Indiana State University
After 140 years,
ISU still striving to offer 'more'
By John Chambers
From its beginnings
as Indiana State Normal School, one of Terre Haute's largest
employers has every desire to grow enrollment and brand a new
image on its 140-year-old history.
"As one has to do with marketing, you've got to know your
niche," said Lloyd W. Benjamin III.
He is the 10th president of Indiana State University, an institution
that has had four names and up to three separate locations.
"I think those of us who know the university feel pretty
good about it," said John Newton, executive director of
alumni affairs. "But I think that it's not known. This is
not the flagship of the state."
Working with a Denver company, ISU officially launched a new
marketing effort in February 2004 with the tagline "More.
From Day 1."
"We've never had an integrated marketing campaign until
this one," said Dave Taylor, assistant director of communications
and marketing, but it's filling an ongoing need.
"Ideally, what you would like to have eventually is such
a unique and identifiable brand that when someone says 'Indiana
State University,' they know exactly what that means," said
Mark Edwards, university director of marketing. "And that
takes a long time coming."
He said it's driven by factors such as increased competition
for students, accountability from legislators and others and
state budgetary issues. The university is coping with $5 million
in state cuts this academic year and the next.
Its integrated marketing will be a cycle of institutional evaluation,
using various mediums to present key aspects of ISU such as experiential
learning in the classroom and field. The effort has a $600,000
budget for the next three fiscal years.
ISU has continued to focus on communities in and around Indianapolis
and Evansville to attract students because of the areas' population,
demographics and other characteristics.
"I think a lot of it is a forming of attitudes," Newton
said. "I think, primarily, they know our name but they don't
know much about us."
The integrated marketing campaign launched the same month that
a partnership was finalized with Ivy Tech Community College of
Indiana, allowing students graduating with a technical certificate
or associate's degree from the community college to automatically
be eligible to complete a degree program at ISU.
Benjamin said the growth of area community college programs has
helped ISU be more selective, requiring completion of CORE 40
coursework and increasing freshman admission levels from a minimum
grade-point average of 2.25 to 2.5 on a 4.0 scale.
"And this year, we have increased the high-school requirement
- you have to be in the top 40 percent of your class," said
Rebecca Libler, interim associate vice president for enrollment
services. "Up until about 10 years ago, Indiana State was
an open enrollment school.
"By 2010, it is our intent to have the minimum GPA be at
3.0, but we tend to raise it slowly," she said.
Enrollment fell to 10,679 students this fall, which university
representatives have credited to competition and higher admission
standards.
"We seemed to be hit a little bit harder because not only
was there a smaller [student] pool, but we raised standards at
the same time," Libler said, citing other Indiana schools
such as Ball State University that are struggling with declining
enrollment.
ISU's enrollment topped at 13,533 students in 1970. U.S. elementary
and high-school enrollment reached an all-time high the same
year as baby boomers were of school age.
"There was a mood on campus that this was going to be the
next Michigan State," said Newton, who came to ISU as a
student in 1965. It didn't happen, but ISU is working toward
increasing enrollment from 10,679 to between 13,000 and 14,000,
including 2,000 to 2,500 in graduate programs, Benjamin said.
Graduate enrollment already reached 2,009 this fall, up 6.9 percent
and the second increase in a row.
"The economy sometimes plays a part in it and the growth
of our distance education programs," Libler said.
But in the midst of an evolving institution, Newton still hears
students picking ISU for familiar reasons.
"They chose it one, because we had the major that they wanted
and two, because we had an atmosphere that's comfortable to them,"
he said.
John Chambers can be reached at (812) 231-4254 or john.chambers@tribstar.com.
|
Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis |
| Meeting place: The fountain at Dede Plaza on the ISU campus is one of the most familiar features of the school. |
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WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT ISU
- Indiana State University was founded in 1865 as
Indiana State Normal School. It kept the name until 1929, when
it became Indiana State Teachers College. The institution was
known as Indiana State College from 1960 to 1965 before taking
its current name.
- ISU-Evansville was created in 1965 until the campus branch
was granted independent standing in 1985.
- The university's eastern division began in 1918 in Muncie.
It became Ball State Teachers College in 1929 when Indiana State
Normal became Indiana State Teachers College, but was governed
by the teachers college until 1961.
- Lloyd W. Benjamin III is ISU's 10th president.
- The university offers more than 100 majors and student organizations.
- It has 454 full-time faculty, 445 full-time staff and 756 full-time
support staff, according to 2004 figures.
- ISU has 15 official sports teams and Sycamore Sam is the school
mascot.
- Of the university's 11,200 students during the 2004-2005 school
year, 9,321 were undergraduate students, 5,816 were women and
79.6 percent Caucasian. Almost 85 percent of students were from
Indiana, 11.3 percent were from out of state and 3.8 percent
were from 61 different countries.
- The school offers associate, bachelor's, master's, doctorate
and education specialist degrees. The top undergraduate majors
are elementary/early childhood education, criminology, communications
and systems and decisions sciences, according to 2004 numbers.
- The most popular graduate majors are industrial technology
education; educational leadership; administration and foundations;
counseling; elementary, early and special education; and criminology,
according to figures from the same year.
- Indiana State University is online at www.indstate.edu.
Source: Indiana State University Web site.
WELL-KNOWN ISU ALUMNI
Olympic athletes Bruce Baumgartner, Larry Bird and Kurt Thomas
are among Indiana State University's most widely known alumni.
Here are just a few of the university's other well-known graduates,
by name, class and profession:
- Robert E. Casey Jr., 1980, deputy assistant director, FBI Directorate
of Intelligence
- Maj. Gen. Jack Davis, 1968, deputy commander, U.S. Marine Corps
Forces Europe
- Anton Hulman George, 1985, president, Indianapolis Motor Speedway
- Eva Kor, 1990, founder and president, CANDLES Holocaust Museum
- Paul Lo, 1970 (master's degree), president/CEO, SinoPac Holdings
- Carolene Mays, 1985, president/general manager, Indianapolis
Recorder
- John T. Myers, 1951, retired U.S. congressman
- Cynthia Shepard Perry, 1968, U.S. director, African Development
Bank
- Lou Anna Kimsey Simon, 1969, president, Michigan State University
- John R. Wooden, 1947 (master's degree), NCAA coaching legend
with the UCLA men's basketball team
List compiled by Indiana State University's office of communications
and marketing.