Indiana Network of Women in Business Annual Gala
"Defining Moments," Keynote Address for President Jo Ann Gora
Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009, noon; Omni Severin Hotel, Indianapolis
It's a pleasure to be with you today. I want to begin my remarks by congratulating the three special women who earned awards just moments ago, especially Karen Mangia, the Mentor of the Year. Karen is a proud two-time graduate of Ball State, holding a bachelor's degree in telecommunications and international business and a master's degree from our Center for Information and Communication Sciences. The work that she does both with her employer, Cisco Systems, and the many other organizations she volunteers for is an inspiration to us all. Karen, it's wonderful for me to be here on your special day.
What an honor for me to speak at this event, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Network of Women in Business. This organization, dedicated to the development and advancement of women as leaders in the Indianapolis business community, serves such an important role. Clearly, leadership roles for women have changed dramatically since 1979. More business executive positions in this state are filled by women. Our lieutenant governor is a woman. When I came to Ball State in 2004, I was the first permanently appointed female president at one of Indiana’s major public universities; now, two of those three presidencies are held by women. Considering that for more than a decade, more than 50 percent of Indiana college graduates have been women, this growth of women in leadership roles is only going to continue.
All of that makes events like today's gala so very important. I had the pleasure of writing the foreword for Mickey Maurer's book, "19 Stars of Indiana: Exceptional Hoosier Women," published last December. In it, I noted that the stories of these 19 women, leaders in a wide variety of fields--business, philanthropy, government, health care, and many more--nonetheless have common threads, threads I also have heard in your conversations here today.
A pioneer spirit and willingness to pursue your passion. Integrity and honesty. A willingness to work hard. A belief in the greater good, one that extends beyond yourself or your organization. A deep appreciation for the sacrifices of those who came before you, particularly family members. And a willingness to pass along what you have learned by mentoring the next generation of leaders.
I speak to women's professional and leadership groups all over our state and when I do, the same thing happens that has been happening here. I talk about my background and experiences, and I ask the group's members about their backgrounds and experiences, and the resulting dialog enriches all of us. What I have found is that we all treasure and learn much from personal stories--whether our own or those of others. While that sharing is rewarding, it is not necessarily natural or effortless for us. Hoosiers often are reluctant to share those personal stories, and for many of us, especially women, talking about ourselves--how we accomplished our goals, faced our challenges, and overcame obstacles--seems boastful.
Yet I am convinced that this sharing is how all of us, not only women, develop our own leadership style. We tell our stories; we listen to those of others. We network; we mentor; we seek advice; we gain valuable insights into our own endeavors and our own personalities. We take the wisdom of others and apply it to our own profession, circumstances, and dreams. In doing so, we occasionally find great inspiration. I hope that you have done so today, and I hope that my story--and those of some Ball State students I want to tell you about--add to that enrichment. I salute the Network of Women in Business for three decades of facilitating this sharing.
The theme of this gala is "Defining Moments." In looking back over my own life story, I could point to any one of a number of those. As I tell our freshmen every year, I entered college convinced I wanted to major in theater and graduated with a major in political science. I intended to enter law school, but got married shortly after graduating. So my first job after graduation was writing and producing commercials for a rock-and-roll radio station in Wilmington, Delaware. My second job was in personnel at a state mental hospital. I think it is safe to say that my journey to becoming a college president has been a long and winding road.
The defining moment I want to talk to you about today came after I returned to school in my late 20s. I earned my master's and doctoral degrees in sociology and criminology and began to teach at the college level. I greatly enjoyed being a professor, especially the teaching and advising of students.
That is what I was doing at Fairleigh Dickinson University when my defining moment arrived. I was approached by the head of my college about becoming an associate dean. It was an offer that intrigued me, but it also made me hesitate. My reservations were not about whether I could succeed in this new job, but about whether a move into higher education administration meant I would no longer be able to guide and mentor students. I worried that I would no longer be able to affect students the way I could when I was standing in front of the classroom teaching.
What I realized in my defining moment was that as a professor, I certainly made a difference in the lives of my students, but it was only 25 or 30 of them at a time. I knew that there were students in the college on whom I had little to no effect because I had never taught one of their classes. On the other hand, if I accepted the job as associate dean, I would be writing guidelines and making decisions that would affect every student in the college--and not just the ones currently enrolled, but those studying many years in the future. It was a defining moment for me. It cemented my decision to move my leadership abilities into administration--a decision I have never regretted, and one that I remember every day as Ball State president, where I still have the ability to teach and mentor students, just not in the same manner that a classroom professor does.
My experience and the realization that there were many different forms of leadership were reinforced soon after I arrived at Ball State. I spent a lot of time in my first year asking alumni, "What do you remember about Ball State?" Nearly unanimously, alumni would respond about a collaborative relationship with a special professor they had on campus, that teacher who made a difference--who not only taught the subject material, but who mentored and inspired that student as the two worked side by side on an important problem.
I soon came to realize that this student-faculty collaboration was the hallmark of a Ball State education, but not a universal one. Unfortunately, the defining moments resulting from this collaboration were not shared by all students. And that is why we are on an intentional path to spread and strengthen those student-faculty relationships and that spirit of collaboration.
We are doing so through a process called immersive learning, which we have made the cornerstone of Ball State's strategic plan. Immersive learning pairs an interdisciplinary group of Ball State students with a faculty mentor to work on a project with a community partner. These students develop real-world solutions to real-world problems. This is truly a win-win situation, which is the reason that our strategic plan calls for us to offer immersive learning opportunities to every undergraduate student by 2012. We're making great progress. In the last academic year, more than 2,700 of our students from 35 academic departments and all seven of our colleges completed 160 immersive learning projects. In just two years, we have increased by more than 1,000 the number of undergraduates participating in immersive learning.
Over and over again, students tell me that these projects provide them with defining moments, teaching them much about themselves and preparing them for the world of collaboration and constant innovation that they will enter after graduation. And as I visit with leaders of communities, businesses, and other organizations around the state, they praise our student teams and the guidance and support they provide for their organization's future.
Let me give you just two examples, all of which also involve Building Better Communities, which connects Ball State faculty and students with community partners throughout the state. Last year, we completed BBC projects in more than 60 Indiana counties.
Bob Niezgodski is a senior in our College of Architecture and Planning from South Bend. Like many CAP students, Bob started his studies believing he wanted to be an architect in the traditional sense--he wanted to design and oversee the building of structures.
But Bob's defining moment began last fall, when he participated in a comprehensive planning studio that focused on how to create sustainable development around the proposed light rail corridor in Indianapolis and the northeast suburbs. And it continued with the immersive learning project, A Greener Nappanee, which is wrapping up this month.
As many of you know, Elkhart County has been in the national news quite a bit as it tries to diversify its economy so it is not so dependent on the recreational vehicle industry. A team of 10 students, including Bob, worked with numerous stakeholders in Elkhart County--the Nappanee mayor and his team; students, teachers, and administrators from the local schools; the Chamber of Commerce; representatives of the two industrial parks in town; and many others. I traveled there in July to watch our students lead a Green Summit, in which several proposals for the county were discussed.
These community leaders are receiving all kinds of products from the student team, including a DVD summarizing the green planning process and the next steps in the Greener Nappanee initiative, a curriculum about sustainability for middle-school teachers and programming of an upcoming Green Week in the local schools, and a guide to slow foods that can be used by area restaurants, the schools, and other organizations. Bob's most specific contributions will be as co-author of an economic redevelopment plan for green business at the town's industrial parks, including the reuse of abandoned factory space and the establishment of an education and demonstration laboratory for green initiatives and products, and as the organizer of a Green Certificate program, in which the Chamber of Commerce will honor area businesses for their green efforts in a manner similar to the Better Business Bureau seal of approval.
Bob is now an urban planning major who is committed to sustainable development. He says he wants to continue his work on the issue of sustainability after graduation, because, and I quote here, "I have found that my two passions are sustainable development and community involvement, and I also have found that if those two are combined, it improves the economic health of the community."
The other example of immersive learning is Project 18. Another team of Ball State students was central to the development of this project, announced by Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning in June.
Project 18 is a comprehensive statewide initiative to fight childhood obesity and features some of Indianapolis' biggest names as its community partners—Peyton Manning Children's Hospital at Saint Vincent, Marsh Supermarkets, and Strategic Marketing and Research, a full-service marketing research firm. Our students designed an 18-week health and wellness curriculum for students in the third to fifth grade, several public service announcements, and the public relations plan for a van that brings interactive educational materials to community events and county fairs around the state. The curriculum has already been adopted by more than 200 schools across the state and the initiative is already attracting national attention.
One of the students working for a semester on this project was Janet Kamiri, a senior health education major from Minnetonka, Minnesota. You’ll be learning a little about Janet in coming weeks as she is one of the students featured in the new Ball State television commercials that will debut in just a few days. She was a critical contributor to the elementary school health and wellness curriculum, and the marketing people at Saint Vincent were so impressed with her work that they hired her as an intern this summer to work with the medical staff at the hospital in finalizing the curriculum content.
That experience provided Janet with her defining moment. As a student from out of state, she found that she really liked the Indianapolis area and she plans to focus her job search in central Indiana. But she also found that she did not want to work for a large corporation or organization after graduation. She is quick to say that she values her internship at Saint Vincent, but she sometimes found the complexities of dealing with so many organizational levels and concerns frustrating. Janet remains committed to improving the nutrition, health, and exercise of young children, but she now knows she wants to do so by working for a small, community non-profit organization or school system.
These are just two stories of how immersive learning projects provide Ball State students with their defining moments. Immersive learning has been quite successful for us--many of our community partners have become repeat customers, and the number of students and faculty participating, as well as the number of community partners, increases with each year. Continuing to increase the number of immersive learning projects is an important component of our national capital campaign, Ball State Bold, which will raise $200 million by 2011. Despite the difficult economic conditions of the last year, we are nearly 90 percent of the way toward our goal.
I am often asked how colleges and universities can prepare Indiana's leaders for the 21st century. My answer is that we need to produce graduates who are innovative, collaborative, and problem-solving. Immersive learning projects encourage the development of those skills at the university. I firmly believe that an important test for any university is how it is meeting the needs of the general public, and our efforts in immersive learning prove that we at Ball State are meeting that test. The innovation, collaboration, and problem-solving displayed by our students and faculty as they provide exemplary service to the citizens of Indiana is why I am proud to be Ball State's president and to represent the university at events like this.
My congratulations to all of you who have helped the Network of Women in Business achieve its 30th anniversary and especially to our award winners this afternoon. Now I would be happy to take any questions you may have about what's happening at Ball State.