The future looks brighter today for Indiana State University than it did a decade ago.
ISU dealt with hefty problems, rejuvenated its campus and instilled a sense of volunteerism in its students. The list of highlights mentioned Wednesday in Dan Bradley’s 10th and final fall address as university president didn’t happen as a random series of fortunate events.
Instead, planning and coordination led to record enrollments, improved graduation and sophomore retention rates, renovations of the school’s historic academic halls, and construction of the new College of Health and Human Services and the riverside Gibson Track and Field Complex.
Most of those successes aren’t one-and-done feats. They require unending attention, such as graduation rates or an increase in dropouts after their freshman year. As Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, “It’s always something.”
The university’s story packs a lesson for the surrounding community. It’s worth considering. After all, as former Gov. Mitch Daniels said of Terre Haute in his address at the local Chamber of Commerce dinner this year, “I
don’t think it’s a secret that this part of the state is struggling a little bit.”
Obviously, the situation is apparent to the rest of the state. Daniels lives two hours away in West Lafayette, where he’s the president of Purdue University. Recent events illustrate his comment.
A plan by the Vigo County commissioners to build a $62-million jail has drawn understandable questions about its size and location, as well as concerns about its impact on the community’s ability to handle another impending need — the renovation or rebuilding of the county’s three aging high schools.
A 1 percentage point increase in the local income tax rate to fund the expanded jail and public safety costs — which would boost the city of Terre Haute’s general fund that has been in deficit almost continually since 2011 — is up for a County Council vote Monday.
The ongoing FBI investigations at the city’s wastewater treatment plant and local school district further complicate all of that.
And just when the community needs to secure every opportunity to enhance the quality of life here, the commissioners decided to stop allocating $50,000 annually to the nonprofit Wabash Valley Riverscape group. The commissioners contend the move was part of broader belt-tightening, but that cutoff will undoubtedly be perceived as punishment for Riverscape’s justifiable opposition to the commissioners’ initial jail site choice — 30 acres of scenic, county-owned property on the banks of the Wabash, previously intended for recreational development.
At times, the community — which has so much positive potential culturally, historically and economically — seems more energized to compete with itself than to compete with the rest of the state, Midwest and country.
Last April, the ISU president announced his intention to retire in January. After that announcement ceremony, I asked Bradley to identify the impediments to progress the community must tackle. His outlook seemed especially valuable, given that he and his wife, Cheri, came to Terre Haute as outsiders (from West Virginia, and Montana before that) but then immersed themselves in local projects, events and service. Thus, Bradley could offer a fresheyed assessment.
He hesitated to discuss specific impediments in that April interview, but offered a broader insight.
“Oh, I don’t want to say too much along those
lines, other than I think the community needs to — in much the way the university did — to develop a long-range vision of what it wants to be, and get a collective agreement on working towards that,” Bradley said then.
“I think there’s an awful lot ad hoc decision making that’s gone on; and it’s pretty common, it’s not just Terre Haute, and it’s not just Indiana State. I think the university has moved beyond that. We really tie our decision making to our strategic vision, and that makes a huge difference.”
Without a similarly collective plan for this town and county, it’s hard to imagine all the different, well-intentioned projects falling randomly into place instead of bumping each other out of the way.
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