EVANSVILLE — The University of Evansville has been awarded $5 million to establish a partnership with three other colleges in the region to help the schools standardize and share business processes and reduce their administrative costs.
The grant is one of nine announced by the Lilly Endowment Inc. Thursday to 16 different Indiana colleges and universities. The total sum awarded approaches $70 million.
UE and three other higher education institutions — Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa; North Central College in Naperville, Illinois; and Valparaiso University — will work collaboratively as part of the project. Valparaiso also received $5 million for its involvement.
Together, the four schools will form an independent, non-profit organization called the College and University Sustainability Project, with the goal of sharing back-office, non-academic work processes. More colleges and institutions would be invited to join in the future.
"It's like going from a PalmPilot to an iPhone," said UE President Christopher Pietruszkiewicz told the Courier & Press. "We had the ability to be able to do certain things on our PalmPilots before, keep track of our calendar, but we weren't able to communicate with anyone else. We can manage our entire lives from our iPhones."
Pietruszkiewicz said the partnership would result in an "enormous amount" of savings, which could then be reinvested into other parts of the university. A news release from the Lilly Endowment said the partnership would allow the colleges to share processes in fields such as finance, accounts payable, general ledger, human resources and payroll.
Conversations about potential partnerships between UE and Valparaiso began almost two years ago, Pietruszkiewicz said. He added that all four collaborating universities share certain similarities: They're liberal arts schools with professional programs and have similar enrollment with little overlap in admissions.
Thursday's announcement was the third round of the Lilly Endowment's Charting the Future for Indiana's Colleges and Universities funding initiative. In all, the organization has awarded more than $138 million.
"Indiana's colleges and universities face myriad challenges as they work to fulfill their educational missions while adapting to growing financial pressures, rapid demographic and technological changes, and evolving needs and demands of students," Ted Maple, the Lilly Endowment's vice president for education, said in a news release. "We are pleased with the creative and collaborative approaches the colleges and universities are taking to address these challenges and seize opportunities to better serve their students, institutions, communities and the state of Indiana."
Other area colleges were also awarded grants. The University of Southern Indiana, in partnership with five higher education institutions across the state, will develop a program to use predictive analytics to improve student retention and graduation rates by identifying students at risk of leaving and providing appropriate intervention.
And Vincennes University, also a grant recipient, plans to establish the Center for Advanced Robotics and Aviation with the goal of preparing students for careers in logistics and manufacturing.
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