Forever Valpo Fundraising Campaign

[valpo95]

It is also true that there were pledges for some of the construction projects, so that receipts of the gifts may have arrived after construction was completed which required a capital loan.

Beyond this, the larger point is that the debt and annual interest payments dramatically increased during President Heckler's tenure.

[vu72]

It is also true that there were pledges for some of the construction projects, so that receipts of the gifts may have arrived after construction was completed which required a capital loan.

Beyond this, the larger point is

It is also true that there were pledges for some of the construction projects, so that receipts of the gifts may have arrived after construction was completed which required a capital loan.

Beyond this, the larger point is that the debt and annual interest payments dramatically increased during President Heckler's tenure.

[/b]

True, but to be fair, we had just completed a very large campaign and there were still immediate needs to be filled. Beacon Hall--bringing Valpo into the 20th century. The new Arts and Science building (remember the old Deaconess Hall?) and the Welcome Center--the first thing new recruits see when setting foot on campus.  Lastly was the new science building--also a requirement based on what we had prior.

[crusader05]

The welcome center was a donation but I agree that a big part of our issue was that everything was pretty much coming due at the same time in regards to buildings. It took a lot of time and some luck to get the funding for the Library and Union and we were still looking at old gross dorms, a too small and under equipped science center and a general lack of classroom/office space. The debt did occur during Heckler's term but that's also cause a lack of real consistent investment and maintenance in buildings went completely unheeded and undone.

[valpo95]

I wouldn't dispute that some of the buildings/upgrades were needed.  I'm also sure the cash flow took a big hit with the closure of the law school and the buyouts of the law faculty.

Keep in mind that the plan under President Heckler was to grow the university to 6,000 students - I could be wrong on the number yet that seems to be what I recall.

All of that is water under the bridge now, yet it puts the University in much tighter financial position to have to service the debt on those new facilities. We also should be reminded that when the discussion inevitably turns to athletics facilities, the driver is still money. So without big donations, I would not expect big changes to the ARC or other facilities in the near future.

[crusader05]

I wouldn't read too much into that. Furloughs were a common thing in so many industries at that time. It wasn't just loss of dorm money that came about. IT was loss of summer camps and other things that pull money into the university. Think about the Lutheran Basketball Tournament and how much money that alone probably pulls in.

Also, Heckler gets a lot of the brunt for the 6,000 student thing but from what I remember that was a board decision. He came in and basically told them the financials were untenable for our current size and that we either needed to grow or shrink and he would be willing to work towards whatever. The board/Strategic Planning Committee decided to go with grow and here we are.

Betting on a Law School that already had a sinking reputation when I was there in 2005 also seemed like a really bad idea.

I'd say shrinking a bit for now and maybe working to shore up some of our graduate programs would be a good idea but I hear that there are still people on campus who think that we shouldn't accept an increasing commuter rate and seem to think that we can someone flip a switch and move back to what we were 10 years ago. 

[vu72]

I wouldn't read too much into that. Furloughs were a common thing in so many industries at that time. It wasn't just loss of dorm money that came about. IT was loss of summer camps and other things that pull money into the university. Think about the Lutheran Basketball Tournament and how much money that alone probably pulls in.

Also, Heckler gets a lot of the brunt for the 6,000 student thing but from what I remember that was a board decision. He came in and basically told them the financials were untenable for our current size and that we either needed to grow or shrink and he would be willing to work towards whatever. The board/Strategic Planning Committee decided to go with grow and here we are.

Betting on a Law School that already had a sinking reputation when I was there in 2005 also seemed like a really bad idea.

I'd say shrinking a bit for now and maybe working to shore up some of our graduate programs would be a good idea but I hear that there are still people on campus who think that we shouldn't accept an increasing commuter rate and seem to think that we can someone flip a switch and move back to what we were 10 years ago. 

Agreed on all points.  The Lutheran Basketball tourney was past on again this year as it ended up in Fort Wayne.  Hopefully they will be willing to come back next year.  For whatever reason, that was a mistake. The Lutheran Summer Music program, currently underway, may bring in more than the basketball tourney as presumably the basketball players stay in hotels as it is during the school year.  There are 170 musician plus staff on campus, living in dorms and eating at the Union.
The Law school was a HUGE drain. When you look back at our Form 990's, many of the top salaries were law professors and as the class sizes declined the cost of those professors didn't.  That was nobody's fault other than being part of a national decline in law students and being in a neighborhood where the remaining top students could decide between choices like Notre Dame, IU, U of Chicago or Northwestern, all within a reasonable drive.

[usc4valpo]

Since Elon Musk is bagging Twitter, I may get him a ring to see if he want to help us out. We need cash now.

[vu72]

by using summer camps to cashflow the core mission.

Let me try to clarify a couple of things I mentioned which may have gotten valpo22 a little cranky!  The LMS and Lutheran Basketball Tournament do indeed bring money to Valpo and that is much more than just good fiscally.  It is promoting Valpo to one of its core audiences--Lutherans!  The basketball tourney brings teams from all over the country which plays into the new drive to expand Valpo's reach well beyond Indiana and the core Midwest which has a declining student base.  The Summer music program currently underway, bring extremely bright high school students--again, Lutheran and studying orchestra, choir and performing arts, all core to Valpo historically and hopefully into the future.  I hope that brings some clarity to my statements which did appear to be focused just on the ability to bring in some bucks!
As for Valpo spending dollars into their core programs, I thing they have done so and clearly will continue to do so based on President Padilla's comments in which he said his top priorities were building a new Nursing and Health Sciences building as well as a renovation or new Business school structure.  The Engineering School has had many additions, the most recent, bio-engineering wing, was just dedicated last Homecoming as I recall.  The professional schools at Valpo all are highly thought of and ranked.  Then their is the addition of the Bio/Chem building and cadaver lab which keeps Valpo with top notch facilities addressing medical and other related fields currently in high demand.

Finally, the core ability of any college to not just survive but also thrive is the endowment.  Ours was WAY behind many small tuition driven competitors.  Now, not so much.  It is a highly challenging time for College administrators.  I'm glad we have President Padilla at the helm. He is one year in and that year has been one heck of a challenge!
i

[David81]

This thread includes a few references to the Law School and its closing, and the topic has come up elsewhere as well. As an ongoing student of legal education (as a practicing lawyer and now as a law professor at a regional school in Boston), I thought I might try to add some context, while admitting freely that this contains some subjective opinions and conclusions.

The demise of VU's Law School was one of the saddest institutional casualties of the sharp downturn in law school applications, triggered by the Great Recession and lasting well into the 2010s. I get that some folks want to assign blame for this, given the Law School's longtime, respected presence at VU and within the Midwestern legal community. I think VU Law was a victim of some awful timing & circumstances and unfortunate but understandable reaches to survive (the latter mainly by way of trying to fill entering classes with too many marginal students).

For many years, VU Law's smaller size was an advantage in terms of offering a more personal approach to earning a law degree. And during its heyday before the Great Recession, the Law School attracted a lot of good applicants who may have just missed out on admission to higher ranked schools and who turned out to be outstanding students, snagging full-time jobs at selective private and public sector legal employers. But when the application pool shrank dramatically, schools like VU had to scramble. At this point, its small size became a major disadvantage, because there was only so much it could shrink without becoming a huge drain on the rest of the University. In 2016, a long New York Times profile of the Law School, using it as a prime example of the impact of the application decline in the quality of law school admissions at regionally-oriented schools, put the school in a terrible light:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/business/dealbook/an-expensive-law-degree-and-no-place-to-use-it.html

During the past three years, law school applications have rebounded, a trend totally unforeseeable at the time that VU's board of directors voted to pull the plug. Had VU been able to find a generous source of "bridge" funds to keep the Law School going without sapping the rest of the University dry, it might've made it to this recovery point. But again, that applications rebound could not have been reasonably predicted at the time the board was faced with its decision.

More broadly in terms of VU's institutional history, keep in mind that VU Law was always operating closer to the margins in terms of its survival than similar established law schools. For example, when I was a VU undergraduate (1977-81), the board seriously considered shuttering the school after a devastating reaccreditation review that found the Law School to be severely under-resourced. The board decided to "go big" by expanding entering classes and raising funds for the new Wesemann Hall, but many questioned the decision at the time.

[vu84v2]

Going back a number of posts, but also earlier than that, some of offered the phrase "VU could not make payroll". From anything that I have seen, that is not true and thus it is an overly dramatic exaggeration. Like most private universities, Valpo had a sudden loss of revenue from having to return money for housing and then from reduced enrollment in the coming year. This created a shortfall in covering operating expenses...the key word being operating. There were two choices....furloughs and eliminating some positions or claiming exigency and using endowment. Given that Valpo has a portion of the endowment, they could have used that money to cover the losses under exigency terms (if no terms exist, they also could have just gone to the donors). I do not mean to diminish the impact of furloughs and lost positions on people, but the university made a choice. Being in a position in which a firm or organization cannot "make payroll" implies that resources do not exist to allow choices...and in this case that is not true.

[crusader05]

Yeah I think the reality is that the pandemic made something that might have happened at a slower pace such as downsizing happen much faster and feel more chaotic and difficult. They budget based on planned endowment spend plus tuition and board and food plus expected other financial areas. A significant portion of these funds evaporated in the space of 2-3 weeks with no idea when or if they would return. Furloughs occurred everywhere as did layoffs.

I also would add to the point about the law school that Valpo was an excellent regional law school that pulled many great people from the area. There's a reason it's not uncommon to see a Valpo Law degree still when looking at higher up and older judges and prosecutors across the state. That regional pull was important (even when I started most people I talked about Valpo to in the area that were older than me had a frame of reference of it having a good law school vs anything about the undergraduate part) and I would be fascinated if there was a change in student behavior that made it harder for the school to compete with those in Chicago, specifically people less likely to settle down after under grad and pick a school based more on location to where their family was vs law school feeling like an extension of undergrad.

[crusadermoe]

"I didn't leave the University of Colorado to oversee a funeral." 
                     -- Jose Padilla, Valparaiso University President (as quoted April 2021 in the Post-Tribune)

It might have signaled boldness and resolve, but perhaps that comment wasn't phrased very helpfully?   

[vu72]

So things are looking up, and I still think there can be a Valpo 2.0.

I very much appreciate your enthusiasm for Valpo's future.  But, please remember that if this is a resurgence, it isn't Valpo 2.0 it is Valpo 20.0.  Valpo has been around for 163 years!  We have had and closed not only a Law School, but also a Pharmacy School and a Medical School. Good schools like Valpo survived the depression, world wars etc.  Covid is the second pandemic for Valpo. 

In spite of the layoffs you mentioned, also an evolutionary issue, places like the Business College, where I graduated from, have made ENORMOUS strides since I graduated. In those days there were a few PhD's but most of the faculty were MBA's or CPA's or just local business men making a few extra bucks teaching a class.  I just checked and now Business has 21 PhD's and three lecturer MBA's and one CPA.

It's been a tough couple of years and I fully agree that Padilla is the right guy and this point in time.

[78crusader]

The "I'm not here to preside over a funeral" comment was ill-advised, showed poor judgment, and did not befit an institution like Valparaiso University.  I hope our new president has mothballed that phrase.

Paul

[crusadermoe]

Agreed. It seemed a bit egotistical.  He does project confidence.  My sense is that he will shape things up dramatically to make the budget work.  In reality that will involve more expense reductiions than revenue increases. Revenue doesn't come easily and they have to live with these small classes for 4 years.

Some call this role across companies and large orgs a "hatchet man." And that's not an insult in the corporate world. He looks like he has another presidency in his tank age wise. And he would be an appealing future candidate for a larger more prestigious presidency after another 3-4 years from now.  I think this will be short term role.

[vu72]

valpo22, I may be misreading your intentions but to me, they come across as if Valpo, unlike its peers, was so mismanaged that it almost went under and still might.  The reality was that virtually every university including the Ivy's, faced financial struggles due to the pandemic and many still do.

Here is an example of a well established University announcing major cuts to programs and faculty--and this article was just published in JUNE of THIS YEAR!  Rider University has 3500 students, is 157 year old, BUT, and it is indicative of why Valpo's endowment drive was so important--only has an endowment of $64 million (2020).

https://planetprinceton.com/2022/06/08/citing-20-million-deficit-rider-university-slashes-programs-cuts-staff/

[David81]

valpo22, I may be misreading your intentions but to me, they come across as if Valpo, unlike its peers, was so mismanaged that it almost went under and still might.  The reality was that virtually every university including the Ivy's, faced financial struggles due to the pandemic and many still do.

Here is an example of a well established University announcing major cuts to programs and faculty--and this article was just published in JUNE of THIS YEAR!  Rider University has 3500 students, is 157 year old, BUT, and it is indicative of why Valpo's endowment drive was so important--only has an endowment of $64 million (2020).

https://planetprinceton.com/2022/06/08/citing-20-million-deficit-rider-university-slashes-programs-cuts-staff/

Spot on comment! Unfortunately, since the Great Recession there have been major bloodlettings at universities across the prestige/ranking spectrum, including a lot of very solid private regional schools like VU. They will likely continue with the coming pool of traditional, college-age individuals continuing to shrink. Schools that get the "formula" right (whatever that happens to be) will survive and perhaps even thrive. Others will struggle and perhaps close up shop.

In any event, in terms of the impacts of heavy rounds of layoffs and departures, in my experience and observation, the cost is often more to internal morale than to external reputation. Whether it's senior faculty or junior faculty taking the brunt of the cuts, there's a palpable sense of felt loss within the institution.

(We experienced this at my school during the past decade. It also triggered an internal governance crisis. Unfortunately, some our dramas were played out in the pages of the Boston Globe. But the bigger costs were morale within the institution. We've made it through the worst of that time, but some of the effects linger.)

VU has definite strengths that it can use as advantages, including a long and deserved reputation for quality undergraduate education, managing a hard-to-balance blend between the liberal arts and vocational training, and being a place where values and faith matter -- the latter without being a more insulated "church college." The successful Forever Valpo campaign also helped to build an alumni/ae base willing to give money. Overall, this is a more interesting and sophisticated university than the one I attended some 40 years ago. I hope these qualities and good leadership are sufficient to give it a bright future.

[NotBryceDrew]

A little off topic for the thread but @72 having PHDs is great but IMO it is not that valuable to the CoB. Business in network driven. Most PHDs at Valpo don't have a deep network because they've never worked outside academia and it is at a massive detriment to the students. Some do and are great at helping make connections, they are the exception not the rule and the best professors I had were always the ones with 20+ Business experience. They need a shift to getting a few more semi/retired industry vets that want a chill teaching job at we're partners/ MDs/ execs and can line up a number of interview slots each year for students. Not another PHD from a back water state school with zero work experience. The CoB Dean although new has somewhat acknowledged this and has made an effort to proactively seek out people.

[78crusader]

The "I didn't come here to preside over a funeral" comment by President Padilla wasn't "egotistical." No, the problem with it is that it fed into the narrative/perception that VU was unstable, shaky, in dire straits, with a very real possibility of closing. 

Imagine how that comment would go over with prospective students - and their parents.  Recruiting kids to come here is hard enough. 

VU needs a public relations win. Badly. The recently-concluded campaign, which raised $300 million, would make a nice story for the media to promote. But so far - nothing. 

Paul 

[vu72]

would make a nice story for the media to promote. But so far - nothing. 

Agree and was wondering the same thing.  I wonder if they are waiting for Homecoming perhaps for the big reveal.

[historyman]

The "I didn't come here to preside over a funeral" comment by President Padilla wasn't "egotistical." No, the problem with it is that it fed into the narrative/perception that VU was unstable, shaky, in dire straits, with a very real possibility of closing. 

Imagine how that comment would go over with prospective students - and their parents.  Recruiting kids to come here is hard enough. 

VU needs a public relations win. Badly. The recently-concluded campaign, which raised $300 million, would make a nice story for the media to promote. But so far - nothing. 

Paul 

It is this great, fundamental fact- a fact which lies at the very heart of my personal philosophy of life and history-which has persuaded me to speak to you today concerning "The Destiny of a Christian University in the Modern World," and to submit to you that in view of the present crisis in the affairs of men this destiny is almost inconceivably great, both intellectually and spiritually. In choosing this topic I feel that I am, in a very small way, paying a debt of gratitude to the men and women who for fifteen years have carried the vision of this destiny in their hearts, and have given this University the full measure of their loyalty and devotion. I am certain also that I am merely reaffirming the compelling influences which guided my distinguished predecessors in their difficult task of reorganizing the University and carrying it safely through one of the most trying periods in the economic and social history of America. I am dominated by the conviction that we are now privileged to enter upon the heritage which they have given us and to build here a school, a center of learning and of faith, whose destiny cannot be limited by forces outside ourselves. The measure of the future of Valparaiso University is our own measure-the measure of our courage and our willingness to sacrifice in order that the dreams of the founders of the University may come true.

--from O.P. Kretzmann's 1940 Inaugural address--

[usc4valpo]

He spoke at the 1984 graduation and he was very impressive and enlightening. We are now in a different era of education for sure.

[sfnmman]

If you are referring to OP, I believe he passed away in 1975.

[David81]

 
[/quote]
It is this great, fundamental fact- a fact which lies at the very heart of my personal philosophy of life and history-which has persuaded me to speak to you today concerning "The Destiny of a Christian University in the Modern World," and to submit to you that in view of the present crisis in the affairs of men this destiny is almost inconceivably great, both intellectually and spiritually. In choosing this topic I feel that I am, in a very small way, paying a debt of gratitude to the men and women who for fifteen years have carried the vision of this destiny in their hearts, and have given this University the full measure of their loyalty and devotion. I am certain also that I am merely reaffirming the compelling influences which guided my distinguished predecessors in their difficult task of reorganizing the University and carrying it safely through one of the most trying periods in the economic and social history of America. I am dominated by the conviction that we are now privileged to enter upon the heritage which they have given us and to build here a school, a center of learning and of faith, whose destiny cannot be limited by forces outside ourselves. The measure of the future of Valparaiso University is our own measure-the measure of our courage and our willingness to sacrifice in order that the dreams of the founders of the University may come true.

--from O.P. Kretzmann's 1940 Inaugural address--
[/quote]

Even though O.P.'s opening address was considered to be a sort of charter for the modern VU, it would be harder for a contemporary VU President to invoke such rhetoric successfully. The message would probably have to cast a wider net, while sounding a bit less officious. And even many alums and parents who might agree with the heart of its message might also be asking, "what's the vocational ROI on a Valpo education?"

Personally, I believe that the times call for a college education that embraces ideas and values, in addition to preparing students for a vocational life. Valpo has the capacity to get that blend right, but it's a challenging tightrope to walk.

[crusadermoe]

He was such an orator.  Someone on the board a few posts back found the impressive quote below. It would be great to see the context.

"IT IS THIS great fundamental FACT in which the Christian university...." 

What is the FACT that is the antecedent to the pronoun "it"?  Or would we prefer not to ask?