries. The statewide system was founded in 1963 as Indiana Vocational Technical College. In South Bend, in the college’s own campus history, “It began in 1968 on West Sample Street in the old Studebaker plant while a nearby unused high school was enlarged and remodeled. Classes were moved to the renovated high school in 1969.” A technical college opened in a closed car plant and moved into a closed high school: the city’s industrial and educational buildings passing, within five years of Studebaker’s end, into the next layer of its schooling.

The campus: A new campus opened in January 2000 at 220 Dean Johnson Boulevard, in the college’s own account, and stands there in November 2026, serving approximately 15,000 students annually on the campus’s own figure — the largest enrollment of any institution in this section, at the size its own history prints it. The system’s course runs with it: renamed Ivy Tech State College on June 1, 1995, and Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana on July 1, 2005, in the state audit record. The South Bend campus was designated a Collegiate Purple Star of Indiana campus in July 2025, for its service to military-connected students. Its place in the web is the trades-and-technology strand the public corporation’s career line also serves — the corporation’s record stands in Schools — carried at the collegiate level for the whole region from one campus on the city’s near west side.

Sources:

1. Ivy Tech Community College, the South Bend campus’s own published history, ivytech.edu — the 1968 beginning in the old Studebaker plant on West Sample Street, the 1969 move to the renovated high school, the January 2000 campus at 220 Dean Johnson Boulevard, about 15,000 students annually, and the July 2025 Collegiate Purple Star designation.
2. The banked Schools fragment of this history — the Lulu Cline building: the old Washington High School at 1534 West Sample Street, renamed 1960, Ivy Tech’s first South Bend campus in the late 1960s, demolished about 2001.
3. Indiana State Board of Accounts, audit record of Ivy Tech Community College — the system founded 1963 as Indiana Vocational Technical College, renamed Ivy Tech State College June 1, 1995, and Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana July 1, 2005.