Jo Ann M. Gora has served as Ball State University’s 14th president since 2004. She quickly demonstrated her commitment to putting students first by declining an inauguration and instead establishing a scholarship fund for 25 high-achieving students. She is redefining education by making immersive learning the cornerstone of every Ball State student’s college experience.
During the 2008-09 academic year, more than 2,700 Ball State students completed 160 immersive learning projects under the mentoring of faculty from 35 university departments. Many of those projects were conducted through the university’s Building Better Communities, which last year completed projects in 55 Indiana counties. Ball State students have completed immersive learning projects in locales as distant as Vietnam and Hong Kong.
Gora has led an update of Ball State’s strategic plan and has increased its commitment to emerging media, campus diversity, and developing nationally ranked academic programs. That plan is the basis for the university’s capital campaign, Ball State Bold: Investing in the Future, which will raise $200 million by 2011. The campaign will create an additional 100 unique immersive learning opportunities and 200 new scholarships.
In May, Gora received the Mira Trailblazer Award from TechPoint for her significant and lasting contributions to technology innovation in Indiana. Among Ball State’s many recent technological achievements was its 2005 designation as the nation’s top wireless campus by Intel and the university’s five-year, $17.7 million Emerging Media Initiative. Announced in late 2008, the initiative funds more research in emerging media, assists Ball State faculty and students in launching new businesses, and helps companies, especially those in Indiana, to improve their emerging media capabilities.
Gora was one of the 12 charter signatories to the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment in December 2006. In May, Gora and other officials broke ground on the largest geothermal district energy system in the United States. When completed, that system will heat and cool more than 40 buildings on Ball State’s 660-acre campus, saving the university $2 million a year while reducing its carbon footprint by nearly half.
Under Gora’s leadership, more than $320 million of completed or current construction and renovation has changed the face of Ball State’s campus since her arrival. The university dedicated four new or completely renovated buildings in fall 2007. These include Park Hall, Ball State’s first new campus residence hall in nearly four decades; Scheumann Stadium; and the David Letterman Communication and Media Building, a leading-edge instructional building that drew lavish praise from its namesake when he returned to his alma mater for the dedication ceremonies. This fall, renovations to Ball Honors House and DeHority Complex were completed, and renovations to the Pittenger Student Center will be complete by early 2010. In fall 2010, two new buildings will be opened: the Student Recreation and Wellness Facility and Kinghorn Hall, another residence hall located on the north end of campus.
Gora is Indiana’s representative to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities board and is one of the 57 presidents and chancellors on The New York Times/Chronicle of Higher Education higher education cabinet. She chairs the Mid-American Conference Presidents’ Council and co-chairs the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, where she previously chaired the governance committee. She serves on the boards of First Merchants Bank, Ball Memorial Hospital, and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, where she co-chairs the Business-Higher Education Forum.
Gora was named one of 2007’s most influential women in Indiana by the Indianapolis Business Journal and one of 15 “Women of Wonder” in the spring 2008 issue of Indiana Minority Business Magazine. In 2005, she received a Torchbearer Award from the Indiana Commission for Women for her commitment to higher education. The award is the highest honor given by the state of Indiana to Hoosier women who have overcome or removed barriers to equality or whose achievements have contributed to making the state a better place in which to live, work or raise a family. She also received a Sagamore of the Wabash, Indiana’s highest civilian honor, in 2005. In 2008, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Yeungnam University in South Korea.
Gora came to Ball State from the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she had been chancellor since 2001. Previously, she served for nine years as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Old Dominion University in Virginia. She earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from Vassar College and master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology from Rutgers University. She has published two books, The New Female Criminal: Empirical Reality or Social Myth? and Emergency Squad Volunteers: Professionalism in Unpaid Work, as well as numerous articles in the fields of criminology, medical sociology, and organizational behavior.
Related Links:
Print-quality photos of President Gora and other university administrators
Downloadable Biography [PDF]