I think John Nunes would be a great new President. Former Valpo professor, man of color, led multi-million dollars organization as well as being a President of a Lutheran college and a sports fan! His son JJ was a star DB at Valpo a few years ago.
I had the opportunity to spend some time with JJ a while back. He’s a world class guy, and I’ve heard nothing but great things about his father. I would fully support that.
Tied to the articles on the junk rating move, I've also seen references to the lack of religion-affiliated youth. I've been saying this for a few years now on this forum, but it is a real problem that Valpo will have moving forward. Most youth are not moving towards religion, they are moving far away from it.
I said it in the other thread, and I will say it in here.
There are two ways to grow revenue. We need a competent enrollment leader. We need a competent development leader. And we need a competent president to hire both. I sincerely hope this president’s cabinet are polishing their resumes, because the new prez needs to clean house.
@regionrat03 nice guy, good person. Not sure he is the person to solve the problem that needs to be defined.
Tied to the articles on the junk rating move, I've also seen references to the lack of religion-affiliated youth. I've been saying this for a few years now on this forum, but it is a real problem that Valpo will have moving forward. Most youth are not moving towards religion, they are moving far away from it.
Where are they moving to? I have a suspicion — it’s away from “organized” religion and more toward personal spiritualism. I know I lost respect for “organized” religion a long, long time ago, but I never abandoned my spiritual beliefs. It’s the organized part that is driving some young people away, the politics within sects, the hypocrisy, yadda, yadda. That doesn’t mean, however, that a faith-based institution like Valpo can’t be attractive to the spiritual needs of young people. But I don’t know quitehow to package it.
yes, the resume looks very good and aligns. Just too bad that he took that job in 2024. And the schools are remarkably similar in sizes of enrollment and annual budget. They are more leveled in enrollment and operating money. And there is that nice view of the Pacific ocean a few miles away....not a long drive from Malibu and Hollywood etc.
@vulb62 Valpo and other denominational schools are in a tough bind.
On some level, I agree with you that students are wary of 'organized' religion, so there might be some benefit in a more open-ended framing that presents Christianity as a way of life rather than an organizational club. To find some more compelling "Christian" pitch would probably be more successful than a denominationally 'Lutheran' pitch (even if that's where a lot of the donors may be).
But more generally, I don't have much hope for the 'spiritual but not religious' folk to meaningfully change society (or make decisions like enrollment based on it). My general sense is that people who claimed it, say, back in the 1970s, really may have been engaging in personal spiritual practices like prayer or meditation or participating in some kind of interesting alternative spiritual community. But today most the students who say they're SBNR are mostly just trying to avoid the perceived extremes of saying they either do or don't belong to a religious tradition/aspiration, and I don't get the impression that it means much on the ground... they don't necessarily act or live any differently than any religious or secular student who is trying to make money, scrolling their phone, buying stuff of Amazon, etc. In the great flattening of the American citizen into the American consumer, I just don't see many interesting Spiritual-but-Not-Religious folk out there bucking the trend of anything. So it's not like that gives Valpo any kind of concrete or enlivening prospective population to target for enrollment.
@vuindiana @vulb62 , at risk of quoting myself here, there are similar discussions earlier in this thread: https://www.valpofanzone.com/community/postid/5374/
Denominational-only schools might be especially challenged, yet that has never been VU's selling point at least in the last 50 years. I still maintain there is room for VU to be attractive to students who might consider Jesuit schools like Marquette, Creighton, Fordham or Gonzaga, or non-Jesuit schools like Baylor, Saint Louis or Notre Dame.
Agree fully with valpo95, though I will point out that Saint Louis is also Jesuit.
@vu84v2 I stand corrected - I missed Saint Louis on the list of Jesuit universities.
Yeah, maybe the difference is that I just don't think the Catholic schools have quite the same denominational cast as the Lutheran ones.
If Catholic families are interested in sending their kid to a religious school or if Catholic alumni/donors are considering giving to them, most think of the Catholic identity in a pretty generic umbrella way ('I'm Catholic' or 'I grew up Catholic'). Of course, you have a few that may care more about specifics (the ideological reputation of the school, the religious order its affiliated with, etc.) but the vast majority are not getting too deep into those weeds because they are prone to think of Catholicism as synonymous with faith/religion itself. Whereas the Lutherans (even before you get into LCMS vs ELCA issues) are already much more cognizant of Lutheranism as a particular denomination or sub-sector just because of the history of Lutheranism as protest against Rome. Maybe it is kind of like saying "Muslim' vs "Sunni" where the former seems to connote a world religion in umbrella terms or in the most universal scope (at least in the minds of those who belong to it), whereas the latter terms seem already to flag some sectarian sub-division.
I just don't know how Valpo can invoke Lutheranism without it seeming like a denominationalizing identity move, when it was/is in fact a particularizing split rather than an appeal to some kind of broader catholicity. The Jesuit schools just don't have the same challenge, since they can always gesture at some generic notion of Jesuit+ Catholic, whereas the Lutheran ones are kind of stuck with a sense of [LCMS/ELCA] Lutheran-instead-of-[Rome? other synod?].
Soooo.....I don't necessarily think the "non-religious" recruiting message should be aimed at the "spiritual but not religious" cohort. While respecting those whose spiritual practices may include meditation or yoga or even secular prayer, I don't think that's the target group.
Rather, it's appealing to kids who take a search for values seriously, who are drawn to pursue meaningful and purposeful lives, and who desire to spend some of their collegiate experience inquiring what that means.
And that inquiry includes vocation, which is why VU's professional and vocational offerings are a vitally important piece of the puzzle.
David81 - Excellent points regarding "values and meaningful purposeful lives" as the centerpiece of Valpo's value proposition. And once again, you seem to be able to state my thoughts in a far more articulate manner than I would.
@David81, yeah, I think that makes sense... though if I were to quibble, maybe it's just that it seems a little overly optimistic about 'values'?
It's not that students are somehow value-less and then come seeking values as some kind of clearly positive tradition. At this point, most students DO have values - but it shows up in strange ways, like in the assumption that it's more fair to turn a blind eye to one's own or one's peers' cheating than to 'snitch,' that it's more moral to do what's efficient (lift work from peers, or have chatgpt do it) than to do things the inefficient way oneself, and it's more responsible to make a lot of money for oneself than do something with lesser ROI. If the university wants to teach 'values,' it is to some extent a de-learning of values as much as it is a learning of new ones.
So I'm just kind of dim on generic 'values' talk, since there are plenty of values out there (shaped by Amazon, political headlines, credit card companies, football advertisements, and everything else under the sun) but they're not necessarily worth the endorsement of the university.
Look. At some point the school has to look into marketing more. This is probably the 5th time in the span of 2 months I have seen people on the internet go to forums and message boards (reddit) and ask people there if the school is good. The question is the same every time.
"I like the program and the cost is great with fin aid, but I have heard a lot of talk about decline and am scared".
VU needs to get back out there rather than acting like a conclave of seclusion
