Valpo Strategic Plan

[valpo95]

I'm sure St. Thomas had successful D-III men's hockey for quite a while, and I think started their women's hockey team about 15 years ago. Their football team was one of the most successful D-III programs in the country. Still, to upgrade to D-1 in all sports is a major achievement.

It may also be that they had the support and committment of several big donors to make that leap.

[vu72]

I'm sure St. Thomas had successful D-III men's hockey for quite a while, and I think started their women's hockey team about 15 years ago. Their football team was one of the most successful D-III programs in the country. Still, to upgrade to D-1 in all sports is a major achievement.

It may also be that they had the support and committment of several big donors to make that leap.

St. Thomas has an endowment north of 500 Mil and an enrollment of 9000 so a large alumni base.

[crusadermoe]

Good points in terms of the analogies or church terms!   

I would guess that the family with three 8-figure gifts in the press release already has driven up the "status" factor and lured more high gifts.  Wonder what happened to the chef donor? ----- to VU Library   

[vu72]

Good points in terms of the analogies or church terms!   

I would guess that the family with three 8-figure gifts in the press release already has driven up the "status" factor and lured more high gifts.  Wonder what happened to the chef donor? ----- to VU Library   

That would be the Christopher's.  Jay is a 1967 Valpo grad.  He and his Doris (primarily his wife) started and built a company called The Pampered Chef. He and his wife are now divorced. They gave $15 million for the Library, as well as large amounts for the Kalley-Christopher building. He also paid for the track.

The pampered Chef was sold to Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway in 2002 for a reported $900 million.

[FWalum]

Good points in terms of the analogies or church terms!   

I would guess that the family with three 8-figure gifts in the press release already has driven up the "status" factor and lured more high gifts.  Wonder what happened to the chef donor? ----- to VU Library   

That would be the Christopher's.  Jay is a 1967 Valpo grad.  He and his Doris (primarily his wife) started and built a company called The Pampered Chef. He and his wife are now divorced. They gave $15 million for the Library, as well as large amounts for the Kalley-Christopher building. He also paid for the track.

The pampered Chef was sold to Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway in 2002 for a reported $900 million.

Jay Christopher and his now ex-wife have given over 75 million to VU.

[valpotx]

That family has done more than enough.  There is a limit to how much you can bleed someone for donations, just because they were successful

[valpo tundra]

Please see an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this weekend that highlights Webster University. While there are several similarities with Valpo, one of the main takeaways is that dozens of universities will be fighting for their existence in the next few years.

[historyman]

FWIW, the University of St. Thomas just announced a new basketball and hockey arena, at a total project cost of $175 million. They have a donor who committed a $75 million lead gift.

https://tommiesports.com/news/2023/1/17/Arena.aspx

Sure would be nice to have a donor or two like that for all of VU.

It's worth a lot, 95.

I hope my reply doesn't hijack this thread and send us off into the typical series of facility or coaching rants and gets the thread off it real purpose.  I merely would like to commend UST for how they have gone about building their brand and following through in an incredibly committed way to strategic goals and initiatives. Of course $75 million in a single gift helps a bit. But it's more than that.

When UST got tossed out of DIII, they committed to going straight up to D-I. They applied and heavily lobbied for a waiver and got it. They joined the Summit League in all league sports, and on top of that, actually added men's and women's D-I hockey — not inexpensive.  And, of course, they. joined the PFL in football.

All were big leaps. Most schools would've said we need to carefully ramp up and transition. Not the Tommies.

This is year two in D-I for all sports. They won the PFL and were nationally ranked. As of today,  they are in the middle of the pack in the Summit's MBB standings.  And then, for good measure to leverage the $75 million gift, they announced a $131 million fund drive for a new multi-use arena that could open as soon as 2025.  They don't even have a design yet. That characteristic of meeting challenges head-on and proactively deserves respect and a measure of admiration.

[crusadermoe]

VU72 noted that St. Thomas has an enrollment over 9,000 and the endowment is over $500 million.  That makes them 3x our current size and twice as wealthy. I don't know much about their programs.

So...back to closer peers in size and structure. Bradley seems closest to us in size. Peoria will be hurting with Caterpillar leaving.  Both VU and Bradley also draw heavily from the shrinking state of Illinois. Not good.

How will we rise above this peer group of Bradley, Drake, and Butler?  What distinguishes us?  That's what you say in a strategic plan. 

[David81]

How will we rise above this peer group of Bradley, Drake, and Butler?  What distinguishes us?  That's what you say in a strategic plan. 

I've been thinking about this a lot. Not just for VU, but for higher ed generally.

And for VU especially, however, I still think it's about blending values (=liberal arts) and vocation (=professions). Helping to infuse young folks with values and an appreciation for the world around them, while helping to imbue them with skills and knowledge to succeed vocationally. And at times those two elements blend together.

It's heresy to say this, but I think to some extent it means minimizing a lot of the edu-speak ("outcomes," "assessments") and career/dollar-speak ("hit the ground running," "ROI"), as well as the unwinnable (or at least tiresome) culture wars, and simply saying that this is a place where one can grow as a whole person. And you know what, the pieces are already in place to offer that theme. Those friendly debates we've been having in these threads about the liberal arts vs. the professions? Maybe it's about messaging the liberal arts and the professions.

[vu84v2]

David81 - I agree with much of what you say, but also disagree with some of what you say. Agree about it being liberal arts and professions. Agree with minimizing the unwinnable culture wars. Agree with being a place where one can grow as a whole person. And attention paid to excessive work on assessment and outcomes does not bring a lot of value - though accreditation bodies expect this and are less likely to renew if colleges within the university do not do this.

I disagree with you on ROI and messages of being ready to be successful in the workforce. College costs a lot and has increased substantially in the last 10-20 years. Whether to spend and how much to spend are huge decisions for most families and universities need to justify the price...specifically, what is the better future (i.e., income associated with chosen career). The message Valpo should use, besides growing and developing the whole person, is that we provide a challenging path to reach that better future....but because of X, Y, and z we increase a student's probability of reaching that goal.

[crusadermoe]

Yes, it would be very helpful to show ROI, by how the truly high achieving professionals were helped by the hybrid of tech/liberal arts. That's not a precise measure because you always have tons of caveats. But a bunch of good examples can make a case. 

My sense of alumni friends from the late 70s or early 80s is that many VU engineers did extremely well in rising into leadership because they communicated well and/or had leadership roles all the way through college in extracurriculars. 

You do need ROI, but it seems like anecdotal stories of ROI are your best bet.

[David81]

As I see it, ROI as colleges either choose or are pressed to measure it is way too focused on the short term. It also undervalues how a liberal arts degree can be the door opener to a high quality professional degree that carries significantly higher earning potential. A lot of my VU schoolmates followed that path: majoring in liberal arts disciplines, a good number with a Christ College affiliation, then parlaying that success into admission into selective law and business schools, which put them on a higher income trajectory (sometimes waaay higher). That's why Crusadermoe's suggestion of using anecdotal accounts is more desirable; it tells the whole story.

I also wish there was some holistic measure, taken from maybe 10/20/30 years out, of assessing the long-term value of the degree and the VU experience. Not just career and income wise, but also in terms of living lives fully and meaningfully. I'd bet that VU grads would do quite well under that broader measure....maybe better on the whole than many graduates of more prestigious schools. My appreciation for VU has grown in part because I look at the lives of folks from VU I became and stayed friends with and thought, wow, people turned out well. They're living good lives.

[ValpoDiaspora]

I agree with David that what ought to matter (and probably will matter more and more to employers) is whether a school helps to cultivate certain kinds of qualities. Now that so much info can be found online and AI can churn out so much low-quality content, surely it's informed judgement and intellectual and interpersonal maturity that will set future employees apart:

Can a person focus and read, listen, and interpret data patiently -- rather than just thinking in reactive sound-bites or reproducing cherry-picked data memes?

Are they able to not only perform competently whatever technical tasks they need to do -- whether that's writing a grammatical sentence, coding a program, or administering the right dosage to a patient -- but also communicate compellingly why they make the judgements they do?

Do they possess an internal radar for whether their own knowledge and skill at something is solid or still murky & weak? If they they don't grasp something, do they identify that and have the will to buckle down and practice the problems or search for the clarifying concept until they really 'get' it? Or do they just keep floating perpetually in the mode of 'well, I watched the video... maybe I could watch it again before the test...."?

Do they have a sense of integrity in their work, being committed to do the work well with an eye towards all those it affects?

Etc.

Yet as David 81 says, we don't have the tools to assess institutions on contributing to these sorts of qualities over the long horizon.

And honestly I'm not sure that higher ed (in general, or even in liberal artsy places like Valpo) really knows how to rise to the challenge of forming solid adults in the digital age. Unfortunately, students experience their learning more and more in piece-meal ways regardless of type of institution.

Part of it is their own tendency to try to maximize everything (probably inherited from the AP high school culture) that leads them to take way more classes than they can possibly actually study for. I find many of the COVID-era e-learners now arriving as freshmen are especially resigned to the fact that they will not really master the content in whatever courses they sign up for. It feels very overwhelming to them -- probably because it is overwhelming in a world where everything from everywhere is possibly accessible! And they have such strong senses of FOMO and FOBO (fear of missing out, fear of better options) about their classes and majors that they tend to sign up for way more than they can actually digest. Or maybe it has always been this way? I'm not sure.

And part of it is the structural technology of higher ed, where universities (both elite research unis and comprehensive liberal arts places like Valpo) structurally push students to live in Blackboard & email to their ultimate detriment. I suspect it is not so piecemeal in fields like math or organic chemistry where the curriculum is more stable. However, in many humanities and social science fields, there's a lot of administrator pressure on faculty to not assign expensive textbooks and to make sure of diverse sources in the curriculum. Indeed, it is important to keep an eye on cost to students and to include intellectually and geographically diverse voices, so I'm not saying those aren't valid concerns. But the net effect is that students rarely work through a comprehensive textbook or standard anthology but increasingly spend spend their time clicking open this or that pdf uploaded to the LMS to skim it before (or maybe during) class, with little sense of where stuff fits. Indeed, many of them have never read a whole book in high school either, but have always just been assigned to read websites and web articles and out-of-context pdfs all the way through. It's an uphill battle for faculty to try to re-systematize and re-narrativize the possibly infinite data into comprehensible units. So too, rather than have a natural conversation with their faculty members about course content and learning and life trajectories, our students are habituated into handling everything piece-meal via quick emails: "Hello Professor X. My grade was 89.4% and very close to an A-. Will you please round it up, since I want to apply to Z and am worried about my GPA." I think these endless requests are less a matter of intentional entitlement and more a symptom of having done all their relationships in small e-interactions of trying to get what you want. I really suspect some of them shoot off the 'where is X pdf' or 'can I have extra credit' emails to faculty with the same quick flippant impulse that they send  'send me boob pics?' texts to their girlfriends. Today's undergrads have very little experience of engaging conversations in-person and over time, where one becomes more sensitive to what builds or erodes good-will and mutual trust in an academic or professional setting. Faculty are not impervious to this either, as it is often easier to just click all the e-tracking buttons you're supposed to click to cover the university's legal concerns, and hope that it sends off e-alerts to whatever advisor or retention officer on campus is supposed to handle an academically struggling student, than to sit the student down and have a real conversation. So much energy gets diverted into e-tracking the students and also being e-tracked oneself in student evals and activity reports for administration, that it really does take an extra re-commitment to make sure the actual learning together and thinking together with other 3-d humans is still happening. So all in all, I think the re-location of education out of books and conversations into BB pdfs and into email and e-tracking is a MASSIVE shift, with losses in intellectual and relational capacity that we are only now starting to see fully with undergrads who have done their entire K-12 and now college educations in these modalities, and faculty too who have been inaugurated from the start into this version of higher ed. College is SO different now than when I went through in the early 2000s.

Whatever college or university can figure out how to cultivate adults capable of sustained reasoning and relationship today... they will really do a service to higher ed and to society as a whole! I bet in the long run they would become a very desirable places and degree-granting institutions for students and employers alike. I just can't imagine that employers will really want ChatGPT doing their thinking for them...

[VULB#62]

David and Diaspora, thank you for your spot-on (IMHO) assessments of the state of academia.

I can't speak to that from an experiential perspective having not really been deeply involved professionally in higher education. But I can second your assessments from a higher education end-product view point.

Over a lengthy career in business and technology, I have observed a dichotomy in the work force within my particular world.  To oversimplify: pure techies (engineers, technogeeks, etc. whose higher education experiences were intensely focused on "the profession" almost to the exclusion of the "liberal arts") vs. technology professionals (engineers, computer scientists, etc. who emerged from well-rounded higher education experiences). Both types of professionals are valuable.  However, those with the well-rounded educational background invariably, over time, bring a value-added component to their companies that, while probably unmeasurable, contributes to the company as a whole in greater proportion.

I guess what I am saying is that a Valpo engineering, nursing, meteorology, biology, etc., etc., grad whose curriculum includes broad liberal arts components will enjoy a more fulfilling career, faster advancement, and possesses the potential to make greater contributions in their field. 

At least that's what I've observed.

And I think that is something Valpo should leverage in establishing their brand in the future.

[valpopal]

In past posts on this thread we have discussed the planned focus of new construction on campus. For instance, in addition to the ARC, we noted interest in a new nursing building and other possibilities. Today, President Padilla informed the campus community in an open letter that a priority of the five-year Valpo Strategic Plan supported by the Board will be establishment of a new first-year residential complex with amenities and features incoming students expect. I think this strategy to enhance enrollment will be welcomed by many. However, I expect the method for financing the project could be controversial and troubling for some. In fact, Padilla acknowledges "not all will agree with our decisions," as he reports the new dorms initiative will be paid with proceeds from sale of some select paintings in the Brauer Museum of Art collection. Also of interest is a policy statement that this is "a practice we will use for other parts of the strategic plan. We will consider assets and resources that are not core or critical to our educational mission and strategic plan, and reallocate them to support the plan."

[crusadermoe]

Warning: Even reading this could expel you from a solid future in higher education. Bearing in my mind the wise insights about information overload, suggest that a mere focus could support more informative personal dialog in small classes.  With so much information and cultural shaming these days, I would be very very confused and may even have a perception that the world and the country are only 30-40 years old.  As we know, before that 30-40 years, there were oppressors and oppressed and the grievances are just as fresh as ever and should receive a class-based or racially based framework above all else (yes, more sarcasm.)

When I attended Christ College, the freshman curriculum was titled, "The History of Western Civilization." (or other others attached to the latter two words.  While many in higher ed now would cringe at that title in our new era of sensitivity, is it possible that history can still be beneficially learned (sarcasm meant)?  Could you benefit in your political wisdom by studying the historical path of Greece to Rome to the Reformation to our English Common Law, to the new radical democracy/federalism of the USA? Dare I say that could be a helpful perspective for young people, if not a fully world one? The CC curriculum later started balancing eastern civilizations and others into two precious semesters. This is laudable, but isn't that a little much for 18 year olds to pack into their brains?  Why not master thoroughly the history and origins of the culture in your hemisphere where you live and be taught factual history of slavery, crusades, and other regrettable portions of it. We let the fear of bias prevent us from just taking the facts where they lead.

[David81]

Holy moly! I must focus on a few things to earn my living today 🤣, but I just wanted to express my appreciation for the many insightful posts over the past day. Overall, these ongoing conversations have been very thoughtful and thought-provoking. I'll share more thoughts later, but felt moved to observe that such exchanges are not always the norm in this online world.

[vu72]

will be establishment of a new first-year residential complex with amenities

I don't presume you are prevvy to the specifics, but, what does this really mean? Are they going to tear down Alumni or Wehrenberg to make room for this new "complex"?? Of the older dorms, only Guild/Memorial as well as Wehrenberg are air-conditioned while the other dorms are not.  Could it be a tear down of off-line Scheele?

[valpopal]

will be establishment of a new first-year residential complex with amenities

I don't presume you are prevvy to the specifics, but, what does this really mean? Are they going to tear down Alumni or Wehrenberg to make room for this new "complex"?? Of the older dorms, only Guild/Memorial as well as Wehrenberg are air-conditioned while the other dorms are not.  Could it be a tear down of off-line Scheele?

As of now, my understanding is that Wehrenberg and Brandt will be closed and are scheduled for renovation beginning this fall. I am awaiting more details.

[crusader05]

The freshman dorms are old an atrocious and way behind other schools so good on them for fixing it. The lower enrollment at least allows for this renovation to happen at once vs a slow roll out as well so silver lining.

I can see the concern about selling the paintings but also, while a nice plus and benefit it does seem that, if this finances a full renovation without accruing more debt or earring into donor dollars when you are asking for money For other campaigns it feels like this is the responsible decision. It isn't a fun one to make, but when students have seen profs and staff laid off and other things get cut can we really say this is a bad look?

[VULB#62]

How about real estate sales as well?

Good planning could result in a compressed but still gorgeous central campus. Eastgate field, for instance, is essentially under-utilized except for baseball. Bring baseball back onto the main campus and sell those acres.  Use other real estate assets to also finance a new multipurpose arena that, if structured correctly, could generate additional revenue.

It's nice to have a sprawling campus, but a compact, close knit campus has a lot of plusses too.

[valpo tundra]

As I have mentioned before, real estate has recently been sold on old campus that a non-profit is using to build affordable housing. That small windfall doesn't necessarily have a destination. What's unique about the selling of works of art from the Brauer Museum of Art collection is that this will be used to fund some renovations to existing dorms and possibly new Freshmen dorms. Already, there is a debate on campus about whether the works of art are integral to the liberal arts curriculum or are they superfluous to the overall mission. This board decision was made known to a handful of people at the beginning of January but just now made public. The Urschel Family had given substantial money to the museum with the caveat that it be named for Richard Brauer and now the name of the museum may be in question. The collection of almost 3,000 pieces includes such artists as Andy Warhol, Junius Sloan, Dale Chihuly, Ansel Adams, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Aside from some legal and ethical issues surrounding this development, look for more similar funding mechanisms in the near future.

[vu72]

real estate has recently been sold on old campus that a non-profit is using to build affordable housing

Are you sure this sale has closed?  I just looked at the records and didn't see a sale.  As for the paintings, this might be enough to build the new arena.  An O'Keeffe recently sold for 44 million!

[crusader05]

From what I have heard it sounds like it's enough to fully fund the dorm renovations but I don't think it's anywhere near the amount for an arena. I get some donors are upset but this is also a problem with relaying on donors to fund things. They don't want to fund the necessary but boring stuff. I remember hearing last year that they desperately tried to get a donor for the beacon hall while they were building it and noone was interested even with naming rights out there.