2008 Hamilton Southeastern Schools Foundation Annual Dinner
Hamilton Southeastern Schools Foundation Annual Dinner Keynote Address
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Forum Conference Center, Fishers
Thank you, Bill, and good evening to all of you. It’s my pleasure to be with you tonight. I always enjoy speaking to groups about higher education in our state, but I’m especially honored to speak to this one.
The money that this foundation raises enhances educational opportunities for students throughout the school district. I understand that last year, you provided more than $50,000 in scholarships to graduating seniors and more than $25,000 in grants to district staff members. Congratulations! We all need to do as much as possible to raise public awareness and support of education in Indiana.
As most of you know, Ball State University has a long history of producing leaders for the secondary schools of our state. I won’t embarrass anyone by asking for a show of hands, but I am certain that in a group of this size, we have a large number of Ball State alumni present. Bill, who extended this invitation to me, is one of those. Leading an institution that was founded as a teachers’ college, I am keenly aware of the long hours and tremendous energy those of you at the high school level give to connect outstanding students with appropriate college and university options. You are truly the champions of higher education in Indiana, and I thank you for your dedication and diligence.
Another reason I am so glad to be with you is that there are so many ties between Hamilton County and Ball State University. We have 9,228 alumni living in the county; that is the third largest total of any county in the United States and, in fact, it represents 10 percent of all Ball State alumni in Indiana. We have 1,037 students on our campus from Hamilton County, also the third largest total in the U.S. Two hundred and sixty-six of those are graduates of the Hamilton Southeastern Schools. So in many ways, I feel that I am in the midst of old friends this evening.
I want to talk to you for a few minutes about the general landscape of Indiana higher education and then move into a more detailed discussion about how our efforts at Ball State fit into that landscape. I do intend to leave some time at the end of my remarks for discussion, and I welcome your questions at that time.
When I became president at Ball State in August 2004, I was the first woman to be named to be the permanent leader of a public university in this state. That wasn’t all that long ago. Yet in only three months, just two presidents of Indiana public universities will have longer tenures than mine, and one of them does so by only a few days. So I have the unusual perspective of still being relatively new to this state—indeed, to the Midwest—but increasingly being asked by reporters or community leaders to speak about the state of Indiana higher education because I have one of the longest presidential tenures. What I usually say to them is what I say to you right now.
I believe one of the best things about Indiana’s colleges and universities is the tremendous variety we have in the state. There are large, public universities, and small, private colleges; four-year institutions and two-year ones; business colleges and Bible colleges; liberal arts schools and trade schools. This diversity is a good thing; it means that nearly every one of our high school students has appropriate postsecondary options in our own state. But it is also true that while diversity and variety provide choices, they can also bring confusion, especially for students and their families during the college admission process. It sometimes can be difficult to differentiate among colleges, and I appreciate your efforts to help your students as they go through that process.
I firmly believe that every college and university in Indiana has its own niche. However, we in higher education don’t always do the best job of articulating what our niche is. That’s where the confusion begins.
Many of you have seen Ball State’s television commercials or billboards that use the phrase, “Education Redefined.” Perhaps you’ve wondered exactly what we mean by that. Let me give you a brief overview to illustrate this process of clearly identifying a niche.
Shortly after I arrived at Ball State, we began two years of extensive market research, which revealed many audience perceptions about Ball State. One audience reaction was confusion about our marketing phrase, “Everything You Need.” We examined what concept more accurately described us to audiences and arrived at “Education Redefined.” We began using it in 2006 and have received very positive responses. The reason is that “Education Redefined” is not just a tagline, or even just a marketing campaign. It is the title and basis of our strategic plan, the implementation of which began last fall. It has become who we are at Ball State.
The focus of our strategic plan is immersive learning. Let me explain what I mean by that term. You are probably familiar with experiential learning, which most colleges and universities in the state embrace. Internships, community service projects, and study-abroad programs are all examples of experiential learning, in which students learn in part from the experience itself.
Immersive learning is experiential learning that is intensified. A team of students, preferably interdisciplinary, works collaboratively under the guidance of a faculty mentor for academic credit for at least a semester and often for an entire academic year. The students drive the learning process, determining the direction of the project, which produces a real-world solution to a real-world problem for a community or business partner. The solution takes the form of a tangible outcome or product—an instructional DVD, a set of architectural renderings, a business or marketing plan, or a creative work.
As I got to know the university during my first year, I saw so many examples of how faculty members were collaborating with groups of students in this way. I learned that faculty mentoring of students during this collaborative process was a traditional strength at Ball State. So in our strategic planning process, we began to view immersive learning as Ball State’s educational niche. We considered ways that we could better capitalize on this strength and truly make it a hallmark of a Ball State education for all of our students.
Why did we focus on immersive learning? There were several reasons. As I mentioned, it built on the university’s traditional strengths, and that was recognized by all our constituencies—faculty, students, alumni, legislators, and private donors. We believed that Ball State could do this because of our size. We are large enough to give our students and faculty access to leading-edge technology and state-of-the-art facilities. But we also are not too large—Ball State faculty value research, but they are committed to the time that is needed to mentor and guide students.
We also knew that immersive learning is embraced by bright, creative students because they know it best prepares them for a world of global competition and constant change. Immersive learning offers a significant intellectual challenge—and that is what we want Ball State to be known for.
Immersive learning quickly has become the cornerstone of what we do at Ball State. We continue to see our immersive learning opportunities both increase and broaden. They stretch well beyond the borders of our campus. Our Building Better Communities initiative took teams of students and faculty to 60 Indiana counties last year and encompassed more than 130 projects. Seven of those were done right here in Hamilton County.
So that has become Ball State University’s educational niche. We are working to make the university the destination in Indiana for students who are interested in immersive learning. In the process, we are helping to keep Indiana’s top high school students here in the state to continue their studies, and—through the connections they make during their immersive learning experiences—we believe we are helping to stem the brain drain here in the state by giving them outstanding employment opportunities in Indiana.
I could cite all sorts of results from this focus on our niche. We have received several million dollars from private donors in support of our immersive learning efforts, and we were the only state university to receive legislative investment in the enhancement of its curriculum during the 2007 session. More than 13,000 students applied for admission to last fall’s freshman class, which is 21 percent more than 2006, and even more have applied to enter this fall. Last year’s entering class featured an average SAT score that was 23 points higher than its predecessor. Enrollment in our Honors College is 19 percent higher now than it was in 2006-07.
But I think the most powerful illustration of the results of immersive learning is to tell you about a couple of those projects that are centered right here in the county. One of them, in fact, features a graduate of Hamilton Southeastern High School.
One of the early innovators in immersive learning on our campus is the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry. There, in 2004, Chin-Sook Pak, associate professor of Spanish, mentored a group of 15 students who studied how Hispanics were assimilated into American culture. That seminar was based here in Hamilton County and used county residents as subjects. Working with the county’s Intercultural Services Agency and the Victim Awareness and Support Program of Hamilton County, the students wrote and produced “Sobrevevir,” a series of DVDs examining the problems Latino immigrants encounter and offering solutions. The series, produced in the style of Mexican soap operas, was distributed to more than 750 agencies and schools around the United States and aired on Univision, the largest Spanish-language network in the United States.
Interestingly, this led to another seminar last year, in which Chin-Sook and her students found that Latino high school students in our state were underrepresented at Indiana colleges and universities. Their response was to produce a 15-minute educational DVD titled “Si, puedes! Making college possible.” It covers issues these students and families encounter when considering higher education: the benefits and costs, how to qualify and apply for college, where to find money to pay for it. Already, more than 300 copies of the DVD have been sent to Indiana high schools and Hispanic organizations.
Another interesting example of immersive learning is the Interstate 69 Culinary Trail, a project that has been going on since September. Twenty-four students, representing five colleges and 12 majors, are working with the Indiana Foodways Alliance, based right here in Fishers. Under the direction of two of our journalism professors, Sheryl Swingley and Becky McDonald, these students are identifying culinary assets in communities along I-69 from here in Hamilton County all the way up to the Michigan border. They have already created a Web site, complete with a culinary trail map, a calendar of events, Hoosier recipes, and profiles of restaurants, farmers’ markets, and organic farms.
By the time this enterprising group of students is finished next month, the site will include several 90- to 180-second video packages featuring regional culinary specialties, photo stories, slide shows, and a virtual media resource room, which will feature oral histories about regional foods. The group is finalizing a media relations plan for the Indiana Foodways Alliance and developing a series of food workshops that will be held around the state in the future.
One of the key students on this project has been Kimberley Jackson, a senior public relations major and a graduate of Hamilton Southeastern High School. She has been one of the major writers involved, just as she wrote for the Fishers Chamber of Commerce years ago and in her many duties at Cardinal Communications, our student-run public relations and advertising agency. She has had to scale back her involvement in the project this semester, however; she is studying abroad at the London Centre.
In conclusion, let me tell you a story that I think illustrates the importance of immersive learning at Ball State and the need for each Indiana college or university to identify its niche to the public. I’m sure many of you saw the media coverage of the David Letterman Communication and Media Building dedication ceremonies in September. I spent more than six hours with Dave as he returned to his alma mater; he really is a very modest, self-effacing guy. He spent an hour before the ceremony itself meeting with some of our students inside the building, away from the media attention. One of those students, in fact, was Kimberley Jackson.
What he told them, quite simply, was to take advantage of, quote, the great thing you have here, unquote. The building is the most technologically advanced building on our campus, and it offers state-of-the-art facilities for the kind of immersive learning that I have been describing, facilities that Dave found out that even he doesn’t have available to him at CBS.
In fact, one of the features of the building is a one-million-dollar post- production studio, where our students, with the guidance of faculty mentors, can edit their high-definition footage and mix in surround sound to produce a film or video. It’s the kind of studio that is normally available only to graduate students at film schools, and its availability for Ball State undergraduate students provides a perfect example of our commitment to immersive learning. It’s what Dave was talking about when he told the students, and I’m quoting again here, the future of communications is in this building.
And when Dave spoke at the ceremony itself, one of the first things he did was acknowledge his special professor, Darrell Wible, and ask him to stand. When I met with Dave more than two years ago and asked him what he remembered about Ball State, he immediately began talking about Professor Wible and how he was responsible for what Dave had become. Now we’re talking about a man who has been recognized as the best in his profession, someone who has interviewed literally thousands of famous people on the air. Yet he remembered with great detail and clarity events that happened in Darrell Wible’s class 40 years ago! If that doesn’t demonstrate the power of Ball State’s tradition of faculty and students working side-by-side, the essence of immersive learning, I don’t know what does.
I strongly believe that we at Ball State are truly redefining education and demonstrating the university’s value to the citizens of Indiana. I am proud to serve as its president during this exciting, challenging time. Thank you for your hospitality this evening and my congratulations to all of you for everything you do to champion education in this state.