Menu
President White highlights city-university partnership
DePauw University President Lori White used a recent meeting with community leaders to highlight where the university has been, where it is and where it’s heading.
White used much of the time during her 30-plus minute address at the State of the University breakfast to talk about strengthening the bond between the city and the institution.
“We have an important role to play here, and we and the community, I think, are better for it,” White said.
Underscoring this point she introduced the leadership team at the university, which includes herself, seven vice presidents and four deans, and noted that all either make their home in the community or did for a significant amount of time.
“All of us, except for one, live here in Greencastle,” White said. “The person who doesn’t live in Greencastle lived here for many, many years so we can count him under the umbrella of Greencastle. Three of the members of the leadership team have kids in the Greencastle School Corp.”
For the president, this means a whole lot more than a short commute.
“As leaders we think it’s important to model for the rest of the campus community our strong commitment to this community, so I’m very glad that all of us live here and recreate here,” she said.
One current problem facing Greencastle, as many leaders inside and outside the university will say, is a housing shortage. This means that though university leadership may model the approach of living locally, housing opportunities are in some cases simply not available.
In this vein, the university and city recently obtained a $250,000 planning grant from the Lilly Endowment, with an eye toward applying for up to 100 times that amount in order to address infrastructure needs related to housing, recreation, education and aesthetics in Greencastle.
“Lilly understands that in our state, many of our colleges and universities are in small towns, and the relationship between the college and the town is so important, both to the health of the institution and to the health of the town,” White said. “So, it’s really an exciting opportunity for DePauw to work in collaboration with all of you to reimagine what we might do to revitalize both Greencastle, the greater Putnam community and the university by working together to propose something really exciting.
“We’ve been awarded a $250,000 planning grant to develop our ultimate proposal,” she added. “Proposals can be for up to $25 million. We have already started to lay the groundwork for what it is that we might ultimately propose to Lilly.”
White noted that Lilly has two proposal dates — September and next March — and that the grant leadership team is aiming for March “because we want to make sure that we gather as much community input as possible for what the ultimate proposal might be.”
Addressing a cross section of community leaders, White called their attention back to the 2011 Stellar Communities grant, which also brought an influx of revitalization money to the community through a city-university partnership.
“While we don’t know ultimately what the final proposal will look like because like I said, we want to make sure that we have good input from all of you, our focus is really on revitalizing the corridor between the university and the city, zeroing in particularly on housing,” White said. “We need more housing for the community, and we certainly need more housing for the faculty and staff at DePauw to encourage them to put down deep roots here in the community. So we’ll continue to keep you posted about that.”
Besides highlighting the partnership with the city, White also spoke of the changing face of the university itself, as it transitions to a three-school model while trying to remain grounded in its 186-year tradition in the liberal arts.
“What’s important for us is to make sure that as we articulate what we believe are the wonderful values of a liberal arts education, we also help students see the connection between what it is they study here at DePauw and what it is they want to do once they graduate,” White said.
As such, DePauw will continue to have its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences while also adding the School of Business and Leadership beginning this academic year and the Creative School, which will begin in the fall of 2024.
White described the birth of the School of Business and Leadership as a response to what students coming out of high school currently want — an education that prepares them for the business world.
“We knew we could do it successfully because we knew we had a successful management fellows program,” White said. “Based on the success of that program and our record of graduating successful business leaders, we knew this was something we could do.”
At the same time, DePauw leaders want to offer something that sets their business school apart, and they believe they can do this by keeping it tied to the liberal arts.
“Our school of business will be grounded in the liberal arts and sciences,” White said. “So our students in the SBL, as we’re calling it, will be required to take general education courses in the humanities, arts, sciences and social sciences in addition to their business courses. And our business courses will be focused on leadership, values, ethics and community engagement.”
The Creative School will begin a year from now, at which point it will replace the current DePauw School of Music to bring several creative pursuits under one umbrella.
“The Creative School is focused on bringing together all things creative at the university,” White said. “So (it includes) our music program, our performing arts programs, creative writing, film studies, technology, design studies — all the tools that folks use to create things and to imagine things and to design things.”
Like wit the School of Business and Leadership, the goal will be to place these creative pursuits in a broader context.
“This will also speak to where young people are,” White said. “They all want to be entrepreneurs. They all want to be influencers. They all want to figure out ways in which they can use the creative tools at their disposal to be able to successfully market themselves and market whatever business it is that they want to create.”
Besides community leaders from various businesses, government agencies and non-profits, White was also joined for the speech by six of the seven university vice presidents, Dave Berque (academic affairs), John Mark Day (student affairs), Dionne Jackson (institutional equity), Mary Beth Petrie (enrollment management), Sarah Steinkamp (communications and strategy and chief of staff) and Andrea Young (finance and administration), as well as all four university deans, Bridget Gourley of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, John Clarke of the School of Business and Leadership, Marcus Hayes of the Creative School and Dean of Libraries Brooke Cox.