As students returned to school this semester, President Jo Ann Gora had a very pointed message for their professors: The pressure is on.
"We are living in a time of declining resources, and everyone ... wants to know what we in higher education are doing to become more productive, more efficient and more affordable," the president said in a speech to the faculty last week.
Ball State's state support was cut by $13.9 million in the current two-year budget — following a $15.2 million reduction in last year's biennial budget.
Now, under the gun like other state schools to prove it is meeting educational goals, the school has to focus on academic quality, Gora said during the annual Faculty Convocation in Emens Auditorium.
"Simply put, this age of accountability is the new norm," she said.
The university's 2012-2017 strategic plan, which is being developed this year, will focus on defining rigorous learning outcomes and assessing students' abilities to meet them.
"Academic quality will remain front and center for everything we do here at Ball State," Gora said.
The New Jersey native, 66, who came to Ball State in 2004 to succeed Blaine Brownell, has met with state lawmakers to argue that millions of dollars in cuts to the schools $305 million budget failed to account for progress Ball State has made in terms of academic success and improved retention rates.
A DAY IN THE LIFE
Last week, as professors prepared for the fall semester and students savored the last week of summer freedom, Gora had a full schedule: meetings with senior staff, a visit with a top university donor, and — perhaps out of place for a no-nonsense administrator — a cheerleading session with students at Worthen Arena.
It was a mixed bag of assignments, but actually somewhat typical, for a chief executive whose roles find her explaining the school to lawmakers and supporters, encouraging the faculty and staff and even teaching students the fight song.
Worthen was throbbing with music Thursday night as Ball State's incoming class of 3,839 freshmen took the bleachers for an introduction to athletics.
"You know, I'll be speaking at the faculty convocation tomorrow," Gora said as she waited to walk onto the gym floor.
"But it's things like this that make me nervous. It is a different experience, because normally when I'm speaking to a group, I'm on stage. I think as I'm kind of looking up, ‘There's a lot of them.'"
Gora said when she came to Muncie she was disappointed that students — even the cheerleaders — didn't know the fight song, and she set out to change that.
She attended Vassar College in New York as an undergraduate, where she said sports weren't very popular.
"I don't know where I came up with this," she said, laughing.
The next morning, on the way from Emens to her office at the Administration Building, Gora explained the importance of encouraging faculty as the year begins.
"To me, what's really important ... is to celebrate the accomplishments of the faculty and staff, to remind people about all the good things that are going on," she said, "so they are buoyed for the upcoming year and that they understand, ‘OK there's challenges. There's always challenges.'"
Questions about the effectiveness of education sometime come down to "are you working the students hard enough; are you demanding enough of them?" she said.
The view from the bay windows in her office includes Beneficence and the L.A. Pittenger Student Center. In the window sills are Cardinal memorabilia, ornaments from her trips to China and tall stacks of papers. At a small round table, there's an orchid from the Wheeler Orchid Collection, and in the back of the room is an orange couch and chairs.
Her time is tightly scheduled, but she manages to work out about three times a week with personal trainer Amanda Salyer-Funk, a physical education instructor at Ball State who has worked with Gora since she was a graduate student. For Gora Friday started with a session of pilates in the morning before giving a speech at the Faculty Convocation.
After the speech, she returned to her office and learned that Ball State senior Jennifer Haskell had died from injuries sustained in the Indiana State Fair stage collapse six days earlier. She drafted a short statement expressing the university's sorrow.
Gora had called the student's mother, Mary Haskell, on Monday.
"What a difficult situation," Gora said. "At that time, they were hopeful."
Next on the schedule was a meeting with Phil Repp, vice president of Information Technology. Repp joined her at the small meeting table next to her desk for an update on a major IT restructuring. The project includes the system for processing admissions, a vital function in a university computer system. Gora seemed surprised to learn the change would occur in September, a critical time for admissions.
"So nothing can go wrong with that," Gora said, looking at him.
"Right, nothing can go wrong," Repp replied.
Gora was pointing out the need for a smooth system change and the implications that could result for incoming students.
"Yes, we do feel the pressure," Repp said.
MAKING THE PITCH
Finding support for the school is a key part of Gora's job, and in her eight years she's exceeded the expectations of her peers. She helped raise $418 million for construction projects and exceeded the goal of $200 million for the Ball State Bold Capital Campaign by about $7 million.
Hitting those million-dollar marks seem to keep her on the move. In between other appointments last Friday, she met with Leland Boren, an Indiana businessman who personally funded half of the school's Bold Scholars Program, which provided $40,000 scholarships for 55 freshmen starting this year. Boren and his late wife, LaRita, contributed $2.5 million in total.
Boren is the president and CEO of Avis Industrial Corporation in Upland, Ind., north of Muncie, and manages 16 companies across the country and internationally.
The self-made businessman made his appearance wearing a jaunty, blue- and white-striped seersucker suit. He joined Gora for a luncheon with the scholarship winner Friday.
Boren, 87, never graduated from college. As he told the Bold Scholars, he hardly made it through high school.
"Times are changed," he said during his speech at the luncheon. "I've been lucky, and I've been blessed by people like you who went to college and specialized in subjects, and came out in front and made our community a success."
What does the university president, an East Coast native with a doctorate in sociology, have in common with a business entrepreneur whose education ended in high school?
An appreciation for the musical "Oklahoma," for one thing. Fostering a relationship with donors is part of the job. Several years ago, Gora took Boren, an Oklahoma native, and his wife LaRita, to dinner and a show.
"Our theater department put on a production of ‘Oklahoma,' and I thought, ‘I just wonder if that might get him,'" Gora said.
On Boren's schedule this time was a luncheon with a group of Bold Scholars. Gora had the idea for starting the scholarship program when she realized the university would exceed its goal in the Ball State Bold Campaign.
Gora said she decided to organize the scholarship program instead of spending money on a showy celebration.
"When you get attention focused on you, that's when you need to speak clearly with your actions," Gora said. "As a leader, I focus all the time on student achievement."
FUNDING CHANGES FORCE TOUGH CHOICES
Gora leads the university during challenging times, which are reflected now in the decrease in state support. It's important to craft her message to legislators very carefully.
When she's not talking to students, faculty and donors, she's likely to be directing her message to state lawmakers, who appropriate the $125,183,000 the university gets from the state.
A fixture in every speech is Ball State's emphasis on immersive learning, in which students get real-life experience in community-based projects. More than 700 immersive projects have been completed so far, affecting 69 Indiana counties and communities around the world.
"We need to be especially persuasive and creative in how we tell our story, or else people don't hear it," Gora said.
As state support fell again this year, the school said it was forced to increase tuition $324, which also allowed a 3 percent raise for faculty, with some pay increases pegged to performance.
"The faculty here are underpaid," Gora said. "They're underpaid compared to their counterparts and peers at other institutions, and we cannot let them fall further and further behind.
"It's painful to raise students' tuition and fees. Three percent doesn't sound like a lot, but we're under incredible pressure not to raise tuition and fees. It seemed like an appropriate compromise."
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