Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
(transcribed by Shea)
\m [music playing] \m\m
>> male speaker:
Coming up next on EIU Conversation, we'll talk with President Bill Perry on his vision
for Eastern Illinois University.
And welcome to EIU conversation, I'm Jack Neil, and again, we're joined by President
Bill Perry of Eastern Illinois University, good to have you back.
>> President Perry:
Great to be back.
>> Jack:
I wanted to spend some time talking a little bit about what's going with Eastern these
days and really looking to the future and where you see, not only Eastern, but the future
of higher education in the next half hour or so.
But we're in a different facility here, as we are with every show, we're sort of working
our way around campus, and sort of touring Eastern.
Could you give us a little bit about where we are today.
>> President Perry:
Well we're in the Booth Library, used to be the south end of campus, in fact I think when
it was built it was believed to be very very far south.
>> Jack:
It really has expanded the campus has expanded dramatically since it started.
Well it has, and actually we're in the original part of Booth Library, it's a very beautiful
part, there was an addition that was done later which is also quite well done, and it
really is a wonderful library, not just the structure but the services here and the attitude,
because a library really is at the heart and the soul, the core of the university.
Because this is where information is available for learning and teaching.
So it serves all of us, it served thousands of students very well for many years, and
of course we're here in the Edgar room, named after Jim Edgar who is an EIU alum and two
term governor of Illinois.
>> Jack:
Really and again, I'll get off the library in a little bit here, but it's a high tech
facility, this is not sort of your grandmother's and grandfather's library is it?
>> President Perry:
Well that's right.
In fact instead of card catalogue, you've got computers, rooms of computers here.
Students can use those computers to access a lot of information.
If I want to check a book out of the library as I do, I can find out from my desktop in
the office, or at home whether the book is here, whether it's checked out or not.
I can make request for books from inter-library loan, on those rare occasions when it's not
here.
And so it is very, very high tech and that's important these days because as our strategic
plan stated in so many words, we have to be able to enable students to access and faculty
to access information anytime, anyplace and almost on any device.
>> Jack:
I want to talk a little bit about the strategic plan in just a bit.
I want to also talk a bit about our renewable energy center.
We were there for the last program and we did a tour of the facility.
Where are things at that location now.
>> President Perry:
Well since that time, we've had approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education, a
Center for Clean Energy and Research Education, and that center has over 50 faculty members
affiliated with it, recently received a national science foundation grant, multi-year grant.
And that center really focuses on research and teaching and public service with respect
to alternative energy and clean energy.
Also, it's building connections with the local school district, we want to see if there are
ways that our expertise in this area will impact the cirriculum of the local schools.
So we have a committee of folks from campus and from Charleston High School looking at
that.
>> Jack:
You brought up EIU's strategic plan.
What's the latest there?
>> President Perry:
Well we gave a draft of the strategic plan to the board of trustees at our last board
meeting, and the upcoming board meeting on March 2nd, we will be presenting it for the
board's endorsement.
As you know, the plan came about after over a year of work on campus, we had a 27 member
steering committee, majority of which was faculty.
We had board membership on that as liazon.
And we had over 900 almost a thousand people involved in discussions, structured sessions,
and out of that whole process came several areas, six areas that we wanted to focus on
strategically.
Academic excellence of course, that's a hallmark of Eastern and we want to continue to build
in that area of financial sustainability, global competition, and student demographics,
technology, community relationships, these are the areas that we want to focus on and
we've got a set of actions under each strategic theme and we'll be moving forward after endorsement
with investing in some of those.
>> Jack:
A lot of people, as you mentioned, were involved in that process over the last year, so a little
more than that maybe.
How did that go?
Often when you get a lot of people involved it can be somewhat like herding cats, as you
know.
Yet, this was a process that seemed to go quite logically from my perspective.
How did that happen?
How did that work so well?
>> President Perry:
Well the framework for it, collaborative strategic planning is something that's been used in
the past at other universities and our consultants for the process helped us with that.
I've got to give a lot of credit to Bill Weber, Assege HalleMariam, professor in psychology,
and Kim Baker, director of campus recreation, who were the tri-chairs I guess you say, of
the steering committee, and the steering committee itself for moderating that whole process.
So the committee actually broke up into groups of two or three, and those individuals each
moderated and facilitated these different discussion sessions around campus.
So there was an organizational framework, but the key was, the steering committee really
carried out all the duties that they absolutely had to, to make that process work.
>> Jack:
The reaction you've heard has been positive?
>> President Perry:
Yes.
Very positive from all corners.
>> Jack:
One of the other things that has happened recently and I think has been real popular
around campus, I know at least with everybody I run into, we have you locked into another
three years as I, at this point in time, as we do this program.
Obviously that's a good thing, many positive reactions to that.
Looking ahead for the next few years, what do you see s really being the need of Eastern?
What do you really want to focus on?
>> President Perry:
Well first of all, Eastern, like any public university, is going to face many challenges
in the future, and it's those challenges of state funding and uncertainty of it, accountability,
performance based funding, affordability, the rising cost of tuition, the income of
families who want their students to acheive a college education, all those are coming
together in a potent mix, at a time when the economy just doesn't seem to be getting any
traction.
So, we have, along with the other public universities, to face these challenges.
One of the reasons we did the strategic planning in the timing that we did, was to take into
account all of those forces.
And I think when you look at the strategic plan and you look at what Eastern's been doing
right now, in terms of enhancing retention, our student success center, our consultation
with Noel Levitz on our recruitment and retention and finanical aid strategies, those are all
focused on those issues of access and affordability.
Also the financial stustainability part of our strategic plan is built with the realization
of these external factors of uncertain state funding, uncertain funding for MAP Grants,
and all of these issues.
But what we've resolved to do with our strategic plan is to make the changes we can make, try
to influence the changes we think would be beneficial for Eastern, and then for those
we can't control or can't influence, we just have to track them and see what we need to
do to meet those.
But number one is academic excellence, we just absolutely have to continue the excellence
of the education at Eastern Illinois University, and we absolutely have to continue with our
valuing of personal relationships.
Those two things, along with service and opportunity, really define who we are.
They define the kind of education that a student can get here.
I see, and this came out again in the strategic plan as one of the themes, is marketing of
the university.
The environment in which we recruit students and recruit their families, is one where marketing
is becoming increasingly important, where financial aid is becoming increasingly important,
so we are moving forward with a focus on the marketing side, we have to market ourselves
better.
This is not unique to Eastern.
>> Jack:
Exactly.
And we're basically in competition with every other school out there are we not?
>> President Perry:
That's right.
The key is though, that every student who comes here when they graduate, or when they
go back home in the summer, they have to be able to tell the story to their friends and
families, that Eastern is a place where their getting a great education.
Where the faculty and staff care deeply about the student's success, so that other people
will continue to hear what has always been true at Eastern.
That is, we care, we've got great faculty, we strive for excellence everyday, and we're
very student focused and student centered campus.
Because word of mouth is the best advertising but it has to be supplemented with other kinds
of marketing that gets people's attention, and comes at people in a way that they want
to access it.
So, yes, we have a Facebook page, and a Twitter, and all these kinds of social networking,
that's an important piece of the picture, but that's going to be changing as we move
forward, so that's why we have to be aware of how marketing is going to change.
To be able to get people to know who we are, what we are, what we stand for.
>> Jack:
What points are you looking for, as you strive for academic excellence, give me a couple
of examples that we need to do differently or better than maybe we haven't done in the
past or aren't doing now.
>> President Perry:
Well I think that, as has happened in the past and continues to happen, we're hiring
great faculty, and they come to Eastern because they know the classes are small, they know
they're going to get to interact with students, they know we respect our undergraduate research.
That will continue.
I think we have to build up our technology infrastructure, it's very strong where it
is now, but there are some extra steps we can take there.
I think that we need to continue to build on our undergraduate research, right now,
for the National Conference of Undergraduate Research, we're usuallly in the top two or
three in the nation in terms of numbers of students presenting, these are jury presentations.
Number one in Illinois, I think if we continue to build that, we'd continue to be in the
top five percent of master's institutions in the nation who send individuals on for
doctoral degrees in the sciences.
So it's, we don't have to make any right angle turns or anything.
I think another thing we can do is take our growing expertise and energy, and continue
to build that, I think that EIU can be a national center for clean energy in terms of a place
where you, as we saw out when we visited the Renewable Energy Center, where you can grow
it, you can test it, and then you can do commercial scale gassification, and that can be a great
help to people trying to understand all the different ways we can generate clean energy.
Also it'll help the regional economy as well.
So I think when we look our areas where we have strength academically, we need to continue
to build those, but we need to look for opportunities in the new areas, which can really bring us
a lot of visibility.
>> Jack:
And going back to the energy, is there any, is there any competition if you will.
It seems again that we are almost in a unique niche there.
>> President Perry:
Well from a standpoint of gassification and the size of gassification plant we have, yes,
we're the largest or in the top two among public universities.
But also to have around us, the agricultural industry that we do, and the ability to access
different forms of biomass locally, that's very positive.
And then to have a faculty that's strongly focused on the multiple kinds of science and
technology and other areas that influence biomass gassification.
I think we may not be unique, but I think we're in a very small group of universities.
>> Jack:
In a good place.
>> President Perry:
In a good place yes.
>> Jack:
Unfortunately, lets talk about what's been a rough place, and that's been funding, you
mentioned state funding.
What are we looking ahead to in the next year?
>> President Perry:
Well, for the next year, right now, we don't have too many signals.
We do know that performace based funding is being tried, kind of putting toes in the water
there to see how that will work.
The board of higher education just, a week or so ago, passed it's budget recommendations
to the legislature.
There was a small, what it's called step one, small performance poll developed by taking
about a half a percent off of everyone's general revenue funding.
And then you can win it back, some or all of it back with the performance funding, and
we won back more than we gave, because our performance was strong.
Percentage bases we're second in the state of 12 campuses.
Then step two, where new money was put in, I think we came in second or third in the
state percentage wise, and so we see that the hope for more funding for Eastern to be
based on strong performance.
We already performed strongly in several areas and that's what is evidenced in the data that
was presented by the Board of Higher Education.
So that's an opportunity.
On the other hand we know that there's a lot of talk about pension reform, and we don't
know in the long run what that's going to mean for general revenue funding for public
universities.
If the state needs more money to put into pension obligations then that could impact
the appropriations to every state agency, and the universities as well.
So, there are a lot of unknowns with regard to that.
Now we can try to raise private funding, which we do, and campaign for Eastern is doing very
well, we're almost at our financial goal, we've continued to build relationships broader
and deeper relationships with alumni and friends, and we've built a larger codre of alumni volunteers.
So the campaign's moving along successfully and so that helps but it doesn't take care
of everything.
We need to keep our tuition increases low, there's a lot of attention on that in the
country right now, at least in Illinois, if a student comes to a public university, what
they pay in tuition their freshman year is what they pay for four years.
So they can count on what that is.
>> Jack:
That seems like positive marketing, again going back to marketing too, because again
as a father who sent four sons through school, that's important that as a family is making
that decision I would think you would want that kind of solid budget information.
>> President Perry:
Well that's right and it is an important piece of information for individuals considering
college.
I think that just the total tuition is something that's still of concern for most people in
Illinois.
So we have to balance the tuition, the fees, housing costs, what kind of financial aid
is available and work with each student individually to figure out how to make a college education
possible.
>> Jack:
How do you bring in more students from our surrounding states and areas outside Illinois.
>> President Perry:
Well, we've begun in that area to offer in-state tuition for students from neighboring states.
So we're ramping up in that area.
If a student is honors eligible, then they can get resident tuition regardless of where
they reside, even internationally as an undergrad.
So we've seen some uptake in those areas.
Clearly, as time moves forward, the cost of education to the student and to the family
is going to be a larger and larger issue.
So as in the past we have been economical in our operations, we've been efficient, we've
created more efficiencies, and eliminated other costs, we just need to keep working
on that front as well.
But, in that whole atmosphere, that whole environment, we have to make sure that we're
always supporting this education at Eastern which I regard to be second to none.
>> Jack:
I want to talk a little bit about the community.
EIU is a part of the larger community as well, and again, a lot of folks in that community
that really have ties to Eastern, whether they be an employee, or have students coming
here.
Recently we've had some work going on on 4th street, there's discussion going on on 9th
street.
How is the relationship with the city of Charleston?
>> President Perry:
Well the relationship's very good.
We have montly breakfasts with the city mayor and city manager, in fact we just had one
this morning, and we talked about a number of issues.
We look ahead, we review what's been done so far, and it was a very cooperative effort
on 4th street and 9th street.
>> Jack:
What kind of reaction have you gotten to that?
>> President Perry:
It's been very very positive, been generally positive for the city as well.
People have questions about change, always, but I think we all know it makes 4th street
a safer street for walking across and some of the things we've already done on 9th and
we'll be doing more this summer, we'll assist in safety there as well.
Some of the other things that the city collaborates with us when we were building the Renewable
Energy Center, we had closed streets, and reroute traffic and all that, and they certainly
collaborated on that.
As we continue to build our marketing, the city also knows that the city of Charleston
has to market itself to the families and the students themselves.
They already do that through student orientation and these types of things but we also need
to make sure that whenever a group comes into town, they're welcomed by the city and the
university, so we've got some things we're working on there to be very visible kinds
of welcoming to state track meet participants, boys state, girls state, band camps, any number
of individuals and groups who come to campus, and also just when we have prospective students
and their families coming, it'd be nice when you come into town, that you see something
that says welcome.
>> Jack:
I think one of the other things you have to work on together, the university and the city
would be campus security and safety.
How does that happen?
How do we keep the campus safe?
>> President Perry:
Well we have a great collaborative agreements, between our police forces and of course our
police force and fire department, also county law enforcement.
So, and likewise, that means we can assist in Charleston just as they can assist with
us on campus, and we do our exercises, emergency exercises which occur once or twice a year,
they participate in those and that continues to build that bond, that important bond.
>> Jack:
We're down to the last four minutes or so of the show, I can't let the show end without
talking a little bit about football and sports.
Now, you are renouned for the blue wig, so we have to go there.
We have a new football coach, tell us a little bit about him and that process.
>> President Perry:
Well the process, as you know, was very open.
We had open forums for members of the community to come and meet the coach, and ask questions
of the candidates, all four of the candidates.
Dino Babers was here at one time, actually coached for a year with coach Spoo, and went
to other programs and was at Baylor right before coming up here, he was a great athlete
in college and in the Canadian Football League, he's also a great success at coaching.
So we're excited to have him here, and we're excited that he's going to build on a winning
tradition that coach Spoo built over 25 years.
We're excited about the brand of football that he's going to bring, I think we're going
to see a lot of footballs in the air.
>> Jack:
I think you're right about that.
We've talked a little bit about you have a few more years with us at least, what do you
see though, beyond that?
Looking in higher education in the 21st century, where is this headed?
Where are we going?
What are the big major changes that are going to really be in the news the next decade or
two.
>> President Perry:
Well I think the influence of technology is going to be huge.
I think that universities are going to have to look at more and more creative ways to
use technology to make instruction more and more effective, because the students are coming
to us now accessing information in ways that you and I didn't when we went to college.
So we have to figure out ways to work with that, so that we can be more effective in
that education.
Having professors in the classes is something, I believe, you always have to have.
But using technology in such a way so that the time the professors spends in the classes,
most effective in building the creative thinking, that we need to have, the critical thinking
to help us understand what some of the basic issues are that we're going to be facing,
students are going to be facing, like we faced when we graduated from college.
What are the things that prepared us for the ups and downs of life?
We're going to need to do that with these generations and do even better because the
societies they step into are going to be much more complicated and complex than the ones
we did.
So I think good use, more than efficient use, but use that makes the educational experience
better is going to be the big challenge.
There's a lot of work going on in that area, we're starting to look at it more and more,
not that we're starting from zero, we're already doing a lot there, but that's going to be
huge.
>> Jack:
It'd be an interesting future in higher ed.
>> President Perry:
Well it is.
>> Jack:
It has also been a quick 30 minutes, I want to thank you for spending another half hour
with us on EIU conversation, and we'll be doing this again in another few months.
>> President Perry:
Good.
As always it's been a pleasure.
>> Jack:
Thank you so much and thank you also for joining us, again, we'll be back to talk with President
Perry throughout the next year or so, every few months or so.
Until then I'm Jack Neil.
\m [music playing--no dialogue] \m\m