Lisa Beck, an instructor of physiology and health science, commutes to Ball State from Bluffton, Ind.
She teaches three times a week, with 48 class days per semester.
Time of round trip: Just more than two hours
Distance of round trip: 91-122 miles
Round trip cost of gas: Approximately $16
Approximate cost of gas per semester: Approximately $768
- Some professors have more than an hour commute to teach classes.
- Lisa Beck, an instructor of physiology and health science, said “at least half of our department [drives more than 40 minutes].”
- A common reason for not moving closer is that the long commute is enjoyable and gives them time to think.
Not everyone has a five-minute walk across campus or a 10-minute drive to get to class in the morning. Some professors commute more than an hour to get to work multiple times a week.
Lisa Beck, an instructor of physiology and health science, lives in Bluffton, Ind., making her commute to and from campus around 70 minutes, traveling three times a week.
She said since her roots are in Bluffton, where her family lives and her husband works, she wouldn’t want to move.
Beck also graduated from Ball State and said teaching at the university is her dream job.
“I love Ball State ... [and] I love teaching health — I love it,” Beck said. “I can’t even explain how much I love teaching it.”
But even though driving takes up more than two hours of her day, Beck said she doesn’t mind the drive.
“It’s a fun way to just relax and kind of just have some me time because as soon as I get here, I have students all day, and as soon as I get home, I have my husband and my mother-in-law [whom] we take care of,” she said.
However, Beck said when the weather was bad, she had to permit three hours to drive to Ball State.
“I was waking up at 5:30 in the morning to come here, and that was not fun,” she said.
She said she spends about $16 on gas for a round trip.
“I always have to balance that if I need to come down for a meeting or training,” Beck said. “I budget about $300 a month, but it stresses me when gas gets a little more expensive.”
When she first started teaching here two years ago, she said she ended up having to get her oil changed every six weeks because she was driving to the university five days a week.
She said she is not alone in her long commute.
“I’d say at least half of our department [drives more than 40 minutes],” Beck said.
Sam Minor, an associate professor of art, lives in Kokomo, Ind., and his one-way commute is a little more than an hour. He’s been a professor at Ball State for 24 years and moved to Kokomo six years ago because of a relationship.
He said because he was thinking of retiring soon, it wouldn’t be practical to change jobs to avoid the commute.
Minor also said he didn’t mind the drive.
“One of the many reasons I commute is because I really do enjoy working with the students,” he said. “If it were not for the quality of students at Ball State, that drive would be much harder.”
He said on his usual morning, he gets up at 4:30 a.m. and is out the door in an hour, getting him to Ball State before 7 a.m.
“I like my hour before classes, and I really enjoy that time in the morning,” Minor said. “Sometimes, the commute home is a little harder if I’m tired, but I really enjoy that time in the morning because I really like that time by myself.”
Minor said he has a Prius he drives when the roads are clear, which saves him money on gas. In the winter, he has a truck with four-wheel drive. He said he has to pay $30 for gas for one round trip when he drives the truck.
Dennis Hickle, an instructor of accounting, commutes from the southeast side of Indianapolis. It takes him a little more than an hour to get to campus.
“I enjoy the environment [at Ball State] and what really makes it worth the drive is the drive is fairly relaxing because I’m going away from traffic,” Hickle said. “I’ve often said if I had to make the reverse commute and travel to Indianapolis in the morning and back in the afternoon, there’s no way I would do it because there’s so much traffic and it’s so much more stressful.”
He said he wouldn’t want to move closer to Muncie because that would force his wife to drive into traffic each morning and afternoon to Indianapolis.
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