FACT SHEET

The Kansas Institute for Technical Excellence (KITE) exists as a collaborative effort between Butler Community College, Hutchinson Community College, Cowley College and the Wichita Area Technical College (WATC). KITE was founded with the mission to provide customized training and technical education in a non-duplicative and coordinated fashion to the citizens and businesses of the region.

KITE was organized in 2002 with the formation of the KITE operating board consisting of the four presidents of each participating institution. The four institutions serve more than 17,000 students and together comprise the largest educational institution in Kansas.

The two-fold charge given to each of the institutions is first, to become a national leader in the development and delivery of customer-driven customized training for regional businesses and second, to develop four world-class education “centers of excellence” in the areas of information technology, aviation, manufacturing and healthcare education.

In this area, IT education and training offered by public and private training institutions is dominated by user training which is primarily based on Microsoft Office products. The second most dominant IT training area is networking applications with a number of programs based on the Cisco training program.

The goal of KITE's Information Technology Center of Excellence is to increase the availability of high performance information technology and computational education and training in South Central Kansas. KITE will focus on developing the computational skills of students by offering innovative advanced mathematical and logarithmical instruction to K-12 students and to older potential students of the program.

Currently, the information sector contributes only 2% in overall employment to the Wichita MSA area. That equates to roughly 5500 jobs. KITE's primary community goal is to build the IT cluster in South Central Kansas over time with the objective of doubling the IT workforce in seven years. The KITE operating board understands that the demand for the initial graduates of the IBM ACE program will likely be in locations other than South Central Kansas. However, the availability of the highly trained graduates will be a considerable asset to the economic development community and will afford developers the opportunity to recruit information technology companies to the area. In addition, it is also expected that some graduates will be entrepreneurial, starting companies in the area and utilizing graduates of the program.