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Guaranteeing students an affordable college education that meets the highest national standards is the theme of the new Center for Regional Campus Excellence project launched Oct. 19 at a news conference on the Indiana University Kokomo campus.
The year-long project will examine "best practices" in higher education across the United States and develop models of excellence that can be implemented on five IU campuses: Gary, Kokomo, New Albany, Richmond and South Bend.
The Regional Campus Excellence Project aims at providing the almost 25,000 students enrolled at those campuses--many of them working adults--with a college education that will prepare them for constructive citizenship and make them nationally competitive in the job market.
 Fulton  Hill  Perrin  Richards  Richardson |
Funded by the IU Strategic Directions Initiatives, the project, based at IU Kokomo, continues IU President Myles Brand's vision of making IU one of the nation's pre-eminent academic institutions. The new venture will be directed by the chancellors of the five campuses: Emita Hill (IU Kokomo), David Fulton (IU East), Hilda Richards (IU Northwest), Kenneth Perrin (IU South Bend), and F.C. Richardson (IU Southeast).
"A university can only be as great as its campuses," said Chancellor Emita Hill, spokesperson for the group. "With 95 percent of our students coming from the state of Indiana, we want to make certain that their education is the equal of any in the land. They deserve the best and so does the state of Indiana."
Designed to produce a blueprint for higher education in the 21st century, the Center for Regional Campus Excellence will examine six key academic areas: the teaching and learning process; academic program quality; faculty scholarship and creative work; information technology; community service; and intercampus collaborative activities. Guided by nationally recognized consultants in higher education, six teams of faculty from each of the campuses will conduct the "best practices" review.
Their report, which will contain action and assessment goals, will be completed and made public no later than Dec. 31, 1999.
"Just in time for the new century," said IU East's David Fulton. "Our students come from the community and return to work in the community. They need affordable public higher education that will prepare them for the 21st century."
His views were echoed by IU Northwest's Hilda Richards, who underscored the importance of access to public higher education for students whose finances and family situations require them to stay close to home for their college educations.
Campus-community cooperation will also be highlighted in the report.
"In an information society," said IU South Bend's Kenneth L. Perrin, "business and industry must rely upon academic expertise in order to stay at the cutting edge."
Another emerging theme of the report will be information technology.
"The students may be placebound," says IU Southeast's F. C. Richardson, "but knowledge has no limits. With distance learning, telecommunications and the Internet, regional campuses can tap into worldwide sources of knowledge and share them with their students."
The lead consultant for the project is Alice Chandler, president emerita of the State University of New York at New Paltz and author of the forthcoming study, Public Higher Education and the Public Good. Other consultants are: Barbara Walvoord, director of Kaneb Institute for Teaching and Learning, and concurrent professor of English at Notre Dame University; James Ratcliff, professor, Pennsylvania State University, and former director of the National Center on Post Secondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Gene Maeroff, director of the Institute on Education and the Media, Columbia University Teachers College, and author of Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate; Carol Twigg, former vice president of Educom; James Mingle, executive director of State Higher Education Officers Organization; Glenn Goerke, director of the Institute for the Study of Higher Education, president emeritus of the University of Houston and former chancellor of IU East.
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