SOUTH BEND -- Ivy Tech Community College in South Bend next year will add an intensive, 18-credit summer nanotechnology study program that is expected to draw students from across Indiana and possibly from other states.

The new program will be funded with a $165,000 National Science Foundation grant awarded to the South Bend campus. The grant will allow the campus here to develop a Nanotechnology Application and Career Knowledge (NACK) Network teaching site hub here, one of just seven such hubs in the nation.

The teaching site here is being developed in partnership with Penn State University.

Nanotechnology involves research and technological development at a scale so tiny it's measured in nanometers -- billionths of a meter. It creates and uses structures that have novel properties because of their size, and it offers the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules.

Jobs prospects are expected to be good in the growing field of nanotechnology.

The initial 10-week summer program will have room for 20 students. The program will be intense: six courses, requiring class work eight hours a day, five days a week.

Ivy Tech in South Bend last year became the first -- and so far the only -- college in Indiana to offer an associate's degree program in nanotechnology.

Abdollah Aghdasi, chair of Ivy Tech's nanotechnology program, expects the summer program to draw students from Ivy Tech's other campuses around the state and also from some four-year colleges and universities.

"You don't need to be an Ivy Tech student. We can take students from Notre Dame, IUSB, Western Michigan University -- anyone who wants to come and get the exposure to nanotechnology," he said.

Although the nanotechnology degree currently is offered only in South Bend, students at other Ivy Tech campuses could take their general education requirements at their home campus, attend the intensive summer of nanotechnology courses in South Bend, then arrange to complete requirements (including an internship) for the nanotechnology degree back at their home campus, Aghdasi said.

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Ivy Tech's nano hub