At the start of his second year in office, Ball State President Paul W. Ferguson is continuing to focus on entrepreneurial learning, starting with the addition of a new official position.
Ferguson appointed Michael Goldsby as the university’s first chief entrepreneurial officer. Ferguson's goal is to make Ball State more student-centered, community-engaged and a better model for 21st century research.
Goldsby was formerly the executive director of the Entrepreneurship Center, and in his new role he will be working to raise the university’s entrepreneurial capacity.
His main focus will be ensuring students receive a broader immersive learning experience and training faculty and staff to become more self-driven in the classroom, Goldsby said. He will be working with Jennifer Blackmer, the new associate provost for entrepreneurial learning.
Entrepreneurial learning is a newer concept for Ball State. Ferguson committed to the idea of entrepreneurial learning when he unveiled the Centennial Commitment, his plan for the next three years, during his State of the University address last February.
He wants to continue the Ball Brothers’ tradition of philanthropy through entrepreneurship, he said in a recent interview with the Daily News.
“We have a spirit of doing things creatively, better, taking risks in order to get farther,” Ferguson said. “Being entrepreneurial is being creative problem solvers not only for the problems of society, but even to help better manage this university. We all want to be entrepreneurs to move this university forward.”
Ferguson plans to make Ball State the go-to Indiana school for entrepreneurship, much like Purdue University is for engineering and Indiana University is for their medical school, Goldsby said, which led to the decision to elevate Goldsby to chief entrepreneurial officer.
"I'm excited. I love it … I have to grow into the new role, and I have to be entrepreneurial myself, so I'm learning too,” said Goldsby.
In order to give more students an immersive learning experience, the shape of classroom learning will change. Ball State is known for immersive learning, but only around a quarter of students were able to participate in it in the past, Ferguson said.
“More faculty will be involved, certainly more students will be involved,” Ferguson said. “Every student will have an entrepreneurial learning experience.”
Ferguson is also focused on completing the brand refresh this fall. After the university dropped the “Education Redefined” slogan last spring, it will now be looking to the community to help pick a new brand. The Ball State website also has a new look since the start of the semester.
Community sessions to choose from a few proposed font and color schemes will be announced in the first week of the fall semester, said Julie Hopwood, the interim vice president of strategic communications and senior adviser to the president.
“We need to conduct those listening sessions rather quickly, but we definitely wanted to wait until the fall term so that students and faculty could really be involved in that," Hopwood said. "That’s not going to be a six-month process because ... we really want that refreshed look."
After the brand refresh, the Centennial Commitment planning team will focus on student success.
One of Ferguson's goals to meet by 2018 is to reach a 50 percent graduation rate, which is 14 percent higher than the university's current rate.
“It’s a huge leap,” Ferguson said. “It will be a huge success, but we want to do better. We want to get that goal.”
In order to boost the graduation rate, a student success council will be created this fall with administrative representatives to search for the best way to meet students' needs to help them graduate on time.
Looking forward to the end of the upcoming school year, Ferguson predicted there will be evidence of visible improvement with the Centennial Commitment goals.
“I think some of our best practices of how we run ourselves as an institution, being contemporary and cutting edge, will be much more visible [at the end of this year],” he said. “You’ll be able to see that; it will not just be talk.”
Ferguson said his and Ball State’s attention will stay on student success, and he hopes the student body takes advantage of the distinctive Ball State experience.
“I would want every one of you to know and have the same feeling that I have that, being here at Ball State, you can develop the experience and the education to achieve whatever dream you’ve got,” he said. “And that’s not a brag, that’s just a fact.”
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