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What Jo Go has to say...

Q & A with the university president

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...ON HER NICKNAME

Q: Do you like the nickname “JoGo”?

A: Somebody told me that a few years ago that that was my nickname. I actually think that is a great nickname, I do. When I think of all the terrible nicknames I could have, I am happy with that. I’ll take that. ... I don’t know how that got started and I don’t know when somebody told me that, but only in the last year or two have I known that that’s my nickname.

Q: I think it’s like a celebrity name.

A: JLo and me, that’s great, now I’m even more flattered. What do they call Angelina and Brad? Brangelina. I hadn’t even thought of it that way. Well that’s very flattering, I’m very flattered now.

... ON GOING TO EVENTS

Q: Fun fact

A: I’ll give you a fun fact, I hate being a spectator. Even though I go to a lot of athletic events, I would rather play a sport than watch it. When I’m watching volleyball, I wish I were out there, playing volleyball. I can’t say that about football, but I can say that about everything else. So, in my future I will probably not spend any time as a spectator, but I will spend as much time as I am able to actually participating in sports.

... ON STUDENTS

Q: Can you talk a little bit about some relationships that you have had with students and what working with them has meant to you?

I’ve been really pleased with the amount of interaction I’ve been able to have. I think it’s unusual for a president of an institution as large as Ball State to have as much interaction with students as I do.

I always joke with my freshman lunch groups, I always say to them, ‘So when you go home for whatever it is, Christmas, Spring Break, whatever, and you see friends from high school, you ask them if they’ve had lunch with the president of their university. And you come back and tell me how many of them said they have.’ Because I think that’s really unusual and I think it’s really unusual in a university this size.

So, I try to use those opportunities to really learn about the student’s experience here. And then, you know, I use that as information to take back to my vice presidents and to reflect on what we need to do better or what we’re doing well. It’s good feedback.

... ON FACULTY

Q: What are your thoughts about Ball State’s faculty in comparison to faculty at other universities?

A: I can say that based on my experience, one of the reasons, and maybe the main reason, we’ve had the success we’ve had is because the faculty here are more innovative, are more creative; they are more collaborative than any other faculty that I have known. And that’s why we have had so much success because they grab on to new ideas and they run with them. They make them successful.

I get a lot of thanks from alumni and donors and legislators for the advances that the university has achieved, but I always say to them, and I mean it, a university advances not because of the efforts of one person, a university advances because it’s a team effort and everybody is engaged in advancing the mission of the institution and wants to move forward. If you don’t have that kind of climate, nothing good happens. So I have the highest respect and regard for the faculty at Ball State for what they have accomplished here. And they deserve all the credit.

... ON BEING A FEMALE PRESIDENT

Q: What did it mean to you to be the first female president to lead a major public university in Indiana, and how has that perception changed?

A: I think a lot has changed in the last 10 years and I think in 2004 it was the headline in the local newspaper. So, it was big news in 2004. I found Indiana to be a very welcoming state, I really didn’t feel that there were any issues about being a woman president of a public research university and sometimes I thought it was an advantage in the sense that I had a lot of name recognition early on because of that. There was a lot of attention that was paid to the appointment and I thought, in the long run, that that was adventitious to the university.

Q: Do you think it would be equally as big of a deal now?

A: No, I don’t think so because, you know, Purdue has had a woman president, the president of USI is a woman, so no, I think it would be less of a headline, shall we say now than 10 years ago. ... I think that’s very positive.

... ON THE PAST 10 YEARS

Q: So have you seen a change in the environment in the past 10 years.

A: I was thinking about the fact that I’ve been here 10 years and I’ve only been at one institution longer than that during my entire career and that was the first institution that I taught at. And I was there for 17 years.

But in 10 years, I have seen a remarkable change in the institution. And everyone focuses on the physical changes, but in truth it’s the other changes that are more dramatic and are more profound. All the physical changes are fabulous and they are the first things that come to mind of visitors to the campus and students and parents and alumni. But the change in the culture of the institution I think is much more profound and will have a lasting impact on the institution for the next several decades.

Q: Can you speak on the change in culture?

A: I think this whole emphasis on immersive learning ... I think that’s a very different orientation from most large, public, research-oriented universities. I think the fact that faculty, students, alumni and donors all use the words “immersive learning,” all know what it means, all embrace the concept. That’s a phenomenal culture shift.

I had the wife of a legislator talk to me about “education: redefined.” Now that’s amazing that the wife of a legislator knows our tagline and knows what it means. That shows how we have infiltrated the public perception of the institution and the fact that this is embraced on campus is what makes it real.

I just finished in the last couple of days reading through the promotion and tenure files and practically every one of them included some mention of that faculty member’s involvement with immersive learning. That’s incredible. It shows how much a part of the culture that is.

But, you know, there’s also a real recognition or acknowledgement of the importance of developing nationally ranked programs. Certainly every week ... I get an email from a dean or a faculty member telling me about something that they’ve been involved with that has now achieved state or national recognition. That’s incredible. Ten years ago, people weren’t focused on that. But they realize that that’s a way in which we elevate the reputation of the university. And that’s a remarkable accomplishment.

... ON ADMISSIONS

Q: It looks like this year has some high SAT scores and GPAs coming in, what’s your reaction to that and what does that mean for the university?

A: I’m so glad you asked because to me that’s always exciting. That’s what we are always looking for. We are always looking for a stronger class than the previous year. We have been raising admission standards steadily for the last, oh I’d say, for the last seven years. We are delighted with the profile of this prospective freshman class as you observed the high school GPA, the SAT scores, are at a higher level than this Fall 2013 class. So I believe that we will see a very academically strong class for this 2014. And that’s really the most I could hope for. That’s really the most important thing for me is to continue to raise the profile of our students because that will lead to the strength, the ever increasing strength of the university.

A university’s reputation is really based on the quality of its students, the quality of its faculty and the quality of its alumni. And so when you bring in strong students and you provide them with excellent mentoring, you produce strong graduates and the institutions reputation can only advance with that kind of formula.

... ON ACCREDITATION

Q: When you started there was a university accreditation and when you ended there was another one. ... What has changed to lead to such a great accreditation?

A: I think really what lead to such a great accreditation report are the two strategic plans, because what accrediting agencies are looking for is: does the institution have a plan and are they working the plan? And, better than any institution I have been associated with, we have plans and we work those plans.

Q: And those are real plans, they are not just documents sitting on a shelf. Everybody is working the plan every day, and that’s why I think our accreditation review was strong; because in the 10 years I’ve been here we have had two, five-year strategic plans with very clear and very precise and very measurable outcomes more than 100 for each strategic plan. And we hold ourselves accountable.

A: Sometimes we meet those metrics, sometimes we don’t, but we always know where we stand and we always know where we are going. And that’s what an accreditation agency is looking for.

ISSUES THIS YEAR

... ON HJR-3

In November Gora took a stance against House Joint Resolution 3, a proposed ban on same-sex marriage in Indiana, for both moral and economic reasons.

Her statement was released after both the University Senate and the Student Government Association made statements against House Joint Resolution 3.

“I think everybody understands that, in this country especially, we all have a right, and in some cases an obligation, to say what we think is right and it’s important to do that,” Gora said. “I’m very comfortable with the position that we took. And I was very proud of the fact that the faculty wanted to state their position, the students stated their position, the staff stated their position ...”

For her, true leadership is about long-term planning and considering what will help the institution in the long run, although she was concerned about how this statement would affect the institution.

... ON INTELLIGENT DESIGN

In April, Gora met with four legislators to back up her statement released in August that intelligent design is a religious theory rather than a scientific one.

“We will always answer the questions that people have, but to me this is very clear,” she said. “This is not an issue of free speech; this is an issue of academic integrity. Intelligent design should not be taught in science classes — it is a religious belief, it is not a scientific fact, and that is the position we’ve taken.”

Her statement followed accusations that professor Eric Hedin was teaching intelligent design in an honors colloquium.

She said it really is her responsibility to make these stances.

“I think universities and university presidents have the responsibility to be intellectual leaders,” Gora said. “In a community that we have a responsibility to stand up for what we think is right and that if we don’t do that, we are abrogating our responsibility.”

... ON THE STATEHOUSE

Ball State has lost more than $70 million in state funding, and Gora argued the university’s unique strengths deserved better. In the last funding cycle, the school received an increase in funding and the state also supplied the final $30 million in funding for the giant geothermal project.

“I felt very good about the last [legislative] session,” Gora said. “I also think we are positioned very well for the next session. All of the work that we have done to raise admission standards, to increase graduation rates, we will see the benefit of that in 2015 in that legislative session.”

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