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Lori White emphasizes point of DePauw community investment
A month after she sought to do so for other local leaders, DePauw University President Lori White laid out a vision for the institution’s becoming more relevant on Friday.
For the annual meeting of the Greencastle/Putnam County Development Center, she expounded on initiatives aimed at shoring up partnerships between the university, the city and wider county areas. The overarching sentiment was each part being better for it.
With the Prindle Institute as the venue for the meeting, White first provided how alumni have continued to invest in DePauw. They, she said, have wanted to give back for what it and Greencastle have invested in them.
“The strength of our community is important to me, because this is where I live, shop, worship and recreate,” White said.
She related this to growing up in the big city of San Francisco and attending the University of California, Berkeley. She has lived in San Diego, Los Angeles, Dallas and St. Louis throughout her career as an educator and administrator.
She realized that she could have thrived at a liberal arts institution like DePauw. Even with her trepidations beforehand about moving to Greencastle, White appreciates how the university and the community welcomed her and her family.
At 186 years since its founding, White correlated DePauw being intrinsic to Greencastle’s history as it celebrates its bicentennial. While it has been a complicated marriage type at times, both entities have worked it out.
She noted the advocacy and major financial backing of Greencastle’s citizens for the Methodist Episcopal Church to establish the university in 1837. Then known as Indiana Asbury University, DePauw would not exist if it were not for this support.
“We are all certainly indebted to those early residents of Greencastle,” White said, “for their vision that a university, located in a small, frontier village, could enrich the intellectual, cultural and economic vibrancy of the town.”
DePauw is the county’s third-largest employer, with approximately 580 faculty and staff members. With 1,800 students now, 34 percent of them are from Indiana, while the rest are nationwide and international. White provided that 2,000-2,200 students is the “sweet spot.”
She shifted her remarks to DePauw’s Bold and Gold Strategic Plan being implemented through 2027. In essence, White related, the institution seeks to maintain its values in the liberal arts, and to be appealing in today’s educational market.
The driving factor is the recruitment of students. White noted that there are about one million fewer of them than before the COVID-19 pandemic, while institutions are facing an “enrollment cliff” of a shrinking population of 18-to-22-year-olds.
The strategic plan is framed on four goals: academic renewal, exemplary student experience, institutional equity in terms of supporting the campus’ diversity and DePauw being a flourishing university.
“We’re focused on enhancing the sense of belonging for all of our students,” White said as to revitalizing DePauw’s student life. This includes facets of residential and fraternity/sorority experiences, as well as wellness in athletics, recreation, spirituality and mental health.
Much means ensuring DePauw is relevant to students’ needs and experiences. White broached the creation of its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Business and Leadership and Creative School as responding to those needs.
To why DePauw needs a business school, White reiterated how many alumni have become leaders in both the profit and nonprofit sectors. The impetus, she suggested, is to build future leaders grounded in a foundation of critical and ethical thinking.
As to collaboration, DePauw and Greencastle were jointly awarded a $250,000 planning grant from the Lilly Endowment. This will be utilized for a proposal to address housing and other needs in the city, after which they can apply for up to $25 million toward these projects.
These initiatives, White hoped, are only some ways in which DePauw has and will look to work with the community as a whole. This was notwithstanding how students, alumni and faculty serve it in their own capacities.
“I hope that DePauw’s engagement with the community is keeping with the vision that our founders had,” White concluded. “Always, I think that our community and the university are better for one another.”