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| TERRY KING |
The face of Ball State will change in August when the next full-time president takes over. But the man working to prepare for the switch expects the university to remain unchanged, at least for the near future.
“My expectation is the classes will be the same, the faculty will be pretty much the same [and] there probably won’t be big shifts,” said Terry King, provost and current vice president. “Specifically, what is going to happen is I think we will see an evolution of the university, not a revolution. Make it better, make it bigger.”
King will take over Tuesday as interim president to prepare for Ferguson, who will take office Aug. 1.
King came to the university in 2006 after serving as the dean of Kansas State University’s College of Engineering. He said he joined Ball State not because of his expertise in engineering — a degree Ball State doesn’t even offer — but because of President Jo Ann Gora’s dynamic personality and vision for the university’s future.
“If you look at where the university was 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago, the differences are obvious,” he said. “And it has been really fun to be a part of that and to think about what is happening in the future.”
While there is still uncertainty surrounding Ball State’s next president, one thing is clear. Ferguson plans to follow and expand on Gora’s successes.
“He certainly is one that wants to come in and build on what we have already,” King said. “He actually has said this: ‘This university is running pretty well, so you don’t want to make big changes right away.’”
At his acceptance speech in May, Ferguson emphasized his commitment to continue along Gora’s path.
“We are coming to join your family,” he said at the announcement. “Our house is your house. It is our commitment to preserve the incredible legacy of Ball State University.”
As for King’s time as interim president, he said July will be about making sure Ferguson has all of the information he needs to take the reins and begin working on some of the university’s major projects on the first day, most importantly the university’s 20-year academic plan.
The academic plan is something that is close to King’s heart and the first to look so far ahead in the history of the university.
“We sort of had to figure it out on our own because we couldn’t find a model of someone who has done long-range planning,” he said proudly.
Ferguson has his own experience creating a campus master plan. Most recently, he led the creation of the Blue Sky Plan as president of the University of Maine. That plan focuses on money management and restoring the bond to the larger community.
At his acceptance speech, Ferguson said Ball State is on the right track with its advanced planning, although they did it a little different in Maine.
“We did it in a very consensus-based way,” he said. “We did it together. It was one of those very wonderful examples of strategic planning where the community came together.”
Even with Ferguson’s experience, preparing a president for the task of managing seven academic colleges, more than 40 departments and roughly 20,000 students isn’t as easy as holding a few meetings and handing Ferguson a Ball State campus map.
“The complexity of the university is such that it will take him a year to figure out where everything is at,” King said with a laugh.
But King said he is up to the challenge.
“I like change, and so I am looking forward to the change,” he said. “Things have to change, so you might as well be involved in it. I am really looking forward to it.”
Although students and faculty may prepare for a drastic change, King expects Ball State students’ lives to remain the same.
“It will still be Ball State,” he said.
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