I've never heard it so quiet without any gabble pounding or it's like everybody just went dead silent. So I guess that's a sign that we're ready to begin. So my pleasure to uh call this meeting to order and welcome everyone to u this month's uh
meeting of the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. Very glad to have you all here. Uh before I make a few quick remarks, I would turn to Dr. Lock Miller to call the role please. Mr. Allen, present. Mr. Bland, present. Mr. Mayo,
present. Mr. Fiser, present. Miss Blackecker, present. Mr. Garon, present. Mr. Hannah, Miss Jordan, present. Miss Kitchell, present. Mr. Kramer, present. Miss
Bharing. That's it. Mr. Peterson and I'm here as well. Thank you very much. Much appreciated. Uh Pepper, congratulations. I understand you're uh with a new grandbaby and not
able to be with us today. So, thank you very much. Life is good. So uh yes again very much want to welcome everyone here and want to thank number one uh Chancellor Holford uh and his entire team for a wonderful visit so
far last evening was just outstanding. Uh we had a great dinner and had a great presentation and discussion that he facilitated with uh with Alejandro um Castillo, former EDA head and who is now a fellow senior fellow here with Purdue
Northwest topic some really interesting topics in particular around uh the work they're they're doing here in the in the region if you will around quantum network and quantum computing which is very exciting uh to hear about. So very much appreciate a lovely evening and uh
your welcoming staff and everyone's been fantastic. Um certainly uh interesting times uh for all of us. Uh I think in every sector of of the the world uh both geographically and uh sector-wise
higher ed is no exception to uh facing some challenges times challenging times like we all are right. So, uh, I think just reflecting on those challenging times, just want to to actually pick up maybe on a on a point that that, uh, the chancellor referenced yesterday, last
evening about, you know, at the core of all these of all these challenges and opportunities, if you will. The key is still students and the key is learning and highquality affordable available higher education is still the the key to
success potential success for for both students students of all ages. So I think in that regard that's our true north if you will and uh you you did a great job of setting that setting that stage. So um with that said thank you again. Thank you all for being here. Um
I also uh want to uh reflect upon someone who unfortunately will be leaving us. Um he's Dr. Chad Lo Miller has been a fantastic um commission member um faculty commission member in his two years and
we uh we regret having to say goodbye to you in that role but very much appreciate uh your your your work on our behalf and with us. And we do have a little bit of a reflection and uh or excuse me a resolution honoring your service that we'd like to present you
with. So I will I will go ahead and read this. Whereas Dr. Chad Lock Miller provided strong faculty representation to commission to the commission for higher education since his appointment on June 1st or excuse me July 1st 2023. And whereas during his service to the commission Dr. Dr. L. Miller discharged
his duties with distinction and impartiality uh and impartially advocated for the students and faculty at Indiana's public institutions of higher education. And whereas he was actively engaged in the commission's academic affairs and quality committee providing thoughtful
insight into discussions and review academic programs. And whereas Dr. Luck Miller was appointed to serve as the commission secretary in 2024 and has effectively fulfilled his duties in that role. And whereas he successfully planned and hosted the well-received and
attended faculty leadership conference in February of this year entitled innovation in the classroom artificial intelligence and higher education which was amazing. Thank you. Now therefore be it resolved that the commission for higher education expresses its deep
appreciation to Dr. Chad Lock Miller for his two years of dedicated service as the faculty representative to the commission for higher education in the state of Indiana and wishes him well as he continues his teaching duties as associate professor of educational leadership and serving as the chair of
the department of educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana Indiana University. So thank you thank you thank you and congratulations uh and a round of applause. [Applause] I'm sure any please uh any comments
don't feel obligated but would love to have your comments and your questions. Well Dan um thank you very much for all of your support the past two years uh you have been an incredible colleague. Um so I'm grateful to you especially uh Commissioner Lowry. you've become
amazing mentor and friend through this process and I'm certainly grateful for uh your wisdom and insight. Uh and I also just say to the commission members uh thank you all for uh everything that you do for our institutions of higher
education for our students for our faculty for our staff and for our state. Um, one of the things that I think I've learned from this experience is that there are dedicated public servants on this commission who are fighting the
good fight for higher education. And I'm grateful as a faculty member, not just as a commission member, but as a faculty member to each and every one of you. I'd also um like to acknowledge the incredible staff of the Commission for Higher Education. Um there are folks
working behind the scenes on a daily basis doing some incredible things and we owe you all a debt of gratitude. Um Michelle Ashcraft and Matt Butler especially the two of you have done just a remarkable job of you as well. So
thank you for all you're doing. And uh I would just say also a note of thanks to my family for putting up with the travel schedule. Uh I appreciate their support through this as well. So, thank you again, Chad. Nancy pointed out, I'm not sure if we need to do this, but we
probably should. Dennis pointed it out that we probably need to approve this resolution. Uh, I don't think they'll be controversial, but just Thank you. Thank you. Any further comments? Hearing none, all in favor say I. I oppose saying
enthusiastic. Thanks again. Okay. Um, oh, by the way, another note. Um, for the commission members, we will have our annual commission photo uh today right before lunch. So, don't disappear without being so we'll get
more details. I'm sure Lucas and others are close to that to that moment. So, I would now like to invite Chancellor Hford to uh to the Dis and uh give some welcoming remarks. Again, thank you so much for having us and really appreciate you and your staff's hospital. Thank you
and good morning. It's certainly my honor and privilege to welcome the commission for higher education to Purdue Northwest. On behalf of our students and faculty and staff, I certainly want to extend a thanks to the commission commissioners as well as the staff that took their time to learn more
about the history of our university as a regional campus of Purdue and to meet some of our students. students certainly are at the heart of everything we do and we're very concerned about their success. Um I certainly want to take the opportunity to point out um the uh table
decorations were actually created by our technology students. Uh so you'll see those uh both at breakfast and lunch today. It turns out uh we have a lot of plexiglass right now and they're coming up with creative and innovative ways to utilize that. So so thank you for taking
the time uh uh to do that. I am certainly looking forward to our presentation uh this afternoon uh where we'll showcase some of the innovations we've done in the classroom and I certainly um um want to point out uh I I think the tour last night you saw some of the amazing things we're doing. I
think that demonstrates uh both the capabilities of the regional campus system here at Purdue as well as the involvement of our students in all aspects of things that are going on. We are deeply committed to the success of the population of students we serve.
Thank you very much. Also on we juggled the schedule a little bit with the student success presentation to right after lunch. So appreciate uh and looking forward to that as well. So thank you. Um you will note in your agenda book uh that it contains minutes from our last meeting
on March 13th uh beginning on page one. So I would entertain a motion for approval. Thank you. Thank you. Any comments, questions, corrections? Okay. Hearing none. All in favor, please say I. I.
Those same. Okay. Very good. All right. My pleasure to uh welcome Brooke Brook Kyle to this to the uh to the for a budget presentation. Uh Brooke is senior associate commissioner of business solutions and we look forward to your presentation.
[Music] Good morning. Uh thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the commission. Um so today I'll be providing an overview of this year's legislative session. Uh starting off with a budget and fiscal perspective. Later on today, my colleague Ray Carol will provide more
information, more in-depth information about some other legislative items. Um, so we're going to begin u with House Enroll Act 101 2025. This is the budget bill. Um, and as a reminder, some key context for this year's budget
bill included um some new uh some new priorities from Governor Brun. We had Medicaid projections going above and beyond expectations and then also a recent revenue forecast showing some challenges for the state of Indiana. And so that's an important lens for us to
consider um not only the legislative session but in particular how the final budget bill landed. Um, as a quick reminder for our commission members, uh, we want to thank you for your partnership in collaboration in developing the priorities that the commission set forth
for this legislative session. Um, we have four really key priorities. First, to maintain our key financial aid programs. Our second priority was to maintain outcomebased performance. Third, maintain dual credit funding. And
then fourth, maintain RNR funding. Um so go ahead. I'm sorry. Please. As probably all of you know, I will had caller commentary here. Um I think it's fair to say that when um the original plans were put forth in early November,
adopted by the commission, uh things look different. Uh they look very different. But if you don't mind going back to the last slide that I wrote, what what I don't want to have you miss is those priorities because you together
with us as your council on this set those priorities and I think what is so significant about that is that they held true for us regardless of where the state's fiscal condition was headed. And um I don't think we've quite
done our um budget request in that manner. And I wish I could just tell you which one of you said, "Hey, we really need to have a list of priorities." Mr. Chairman, I'll give it to you, the the budget chair. Um anyway, I just don't want us to miss that. And I think from a historical standpoint, we really need to
capture that and understand that often times in a matter of a few months, this is not new. Fiscal conditions, economic conditions change. And it was really critically important for those of us who interact with our representative elected representatives
to have that. So, so thank you because as you'll see all all of that is really important in the outcome about which is going to talk. Thank you, Commissioner. Okay. Okay. Um so the first thing we're going to look at is House Enrolled Act 101 um from an commission and agency
perspective and then after that we'll look at it from a state educational institution perspective. So again starting with the fiscal impact of the budget bill for the commission for higher education. First and foremost um huge win 21st century scholars in the Franco
Bannon uh grant appropriations were held flat from fiscal year 25. Um, this is a huge win, like I said, for the commission. It's a win for students. It's a win for higher education. It's a win for Hooser businesses that need the talent, um, for upskilled and reskilled
workers. Um, and so we're really, really pleased with this outcome. most of our other financial aid uh programs and grants and scholarships did receive a 5% reduction across the board and we'll look at that in a little bit more detail that that is sort of a reoccurring theme
from the budget bill. Um one other thing to note is that the CBO appropriation was also held flat from fiscal year 25. We've talked about the CBO program quite a bit at uh earlier commission meetings and so we were pleased um that with the
high demand of this program that at least the appropriation was held flat. Please remind me of the acronym. Oh uh oh my gosh. Can you remind me? You want to get it right for us Michelle on this? That children children of disabled veterans.
Oh yeah. CVO represents a a host of programs that are for children of deceased and disabled veterans and public safety officers. Thank you very much. Just want to make sure we Yep. No, I appreciate that. A lot easier. Yes. Thank
you. Um some of the biggest changes for the Franco Bannon grant um in the budget bill is that the Franco Bian grant is now um converting it to a reverting fund. So as of June 30th, 2025, the state budget agency will be required to
transfer any balance in the Franco Bannon fund to the general fund um for the the funds that's not being used for scholarship by the transfer deadline. So we have claims deadlines of that nature, but anything left in that fund uh will be transferred back to the general fund.
The uh final language in the budget bill does allow the commission to transfer Frank Oannon funding to other programs with no statutory cap. And so um myself and I think our agency leaders will be looking at um how we most strategically
use this part of the statute to make sure that um we can support students um but also comply with what is in uh code. And I'll I'll add again some of you are newer to the commission and some of you were here when this
transpired the the earlier slide that Brooke had noting that the appropriations for 21st Century and Francoon were not cut. That's really important and it ties into this. Yes, the funds are reverting. So, you know, if we have something left over, they're going to sweep back into the, you know,
general budget. Um what what I would remind you though of is historically um two and a half years ago. Yeah. Two and a half years ago, the commission u endorsed asked me and our team to go to the state budget committee
and increase the level at which we could disperse Franco funds that had been cut in the great recession of 2009. We went forward. State budget committee agreed. What resulted was a 35% increase. So the bottom line is this. What we were
spending was in the 130 to $130 million a year out of a roughly $168 million appropriation. With this new ability that we receive starting the next fiscal year, we are allowed to spend up to the
full appropriation of $168 million. I want that for all of us to sink in. that that is significant additional help for low-income students. That is approximately, you know, $30 million more a year. You can do the math
between the time that happened and the end of this decade. We have a lot of goals at the end of this decade. As you recall, there will be because of that and still will be uh roughly in that time period an additional quarter billion dollars of need-based financial
aid additional additional going to low-inccome students. I want to remind you because many of you are on the commission and help make that happen and obviously those of you who joined we've seen nothing but embrace of that. So again it's one of those things just just don't lose sight that that's
that's a that's a big deal on behalf of helping you use the word affordable Mr. Chairman uh students be able to receive a high quality affordable education in Indiana. Sorry to keep interrupting but no that's great commissioner. Thank you. um already reviewed at um some prior
commission meetings um the budget bill did reduce the agency's operating fund by 5%. The agency has already acted upon this 5% reduction in January of 2025. Higher education act 101 also directs directs the state budget
director to withhold 5% of state agency funds as part of a reserve. So this 5% will be applicable to both fiscal year 26 and fiscal year 27 for the funds predominantly used for salaries and state agency employees as well as
general uh general operating expenses. Uh for context the commission does have a reserve this year of 2%. So a reserve is not unprecedented um but it has been increased to 5%. Yes
commission. Oh I'm sorry. Uh, next I'm going to move into the fiscal impacts for our state educational institutions. Uh, probably shouldn't have had an acronym there, but that's what SEI stands for. Very early in the morning for acronyms. So, um, state
educational institution operating funds. Um, one of the the things that we're celebrating is that the outcomebased performance funds earned by institutions in fiscal year 25 was added to the operating base for our institutions for both fiscal year 26 and fiscal year 27.
Um, additionally, the commission, um, were very pleased that OBPF was kept in statute, signaling to the commission that the general assembly and the governor do support performance-based funding, even if new OBPF funds were not
made available um, for appropriations in this bianium. Um, the final version of the budget bill did take a 5% reduction to these operating funds as well as line items for all institutions. Um, as I said earlier in one of the
slides, one of our other key priorities of this legislative session, uh, was dual credit. Um, in the governor's recommended version, um, dual credit was held flat for institutions at the fiscal year 25 level. And we had quite a bit of back and forth throughout session of
what that might look like. and the the final budget bill did keep the fiscal year 25 funding levels um for each institution and then reduce those by 5%. Um so what this will essentially mean that we have said at other commission
meetings is that institutions will essentially receive a varied per credit hour rate um um based on on the final version of the budget bill. Um, next, uh, capital funding. Our institutions did not receive any new
capital funding in this version of the budget bill. Um, the commission is very, very pleased that RNR was put back into the budget bill. Um, it was reduced by 5%, but again, very happy that it was in the final version. Um, existing student
fee replacement and debt obligations were met. Um, however, no new fee replacement um, was included in the funding. Brooke, if you might clarify for us, I think I think I've got the number, but at one point it looked very much so that
RNR was going to be at risk, correct? Not being in the budget. Correct. And I think the number before the 5% cut was 47 million if I'm recalling. Yeah, Michelle. Yeah, 47 million. Again, the list of priorities that Brooke shared at the beginning, that was really our
guidepost for what we kept doing behind the scenes and so forth to come out as faithfully as possible in a very, very challenging budget year. Um, and then finally, um, the final version of the budget bill also included a one-time deferred maintenance
appropriation for the Indiana University and Purdue University systems for their regional campuses. Um this was moved to only fiscal year 26. Um and then again that appropriation was reduced um ultimately by 5% in alignment with the
other reductions in the budget bill. Um a new element of the final budget bill was also the inclusion of state educational institutions um in the operating reserve. Um so similar to the agency, the state budget director um is required to withhold 5% of state
educational institution funds for fiscal year 26 and fiscal year 27. Again um for funds predominantly used for the salaries of state education institution employees or general operating funds. Are there any questions on house
act 2025 or house act 101? Okay. Um I'm going to move into um another um act that has some fiscal implications. This is Senate Enrolled Act Five. There's several sections of Senate Enrolled Act 5. Um I'll be covering a few of the key sections that have the
most direct impact uh to the agency. One of the big things to note is that um state educational institutions are exempt from the requirements in Senate Enrolled Act 5. Um but it is something that will be applied to the agency. Um so in terms of section two, Senate
enroll 5 does say that uh our state agency will be required to submit quarterly reports to the state budget committee for any new federal fund requests um based on a quarterby quarter basis and that any state agency may not accept federal funds prior to state
budget committee review um of a report that we would submit if the acceptance of funding requires a state match or an additional permanent full-time employee. employee or a new requirement of the state as a condition of acceptance. Um
so for the the commission's implications uh really our only federal funding at this point in time is the Carl D. Perkins program that funds all of our career and technical education. Our reading of this bill is that because that is not a new fund. It it is kind of
grandfathered in and we don't expect huge implications from that front. Um section six gives us some reporting requirements um for large contracts. It does require a state agency to submit quarterly reports to the state budget committee for active
contracts not less than 500,000. And this report must contain um several elements. The report layout the the final template has not been released. Um but the report will include the current expenditures compared to the maximum allowable amount. Um any changes to the
contract. So, if there are amendments made, scope of work, anything like that, that will be reported. Um, and then in alignment with um I think Governor Brun's um commitment to transparency and accountability, we're seeing um the inclusion of metrics. And so, uh we've
always included success metrics in our contracts as a commission um for our scope of work. Um but now these will be um looked at a little bit more closely. And so we will be expected to make sure that the metrics are clearly defining what determines success and clearly
defining um what constitutes um acceptable performance of the contract. Um also in section six um is the reversion of appropriation. So, beginning in fiscal year 26 um for any contract regardless of the amount um any
fund appropriated to the state agency um from the Indiana General Assembly for an expense related to that contract um if it's unused for a period of 90 days um ultimately that that amount of money will be unallotted by the state budget agency and then reverted back um to the
fund. So for practical applications this has some logistical implications for the commission. Um we do lots of contracts during the year mostly for services. Um many of those services are related to our federal Perkins grants. Um but we also of course have other professional
services. So, we will be working together as a leadership team and also with our finance and accounting teams to make sure that um we're really being judic judicious in our contract language um to make sure that the scope of work is spelled out, the budget is very clear
um so that we don't have a risk of having a substantial amount of funds left over from a contract that we're then not allowed to use for other uh for other instances. Um there's also new language for again large contracts for mandatory contract
terms um that to the extent practical practical uh clearly defined scope and metrics. Um this is new language that will be coming um after June 30th, 2026. We'll get language about liquidated damages for other remedies
for missed deadlines. And then also we will receive guidance on uh a more formal formal process for a third party to review um that the contract was executed successfully, that all the metrics were met in compliance with the contract.
Um and then finally um a review of amendments. Uh this goes along with the quarterly reports that we'll be required to submit um to the state budget committee detailing any contract amendment. Um and again this is only for uh high uh the contracts that are at
500,000 or more. So if an amendment would increase the amount by 500,000 or more or if the 500,000 or more contract would extend the contract by more than 6 months. Um so uh for the commission members knowledge a lot of this information for these quarterly reports
uh the agency already submits to the Indiana transparency portal. Um this is just sort of clarifying some additional requirements. So we've always been doing this transparent work. Um we've always um been submitting all of our contracts to that so that people have access to it. Um, but Senate enrolled act five
will sort of uh tighten up this process a little bit from a a quarterly reporting standpoint instead of just an ongoing standpoint. And B, I could just add to some of the provisions in Senate rule act five commission staff has been doing
anyway, you know, especially around the language about scope, outcomes, metrics. Um, I'm not sure how you're supposed to operate otherwise. So just know that yes, it's requirement now. It's just how leave it rolling. Thank you, commissioner. Any other
questions from the uh budget update perspective? Okay, I think I'm ready to move into the next presentation. Is it also focused? Yes. Perfect. Um, okay. So, we're going to move right into our tuition and fee
recommendation. Um, I will be beginning the presentation and then Commissioner Lowry um will join me towards the end of the conversation um and be presenting some additional information. Um first I wanted to kind of give an overview of the tuition setting uh
responsibilities and considerations. Um this is a statuto statutory required responsibility um no less than 30 days after the enactment of the state budget. The commission shall recommend a nonbinding tuition and
mandatory fee increase target for each state educational institution. the the state educational institutions will then take the recommendations, submit um a report to the state budget committee concerning the financial and budgetary factors that their boards of
trustees considered um in determining the amount of the increase. Um and then the state budget committee will review the targets recommended by the commission um and also will review the reports submitted by the educational institutions and um if the state budget
committee would like they will ask the institution to appear at a state budget committee um to talk about what is contained in the report. Some key considerations that we have for this year's tuition and fee setting. Um first and foremost our hope agenda goals. Um, as Commissioner Lowry
said earlier, um, making sure that, um, we are encouraging enrollment and encouraging completion. We've made some great strides the last couple of years, but something that we still want to ensure that we're doing. Um, affordability, another huge component,
something that drives enrollment, something that drives completion. And then finally, another key consideration, um, is the economic landscape. So the first thing that uh we've considered in terms of the tuition and fee setting recommendations is looking
at trends in enrollment. So last fall Indiana recorded a 2.2% increase in enrollment across its public institutions. Also a 3.3% increase um at its private nonprofit institutions. Um so what that signals to us is we want to
continue that trend. We want to continue uh collegegoing rates increasing. We want to encourage enrollment rates increasing. Um so this is something that we are looking at. Indiana is now ninth in the nation for completion rates. Um this is something that Commissioner
Lowry says that we are pleased but not satisfied. Um and so we are really working towards looking at a tuition and fee recommendation that ensures that um we are sustaining completion rates and improving completion rates. Um, and this ties again back to um, supporting our
need-based financial aid programs and overall college affordability. Another consideration that we look at is the national pricing landscape. Um, so for the last 10 years at Indiana's public institutions, uh, the instate tuition and mandatory fee
rates fell by about an average of, um, 1.2% annually over the last decade. and that's in constant dollars. Um, which is the eighth largest decline in the nation. I know that slide is very difficult to read. Um, but basically is looking at the annual tuition and fee
changes over a 10-year period where the blue arrow is signaling uh where Indiana is. Um, for our public two-year institutions, we don't have a graphic for that. Um, but they have held at 0% flat um over the same time period. And
Indiana's really proud to be a leader in affordability. um and really proud to be kind of setting the stage for um how to keep a disciplined approach to tuition and fee increases. Um another in uh another thing that we're also starting to look at is different ways of looking at
affordability. And so um we are partnering with the Strata Foundation to begin looking at their um affordability metric. And the strata uh state opportunity index allows states to compare themselves or benchmark themselves against other states on a
variety of metrics that help the states understand how they are progressing from an uh education to employment pipeline. And so there's several metrics about alignment with the workforce, about return on investment, um about data uh
infrastructure, but one of the other metrics is included is this affordability metric. And so this is a map of the United States obviously and it is the affordability of post high school public education by state. Um and this is for all public institutions. And
there's a legend at the bottom. Green indicates leading, blue is advanced, yellow developing, and red is foundational. So there's only two states in the country, both on the West Coast, where students can work fewer than 10 hours per week, as well as full-time
during the summer. Um, and that's based on the state's minimum wage, um, where they can afford a public education. Um, Indiana is really, uh, proud and excited to be part of the advanced group. We're one of 14 states where students can work
between 10 and 20 hours um, per week during the school year, full-time during the summer, and afford an instate um, public tuition education. Um, and so like I said, um, very excited about this metric and we're continuing to monitor it and benchmark ourselves against other
states. And I would add a little bit of color commentary there too. Um, as Brooke noted, we I think all of you know, we've been working very closely with the Strata Foundation, Strata Education Foundation on a number of fronts. We're really fortunate. They have a corporate office in Washington DC
and across the street from our office. That's their second office. So we work with them quite closely. Um while you know I can't resist this for while there are 14 in the advanced category um when you look at the leading and the advanced
all 50 we are I believe eighth in the nation u statistically yes that's the kind of place we want to be. It's a top 10. Um, so you you see right the connection in all these things. Top 10, top 10, top 10. And again, working very
closely with Australia and a benefit we have. One, they're just across the street. It's really easy to visit them. Um, but they're they're very supportive in helping us connect with other states, finding out their practices. You know, uh, they're they're a wealth of research as some of you have come to find out.
Um, and we tap into it regularly. Yes. Thank you very much, Commissioner. I forgot to mention that. Um, one thing that we also um wanted to tap into is um our heart and mind strategies research. It's very important to understand um especially
where Hoosiers are coming from, their perceptions of college, perceptions of value as we look at this year's tuition and fee landscape. Um so when we did uh this research project uh concluding last year we found that uh cost still remains
a large barrier for a large number of students. About one in four hooers still believe that a cost is a barrier. And one of the things we also learned is that the published prices are met with some skepticism. And so, um, of the Hoosiers that were surveyed, um, most of
them overinflated the actual cost of instate tuition by about double. Um, so those survey respondents thought that a 4-year annual instate tuition would cost about $21,000. And in actuality, it's only 9,800. And the same kind of pattern was
looked at at the two-year institutions. students and families um very much overinflated what they perceive for the cost from instate um tuition. So although we have the previous slides looking at Indiana's um gains in
affordability, how we rank in our um ability to give need-based aid, there is still um value or not value perceptions, there's still cost perceptions that we're keenly aware of that um we still have work to do and that we'll be battling.
Brook, I have a question. Yes, please. Um, and I should remember this from the study. That's okay. But did we also ask what people thought the all-in cost would be because this is just tuition and fees, right? And I think a lot of people get sticker shock over housing
and food programs and all that. I don't have that at the ready, but I can definitely get that to you. Thank you. And I have to say, Nancy, it's a great question. And I have to say that our research using heart and mind strategies
also catalyzed our friends of strata education foundation to also dig into this further and we're literally in the midst of literally now in the midst of releasing some of that and I give you the the early take on it. It really reinforces this and I think from
additional angles Nancy like you're alluding to. Um I also think um this actually provides a perfect segue to my next slide Jordan. So thank you. Um one of the other things we are looking at is that net price. Um so the out-ofpocket
cost for the student and family and again not just for tuition and fees but for cost of living whether that's room and board on the on campus or whether that's living on your own books and fee or books and supplies things of that nature. So at a national level, net
prices for families has actually been on the decline uh since 201617 and now it's hovering at around $17,000 um again for the entirety um of that. At 2-year Publiclix nationally, the net price for families has also declined um
but just on a shorter time span and hovered around $9,000 uh for the last couple years. Um, and so the bottom line for this is as we look at our tuition and fee recommendation is in years past, you know, gift aid has kept up with the pace of tuition and fee in fee increases
leading to either these flat or slightly declining net prices. And so that's something that um we're very keenly aware of as we move forward um in looking at this topic. Just to um Mr. Obvious question here, but just to be clear, th those national
numbers for both the four-year Publix and the two-year Publix are for their own instate tuition. Correct. Correct. Yes. And it'll be the net cost. Correct. But instate rates, not out of state rates. Correct. Each of those. Thank you, chairman.
Um as um our chancellor introduced um earlier today and I think we all talk about um we are very cognizant of our student populations and our student need. It's important for us to keep this in mind as we look at cost and investment perceptions as well as the reality for our students and families.
And so um for some context, there's a lot of different ways of assessing um you know the the student body and their need profile. One of the things that we can do is look at their percent of firsttime full-time students awarded the federal PEL grant. Um this is a federal grant based on the FAFSA information. Um
and it's awarded to the lowest income students. And so um as a median across our public institutions in the state in 2023 about 42% of the incoming student class were PEL grant eligible. Um and then you can see by individual
institution it's going to vary and that's going to vary based on um a lot of different factors. Um but something for us to keep in mind is that's a a significant percentage of students um that are high need and we want to keep that in [Music] mind. Um another topic that we look at
when we're considering the tuition and fee recommendations um is the borrowing landscape. Um there's continually lots of new stories about student borrowing. Um and for us, um the borrowing also sort of uh reflects like an an investment risk threshold in terms of
what amount of money are students and families willing to to put on the line for their education. And nationally, we have been seeing um that far fewer uh students are borrowing federal loans. In 2020, in 2014, 36% of all students who
were graduating from an undergraduate program borrowed a federal student loan. By 2024, um that percentage was less than 25%. And so we're also seeing this in Indiana. If we look at the longitudinal history of student borrowing, um the student loan borrowing
rates continue to go down. Um when we also look at the amount that students are borrowing, we're uh looking at are the amounts that they borrow that they're borrowing um acceptable or um manageable for a student coming out of undergraduate. So we put an example here
um based on recently collected data of what a student graduating from a bachelor's degree program what their median debt level would be. And it's around $20,000. Um, and if you look at federal student loan interest rates and a standard repayment plan, um, that's
around $300. So, um, this for us is is a good signal that it's, uh, keeping affordability. Um, it's not something that they're paying $1,600 a month. It's not equivalent to their rent. Um, but we're also hyper aware of that
information. Um the next thing that we always look at um have traditionally looked at is also the economic landscape. Um and so we look at the inflation indices. And I'll walk through these in just a second. Um lots of acronyms this morning. We'll be playing bingo later. Um the two on the
first are the higher education price index and the higher education cost adjustment index or adjustment. That's he and hecka. And these are inflation indexes for institutions of higher education to measure the cost of their operating. And so it's not a
consumerbased. And so for HEPY and HEKA, the costs that these two indices are really looking at are uh predominantly personnel costs. So HEPY looks at um staff or excuse me faculty salaries and how those are changing over time as a
driving way uh as a driving indicator. while the HEKA adjustment looks at all professional uh both faculty and staff salaries and then comes up with a rate. Uh the next thing we look at is a series of four consumer price index um
indices. For those of you who've ever seen a news story talking about the consumer price index, these are what we're talking about. Uh the CPIU, which is the consumer price index urban, covers about 95% of households. And then there's different variations of this
that we look at. We look at um this indicy less food and energy. We look at this indicy specifically for the Midwest. And then we also look at this indicy um for education and communication only. Um, and then again, u, one of the things
that we're considering this year as we move into the tuition and fee setting recommendation are those key factors that I mentioned at the beginning of the budget presentation. making sure that um alignment with Governor Brun's priorities, taking into consideration um some Medicaid challenges as well as um
some recent revenue forecast being below expectations going into the tuition and fee setting process. Um the commission has historically considered each of the following in developing its recommendation. Really the topics that we just covered. How do we improve
educational access and attainment? Um, how do we maintain or improve affordability? Where do we fall in the national tu tuition setting landscape and where we fall in the national and state economic landscape? Um, this is our recommendation history over the last
eight biania. Um what you'll notice is that we've always recommended a 0% floor and then the ceiling has varied um by b by any year um from 1.65 in 2015 all the way up to 4.70
um in 2009 um at the height of the great recession. And then I'm going to hand it over to Commissioner Lowry. Um do you want to come up here or just narrate come over there? I think I'll do it from here on my notes. Well, Brooke, thank you. Just tell me I'm going to do this. Yeah, thank you.
Um, again, as always, great work, bro, to you and your team and getting us to this point. Um, first slide, please. Commission members, one of the first things Governor Brun did when taking office in January, as you all know, was
to direct all state agencies to cut expenses by at least 5%. We did that and immediately so. When the state revenue forecast in April showed Indiana with a $2.4 billion budget shortfall of the next two
years, we as state leaders didn't panic. We were already in the mindset of being efficient and finding savings. So, and so continued those efforts as we do today with bigger. The final state budget confirmed
the governor's direction. Nearly all state agencies received at least a 5% operating reduction with an additional 5% held in reserve, including our higher education institutions. their efficiencies and savings to be
found in all levels of state government and our priority as leaders is to identify those without compromising on services for Hoosiers. We are fortunate that all of our state
entities are that of all of our state entities. We're fortunate that all of our state entities of all our state entities, our higher education institutions are in the best financial position to weather these cuts as state funding represents just one of the
revenue streams and institutions have strong reserves. Our higher education institutions need to address the reductions in the same way as other state entities. Focusing on core missions and then finding efficiencies
and accomplish and accomplishing those eliminating red student redundancies and identifying ways to streamline the delivery of higher education. I am encouraged personally by the example that has now been set for 14
years at Purdue University under the leadership of Presidents Mitch Daniels and Mong Chang, holding tuition and mandatory fees flat for 14 years while delivering successfully on their core mission is bold and
inspirational. Governor Broad has indicated and I am sharing with you that for these reasons he is requesting the commission recommend institutions hold tuition and mandatory fees flat. In addition, I would share with
you as your commissioner I fully endorse this recommendation. In fact, it supports the work that has been underway for three years in terms of affordability for students. As we all know, Indiana's college going rate, anything post high
school, declined from 68 to 53% in just a decade. And we've been hyperfocused on improving that over the past three years. For the past over the past two years, after a decade of decline, as Brooke pointed out, we have seen for the first
time increases in enrollment. Further, we've kept the gas pedal down on completion, as Brooke noted, ninth in the nation now, up from 14th. And we've been focused on keeping Hooter students here once they finish. You know, the evidence is clear. We
talked about leading indicators, demonstrating our strategies and initiatives are working. In the last three years, we've moved to automatic enrollment for 21st century scholars, nearly doubling the cohorts. Expanded Franco and utilization, expanded the number fast completions, moving from
39th in the nation, I believe currently, to eighth in the nation. 3 years ago, 84 high schools were using the Indiana College, offering it fully. Today exceeds 300. pre- admissions initiative that in just the past two years has
found 120 over 125,000 seniors receiving letters indicating institutions to which they would be accepted. Now adding on to that in a dynamic way, thank you Secretary Jenner and Governor LeBron, we now have automatic admittance to our
state institutions for students who will graduate with our new um enrollment honors plus diploma. That's remarkable. The bottom line is the commission, the work underway with our institutions, our other partners has leveraged policies, programs, and partnerships to keep our
college and universities accessible and affordable. As noted earlier, Strat Education says we're top 10 in affordability. CHIO says the same thing. This is where we need to keep focus. However, I know we all realize that
economic challenges have existed for our students, our fellow Hoosiers over the past few years. Things have been tough often for students and families to afford this. This is the time to continue to push. Again, to be very
clear, I fully support the governor's recommendation in keeping tuition and fees flat. Thank you, Brooke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Chairman Peterson. All right. Thank you. I think uh at this
point in time um it's important we open this up for comments and questions from commission members. Um one motion. Well, I just like to uh fully support likewise the the recommendation for uh remaining flat on tuition and fees. I know that's
a real challenge for our institutions and uh and I'm very sensitive to that. But I think the most important thing is uh is what we've been striving for through our hope agenda is increasing enrollment and getting more who's your students to go to college. And I think if we can can make a statement to those
to those students across the state that we're prepared to not increase tuition and to keep it flat, then we want you to come to school and that can make a bigger difference. you know, perhaps uh a small increase in tuition might, you know, you know, earn a few additional
dollars, but if we can drive additional students, that's a heck of a lot more important than just getting a little bit of an increase in in revenue. So, uh I think it's uh holding true to uh our uh really strategic objectives of continuing to drive enrollment, making
our colleges more affordable for who's your students. And again, we've we've made some progress here with a 2.2% increase over the last year, but there's so much further that we need to go in in that effort. Um it's it's a matter of
you know being student centric as we focused on throughout and uh really batting down the hatches and recognize we're in a challenging economic times and uh and then that's going to mean that's going to traverse across the state also with uh you know challenges for some of those young people that
maybe would have gone into uh directly into work that maybe aren't going to find those jobs and now college is even a better choice. So if we can help encourage them to enroll in one of our state institutions, I think uh we're going to be better off in the long run. So I strongly support that. Mike, thank
you. I'll take that as a recommendation from the chair of the budget productivity committee as well and and to Larry's point, we'll I'll entertain motion entertain a motion for approval and then we'll have further further dialogue. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is Pepper. May I make one more com comment?
Yeah. Yes, Pepper, please. I apologize. I may be delayed. Um, when the increase or with the I I I fully support the flattening and recognize the challenges for our universities, but I'd like to just make note that I hope our
universities aren't compelled to seek more outofstate students to make up the difference. And I understand why they would, but I always want our focus to be on our state of Indiana students. Okay, thank you. Other comments? I guess
I would just add, you know, it's not our top four uh agenda items or priorities, but you know, the public private partnerships and the partnerships with business and interns and working together on what we're ultimately trying to get to, which is an available
workforce for the future of business in Indiana. Um, you know, I think if the business community understands the tight economic times and the the 5% cut and holding tuition flat and the reasons
behind it, you know, I just would encourage all of our university partners to just keep driving that that partnership with business and see if that can't help. Well, thank you. Um, I would just like
to add as a student when I heard this news, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief and pride because for so many students like me, that decision means everything. That cost means everything. And it's the it's the difference between opportunity and what seems to be
impossible. Um, personally, my mom comes from a perfect country. Both my mom and my brother didn't go to college, didn't graduate from college. And um for me, I wasn't even sure if I could pursue higher education or not. Um but my story is just is just one of many. There are
plenty of students who work two or even three jobs to stay in school. Students who care for their younger siblings or for their parents. They have to support their families. And there are students who never even take that first step because the price tag scares them off. That number is too big and they don't
even believe in their own potential. So I just want to say as a student, I fully support this. This is exactly why we do this. Keeping tuition flat keeps that door open for all students, all demographics, no matter what zip code, what walk of life, what background, this opens that door for them. And it shows
that education is for every demographic, not just one student. So, I just wanted to say that receiving this position and uplifting student voices has been such a blessing. And it's really important what's being here at the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. And I myself as a Franco Vaning Grant
recipient am incredibly grateful and understand what difference this makes in success and the chance to go to college. So I'm really proud to be part of a generation that doesn't give up and also really grateful to Commissioner Lowry Brooke and all here that care about higher education and choose to stay with
students. Thank you. Nicely said others just a uh point of clarity and understanding. Um this would be our recommendation and I really appreciated
the uh the history of our recommendations in the past. Um historically where does that where does our recommendation measure up against what actually happened? Um uh thank you commission member
Kramer. I don't have that um information in front of me right now from the last bianium. Um generally I will have to get that back to you. I would generalize and Brooke Michelle or somebody reel me in. uh generally
speaking when the institutions take this recommendation and then they act as boards of trustees presidents you know to do what they're going through in tuition and fee uh setting um I think overwhelmingly they've come in below the
recommended ceiling threshold and once in a while you know have gone above that yeah once in a while is very loose term but we as fake can get that to you but I think the overwhelming majority has been to come within the ceiling that the
commission has recommended. It's typically it's typically been about one to two. We would exceed our recommendation each time. And and another point of clarity, our ceiling is zero, correct? That's what's recommended.
Comments. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I would just like to say before I do call for the question, um just chairs B if you're certainly understand challenges that we all are facing and I I think uh we've done a great job as a as a collective over the
last number of years uh with our partners at higher ed to really maintain affordability and we've seen the evidence of that. I think what is being said here is emblematic of an aspirational uh look forward to really try and make
sure that we have the best possible affordable and accessible access to higher ed for Indiana students going forward. And as an aspirational uh view of this, I think it's it's it's important and I think I think we need to support it. So just my
own two cents on that. So, with that, unless there's any other comments, I would call for the vote. All in favor of approval of the 0% tuition fee increase uh recommendation, please say I. I
opposed. All right. Thank you. Passes. Thank you, Brooklyn. Thank you. Next up, uh, Greg, I have you as the next up to, uh, follow on with a, uh, deeper dive on legislation update. So,
please welcome, assistant commissioner for public policy and strategic partnerships. Well, good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the commission. um excited to uh have an opportunity to um address you all following the conclusion of the 2025 legislative session. For my brief update
today, I'm going to focus on three areas. I'm going to pick up where Brooke left off focusing on the budget bill, but step over into programmatic and non-fiscal elements um of that legislation. And then we'll talk about um House Enroll Acts that lead across
the finish line and then round things up as Senate enrolled acts that um also were passed. So in each of those cases, um these bills will um really the main bits of legislation focus on higher education, K12 as well as the workforce.
All right. Before diving into the bills, just wanted to um give an overview of of legislative session. Uh the legislature did adjourn sin die um in the early morning hours of Friday April 25th. Um of the over,200 bills that were filed um
just slightly more than 240 um moved over to Governor Braun for signature and moving into House Enrolled Act 101. So the first element that I'm going to speak about is the utilization of physical facilities report. This was language that was priority of the house.
Um we're very appreciative for them sharing that um early with us and and looking for our feedback. So um Kyle, Seth Pinchel and I provided um some recommendations and and actually this report is not a completely new item to the commission. and it it really looks
to reinstitute a report that the commission delivered about two decades ago focused on this very topic. So at its core, it requires us to submit a report that examines the utilization of physical facilities um at our public college and university campuses that are
primarily used for instruction. Um this report is due on an annual basis on July 1st beginning with 2026. um allows us to examine the number and utilization of classroom spaces, instructional and/or laboratory spaces as well as combined
classroom and instructional spaces. Um I will say that I I think um the language that we landed on um is going to allow us to um really have actual data uh moving forward to support long-term planning at our institutional campuses
while having the flexibility um you know of understanding the the differences in the missions and students that our institutions serve. So we are appreciative of that. Craig, I got a question on that. Um, how exactly do we implement that? Is that on the staff's shoulders to gather
all that? Is it on our partners' the educational institutions to provide some kind of report? You know, do we have templates or is this where we have to go out and hire contractors? Yeah, that's a really great question, Nancy. I I think uh certainly philosophically we see it as a partnership between our staff and
our institutions. Um there's data that we're going to be requesting from them. Um we were mindful in the discussions that we had with the house um being flexible knowing the differences between our institutions but still getting to that common ground that that we seek to
um support with long range planning at our institutional campuses. And I I would just flag I think this is such a huge win for Hooser students. Um, Commissioner Lowry, I've talked about this a lot as a commission. You should know, you probably do, Indiana is number one in the nation for students leaving
with college credit. It's fantastic. A lot of our goal ahead is how do we blow open access so that every single child, regardless if they're in a rural school or an urban school or if their dual credit teacher retires in August before the start of the school year, that every
kid has the opportunity to earn these credentials of value. Um, so, uh, we typically get a a huge list of action items that come out of legislative session, but I think, uh, Commissioner Lowry and I will eagerly accept this one
because as our number continues to go up for students who want to take these and who access these, we also have to, um, uh, make sure that we're doing the best we can with the funding and uh, and really leveraging that in the best way. So, this is an action item. It's going
to take some work, but we're we're eager to get this one done, help a lot of kids. Well, thank you, Secretary Jenner. Um, and we completely agree. I think that um, you know, being laser focused on on funding and aligning um, that with
with the new Indiana diploma and the enrollment um, you know, honors plus seals and other other opportunities for students is is definitely a step in the right direction. And certainly while we um lead the country and we talk about that a lot in early college credit um that's no reason to take um our foot off
the gas and so we look forward to continuing to expand that opportunity for future students. Thank you. We'll go ahead and move to the next slide. Um one um other piece um that we wanted to to flag. So the governor's workforce cabinet that has existed for a number number of years was established
back in 2018 was abolished by the budget bill which um takes effect uh July 1st of this year. Most of the uh appropriations, powers, responsibilities of that body uh will go over to our partners at the Department of Workforce
Development. However, I did want to draw attention to just a few places in the budget bill at which we will um be inheriting some responsibilities um from that body. Uh first and foremost, we'll be supporting um collaborating with the Department of Education on approving credentials for the credential
completion grant. Uh we've talked about that opportunity before, but I know we have several uh new commission members. That's an opportunity that really um incentivizes the completion of of high value credentials, things like modern youth apprenticeships. there are a number of other you know programs such
as CDL or technical certificates in informatics that have been provided in the past and so we'll have a voice in that um with the department at lead. Um and then thirdly I'll I'll wrap up with this last part requires us to collect um data to inform future career clusters and course sequence sequence
requirements for CTE um and with that deliver an annual report to the legislative council. Next has to do with career scholarship accounts or CSAs. Uh this is a program that we have helped lead alongside the department of education and the treasurers of state's office since the
uh 2023 session. Um it transfers the administration of that program to the department of education from the treasur's office. Um we have a smaller role um but very important role in that program. commission um will continue to be involved for the next year, but um at
July 1st of 2026, those responsibilities um that we have will be transferred to the Department of Education as well. Um there's some additional language um about funding in the third bullet um that I won't go into too deep of detail on, but wanted to brief the commission
of this change as well. Next is post-secary career and technical education. Um this is actually related to um um the abolishment of the governor's workforce cabinet as well and and shifts and some of some of that language uh with the result being that
the commission um every two years u must prepare a plan uh for implementing post-secary CT programming um and and really use the state board of education's um plan that they have as a model by which to devise ours. Um
there's a a bit of language um really calling out the importance of of tying um the plan to employment um and outcomes. And then lastly um we are required to submit the plan to the state board of education uh for their review and any
recommendations. Okay. So we are still in uh the budget bill. Um after looking at these programmatic pieces, the next few slides which I will describe to commission members um are focused on higher education reform. Uh the first looks at um faculty and tenure. Um the
tenure language requires institutional state board of trustees uh to establish a review process first for department level promotions of faculty and tenure expectations and then next a post-tenure review process. Now, many of you are
familiar with the uh post tenure review that came out of the 2024 legislation by way of Senate Act 202. Uh this language, we've been asked a few times whether they're any um you know uh whether those conflict, they do not. Um they they run parallel, I think, with the same
objective of maximizing productivity at our institutional campuses. And that's really what this language gets to um the point of um the process uh requires that uh productivity is measured. Um you know some of the elements that that I noted in front of you are are faculty member
workload things like the number of students at the undergraduate level who are served. Yes sir. The when you look at faculty member workload does that indicate that if you've got too many professors particular course that will lead to some termination?
There's we'll get to that in the next slide. Commissioner Member Keratony, I appreciate that. Ultimately, um you know, the the language I think is very clear that was put into the budget. It will be up to our institutional boards of trustees um and how they implement that. But there are some some guidelines I think that get to the heart of your
question in my next slide. And actually here here in the the first bullet. So if productivity requirements are not met that are established by the board of trustees um the institution shall not a may uh place the faculty member on probation which
may result in dismissal um of that faculty member. Now um this does uh uh come into play at the start of the new fiscal year fiscal year 26 on July 1st. Um this includes any tenure agreement that is new as well as those that were existing but are being renewed. Um
lastly I'm sorry. Yes, the productivity of of the professor did not indicate whether there's too many people. Am I missing something here? You know, if the predict productivity requirements uh of a particular person under review are not
what they should be, well then that would lead to some possibly separation. But if you've got too many people in department, I'll weigh in Larry. I I think the productivity metric does tie really closely to that that if we I don't know
Nancy Dan and I are all doing one thing and right and we're not we're not all needed for that um yeah I take it that way I would echo Commissioner Lowry um you know in listening to a lot of the different
discussions uh during session um if we have uh I mean India I think we over 6,000 programs. So um across public and private. So let's say we have a program that has had four students in total over
five years and there are six professors who are in that program. Uh so that would be a question of productivity. I think the main provision uh could be considered and maybe in some respects on the research side, right? There's a
balance, but um the productivity element that you're asking about specifically as Commissioner Lowry stated would be considered. Thank you. And uh last uh point I wanted to address before going to the next slide. Um the language does require
faculty members to post the syllabus for each course. um the faculty member is teaching on the institutional website. Okay, next slide is is moving into faculty governance organizations. So um typically known as faculty senates or faculty councils um on campus. Um it
does define a faculty government uh governance organization as a body of members selected to represent faculty um at our institutional campuses. um requires any meeting um of of these bodies that um you know will make a motion or vote on a matter to be
publicly available. Uh another provision it prevents any member of a faculty government's organization who is not employed by the institution currently from taking a vote on a matter. So example would be a professor emeritus who who is retired but still uh
contributing to that body. Um lastly um there there is a change that provides that actions taken by govern faculty governance organizations are advisory only and uh with that I'm now going to transition into house bills uh now that
we've wrapped up with programmatic elements of the budget. The first bill I'll discuss is House Enroll Act 1111. Uh which as you recall, we've talked about this um throughout the legislative session was the Indiana National Guards Agency bill. Um it's got a variety of of
changes incorporated into it. The two provisions that impact the work that we do at the commission is first it expands the National Guard supplemental grant to include in- demand apprenticeships and other approved credentials uh which are approved by um the National Guard, the
Department of Workforce Development in consultation with us at the commission. So that does expand that scholarship. mostly right now that's limited to undergraduate degrees um for eligible um Indiana national um guardsmen or or airmen um both in the army and air guard
who can participate in that program. And then the second provision, um, I'll just mention quickly. It allows a recipient of the National Guard supplemental grant, uh, to use the award for up to two years on room and board, um, and other educational expenses, um, that that we would have to approve at the
commission if the student is a 21st century scholar. So, this expansion in the past, a student who was a recipient of the 21st century scholarship, also eligible for the National Guard supplemental grant, was only able to use one award. Um, in this case now, due to the legislative change, a student who is
a 21st century scholar can continue to use their 21st century scholarship on tuition and their national guard supplemental grant on other um approved expenses including room and board. House enroll 1515. This was um a bill from from Representative Bain. Uh
largely was um a K12 bill. Um however it did take um a number of changes in conference committee. Um the first bullet um I'll mention this has been part of the bill since the beginning but it it amends some of the uh one of the requirements for the workforce ready
grant um really expand expands eligibility. This this is a conversation actually um that Commissioner Lowry and I had um with Representative Bain about this idea in that um if a student earns a workforce ready grant qualifying certificate um in the past they have not
been eligible to use that award again um that now changes and the student could earn another certificate underneath the program. The um next bullet point uh we talked about house uh bill 1049 which was the public service attorney um
scholarship bill. Um that bill died um but the language was added back in conference committee to 1515. However um the program was not funded in the budget. Okay, we've wrapped up with house bills. Now moving into um senator
rule acts. Um first bill I'm going to discuss is unlawful discrimination. Um this bill um changed quite a bit throughout um legislative session. Um and where it ended um you know certainly wanted to note um commission members just a couple places that it impacts our
work. Um first for three different scholarships the next generation hooser minority scholarship William A. Crawford minority teacher scholarship and Erlene S. Rogers student teaching scholarship for minorities. uh minority is stricken from eligibility criteria for each of
those scholarships. And now the change is is that students um are are required to be residents of underserved counties to apply or um also graduate in the case of the next generation who's your minority scholarship, graduate from a high school located within another
underserved county. Those underserved counties, there are five of them defined in the bill, um listed as Allen, Lake, Marian, uh St. Joseph and Vanderberg. Um, another provision, um, it allows for the continuation and
renewal of the impacted scholarships for any students, um, who received the award prior to fiscal year 26, uh, which is July 1st of this year. Um, a couple other things I'll I'll mention quickly. Um you'll recall the central tier 2 work
um and diversity committees where intellectual diversity was added on uh to that area in statute and actually repeals those committees from code. Um and then finally round granting it out provides that a scholarship or fee remission based on a personal characteristic. So race, ethnicity,
gender, some there are other criteria as well that are spelled out in the statute may be provided to a student if the source of the scholarship or fee remission is not state funding. I just have a quick question. The definition for underserved counties, do
you know what the definition why those counties? Um, I did not. Yeah, we did not engage. Um, they're the largest populated counties. I'm just concerned. I'm just that's a curiosity what defines
underserved. Yes, that's that's a great question, Commission Member Cave. We we did not engage um on that amendment. Um but it was I I can tell you that um during a second reading in the house is when that amendment was presented um and
was taken um um by the house then. But that that was where most of the changes that I just detailed including the definition of underserved. I was just curious of health is it? It's a really good question. So some background. So Chris and I have to sit and watch background all the time. So does Greg
and all these others and I know you all don't watch it all the time. So, some background um off the top of my memory and and correct me if I'm wrong. I believe Representative Earl Harris Harris, correct? Um Earl Harris uh made this uh suggestion and this was because
um of the Harvard Supreme Court case uh that would cause some issues for the state of Indiana and the commission on how we currently um give out deploy our support for uh uh
minority students. Um, so Representative Earl Harris made this recommendation uh in this way and I'm certain we will work with Earl and many others to think through how this is. Glad to connect with you if you have some ideas as well, but this was to get us in line so that
we're not illegally illegal federally uh in how we're currently doing it. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm not questioning which one. I'm just questioning what defines underserved. Is it is it education? Is it the average?
We'll be working through that. Yeah, that's what I'm just curious. Just curiosity. Absolutely. Yeah, that and thank you for the question. Yeah, that'll be a followup for us to help everyone understand what all those parameters are. I'd love to involve that. That'd be great. We'll we'll make sure that and again I I would just have
to echo to represent Harris coming forward to help solve that tricky issue right in his backyard right here. Um and also fantastic. Yeah. And also not surprising as you may recall you carried the the 21st century expansion. So we'll
make sure you're involved. Thank you. Sure. Because I I noticed there aren't any rural counties and so that's just just curious. Great. Noted that for followup. Thank you. Um moving into the um next bill Senate Rule Act 365. Um another bill
that we we've discussed now for several months. um originally started as a um return on investment report and analysis and that um uh requirement you know evolved over time. I will say there was some significant collaboration between
um the commission, the office of education, department of education, MH which is the management performance hub um and and Senator Rods on on this particular language and we think we it landed in a really good spot. Um essentially requiring the department in
collaboration with the commission DWD and MPH to publish a dashboard with timely and relevant information uh which is incredibly important. uh concerning certain secondary programs. So in the introduced bill, 21st century scholars
and Frank Oannon were also included um with the programs that were being looked at. Those were removed. Um we are spotlighting career and technical education at the secondary level, high school equivalency as well as adult high schools in this work. And so we look forward to supporting um the department.
And it will look at other things including participation cost completion and employment outcomes for our students. Another component uh with regards to reports in this bill um the department of education in collaboration with us in
MPH um beginning with the class of 2023 um must report the number of students who reach CTE concentrator status. So, I know Sam Ror, our our assistant commissioner for CTE, has has talked about um that before, but essentially, you know, earning your your principal
scores and then your concentrator A and B is the way by which we measure concentrator status. So, not only that, but secondly, are those students employed um in an occupation aligned to their CT program um you know, 1 3 5
years down the road? And so, we think that will deliver some some rich data as well. Um a couple of other uh changes with respect uh to this bill. One looking at the career coaching grant which the commission has um administered um moves that uh program over to the
department of education starting July 1st. Um you know we think that's that's going to be a good move and definitely undergards a lot of the great work that Secretary Jenner's team um has done you know in collaboration with with the commission on diploma redesign. Um and then lastly it prohibits state
educational institutions from applying for the grant. So, eligible entities, intermediaries, per coaching providers, um, and others. And with that, thank you. I think what we'll do, Greg, um, we have a guest who wrote up here to be
with us and I'm going to come up there for a second because we have one more bill we want to talk with you about. Glad to take questions now on any of the bills. We certainly can do it after this one, too. So, I'm going to make my way up there. You know, commission members, just a quick observation as I get ready to
introduce our our guest. Um, as as I reflected on the review that Greg just did of the session, a handful of words came to mind. alignment, streamlining, efficiency, intentionality,
outcomes. I think I think those were really strong commonalities amongst the legislation that really will strengthen what we're doing here in Indiana across across agencies and uh on behalf of our fellow Hoosiers. And with that, I think
u a bill is just remarkable. It was uh the commission's, as you'll recall, priority bill, Senate Bill 448. Um, I think it speaks to all of those things and we are just really lucky that u I'll just say our friend Senator Greg Good
drove all the way up here just to uh talk with all of us all of you about this just terrific piece of legislation. We would be hardressed to find we have a lot of support in the legislature and a lot of friends there and so forth. I'm just telling you, we'd be hardressed to
find anybody who uh uh helps us carry the water any more so than Senator Greg Good. So, Senator, thank you very much. [Applause] Well, good morning. Good morning. What
an honor it is to be here. Um I don't know about you, but all of us have hit the lottery of life, have we not? We're here in the United States of America. We are here in Indiana. And uh no matter whether times
are difficult by our standards or uh good or great by our standards, it's a whole heck of a lot better to be here than a lot of other places in the world. And when we look at life situation with
that top of mind, then we can solve anything. And I'm deeply grateful to be here. uh especially on this campus when I think about Purdue the name Purdue I think of Mungchang when he says that we will make Purdue the most consequential public university in the United States
of America with regard to national and economic security and what I love about that is that's a vision not only for Purdue uh but for all of American higher education certainly in Indiana if we will it and uh I want to give a shout
out to Commissioner Lowry for your leadership and uh Secretary Jenner, all of the work and you do things the hard way, the transparent way of making sure that we've got this continued uh seamless transition right from the
earliest stages of life all the way to something as advanced as a PhD that in our economy needs workers in all of these different categories with all of these different credentials. Uh but uh we've got to continue to try to build the pathway um toward that. And I just
want to say a few words about that. But before I get to uh Senate Bill 448, just a couple of of comments. Um and I shared these comments during the legislative session. Uh the first relating to uh Senate Act um uh 289. and
I said, "Yeah, I voted against it and it's on my heart." Um because uh no one could at the legislature give me the assurance that the state wouldn't mess with African-American cultural centers on
campuses and it just didn't feel right to me. And um so I respectfully voted against it. But I'm going to be watching that issue and I said that to my colleagues very closely. The state of Indiana is not going to mess with African-Americ
then I'm going to personally get involved. I don't think it's going to happen, but I don't want it to happen. And that's very important in my district and to a very important constituency uh to me. And then the second thing and uh tr call you trustee, commission member
Cale, I think your question is spot on. I think maybe looking at the eligibility of free and reduced lunches uh might be uh an indicator, but um it's a very good question. Uh the second has to do with the budget. Um a day that will live in
revenue forecast infamy. uh April the 16th uh essentially blew up 3 and 1/2 months of hard work uh related to a budget and uh we were trying to find a lot of different ways to make sure that we invest in higher education and I
still had the high hope of uh making sure that we could find a way to invest in capital because capital is important not only to our uh institutions of higher education but it's important to building trades. it puts people to work and uh it's such an important part of attracting students and and growing
enrollment, but uh things kind of took a turn for the worse. I believe in the American economy and uh I don't think it's going to be as doom and gloom as as they were projecting and and I'm hopeful that um if we find ourselves uh perhaps sitting on more money that we can make
some strategic investments uh and higher education, post-secary education needs to be uh top of mind. And why is that important? I think you made the right decision uh with your your position on tuition, but the state also has to meet
its commitment. And that's the difference between Indiana and a lot of our our surrounding states. When the state may meets its commitment by way of the operational appropriation, then that uh is the best incentive for our institutions to keep tuition lower. And
that's why regional campuses in the state of Illinois have higher tuition than our flagship research universities in Indiana. And so we always want to make sure that we're mindful that, you know, as we think about the expenditure uh per full-time equivalent student in
higher education, it involves the appropriation, but also um tuition. So I want to just really quickly um uh just talk a little bit about 448. Um it's one of the few pieces of legislation that comes out that came out of of uh the
Senate Education Committee with bipartisan support. That doesn't always happen. Uh but I think that speaks to the commitment of Secretary Jenner and Commissioner Lowry and and what I wanted and we wanted to listen to all sides and we wanted to uh make sure that we were
trying to be as responsive to all sides through that legislative vetting process. And before I talk about the details of 448, I want to just quickly paint a picture. I think most of you are very familiar with these two books. Uh Jim Clipton's The Coming Jobs War that
came out in 2011, chairman of Gallup and and I read that book every couple of years just as a reminder. But back in 2011 he was projecting uh that you know with the billions and billions of people on this earth there's
infinitely uh smaller number of good paying jobs and the competition for these good paying jobs is only increasing through globalization and uh technological leaprocking and so if America and if
Indiana wants to be able to compete for these good paying jobs it's going to take a highly skilled workforce beginning at the earliest stages of childhood and certainly uh making sure that third graders can read by the third
grade and to continue some type of uh continuing education and training. Fast forward to just a couple of years ago, Jamie Marisadus uh wrote a book uh human work in the age of machines. And uh again speaking from a global context but
drilling it down to typic county citing the example that in 1989 when Subaru uh opened its doors, uh a human uh performed uh just about every weld on the 88 or so automobiles coming through
the line. produced every day. In 2016, a machine or a robot was uh performing most of the welds on the approximately uh uh 1,300 automobiles going through the line. And of course, the the whole premise of that book uh with that
example is that we better embrace technology and figure out how we humans work with technology. And again it means a highly skilled um workforce. That's on the global context. The national context
is there is tremendous opportunities across the United States of America but particularly in the heartland and specifically in Indiana. And I wear two hats. And yes, while I'm here today in part to be with you, Commissioner Lowry,
a guy named Todd Young has a list of some other things that he wants me to do while I'm up here. And I want to give a shout out to my boss because he's working his heart out on both sides of the political aisle. And a great example was somebody who I
believe spoke uh to uh with you last night, Alejandra Castillo, uh the former uh EDA administrator, and they worked very closely uh on the chips and sciences act and particularly the federal tech hub uh the Hartland
Bowworks that is located uh in central Indiana and uh that type of bipartisan federal work to onshore these incredible high techch uh advanced manufacturing ing types of possibilities is so
important uh to uh to Indiana. And so Todd's working really hard not only on the implementation of the Chips and Sciences Act, but a bill called the Ships Act to bolster the American Navy. And why is that important Indiana? Because we produce, we are, you know,
such a manufacturing intensive state. We produce a lot of components that go already into existing vessels and there's going to be a whole lot more of opportunity on that. So, chips, ships, rocks, because uh as recognized by
Governor Braun pretty recently in developing a rare earth mineral council, uh Indiana's got an important part to play with regard to the important rare earth resources that will fuel the 21st century economy. And then finally,
genes. Uh genes with a G. Uh Todd serves as the uh chair of the uh National Security Commission on emerging biotechnology. Tapping into life science is so important right here in the state of Indiana because future national
economic security will largely be driven by what we can grow in labs for the betterment of mankind. But we also are facing competitors and even adversaries that want to use that same technology and yet they do not
share, you know, our commitment to liberty, the free market and and our American values. So that's at the national level. And then finally, what does that mean for Indiana? And that's what 448 to me was all about. Indiana is already a prominent
leader. I mentioned life sciences, human, animal, and plant life sciences. Indiana is is becoming this incredible emerging leader in micro electronics, semiconductors, and chip
manufacturing. Indiana, we are standing right here in the heart of the quantum corridor connecting the University of Chicago to Notre Dame. And the next vision uh phase of this vision is to get it down to Purdue, West Lafayette to
Indianapolis all the way to Crane that supercomputing capability will fuel artificial intelligence development. Indiana is doing so much, punching way above its weight with regard to defense development, whether it is in uh AM
General uh in uh South Bend to the myriad types of companies that feed into our defense manufacturing base. And so, but we're not fully inspiring the workforce to go into these
various fields as well as a whole host of other incredible opportunities that demand a strong and highly skilled workforce. And so when Secretary Jenner and Commissioner Lowry approached me last December about, hey, we want to try
to come up with some ideas um to kind of help our work with our university partners to better focus on the state's workforce high demand priorities. I was like all in. Let's do it. And part of that relates to program
review. That's one component of this bill. Now, if you're a glass half empty personality, you're getting scared and oh my gosh, they're targeting uh my program. No, we are glass half full personalities. This is a way to help
encourage and inspire department chairs from my perspective. Let's grow our enrollment. Let's get out there and work with our university partners and with our commission members and with legislators and let's promote higher education. Let's grow that enrollment in
those programs. But if those programs have minuscule enrollments, then if they're partly funded by tax dollars, shouldn't those
programs undergo some scrutiny? I think so. between 1989 and 2009, your predecessors with the Commission for Higher Education went through, you know, about 20 years worth of program
proliferation and you all were doing a phenomenal job of making sure let's be really really focused on the type of academic programs that you are approving and I think the taxpayers deserve that. Secondly, Secretary Jenner wants to
continue to push forth on some plans and some road road mapaps. Um, these are the high demand, high priority economic areas in the state of Indiana. And these are the types of credentials and stackable credentials that will allow an
individual to get a job. Let me give you an example. And I use this example all the time. Excuse me. My seasonal allergies are kicking in. IvyTech in Bloomington has a semiconductor
certificate in response to the micro electronics work at Crane. You have somebody who has no idea what a semiconductor even is, can go to that IT tech, work toward a semiconductor
certificate that will provide entree into this incredibly important national security field. That certificate is designed to be stackable to lead to an associates degree or a bachelor's degree.
I love that example because I think that's in part when your vision about this pathway that's what you have in mind. Finally, it it takes a deeper dive around enrollment and how many students in the state of Indiana at our public
institutions are coming from the state of Indiana versus out of state versus from outside the country. And there's been a lot of discussion around um should we
have minimum admission requirements to accept so many um who's your students? I personally did not want to go that far. What I had thought though was let's put um thank you so much. Let's put let's just put some scrutiny of
reporting the data and and by that I'm talking about um if if uh the the commission will now uh be required to report on its uh uh web page. Uh these these are the institutions. This is the
percentage of instate students. This is the percentage of students out of state but from the United States. This is the percentage of students from other countries. It takes a a a little more of a deeper dive to also pinpoint engineering
programs and computer science programs. And what we want to make sure is we're just we're just paying closer attention of who who are we educating and and I hate to put it in these terms, but are we educating are we the taxpayers helping subsidize the
education of individuals who will take their their uh the intellectual capital and use that to uh work against the national security interests of the United States of America. So, we just want to pay closer attention to that. And I I I guess I'll just leave leave it
at this that um I we are so richly blessed in Indiana. There is a postsecondary opportunity for every hooer and we have generous um financial aid programs. The 21st
century scholar program I is I think the envy of of the country. Uh but we've got to continue to keep working together and uh to be as strategic to be as focused as possible. And I think if we do all of that then you know 10 years from now whe
whether you're still serving on this commission for higher education or there'll be those who succeed you will just continue to make sure that Indiana which is competing globally uh is just continuing to make strides in
all of these key measures of economic progress and success and freedom and uh as the free world is counting on The United States of America, my friends, the United States of America is counting on Indiana. So with that, I just
appreciate your service. Would welcome any questions. I've spoken uh long enough, but thank you for allowing me to to be here. Thank you for being here and just I'm sure others will have comments and questions, but I just want to reflect on thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your insightful comments here, not
only on 448, but just the specifics of higher ed. Just really articulate and and thoughtful and deep comments around those realities, your your background and history with with higher ed as well as your your day job with your boss and everything seems to have aligned you
your life's work with being in the right place at the right time to really help things advance in the future. So, thank you. And I just a quick comment about your I love your reflection on the micro electronics example of going in to the Iotech certificate program thinking more about the crane piece. Many people don't
know this but there's a an interesting way of actually bringing that opportunity down even to the secondary level. There is I think it's LGO has a studentrun business that actually every ship that goes in the United States fleet has a part on it that this student
run business builds makes. Yeah. It's tied to to a lot of really interesting opportunities for engaging students um in not only defense and ships but all sorts of academic or excuse me industrial opportunities in the future. So another great example of reflection
on how important that is. So thank you. Thank you. I I have to add a couple of comments. I I smiled at Secretary General as you were describing that if you've been under secretary very long. I have you here talking about blurring the lines a lot. It's become ubiquitous to our
education lexicon here in Indiana. And another thing, you know, like if there's an AI model that would pick this up, this maybe only second to bluring the lines would be stacked credentials and that's deeply embedded
in this bill. Um, Secretary Jenner team, our team, Senator Good and others made sure that was there. It's so critical for all the reasons you pointed out, Senator, for all the reasons you point out daily secretary Jenner. um you know people
don't people don't end up losing the value of what they've already done which has happened far too often over the years in education but it but it builds on great intentionality the the other thing one other thing that I would be remiss uh if we didn't make sure we both
mentioned credited you for helping get it into the bill secretary Jenner um Governor Brun's incredible idea that we brought forward in early April which was for the coming new uh high school
diplomas to work with the institutions. Talk about partnership getting commitment from all the presidents that a student who earns the uh forthcoming Indiana high school
diploma earns the enrollment honors plus seal and submits the nationally recognized college executive entrance exam would get accepted would get accepted to any of our institutions in the state. You helped us senator codify that. Yes.
Uh it began as a bold executive order from the governor. Uh many of us had the opportunity to be there and be part of it in the discussions. That's folks that's historic. You heard a number of things this morning that other states just
aren't doing. And you know I think again you look at the the working relationships, the partnerships and so forth here, but then the leadership to make sure those details happen and push it across the line and get it embedded. Um those are things we're all trying to do and Senator we're just we are
absolutely grateful for your partnership. Thank you all. Appreciate you all. Thank you. Greg, is that it from you? Great report. Uh thank you both very much. Um any follow on comments or questions? not only for good, but for
Greg on on the legislative items before we we move on. I just briefly briefly say and piggy back on what Commissioner Lowry said. Um what is in 448 and that direct access
coupled with the transparency in 448 is going to it's going to create incredible opportunities for Hoosiers who's your students that it hasn't existed before. So, I just echo the excitement and appreciation. Thank you, Kim. Commissioner, I think
you're next up. Don't take this as a reflection of anything other than I need to run down. Yeah, I I will try I will endeavor not to be equations, Mr. Chairman.
Um, so Senator probably had never go back there. Um, as I get ready to do my presentation, some of our staff have heard me say this before. Um, and I won't go into the whole thing, but he mentioned something along the way. He
mentioned two books. I've read both. I read the first one. He mentioned when it came out because my CEO, to whom I reported, Hilton Brand made me read it. I don't know. We did whatever he said. Um, and uh, the executive team, the whole senior team read the book and um,
I know you need a credit for blame. Fell named Ken Campy passed away a couple years ago who was our CEO. He looked at myself and two other people. We had all been reading and had read the coming jobs war. Um, and he looked at us and he said, "So there's this looming war for
talent. Let me be clear. If there's this war, we win." and he pointed at us and said, "And you're going to figure it out." And we went, "Well, okay." We had our homework assignment and uh I won't worry about
the whole details, but there was a a seminal moment that uh led me to be with you all today. It began with that book and in his corner office as we were talking about our own enterprises, we were in an inquisitive phase and so
forth. Um, so you brought that was a flashback uh, Greg and he was never delegate by the way in his issuance of direction and uh, we didn't take it seriously and we set out to do that. So anyway, thanks for that fond memory of
how they ended here. I'm going to be somewhat brief on some of these slides because we flipped the schedule around a little bit, you know, trying to make sure we accommodated everything. And frankly, Brooke already did this a smashing job and Greg did on some of the components in my presentation. So, I'm
going to spare you um additional slides and minutes uh from me. Okay. really quickly. Uh, but I do think this bears repeating and I'm not going to go into all the details. Um, I I think what
transpired with remarkable leadership in the face of incredible challenge. Uh, we won't talk about it in depth here, but uh, you know, the shortfalls for revenue. By the way, in the fiscal year we currently operate, right? That's the 400 million
and 2 billion over the next bianium. um folks did a lot of heavy lifting and um you know literally about a twoe period. So as you as you see folks who are really involved in that, legislative leaders, the governor, this whole host
of folks um tell them thanks. These are really really hard decisions to make and they're hard to implement and and this what occurred was what needed to occur to occur on behalf of our fellow teachers. Ah, thank you.
We give this one a shot. Yeah, this one's cool, right? So, so can our tech corridor invent a clicker that actually works? Yeah, and I would be okay with just a chip up here. Yeah, thanks. So, uh, you've heard
about Senate roll back 448. Again, tremendous thanks to Senator Good House and Roll Act 101 between especially Brooke and Greg. By the way, you you hear me say I hope you hear me say often enough really good things
about our team. two people who again new to their roles. Brooke was thrust into this role if you don't recall on January 14th. Yeah, we were already in session. Holy smokes. Um and Greg
leading our legislative and policy actions brush into that role, leading it leading it on January 14th. And frankly everyone I think it was a remarkable year and it's it's really great leadership of folks like that team. Um
you've seen the fiscal nonis frankly I wanted this slide so you would have a close notes version because there's a lot uh I won't go over it that's already been covered but I thought this would be really helpful for you just to have as a takeaway and for your own purposes and you know out in the community and so
forth where you live. um executive orders. There'll be quiz over this after lunch. Um yeah, this was just to give you an idea, but I'm going to give you a better idea. Now, I'm going to brag on Michelle, who you know is our second
command chief operating officer. She doesn't know I'm carrying this today. Uh we we decided to start something as soon as uh executive orders were starting to occur from the president and the governor. Um, and if they had any way of affecting
us. Yeah. I'm just going to tell you, you don't work with Michelle Hashcraft and not become highly organized. Yes. And so we're tracking these things obviously as agencies and so forth, but she made sure we had a jump on this and started spreadsheets of
the of the presidential and gubernatorial uh executive orders, how they would affect us, what the impact is, when we could start, etc., etc., etc., and then began doing that with legislation. And what I will tell you is you probably updated since this copy that I got a
couple days ago u Michelle but the lines uh total 71 different responsibilities and the point is I want you to know because of folks like her and others on this team we're ready and we're not just ready we start
implementing and u a couple of us were talking about uh some legislation maybe yesterday uh effective for example July 1. My strong opinion is we don't come to July 1 and start thinking about maybe kind of sort of looking at and figuring out what
we need to do. We need to get the round running on July one and that is darn sure what we will do. So that was a sorry Michelle for embarrassing you long way of saying you know to have a team like this that's on top of this this this could be so
overwhelming and maybe it is to other people uh it will certainly take a lot of work um but we've got the road map to do it I'm carrying what I think is the latest version there you know you can access those electronically I I know but you you know
we can I love an impact right do that like a budget bill or something and somebody had to help him carry it or something. Yeah. So, same thing on legislation. Uh, executive board legislation. Um, FASA, we got to
we got to talk about that a little bit. I I referenced it this morning. We were 39th in the nation a couple years ago. Um, or eighth or 10th as of today. Uh, yeah, eighth eighth in the nation. We set a goal 20 gosh I'm trying to
remember Michelle when you started two and a half years ago what had been our percentage of completions by seniors uh by June 30th it was about 41%. Yeah and uh so you know we we like stretch
goals um and we set forth to set that goal at 60%. Um it didn't happen last year because you might have heard the uh former US Department of Energy or energy um education fumbled the ball and yeah
there there are not enough ways to explain how the former DOE you know messed up FASA frankly for a lot of low-inccome students too. Former US DO not that Thank you. You heard the ad former.
Uhhuh. Yes. Thank you, Secretary. Yeah, absolutely. Um, right. And so that put a crimp in things. Although I think as you know, we're one of only two states that actually grew fast to completion year-over-year. One, two states. Um, in
spite of the federal um two of my favorite words, Secretary General. Yeah. um you know so so we had a good running start legislation that we were able to get across the line a couple years ago was very helpful um but you hear us talk about all the time that we could not
have done it without partnerships uh Fairbanks foundation supporting it lots of community faith-based organizations supporting it and so we've stuck to that 60% goal I think uh Michelle I read an email from you or somebody else yesterday we're sitting here on May what
is it 14th or something 15th and we're 57 7% I believe folks we're going to pass the 60%. We're going to exceed it. Uh going to remain in top 10. And now the nervous part for our team that they know they know what this what this means.
New goal. Um top 10's nice. Let's just be number one now. But you know it's it's very much to brag on our our team but very much also to acknowledge we have extraordinary partners. uh Clarity and Green and the folks at the Fairbanks Foundation for full
disclosure I'm on their board now was not when they made this decision uh to support this Fairbanks has poured millions of dollars into this and organizations he goes on the board of this commission at the time organizations like Goodwill and uh CLLD
and others uh have stepped up and we're reaching especially lowincome students to give him the chance at something that I won't even attempt to say, I would just say rewind the the video or the tape and listen to what Samantha had to
say earlier this morning. That's why we do this stuff. Uh, by the way, team, some of you should be ready to do what you're going to do maybe after lunch, now before lunch. And I'm I'm thinking because we're ahead of schedule, Mr. Chairman. Um, probably back if he's
around maybe want to be prepared. I think we're right on the spot, man. Um, for a Q and uh, Chair Bland are going to be good for that. So, I'm going to wrap up here in a second. So, uh, I want to acknowledge a couple things here and
talk with you about, uh, people. Uh, Cody, who I hope you were able to meet last night, if you didn't already know him, was just a a smashing addition to our team. Um, he he has been coveted for his uh, expertise in at the state house,
his the respect that folks have for him in the finance area, legislature, state budget agency, governor's office, and so forth. And yes, team CAG won. I I mean, yes, we're the ones who landed him and um we're glad he also picked us. So,
Cody, welcome. And uh just so glad you're part of this team. Um you know, I want to make sure and recognize the partners and teammates. And I know she's probably checking emails right now, but uh I want to make sure that we all know that Susan
Preppel, who has just been a terrific partner to us, uh representing Indiana State University, is attending her last meeting as at last commissions meeting as the representative for Indiana State University. and just wanted to
personally thank you, Susan, for your partnership with all of our team uh with me, the the work that you do on behalf of Indiana State. So, we're just we're really grateful and only because I still have the microphone, Mr. Chairman. Um, I
know we I know we talked about this a little bit earlier and u people people had some people had some nice remarks to say and then he had some very gracious remarks to say but in this role I'm going to miss uh working with hanging
out with and so forth with Dr. Chad Willer. Um, I was delighted to hear him say something that that I had thought and that is that I became different and um, you know, he he embraced what was
honestly just this really kind of loose idea that u, hey, shouldn't we really be focusing on artificial intelligence as, you know, an ecosystem and really thinking deeply about that? and um he he grabbed the ball, he ran with it, and
he's started scoring touchdowns for us. And um he knows I'm I'm going to go visit him in a couple weeks when I come and visit Dan Peterson in Bloomington. He and I are going to get together and he's going to I'm just preparing. He's going to hear me begging him to continue
to help us, especially in the area of artificial intelligence. the um the faculty leadership conference that was held in January was absolutely phenomenal and you heard from a couple of our uh uh couple of his colleagues
from Indiana University and he was at our last meeting uh Justin and an the the way in which they really helped you think about what the possibilities of artificial generative artificial intelligence especially are. And so yeah, publicly he's on notice. I'm going
to be begging him to continue to help us and I'm a crab sandwich and so forth uh as friends. So Chad, thank you for your counsel and your friendship with um I didn't have anything else, Mr. Chair, because the people with the real talent
covered half of what I was going to cover anyway. And um I suppose what we can do is they're prepared unless Michelle already took care of as normal. Yes, she was anticipating. She was three steps ahead. And and look at that.
Victoria is going to talk with you about readmissions. And Michelle, would you make sure that I know Victoria has met several folks, but could you do a intro? We are clearly very different heights. And this is I'm going to tiptoe this for a second. Um uh yeah, this is Victoria
Fair. She our secondary transition manager, one of two on our team. Um, and many of you have heard me for the last two years talk about our pre-missions initiative. She oversees sort of the day-to-day operations of that program. Now, she also oversees our FAFSA strategy. So, we have her and many of
our teammates to thank for our success so far this year. Um, we are going to co-present today. I'm mostly going to help cover some new aspects um that are going to fall under the pre-missions umbrella. Um, some of which you've heard a preview of with Thank you. the 448 conversation. Um, yeah, it's a little
it's a little wob. We're going to make it work. Um, so yeah, uh, this is to give you a little bit of a preview of, um, what is happening as we prepare for the class of 2026 for pre-mission. And then at our September meeting, you'll hear Victoria give you um, sort of an update on all the numbers that we know
Commissioner Lowry and several of you love to hear about what the impact of this program will do. So with that, I'll turn it over to Victoria. Thank you, Michelle. It's great to meet everyone again. My name is Victoria Fair. Uh, today we are going to cover maybe Perfect. Thank you. Uh today we're going
to cover what is Indiana upgrade missions, some statistics from 2024 and 2025, the first two years of the program, as well as looking forward to 2026 because we are about that time and then just some updates in legislation with Michelle as well as our new enrollment ready
campaign. Thank you. So what is Indiana free admission? We're going to go one more case. Okay. So, Indiana pre-missions is an initiative we run. Like I mentioned, we are going into the third year of the initiative. Through this, we look at
high schools that often participate. We match them through their junior year GPA and STES the students into what we call pre-missions for participating Indiana State institutions. So through that we get to talk to all institutions across
the state and we get to create many um options and available pathways for students. So we are very thankful for all of our partners in the high school space and the college space. So this is our K12 postsecary road map. It features many but not all
of the ways we interact with students through their high school journey starting in 8th grade with automatic enrollment. You'll see pre-missions all the way to the far graduation cap. not the near um that so that means that while it's not our very last interaction with them through the FASA uh season and
pre-missions it's one of our last interaction points. How do we do this? So we communicate to the students through a variety of ways. First off is an initial letter. Uh we joke that this is the letter when they get it in the mail that explains who we are and don't throw it
away. Um because sometimes they're not sure who we are or they haven't heard from us yet since they're just in this stage of high school. So on this letter you can see well you can't see it unless you squint really hard but you could see that it lists all of the institutions participating in pre-missions as well as
the ones who are not just because we want to make sure that students know their options. So let's say there's a student or an institution that is not participating. We don't want a student to say well it's not my letter I don't think I can apply or I'm not sure. So we make sure that they understand that. It also includes just basic information on the program as well as how to get in
contact with us. This letter goes out at the very beginning of the pre-missions process for us. So, it goes out towards the end of August in time for college go week. That way, they have an idea to start looking into the campaign or applications this season. The second letter they get is
the official letter. This includes their matching. So, a student can get anywhere from 3 to 39 for the last class of matches on their list, which we were very excited. We have pro we have three campuses that participate as open enrollment. So the way we match them is each institution sets a cut score. So
it's a minimum GPA andor SAT to help match them for that pre-missions. We have three institutions that have a no cut score. So it's open enrollment. So every student gets at least three. Maximum again was 39 for last year. It also includes next steps. We call it pre-missions on purpose because we want
students to know that there is something after this. So it's not just show up on the first day of classes. I'm supposed to be here. Um they do need to officially apply. Uh, also we have information. We have a QR code to our website as well, which I will have you go to the next. Thank you. And this is
just the top of our website. On there, they can see samples of the introduction letter, official student letter, as well as a parent letter. On the parent letter, it is a copy of the matching letter. It just is skewed towards the parent in case the student threw it away or if they're just not sure what it is.
Um, this is a great way also for parents. We can tell them about going back to college themselves. And then again, just future options for them. Last year we had 39 campuses participate. I won't read all 39 to you. Um but we're very excited to have had all these partners for pre-missions. And
I'm just going to give one second for everyone to scan it. Hopefully you read quickly. Okay. Thank you. So looking at 2024 to 2025. We're working. Yay. Okay. Thank you. So these are just some quick stats
to compare the very first cohort to the second. So in 2024 we had 327 high schools participate. In 2025 we bumped that to 390. We had 38 institutions got that to 39 last year. And then that is a breakdown of the public versus privates.
In 2024, the first year of this program, we had 56,426 students that were matched. We're very excited to say we had over 67,000 students last year that got matches for pre-missions. And again, those letters range from 3 to 39. On average, a student was admitted to 24. That's
something that is on their list. But we did have 24% of students receive all 39. The first year of the program, it was 28%. That went down just a little bit as we continue to get more students involved. Um, but again, 24% of students received all 39. Every institution that participated, so that letter was quite
long. If I could just hop in, we get a common question about why optin for the high schools. So, I just want to answer that really quickly. Um, we have an incredible partnership with the Department of Education to help execute this program. Um, and one of the things that we have been working on is centrally collecting data at the
department that we can then infuse into our system to be able to do this. Um, and so we've had an opt-in in the first couple of years of this program where schools directly report their GPA data to us while we build out that process. And that process is built. Um, and so at the end of this academic year, for the
first time, we're going to be centrally collecting that GPA data. we already got the SAT data um and so we'll be able to ingest that into our system and match every high school student in the state. So um we're grateful to Dr. Keller um Secretary Jenner for partnering with us
on that. Um and so you will see this be all high schools in the future. We're really grateful for that. [Applause] Excuse me. This is the best real quick. This is what I had no idea. This is the value of the teams. Like you all just
make it happen. I mean, I just wanted to flag that. That's that's awesome news. Thank you. I They make it happen. They do make it happen, don't they? Thank you. Two quick things and thanks for that recognition of them. Um, two quick things. Could you talk
briefly about what we're doing beyond the seniors? Mhm. Yes. We have coming up. Yes. Okay. I think somebody else had a question or comment. I have a question. So, regarding the initial letter, the official letter, and then the parent
official letter, are all of these on the website as accessible in Spanish? That was a very big question. And I know that of a concern prior that parent Yes, we do translated copies. And several other languages as well. Yep. And the the sample letters, they just say dear first
name or dear student. Um, so they're not any student specific letter, but it just gives an example. So, a lot of the times when families email, they're like, "What can we expect next year?" We send them there and they can click and read, pre-eread, I guess we put it. Okay. So, legislative updates. Um there's a couple if you go ahead and
click Victoria. Um you received a preview about this as we talked about Senate World Act 448. Um but we have been partnering with the department to uh implement what will be the new Indiana diploma with readiness seals. Uh there are a variety of different combinations of seals that students will
be able to earn and they will start opting in for the class of 26, 27th, and 28th. Uh and then the class of 2029 will be required uh to do that. On April 2nd, uh Governor Braun made an announcement that all of our public institutions uh
had opted in to guaranteeing admission for any student who earns the new Indiana diploma with the Enrollment Honors Plus seal. Um, as mentioned earlier, we codified that through Senate Enrolled Act 448. And what we are doing right now, Victoria, is meeting with every institution across the state,
including our private institution partners and giving them the opportunity to opt in as well. Uh, we're wrapping up those meetings near the end of May. Uh, and institutions have until June 30th to get all their paperwork in place with us to be able to participate for the class of 2026. We already have 11 private
institutions who have opted in um and many who have signal to us that as soon as they get some questions answered in these meetings that we have that we can expect them to opt in as well. So um again when we share information with you in September we'll be able to let you know the scale of that. Um but essentially institutions will still be
able to opt in with their cut scores GP or SAT and then they can layer over that that if a student uh receives the new enrollment honors plus field that they can be pre-mitted for that as well. So when students receive their pre-mission letters in the fall, they will be matched on all of those criteria. Um and
we'll be able to use this as an opportunity to really promote um both the enrollment honors deal and enrollment honors plus deal as well. So grateful for that [Music] opportunity. Oh, I think you went one. Um yeah, so uh in legislation um as
mentioned you will see uh that is a requirement for the public institutions. Again, we are providing the opportunity for the private institutions. Um, and we will take care of through the pre-missions umbrella, doing the matching process as we have based on GPA and SATs before and communicating to the
institutions all of the students who qualify for um admissions based on the new Indiana uh diploma with the honors plus seal. Uh there is a variety of paperwork that we have to do to execute this as you can imagine because there's a lot of data sharing that's involved. Um, so we
have anou that we sign with institutions based on GPA and SAT scores. We'll have one that we will sign based on the enrollment honors plus seal and then a data share agreement that basically allows us to send institutions to the list or sorry list to the institutions to say here's all your students that
were pre-mitted based on that criteria. Um, they can currently get access to addresses for those students. So they can do follow-up mailings if they choose to do so. uh many just to start communicating with them as students express interest through the application process, but also thanks to the
department, we'll be starting to centrally collect email addresses as well. Um so our ability to communicate that way is worth coming to. Okay, turn back over to Victoria. So looking forward to 2026, this is just an idea of the timeline for the summer. Uh
so as we mentioned, the opt-in form, it's the season for that. So high schools have until June 20th to opt in. They have to submit their junior's GPA to us by June 30th and that's through scholar track. We call that graduation details collection. The schools or institutions
uh they have until June 30th to sign all the paperwork. So that includes for the new Indiana resident admissions as well as the Indiana pre-missions and our data share agreements. So lots of paperwork by between now and June 30th. And then students and families will start hearing about their side of things in August and
September. So that is when the letters will officially go in the mailboxes. and we're excited to start getting the family calls about what is this and what does that mean and how can this help my student. So, as Chris started to mention, uh we have an enrollment ready campaign, which is something new that
we're super excited to talk about. This technically started in January. Um it's going to switch to a different cadence for this upcoming academic year, which is why we're talking about it now. These were letters sent to 9th, 10th, and 11th graders in participating Indiana pre-missions high schools that featured grade specific tips and tricks on how to
become enrollment ready. These tasks, tips, tricks, uh they were mirrored through our scholar success program for 21st century scholars. So these are not brand new things, but they are things that are now becoming widely spread to every student. Um so it's a great way for them to start getting prepared and looking into what comes next for me,
even if I'm an eighth grader or a nth grader. The reason we say it's switching just a little bit for this fall. So, as I mentioned, the first round of letters went out in January. Starting this upcoming academic year, they will go out every fall. This is to mirror the cadence for free admissions. So, that by the time a student gets to senior year,
they have heard from most many years in a row and they should be running to their mailboxes. Um, the great part of this is that it will also align with college go week. So, they'll get a chance to start learning more about that earlier on as well as just getting more ideas about how to become enrollment ready. Uh we are also including eighth
grade letters starting this fall. So we are also adding a grade year. Um we're going to highly encourage them to keep their grades up. That's the eighth grade letter. Uh but again they are grade specific. You wouldn't see behind. So this is just a version of the 10th grade letter. As I mentioned it looks very much similar to the pre-missions the
letters. Uh it talks about what is pre-missions, how can I be pre-mitted through this program? What can I do now to prepare for college? Other grade levels will include things about FASA, financial aid, scholarships, as well as diploma options as we transition to the new diplomas. It will also feature a brand
new website. This is not public yet. It'll start this fall as we do the next round of letters. On the letters, there will be a QR code. It'll look just like the pre-missions website. On this, we have just the 9th, 10th, and 11th grade letter listed on here, but it will also include the eighth grade letter, of course, as well as translated copies. A
student will then be able to go on and say, "What letter will I get next year?" They can read ahead. Or if they're an 11th grader now, they didn't get the 10th grade letter earlier, they can go back and reread. So, it's a great way for them to see what tips that they missed or need to go back and redo. The other thing that we're really
excited about with this opportunity, um, many of my campus colleagues in the room, uh, know that they have asked us for a very long time, can I get a list of students for insert reason here? Usually it's for a proactive outreach initiative to students especially for younger students who they want to talk
to about college and unfortunately the answer has always been no because we have a lot of restrictions on sharing data until Knack. Um so what is also going to be a part of this enrollment ready campaign for the first time ever is when students create their scholar track accounts which they can start
doing once they turn age 13 they will be able for the first time ever to say these are the institutions I would like to hear from. So essentially they can express interest in any of our institutions across the state and then much like we share lists of students who have been pre-mitted, we'll be able to share lists of those students who have
expressed interest directly with the institutions and then they can reach out to them via email and mail uh to share information with them. I always share a story of when I used to work on a campus sometimes I would get to orientation in the summer and a student would come and see me and they were talking about a major that we didn't even have and that
felt like a little too late in the game to be having that conversation. Um so this will allow us from age 13 eighth graders on on a monthly cadence to share uh information with students directly with our campuses of students who have expressed interest in them and for them
to reach out proactively to share opportunities uh with the students about their campus um both to engage before they apply um and application processes down the road. So, finally have an early data sharing option um that we're really excited about.
And that is what we have for you. If you have any questions, we're happy to answer. Victoria, did you say early on that um in the parent letter there is information about engaging the parents on their home in their own higher
academic journey or was I dreaming that? Yes, there is. There's information for how they can file the fast with their student as well as for themselves and then information to direct them to our websites and how to start accessing education for themselves. Yeah. One um tidbit I'll share about that. Last year
when we were in the middle of as Chris refers to the federal FAFSA fiasco. On the back of that letter, uh the both letters, the student and the parent letter, it advertises FAFSA. Um they're customized. And so for the parent letter, it tells them not only how to complete the FAFSA for their student, but also how they can do it for
themselves. Um, and last year Indiana led the country in new adult filers for the FAFSA. And we think a lot of it has to do with the free admissions initiative. So I I guarantee it. I think that's genius. So kudos to whoever was
piloting that. That's fabulous. And I'll echo the the genius. But the question just as we've done with FASA, if I can say that right, enrollment um are we partnering with Philanthropy and our faith-based organizations? I mean, I think about Commissioner Kramer and
Bland and their organizations um on this this new enrollment. Yeah, absolutely. Um much like we're working with them on finding the FAA, how we most work with them is getting high schools to sign up to opt into this program. Obviously, once we have these centrally collected GPA, we won't really
need that help as much anymore. Um, but they have really worked with us to get schools to sign up. And then many of those organizations have what we call community partner access in scholar track where they get access to the school rosters to be able to help the schools with a variety of initiatives.
Mostly that's been around 21st century scholars historically, but that allows them to see every student and all of their pre-mitted decisions just like the high school counselor does. And so many of them have engaged in sort of coaching and counseling of helping students take the next step to apply. Um helping with
their application essays, all sorts of things like that. So many community partners involved sort of in helping with those next steps. Great report. Awesome. Such great stuff. Just a quick question and maybe you said this and I missed it and I'm almost full of time so bear with me. The first
pre-mission letters went out in 24 for the class of June. Yep. Uh they go to seniors using junior data. So the class of 2024 would have got it in August and September of their senior year of their senior year. So we will have we already
seen the impact of the letters in the going rate yet or will that not really play out until next year? Not that we have publicly shared yet, but we have tracked every single one of those pre-mitted students versus non-p premitted students. Um, and our business
intelligence team uh is going to share collegegoing data. Um, so more to come. Yes. Do we have an indication of what percentage of our graduates are going to have the honors plus uh certificate or
seal? Good question. One of the things we're partnering with the department on right now is aggregating some historical data that would sort of serve as like proxies. So, academic honors diploma, technical honors diploma, working with our CT team on workbased learning, um, and then data with our business intelligence team on who has earned
credentials in high school up until this point. So, we'll be able to later this year start sort of estimating what that might look like. Um, and then the department is also working on the ability for a student to signal the diploma path that they intend to take. Um, so students start to report that as
we implement these new seals, we'll be able to sort of signal what um, their choices that they're making um, for the different enrollment um, or sorry, readiness seals with the new diploma. Secretary General, I'm not sure if you want to comment further, but okay.
Nailed it. Awesome. Yeah, I I have to add a couple comments that one, especially because we have newer commission members who weren't here when this started. Um, this started as just a Michelle really just kind of big idea,
kind of a loose idea u in the conference room at the commission. A handful of us were sitting around and um some of had some of us had strong opinions that while we have such great value of higher ed and we know the outcomes and how it
changes lives and all that the marketplace is pretty crummy for the consumer, parents, students, adults, right? And where this whole thing began was this discussion, how can we make that easier?
uh bring parents in to help students know. You know, we were conjecturing that gosh, we bet that there's not a student around who knows there are 29 independent colleges and seven state, you know, state universities and colleges and all the campuses and all
that. Huh. And we wandered into the discussion of gosh, what if you could just sort of do some of us had silly ideas with like a matchmaking kind of service, you know, swipe left, swipe right. Um, so I hear, you know, I hear we be clear, right? But just big ideas
like that and I think Michelle and Josh and a couple others said, "Well, let's go look at it." Came back, found that they were doing something and I don't know, we're right, we're doing it better now. But, uh, we were the second state to try to do this. And, uh, it it just started from that. You know, started
from this notion that the marketplace is just kind of crummy for the individual who wants to go. So, let's go solve for that. The other thing, couple other quick things. The other thing that I think is just kind of fun about it and it reflects the team, it was about April of 23 where we all went, "Oh, yeah. So,
let's like go try to do the Idaho thing." Of course, Michelle's got a list already going together, you know, so we're going to do this, this, this, this, this, and this. And it's pretty monstrous list. And, you know, I think there was kind of loose discussion April 23. Hey, we could be ready to do that next year. I don't think it took 30 seconds,
Michelle, for the team to look at each other and go, "Nah, let's get it done in August." And, uh, so it was a lot of heavy lifting, you know, gosh, it was good then, it's great now. Um so yeah, this this is one of those I think it's we're just going to continue to see the impact of um not just for students but
for their parents and then for as the question came up you know for adults so they can start to you know seize the possibility and um since I'm on a roll of just embarrassing people Victoria um if you didn't pick it up she this is how
she the like the culture and spirit she brings to work this is who she is um I think you all know I get privilege every time we hire someone. I'm the last interview. Um it's not quite an interview. Um we talk about what makes
somebody tick, what they're looking for, what the culture is we have. And I remember talking with Victoria about one of our favorite words on the staff. If you don't know it, you can look it up. Um elacrity. A L A C R I T Y. Michelle's
Latin name. But how often do we hear that word? You can look at elacrity. She approaches her work and you can see it in this with elacrity and represents the kind of culture we've been trying to build. So Victoria, great work by the way and uh yeah, thanks
for pushing this to the next level. Thank you so much. Um the last thing that I will um shout out is uh we have an intern over here with us, Joe. Um Joe is currently working um on the Richard and Fairbanks Foundation grant college
matters um currently um but started out as a governor summer intern with us and spent all of last summer working with our high schools to implement this. So we're grateful to Joe as well. Thank you so much. Thank you all very much. We're running so far ahead that we are
going to add one more item before lunch and before our picture. So Dennis and Matt, you're going to do academic affairs. I mean, sorry, Dennis and Yeah. Yeah. I need more coffee. I said that then he looked at me.
Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Well, with the change in schedule, it seems like I'm going to book in your lunch. I'm going to be before it and after it. So uh and I'm also glad that they changed schedule. I didn't immediately follow Senator Good's
eloquent remarks on the basis for Senate Rule Act 448 and all the other work we're doing to align training post-secondary uh attainment with uh the current strategic sectors and emerging sectors of our state. And that is uh at the core
and in the DNA of Senate and Rald Act 448. I'm going to go through some slides that uh I sort of stole from Greg, so they'll look pretty familiar. Uh but I will point out some key highlights. I have a few additions that occurred in the latter half of session uh in the
house. Uh not so much major but definitely additive. And then I'll then transition to back of the budget items that are in 101 that intersect with our academic affairs work and our compliment complimentary additive and intersect with uh 448.
said it worked. Um, so yes, 448 had agenda and a vertical agenda bill and an agency priority. Uh, and that is the revamping. I'd say it's more stronger than refresh is the revamping
of our degree program and approval process and a dormant or unex exercised degree program review process. The commission does have statutory authority uh to do all of these, but 448 turns it into a shall. It also then specifies
criteria we we must consider. Many of them will be measures and metrics that do not surprise you at all. A few might be uh new ideas or you hadn't thought of and I I'll get to those briefly as well. Uh but what they do require is the commission will shall approve all
programs. We do that already and we will review all programs on such a timeline looking at such and such measures and some of those measures are student outcomes but they're also prospective outcomes for instance looking at uh new applications coming through and those
are labor market alignment job placement of the graduates wages at start off 5 years 10 years opportunities for credit for prior learning whether it be professional or um military credit for prior learning. You've heard that be a
major priority of of of the commissioner and the and the hope agenda. Uh I can say graduate retention is another workbased learning requirements, experiential learning requirements, uh opportunities for embedded stackable degrees and credentials. We've heard
about how uh certificates are stacking to associates to um basters programs. So both perspective perspective outcomes and outcomes that are student centric that are aligned to our industries our emerging sectors the
well-being and gainful employment of the student and then whether that curriculum and that degree program has been packaged and designed with high impact practices that we know make a huge impact on success while studying and success immediately afterward. Uh some
additions that were made to the bill were was requiring the commission to take official official action on a complete application within 90 days and I will stress full and complete application. Another that was added in the house towards the end was requiring
the commission to look at uh the dashboard that Brooks team has been creating. We would have looked at that anyway. So that's completely additive. There's another item that's in the uh bill that's a MH data product which tries to look at um the pipeline of
credentials and the need of credentials. We'll be looking at that as well. And then also there is a cadence or cycle that's specified of 10 years for uh every degree. So the those remove uh
reviewed uh before will need to be reviewed by July 1, 2035 and then going forward 10 years out from their approval. So excellent 448 also requires the commission is moving uh to outline a
process to outline a process for jury program monitoring improvement and suspension. I'll return to those in a little bit when I talk to 101 because it kind of all comes together there. And the same thing for the dashboard. And then it also requires us to publish a CPL, a credit for prior learning
inventory. We have that so to speak now. We've called it a clearing house. Internally, we're calling it a clearing house 2.0. We'll come up with better branding of that than that. But the thought is that it would be a resource in which students can compare and contrast their CPL opportunities when
they're looking at potential degree programs or potential providers and those pretty much go uh would be looking more in the unconventional or expanding space of CPL. We all have heard of AP KP IV exam equivalencies. Those are indeed
uh CBL, but others that we'd be looking at are military exams, uh joint service transcript crosswalks, uh industry certification crosswalks, and then also opportunities for like individual portfolio, individual assessment. When somebody says that many years of
experience in a professional workplace or a technical workplace, uh there has certainly been college level learning during those years and that should be honored when that student comes in. honored in an appropriate way in which the faculty of course articulated that planet but still honored nonetheless and
I think we all see that not only is honoring the student but it's an enrollment play it's an accelerated completion play if done well there are there is some upfront pain but good good win so we'll transition to the back of the budget language that was in 101 and
this is where I said I was a bit holding off on the process of program monitoring and improvement because kind kind of all weaves together here. Um, in the back of the budget, there was a requirement that our state institutions engage in regular uh, degree program approval or sorry,
review processes. We know they do this already. We in fact did a program review survey of our institutions to get a much better sense of how how how they do this and how often they do it and what they look at. Um the the language in the back
of 101 isn't that prescriptive, but it does provide uh guard rails including it must be done every seven years. That's not out of step with many. Some do it quite more frequently than that, whether it's annually or every 3 years or four years. Yeah, helpfully. I think for our
summer institutions, it allows them to be uh synced with programmatic accredititors like say a u um like an engineering accredititor or uh one of the programs for expedite action is uh a forensics program and it
has accreditation in fact and it will be pursuing accreditation once approved. So aligning those every seven years as long as it doesn't exceed seven years. It specifies that the program review process of the university needs to look at enrollment, qualitative data, and quantitative data. We know they do that.
And then it says that that program review needs to inform uh improvement and adjustment. And it specifies that that adjustment may include enhancement, maintenance, reduction in scope, um consolidation or elimination. And I
think we all know that that's a part of a any enterprise that has a portfolio of uh products. Not to use a not to boil it down, but really a portfolio of assets that they are providing to the marketplace. They need to be reassessing
those to whether they're current, they're going to be needed in the future, and how well they're performing relative to the other products in the portfolio. So uh that that will inform their resource allocation decisions and it'll also inform how the commission is looking at our state educational
landscape of institutions and then in terms of both the monitoring and then a dashboard so to speak for uh accountability the the institutions need to post their program review on their website and they're going to submit it
to the commission and I envision we would also post that on our dashboard as well. So say an individual could see oh this degree program was reviewed at last act state and oh here's a click here's a link to the media or something of that sort. So sevenyear in in this compared
to the 448 do they conflict or no the 44 the I'm sorry I was thinking the same thing can at our 10year review can we utilize the I guess depends on how out of sync the two time frames are but
right if they are totally out of sync then there could be some there could definitely be some overlap for the commissions program review, you have a 10-year window. For the institutions for their own internal review, they have a
7-year window. And so, yeah, you kind of have a o overlapping for the commission's program review. I think syncing it with uh the the the institutions program review would help avoid a lot of
duplicative work or trying to cobble together more recent data uh if you're doing it a few years down the line. So I think there's tremendous opportunities for synergy and syncing there when it comes to this really codification of state of institutions doing their own
program review but it's good to know that I have seven years as institution to review max program for for the commission I've got 10 years to review a program as well and um as we get to the next slide as you change we're almost
going to be doing a program review so to speak every year anyway now So uh we're doing more frequently kind of like 1 710 at least and with this one uh which was in the back of the budget uh requires uh
kind of this continuous looking at our our portfolio of academic offerings and degree program offerings in terms of of production in terms of output. And it specifies that uh if an institution has a degree program in which the average of
the three preceding years uh a number of graduates is below a threshold by that degree type, they have to request approval from the commission to continue that degree program. And that's uh 10 students for associate degrees, 15 for
bachelors, seven for masters, three for education specialist programs, and three for doctoral programs. Um the institution would request approval to the commission uh to continue it. Um and if so, then it would continue on. That's
a process we are building and will be forthcoming uh for the post July 1st uh new paradigm. Um but I will also say that knowing that this is coming, we have been very proactive with our institutions uh to uh identify uh
opportunities for voluntary early action on their part and that work continues to pace. Uh we're in regular communication with our state institutions to uh signal a commitment to this wise uh usage of public resources so that we're providing
a package or portfolio of degree programs that are uh attractive utilized by students are are putting out graduates are putting out graduates in areas uh that the state needs the society needs and that you know have great outcomes. So uh I will I
believe that's the last slide. Yeah, a big one. So, yes. The for the programs that must be eliminated, will those be grandfathered out or that? That's a very good question. Yes. Um HLC accreditation
requires teachouts for programs that have students currently in them. So, the first step would be a suspension with teachout. Uh and then eventually once there's no longer any students in it, we envision it would then be an elimination. But there are currently
programs now that have no students in them. So they're if doable a prime candidate for nearly immediate elimination in my opinion. But you're correct there there has to be a glide path down for some. Others I believe immediate action can be taken. Other
options are merger and consolidation of programs um when they're relatively similar and they can be consolidated into one um to rationalize the portfolio offerings of those things. Yes, Commissioner. I have a quick
comment. Um, now it's about Matt. Um, some of you commission members may recall. Um, I'm not sure how the staff might have been talking about it. I I tell them I hope they go in their offices, talk about me, talk about the challenges, figure out what they're going to do, and then come back and go,
"Hey, here's what we've come up with." Um, because I know what I do sometimes is lay a firecracker in the middle of the conference table, then walk out of the room. Um it's Michelle's smiling and that's exactly what was the case with this um attending a national conference
last August or September uh I heard my peers our peers talking about program review and approval and all I can tell you is I stood up in a room about 500 people and said so let me really clarify none of us are doing program review we're all doing program approval and we now have
thousands of degrees across our nation right And yes was the answer. And the reason I want to pick on him a little bit the team is this was literally just some rousing of mind starting in about September. Matt of course was with the
former governor at the time discussions and then um he graciously chose to interview with us. Um but this was the top thing on the list and I think you started the first week of November. Maybe uh November 12th, the day after
Veterans Day was my first day. There you go. Who's counting? Who's counting? Matt's going, "Wow, is it only been 6 months?" Um, but I I tell you this because it was it was by shortly after
Thanksgiving that Matt said, "So, here here's what I've got in mind, how we can do this program review and approval stuff and like real teeth to it." And there was not, unlike pre-missions, at least someplace we could go and snoop around someplace because there's nobody doing it like this. There is no state
doing this right now. And it was before the holidays that he said, "Hey, here's how we can do it. Better yet, it'd be great if we could codify this. Um, we have the strong opinion. Look, yet none of us in any of these chairs
are going to be in these chairs forever. And when something like this has such great potential for our state and our students and our employers, we have to copify it. And uh so I want you to know, you know, this this is something that could have taken a long time, far too
long to to ruminate on and really credit just the approach that he took on this. Very no at all, very thoughtful, very thorough. And if now we've got now we've got it in statute and uh you know um I I
think somebody I think some folks have said so y'all have started work on this already that the effective date is July one. This is the one one of them to which I was referring a while ago and we weren't going to wait till July 1 to sort of maybe kind of think about getting around to it. Um so process has
started. Um, you know, we'll I'm sure we'll have some bumps along the way, but um, we have we have 3,400 plus just in our public institutions degree program offerings. I hope you picked up on I was writing notes here back and forth with
Dan. Uh, Matt used the word enterprises and I think you talked about rationalizing and allocation of resources because resources are scarce. um and being as effective as we can and just saying that u you know Matt Matt
personifies the way the team tackles something and says well okay it's a big deal no other state's doing it so let's just let's just go figure out how to do it and so now we have codified and thank you secretary Jenner for being such a big part of that too and this this right
thing to do for our state and our students and employers and um yeah Frankly, this this is just fun getting watching them come up here and talk about the work that's being done cuz they're the ones doing it. Be clear about that. I just have a quick
question, Matt. How quickly will the commission be able to see uh some of the trimming, if you will, some of the impact of this, I should say. the the most immediate would be the uh 101 language regarding thresholds for
uh graduate production. uh obviously that takes place uh July 1st but we uh have been working with the institutions in a proactive voluntary basis that if they can look at those thresholds look at their most recent uh years averages
identify uh prime areas where there could be pruning or rationalizing uh that makes uh sense to them and and makes sense for their offerings and we are asking that they submit those to us uh before uh mid June that they could
then be acted upon at the July commission meeting with the first this would be sort of a first preemptive wave. Yeah, great. I think that would send a strong signal uh that all of us are taking this seriously. Um this was getting out in front of it ahead of time
and then going forward from July 1st we would then have the formal uh approval or request to continue and consideration and approval process. the commission is going to have to make considerations. For example, the statute is silent off
of regarding a new degree program. So, say we approved, and I think we would even this year, uh, approved a new degree program that's very cutting edge and is responsive to emerging industry needs. Come July 1st, it's technically doesn't have a track record of any
graduate production, it's average zero. And I think there there needs to be accommodations for relatively new degree programs in that regard, but ones that are sort of older or more legacy uh that the the proof's there a and uh if they're under a threshold, they need to
be scrutinized and they will uh and institutions um will have an opportunity if they think it's worth continuing to make a best case, most compelling argument why that degree program should continue. There are some examples that might come to mind in which um for
healthc care field say like an associate in the healthcare field the accredititor limits them at a certain amount of students per cohort but it's a very important uh and it's a very important field that has high demand in our in our healthcare
system that has great student outcomes. um that that would be something where they that they're a compelling case that those facts and those uh that that context would be carefully considered when we're looking at but I I would say back to not to uh be too ciruitous in
answering but we'll see an immediate impact in July and then it'll be going forward from there. Great. And then approximately how many requests to continue applications come to the commission on average a year? I would assume it's going to be
hundreds. Oh yeah. Yeah. Going forward. I mean it's very little today like Well, they don't really Yeah. Yeah. They don't really do so unless they're making a tweet and it it ends up becoming something new. Secretary General. So yeah, I mean it will literally be
hundreds. Yeah. Especially with the the cycles that both we and the institutions are having. And and I would I would point out how also that the thresholds are what they are, but you do have say with regional campuses that their student
population makes it perhaps more difficult for them to have as many uh graduates say in a bachelor's program as say the main campuses of our two flagships and our comprehensive university. So there's that as well. Uh but yeah, it will be conceivable it will
be hundreds. I I I think we just from conversations I know especially Nat and I are already having with very thoughtful folks from the uh institutions they're looking at various things whether it's consolidations you
mergers in business terms huh of programs to right to have a better mask utilize your resources much better um yeah and it's a great question Secretary Jenn Okay, thoughtfully impatient here
when and to cut to the chase. You all are going to see this uh the next time you gather. So on our first actions and I know your your patience level is similar to mine. Um probably on
this point out uh there um but so we'll see the first round in July that are uh go to have raised their hand and said these and then when will the request to continue start to roll in? Yeah, we will
have to I'm working on it now, but we'll have to launch that uh formal uh request to continue process and response. Okay. Um I think for um July this we're calling it internally with the
communicating call like voluntary early action because it's we know this we we know this uh this requirement is coming as these benchmarks. What can we do to get out in front of that that just makes sense? You know, maybe we were thinking about this all the time and we just were
putting it off or maybe have we looked at some of these lists and yeah, we probably should do something whether it's uh eliminate something that's completely empty right away. whether it's to make a commitment to suspend a program with a teachout uh going forward
because there are not to get too detailed but there are some wrinkles to this in which uh accreditation higher learning commission requires a teachout period and if a university wants to consolidate or merge a program uh it
can't do it formally through a staff action likely in July or um and September it has commit to us in like writing and we would consider that in the approval process saying we realize there's some issues here. We're going to suspend this one with a teach out. Uh
we're committing that in writing and when it comes time for the approval to continue, we recognize that because they've got to continue another full academic year unsuspended suspend probably in late spring or early summer next year, next
latter half of next fiscal year. uh that way they've done their due diligence accreditation wise to start the suspension clock which then puts it on a m a several year clock towards elimination as you teach out the students are in there but they're not admitting any new students thank you
I would just suggest as we as we go through the process and and the institutions review I mean be focused on uh on employers and what employers are looking for as opposed to just fine-tuning a an additional degree program. I mean, as I look at some of
the things that we've approved in the past, new degree programs, you know, probably the, you know, for example, an Eli Lily, it doesn't matter whether it's this degree or this one, they still have the same skill set that they are looking for. Uh, so I would just say be sensitive to the
fact that let's just not try to fine-tune it to the most critical element, but what do our employers really look for and who what kind of credentials are they hiring with? Yeah. And and Mike, thank you. And fortunately too, as part of Senator,
pardon me, Senator Rol act 8, there are some requirements of our various departments, excuse me, the management performance hub to get exactly that kind of data for us around credentials, uh, wages that are being earned, placements wages and those things. Um yeah, the
things that we really need to institutions need, we need to make these decisions cuz we we we've got to be judicious with our resources so that we have the kind of impact in the economy we need. So yeah, that's that is all part and parcel to this. I just have to
make a comment. I I see this and I see it in unity with our review of facilities and usage of facilities. So I I like to look at the big picture, but you got to put them together and see it makes sense to not only look at degrees
and the importance of them and and what are the efficiencies and productivity coming out of them and the impact, but then looking at lining that up with our facility reviews. And so down the road, I would envision that you're lining them and it's all a big review because if
we're being productive over here and these degrees are more important in this facility, do you see where I'm going? I mean, it's it's it's putting business practices into higher education. Could not agree more, Kathy. Um, in fact, our team talks about the allocation of
resources all the time. And at least in your your yours truly's view, there are three primary ways that you spend your money. You allocate your resources because of the plant, capital, equipment, people. That pretty well sums it up. And then the rest of it is rounding, right?
Um, so you could not be more spot on. It just, yeah, we're just kind of geeked up about this because we've got these various pieces of legislation and and that is exactly the kind of vision and and which is why we need all of you so that we can call on you Kathy because
literally because of what you do and what you've done professionally say help us now fit those pieces together. Yeah. One thing I might add before we close um and I forgot to mention but it's in response to what Mike mentioned is that
all through the year we're receiving routine staff action from our institutions and there's a multitude of them to split, merge, suspend, eliminate, add a location, remove a location, change credit hours, change the zip code. Uh but institutions are
eliminating programs or suspending programs. We just don't report them to you. And that's something we need to do a better job of. Mr. Geratony has some of these details to me a couple months ago. And uh Rachel Martin and my team, we put together a summary table of all
of the uh the net ads and the net eliminations since 2020. And through at least earlier this year uh since 2020, the the net has gone down. More have been uh pruned than added netwise. Uh but what we'll do is we'll put together
like a summary table of that net add net add subtract uh for the July meeting to give some better and and in fact we can do that by like subject areas as well like healthcare stem some of those things I I think I think that the
numbers would be very instructive by the way I would add to you know getting a jump on this as Matt has done trying to get action started even before the statute takes place. Um I've had some really good conversations with
university leaders. Um one of whom at least I know really put that university's team to work after we started talking about this last fall part, you know, really anticipating
and saying, "So looks like where this is where it's headed. So let's start doing the analyses. Let's start putting together our plans around it." And yeah, you know, that's that's really encouraging to see. You said you don't give us information
and maybe there's more than what's in there. But I know as I looked through the meeting materials each time, it usually does have the suspending, eliminating it, whatever at the end. I would say as part of what you said a minute ago that you
were create a new resource table more than just this meeting's information if there's a way to add even just a change code because I I know when I look at these I'm always curious when it says eliminating a program is that it's been consolidated into
something there's some more information maybe that okay would make that table a little more helpful certainly the information you already have. I just I don't need to create a whole new consolid merger
consolidation are relatively rare. Um that's said if it says elimination it's a true elimination program is going away that may also become more frequent because of all this correct I believe I believe yeah but I I I did I
overstressed how we don't report it. Yes. They're information items at every commission meeting and they're way in the back and it's a long list and uh the individuals is the commission members who sit on the AAQ committee. They they see these as well but I we don't provide a running say summary of
the fiscal year or the academic year. And I think with this becoming a far more um priority area those kind of numbers important they'll be important to me. I mean, we just keep them internally, but I think they'll be important to all of
you. The other thing just to flag like for the the greater good of our country. Um, the I was in DC last week and was specifically asked about what the commission is doing in this space. A lot of people are very intrigued with how to do it in their states. So to your point
about the extra data, there may be data even beyond what you mentioned that we should collect just to understand the return on investment for what this commission is doing. uh because again it's all it's causing a lot of conversation um already good
conversation I think good conversation and just acknowledge I think we all have to acknowledge it's going to be uncomfortable anytime we tighten our belt like let's be honest it's going to be uncomfortable but there are ways just like we run our own households decisions
you have to make um that ultimately are good we end I think we have to uh continue on the conversation in this room and behind the scenes to get to a better place for Indiana here. With that, I don't want to I don't know where we are in time, but I
I I know lunch is next and then when you come back from lunch, I'll be back up here. So, somebody will have to tell me where we start again. Not time wise, but on what I It's all about Thank you, everyone.
Before we go to lunch, thank you all for a great morning. Um, I think the picture is still on. Somebody want to over here. Okay. So, commission members please over under coming back. I hope everybody enjoyed lunch. Um we are actually going
to go back to what was originally scheduled after lunch and that is a great presentation around student success uh through the student success and completion uh efforts here. We will um we will uh continue our meeting u
hearing presentation on student success and completion here at Purdue University Northwest from Dr. Marie Mora who's provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs Dr. Elizabeth Badcock Dew, vice chancellor for enrollment management, student affairs, and Christina
Maldonado, who's the assistant director of admissions for parent, community, and early education. So without further ado, thank you all and we look forward to your presentation. All right, thank you very much for having us and we're delighted here at Purdue University Northwest to be
hosting the Indiana Commission on Higher Education. We hope you're having a wonderful visit and it's been our pleasure to to have all these conversations with you. Um, as mentioned, so there we go. Um, as mentioned, my name is Mar and I do have the privilege and pleasure of serving as proistent
vice chancellor for academic affairs, but since we're talking about student success, we need to emphasize that it's not a the responsibility of one specific department or one specific division. Uh, it is a campuswide effort and we need to make sure that all hands are on deck. Um, and so I collaborate very closely with Dr. Elizabeth Batu. uh you'll be
hearing from her shortly who's a vice chancellor for enrollment management and student affairs. We'll also hear some specific examples um including from a member of her team Christina Mulano and then also Katherine Olsen who was working in academic affairs and moved to the chancellor's office last year to be chief of staff. Um she designed and
launched our first year advising. So this is a team effort and we're delighted to share some of the examples with you. Um in terms of my part of the presentation, I'll be giving an institutional update um about Purdue University Northwest. Uh we have over 6,500 students. Um these are our core
students, the full-time equivalent. Um 5,700 undergraduates and about 850 graduate students. U many of our students about 80% are from the region. Um and then the last bullet point mentions that 70% of our alumni also stay in the region and stay in Indiana.
Um the map shows the primary areas where we draw the the high schools. And you might not be able to make that out, but those are little lining heads reflecting our mass. in terms of the feeder schools uh to our campus. Um our university uh was created to focus on workforce development for the region and we have taken that very
seriously um throughout the different iterations of our institution's history. Um in addition to our 6550 students, we also serve 200 Indiana high school students uh through our dual credit program. uh we have approximately 70 academic degree programs and those of
you who want to do the math technically right now it's 69 um in terms of bachelor's masters and we have three doctoral programs um those three are applied programs again a lot of our focus has been on the applied nature of higher education again meaning our workforce development's um focus um in
addition love this map it shows our reach and footprint across the region of northwest Indiana um you are on our lovely Hammond campus that's the the gold number on um in addition we have another campus in Westville um that's over in Leport County. We also have the
Gabas aridum uh that is in Porter County. So when we talk about being Purdue University Northwest, we are indeed spread throughout the Northwest. Um we have other sites uh including number five there which is at downtown Hammond. That's the Robert's impact lab that you heard about at dinner last night. Um we have a map with some
additional sites but it gets very cluttered. So we wanted just to share again our overview for our footprint across the region. We just completed the first major phase of our new strategic plan. Um, coming up with a new vision, mission. Um, and this was something that when Chancellor Colbert became
chancellor, it was time to do a new strategic plan and he made a concerted effort not to have it be top down. Uh, he wanted it to be a grassroots effort. And so we had wide engagement and collaboration across our campus communities. Uh, and we had literally hundreds of people who were involved
including a couple of full day strategic planning sessions. Um, and we came up with a wonderful vision statement. We're very excited about it. Um, and it's to cultivate leaders, inspire excellence, and impact our world. Um, if we showed you our previous vision statement, it would take the entire slide and had very small font. It was a very long vision
statement. So, we're delighted with this one. U mission. Uh, we want to make sure that we did not change our mission that much because again, a core part of our mission is meeting the needs here in Northwest Indiana. Uh, and so we feel our current mission statements describe who we are and what we do. Uh and again
a big focus on transforming lives for serving our region. Um we have a big focus on innovation in working closely with our industry and community partners. Um impactful research uh a lot of it being very applied and then community engagement. Um we're very delighted with our new set of values.
It's not that we didn't have these values before but to have them put together in this this framework. Um our working group that that proposed these values came up with the acronym rights. So respect, innovation, student centric and excellence. Um actually student centric technically should come first because that's the core of everything we
do but we thought rise sounds much better than something like sire. So rise is uplifting and progressive and it it shows the impact that we have on our region. Again also being that innovation piece. Um in terms of excellence um we have some examples. Uh we had a hard
time narrowing down the slide because we have many examples of excellence that we're very proud of. Um one of which is that we are designated as an innovation and economic prosperity university. Um this is from the APLU, the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities. Um highlighting the type of work that we
do in terms of economic development and economic revitalization. Uh working with our community. We are the we were the third institution in Indiana to get this type of designation. Uh the first two being Purdue West Lafayette and then also Indiana University Wilington. We've been named recently as a college of
distinction. Uh we are the only public regional university in Indiana to have this distinction. Uh also we're very proud of our first scholars institution uh designation and this is from the center for first generation student success uh and it is reflecting the type
of intentional support uh and uh programs that we have for first generation college students uh who make up a core of of our college students. Um last year we were designated by the federal government as being a Hispanic serving institution. This is a designation when student populations at
the undergraduate level um where 25% of them or more identifying as being Hispanic or Latino. We're proud of this designation because it also reflects the draw that we have from our immediate region. Um as our regional demographics have changed, so too have our student demographics and this is a reflection of
of the changing student demographics to make sure that we're continuing to meet uh our needs of the region. Um we're very proud that we've been expanding some of the research uh infrastructure and the research support that we've been receiving um and being able to generate. Um a lot of our research is applied in
nature. Um this year actually just since July we have received over $60 million in externally funded research. Um the previous year uh was less than 60 million. We still have two months to go. So we're excited to see the outcome of that. Uh we were also redesated last year as a national center of academic
excellence and cyber defense education. Uh this is a designation from the National Security Agency and also the US Department of Homeland Security. Um and it's in recognition of the education programs research and also workforce development that we have around cyber defense and cyber security. Um in
addition a lot of our programs including a lot of the research programs um are done in conjunction with our industry and community partners. Um and again you've been hearing about that uh throughout different presentations including at dinner last night. Um, and so we want to emphasize that we could not do the work that we're doing and
meet the needs of the of North meet the workforce needs of Northwest Indiana if we were not collaborating very closely with our industry and community partners. Now, in terms of some of our specific student success initiatives, I'm going to go ahead and turn the floor over to Dr. Dw um who will talk about
some of our feeder programs and then we'll continue with um our other presentations. Thank you. So, we appreciate the opportunity to talk with you all today about how Purdue Northwest is advancing student success. Um, so we believe that student success
begins as this slide says um as early as kindergarten and it wouldn't be possible without the collaboration that we have with our partners in K12 with the Indiana Commission for Higher Education as well as our community and career partners. So we all have a shared goal
of increasing the college going rate in Indiana. And as we were talking to students, understanding their backgrounds, where they came from, we had a number of really well-prepared students who were having an excellent experience at the university, um who were continuously saying that they
didn't intend to go to college. And um when we asked the questions of how and why did students who appear so prepared to go to college never plan to go um we learned a couple of things. So we learned that they were largely first
generation students. We see that in our student body that they are more um whose families were unfamiliar with the higher ed process. um we learned that they didn't believe that they were necessarily college material and that some of them were simply afraid of the
unknown. And so we were left wondering how many more students are in this exact same situation who don't end up making it to college. And so we knew that that was a number that we needed to impact. That was a number that we could impact and that would could be our
contribution to the college going right in Indiana is figuring this out. So back in 2022, out of that um discovery was the um what is now the assistant director of admissions for parent community and early education. And this position is really one that blurs the
line between K12 and higher education where we're layering experiences that encourage students to get comfortable with the idea of college and to be able to see themselves here. So today, um, you're going to hear from Christina Maldonado, who leads this work, and
she's done a really amazing job transforming what we do in the K8 space, um, to help students understand what it's going to take at that early age to be able to achieve those dreams. So, um, while we know that students don't walk
this walk alone, um, the journey is one that is is walked with their parents and their families. While the students are discovering their potential, we also work with the parents to help them to understand how they can support student their students through college, how they
can be first generation parents and what that means and how we demystify college for them. And so in this space, we're really looking to build trust, address misconceptions, and provide information in a way that really reaches the parents and students where they're at and where
they're coming to us from. So we have what we affectionately in our division refer to as the cub to lion. Um and so in the cub stage, this is where we're really working in those early years in kindergarten introducing the college and careers pathways in a fun
way. And the students are getting to work with our elementary education students and so our students are gaining that experience in the classroom early too. Um, one of my favorite activities that they do is a um coloring of Leo where they dress Leo up for the career
that that he's going to have in the future. And so what that allows us to do is when we see what the students are are um drawing Leo as in the future, then the classroom students can the um early education students and our K12 team can
talk them through what does Leo need to do to be a teacher? what does Leo need to do to be a police officer? What's it going to take for Leo to be a doctor? And so there's really getting that conversation going kind of early on and then as the students grow, we guide them towards the Lion days, right? Um the
college where they're coming to Purdue Northwest or wherever they end up to find their roar um and discovering kind of the strengths and the potentials of what they have. So, I'm going to get out of Christina's way for a few minutes um so that she can walk you through some of the things that are happening in the K12
space and and specifically the K8 space. So, in order to help our students grow from curious learners to competent leaders, from that cub to lion stage, our mission centers on three main goals. to inspire young minds, to empower the journey, and to ignite the future with
pride. So, I'll walk through these goals and share some of the initiatives that we've implemented so far to try to meet those goals. Starting with inspiring young minds as our first goal, this essentially means to take college and careers to students to meet them where they're at and try to help spark those
dreams of college and careers early on. We know that many times young students are very limited in their knowledge of career options and lack the um awareness of post-secondary pathways. So, one of the things we've done is developed a tiered curriculum for grades K through
8. This tiered curriculum includes worksheets, resources, interactive activities, and games to teach students about post-secary opportunities. We use this curriculum when we're on and off campus working directly with students. An example of this curriculum would be
when working with a second grader or a kindergartener, we might read the text Belinda Bologna Changes Her Mind. And in this book, students are introduced to a number of fun careers in a fun elementary way while also learning at the end that Belinda realizes she
doesn't have to choose just one career. She can choose multiple careers and she has plenty of time to think about it. So the overall message with this text is for students to learn that it's okay to change your mind over and over until you land upon that dream career. Then they would go about and color a Leo the Lion
mascot worksheet as you see in the picture there where they would dress up Leo as the career that they hope to be when they grow up. These lessons in the curriculum progress as grade levels increase. But the overall goal is to present students with positive post-secondary pathways of college,
trade school, military, entrepreneurship, and employment and just spark those interests early on, well before they arrive at high school. We work with high school students as well by facilitating career discovery meetings with our high school
partners. This allows us to work with small groups of juniors and seniors and talk to them about the many careers that are available to them with a college degree. We're able to walk them through what that journey might look like, talking about courses they might need to take or the timeline for obtaining a
college degree. That we're also able to answer any questions they might have about the college experience or college life in general. Our backpack giveaway is the next initiative highlighted here. And this is one of our favorite events to host here on campus at PNW. This event
allows us to connect with community and give back to our community as well. We created this event as an opportunity to invite parents of high school students and K through 12 students to come to campus and be familiar with what a college campus is like, but also to
provide students with backpacks and necessary school supplies while also providing their families with necessary resources and valuable information to try to help them prepare for the upcoming school year. This is a collaborative effort done with campus partners and community organizations and
we hope to really continue to expand our outreach with this particular event. Next, we have college and career expose. This is one of the ways, another way that we really seek to inspire young minds and take college and careers directly to the
students. We collaborate with two specific school districts to co-host these college and career expos. That would be the school city of Hammond and Michigan City area schools. The idea behind these expose is to try to help connect young students their current
academic mindsets to their future academic goals and help them realize the steps that they're going to need to take to make those dreams a reality. At these expos, students are able to engage in conversations with professionals. They're able to ask questions about careers and they're able to participate
in interactive hands-on activities. They learn what it takes to really pursue their dream careers. The numbers that you see on the screen reflect the numbers of students that have been served thus far in these collaborative college and career expos. School city of Hammond, this would be our number since
the spring of of 23 and then Michigan City since spring of 2024. We also look forward to expanding these efforts in the future and being able to collaborate with other school districts to do similar work. The second goal is empowering the
journey. This implies how do we increase access to information and provide more resources for college readiness. One of the ways that we do this to increase access for information is by creating bilingual materials. Our admissions office has a number of bilingual
materials related to anything from financial aid to how to apply for college. Um, and we also have information in Spanish regarding our campus tours and 21st century scholars program. We realize that we do serve a large population of Spanish-sp
speakaking families. So, we do want to make sure that our information is always accessible to our families in the community. Parents also can access parent portal that we have called campus ESP. Our parent and family portal allows families, parents, and prospective PNW
students to access a large number of resources, including articles on how to help their students prepare for the college journey and important deadlines such as uh the due date of filing your FAFSA. Additionally, we host bilingual
FAFSA nights in co conjunction with our financial aid team and we do parent presentations as well in both English and Spanish. 21st Century Scholars Outreach and Awareness has been a huge component of our efforts and we work really hard to
establish multiple initiatives to increase awareness of this program and help scholars along their journey to maintain this scholarship. We have guidance counselor workshops. We do classroom presentations and this past year we participated in a large number of scholar track labs which we've done
collaboratively with the commission um northwest Indiana's outreach coordinator Miss Ivon Perez. I want to note the importance of partnerships with being able to do these scholar track labs and also highlight the PNW middle school advisory board
that we've created here. So, our middle school advisory board consists of 41 guidance counselors representing 19 school districts and 25 different schools in Northwest Indiana. This board meets three times a year. And through these meetings, we've been able to
connect the school counselors and their schools and these school districts with multiple resources, including our outreach coordinator and many resources within the community as well. This energy and momentum that we gain
from these partnerships is probably best described in a quote from our partner Miss Ivon Perez in which she says, "My partnership with PNW has been essential an essential component to my professional development in such a large region. Connecting and collaborating
with the PNW team is so much fun. Their passion for their work overflows and spreads to those around. Happiness, purpose, and motivation are everywhere when I collaborate with them. Finally, Parent University. Parent University is a new event that we hosted
this year with a purpose of providing information regarding higher education for families and for high school students here at university. This idea was actually born out of conversation with Dr. River Jones, Northeast outreach coordinator for the commission in which
she and I were trying to come up with a way to increase access and awareness for the 21st century scholars program while also offering an opportunity for families to learn more about higher ed in general. So, as a result, we developed a collaborative effort with
Purdue Northwest, Purdue Fort Wayne, and the commission to host our first ever parent university. The agenda, as you may be able to see from your seats, included a number of sessions ranging from topics such as how to pay for college to how to connect
your passions and your interests to a major to navigating being firstgen. And our sessions were not titled using the term firstgen because we do understand that many times students come to our campus not even knowing what firstgen means. So our our sessions say, "I
didn't go to college. How can I help my student for parents? And the other one for students is my parents didn't go to college, so where do I start? I also want to note that we had four sessions in Spanish for parents. So all of the information that was provided in English
was also provided in Spanish at parent university. We received a ton of positive feedback from all who attended parent university. And we have one parent who was quoted as saying, "As a parent of four children and two in college at the moment and one soon to
start, this parent student workshop was very informational and full of knowledgeable staff. All of my questions were answered. Just like every parent, I want what's best for my kids." And this workshop really helped tremendously. We look forward to making
Parent University an annual event here at PNW. The third goal is to ignite the future with pride. This encompasses all the work that we do to connect students with college in a way that not only motivates them but shows them that a college
degree is within reach and it is is indeed attainable. We do this in a number of ways and the first one I'll highlight is our campus visits. This is something we are very proud of here at PNW is the amount of K through8 students that we have come to visit campus and
take a tour. When students come to PNW to visit, they will receive a PNW bag of swag. They'll have an age appropriate, grade level appropriate admissions presentation. They'll receive a tour. Sometimes they have lunch on campus, and they'll participate in interactive
activities such as our college and career vocabulary bingo that students love. When they leave, they'll take a postcard with them. There's a postcard um on all of your tables to refer to. This postcard is given to the students as they leave so they could take this
home and share with their parents their experience at college for the day to let their parents know that they went to college some of the sites that they were able to visit and also some of the people that they have met along the way while here at PNW. STS postcard offers
parents an opportunity not only to have insight into what their student's day looks like, but also as a talking piece so they can engage in a conversation with their student and ask them what their day in the life of a college student was like here at PW. And I also like to point out that one of those
people on the postcard, the very last one, Miss Fatima Chavez, she was a student worker in our office who recently graduated with an elementary education degree this past weekend. and she was an incredible asset to have in our office for these tours. Strategic
initiatives are another way that we work to ignite this pride um within students. These are unique efforts that we have with campus partners to create opportunities for K through2 students. One that I'd like to highlight right now is the one that you can see in this
picture. We have two PNW athletes who are reading to students in a second grade classroom in one of the elementary schools in school city of Hammond. This is part of an initiative known as the Rdubs club which is housed in our PNW athletics department where our athletes
go to the elementary schools once every other week and they sit and read with second graders. Um this was a response to the school city of Hammond strategic improvement plan in which they really hoped to increase ivory scores. This has become a very successful
program, one in which our student athletes have become more of mentors to these students and the elementary students look forward to their visits every other week. Another strategic initiative is our AI and STEM discovery day. That's a day where we invite middle
school and high school students here to campus to explore workshops, to hear presentations, and to engage in hands-on activities in AI and STEM related fields with the hope of inspiring them to pursue a career in one of those
fields. Classroom visits. These are also very important for how we directly connect with students and use our own personal stories to try to inspire them to seek higher education. Talking about being firstgen, talking about overcoming obstacles and barriers
that we faced along the way provides them with tangible real examples of the path and the success that's attainable with trying to achieve a college degree. We also partner with our TRIO programs here at PNW and we co-present in many
different schools so that we can share that information as well and talk to students about how TRIO programs are an amazing way to help them prepare for college and careers as well. Finally, College Go week. College Go Week is something that our office absolutely
loves. We are able to engage not only with students but with parents and with families as well. This provides opportunities for us to engage in a lot of creative ways. During college build week, we typically receive a large number of
requests to be in classrooms and for students to come here and visit our campus. And we know that we can't be in all the spaces and places in those 5 days of college go week. So, I wanted to create a way to still be able to support educators in our absence. So this year
we developed a Google Drive with K through2 tiered resources to share with educators and help them spark those conversations within their own classrooms and talk to students about college and careers. We also host a sticker contest
the collegego sticker contest which we open up to elementary and middle school and ask them to design a sticker that represents not only college but our but PNW as well. Winning sticker winners will receive an ice cream party or a
pizza party for their classroom. They'll receive a t-shirt with their winning sticker design and they'll receive a sticker sheet as the one that you all have at your table there with all of the winning sticker designs for that year. This is simply a fun and creative way for us to engage students and connect
them with college in a different type of way. So in summary, we are very proud of our art outreach efforts thus far with K through 12 and primarily in the K through 8 space. We believe that these efforts are indeed planting the seeds for students to start thinking about
college much earlier prior to high school and we know that this will have impact in the future. This is a visual of some of the numbers of students that have been served through these initiatives that I've been talking about. And I want to draw your attention
specifically to Scholar Track Labs, which is uh second to the bottom here. We've served over 1,200 students just this year in assisting with Scholar Track account creations and helping high school students fulfill their scholar success program activities. And then the
last number is how many K through8 students have been to our campus since the fall of 2022, which is close to 6,000 students. So again, we're very proud of these efforts. We know that uh we're trying our best to get our students prepared for the next steps.
And if PNW happens to be one of their next steps, we know that they will be well prepared for our warm handoff to our first year advising team here. Okay. So, as Christina explained, our admissions department does an outstanding job of providing that warm
welcome for our incoming prospective students. And in my previous role, I was the director of academic operations overseeing advising. And we wanted to continue that same positive welcoming experience for camp for our students when they came on campus. So we started
working on creating what did that warm handoff look like from the moment these students are admitted until the moment they come here on campus and experience PNW. Previously students were assigned an advisor within their college of major and this wasn't a consistent experience
for the students. We found that some of them were getting different experiences and it was confus confusing for them and um there was some missed opportunities for connections for these students. We noticed a drop off from even when the students had their acceptance here to
when they would actually enroll in classes. We were having a little bit of a melt during that time and a decline in the retention of those first year students. So we decided to implement first year advising. With first year advising, our firsttime in college
students all go through a centralized advising office. Um, by utilizing this model, we are able to ensure that warm handoff from admissions to to um, enrollment. The admissions department works so hard to bring those students into our campus, and we want to make
sure that we're doing everything we can to keep them here and earn their degrees. Over half of our students are first generation college students. They need extra care. They need that handholding experience. And so first year advising is able to provide those
wraparound services and connect them with resources early on in their careers here on campus. We literally walk students through the process of transitioning from high school to college step by step. Our adviserss are
all trained in appreciative advising. They go through a week-long training. They get certified in appreciative advising. And this starts with a 1-hour meeting with students where they ask open-ended questions to the students trying to find out what it is that they
really want to do in their lives. We also have a pre-advising form that the students fill out. So between the pre-advising form and that first meeting, adviserss are able to talk to students about what is it that you actually want to do when you grow up. And sometimes we're finding that these
students think, well, I want to be an engineer when I grow up and learn to find out they don't like math, so probably not the best major for that student. But we're having those conversations earlier and the adviser is able to get them into a major that makes more sense. And that's also helping
greatly with our retention. We also have parents that come in on some of those advising appointments because the parents now say, "We're going to college." and they're coming with the students and they're going through this experience together and transitioning to college
together. The support doesn't end after that first meeting. We had several touch points with these students throughout the semester in the first year including weekly texts. We offer dropin advising so they can see an adviser whenever they want. They don't have to have an appointment. We have faculty-driven
progress reports and also midterm grade um evaluations so the students know early and often how they are progressing throughout the semester. And then we have a direct partnership with the tutoring center and we've seen an 8.7% increase in tutoring among those
firsttime college students because we're getting them connected to that resource early on in their career. We piloted piloted first year advising first with our student athletes. We have 500 student athletes on campus. So that was a great group to start with. We expanded it to the college of business and then we rolled
out all the first year advising to our incoming fall of 2024 students. We are already seeing early signs of success. So we are tracking weekly the FTIC first college retention rates of those students who started in fall 2024 and
seeing if they were retaining them in fall 2025. Already we have over a 6% increase in that percentage in our FTIC retention rates which um you'll see in a couple slides how we'll progress over the years. So connecting these students
with resources early such as uh peer mentors and the center and student college success coaches is really helping us to get our students to persist and retain and then hopefully um finish college and get those careers
that they came here to receive. So building on the success of first year advising and the peer mentors um we want to talk briefly about our um college success coaches that were funded by a grant from the commission for higher education. Um so these success coaches will engage in individual success
coaching sessions um recognizing the value of the social aspect. They also have life skills workshops that are in a group setting and they are also doing um career readiness workshops in collaboration with our career services center. So target populations here um
are what the commission would expect um Frank Oannon recipients um our 21st century scholars and first generation students and we target also students who are in um their second year or beyond because they're receiving such great support already in their first year for
first year advising. Another um aspect that we're proud of um on campus is our co-curricular record. So this is a personalized record of student engagement on campus that enhances their student learning that's outside of the classroom. And so this is um a a record
a digital record that um shows um event attendance, leadership opportunities, civic engagement um and and career readiness types of activities that they can earn. the badges that are on the screens. So through our app um my plan W
life um they can go through and earn these and they can and the activities foster that sense of belonging and engagement on the campus. We have the three phases of it because this is meant to go from their freshman year all the way through their senior year. Um and so
we have the connect phase where students are getting into you know just showing up being present being aware of what's on campus. Then the next one is to engage. Um and that is where they're taking um an active role maybe in joining a student organization,
participating in a project. And then ROAR is that leadership piece of it where maybe they're um one of the leaders of the student organization. So they receive recognition for their work on campus. And so we want them to progressively be engaged more and more on campus. These credentials can be
added into their LinkedIn profiles. Um and they could also be printed as a summary to um provide to a prospective employer um or to a graduate school turning that campus engagement into career building skills. So this is our our wrap-up slide
um to kind of demonstrate some of the early successes that we're seeing in these programs. Right? So um if we look at our first K12 partner school corporation, we are seeing an increase in um 2022 with 33% in applications, 13% in admitted students and actual enrolled
students um through fall of 2024 was an increase in 28%. 125 is still enrolling. That's why we don't have that one on there. But you're seeing a little bit of a decrease um from application to admitted students, right? And so some of the students that will are interested in college, which was the point, right? um
they're interested in college and they may not necessarily have the skills to come directly to PMW. We work with our partner institutions, IvyTech um being one of those to get a plan together and walk those students to IvyTech through their process and we're still involved
um and create a path back to Purdue Northwest if that's what they want to do. Um our college and career expos have increased 400% nearly 400% since um their inception in 2022. um they are primarily elementary and middle school students. We have some high school. Um
but one of the things that we were also seeing is that the career partners were hesitant initially in participating with these in these because it's elementary and middle school students. But what they also quickly realized was that high school is too late for for the career
partners as well. And so we've seen an increase in the career partners wanting to participate in those expos. Um Catherine mentioned the increase that we're seeing in um our ATIC retention rate. So we were hanging out mid60s um in retention for the incoming class of
students from year 1 to year 2. Um fall 24 is when we implemented um first year advising and we are currently sitting um at 72% of um students who have come back for the fall 25 semester. and we enroll students all the way through August when
classes starts. And so we expect that this number will continue to grow. And then finally um the success of our um commission sponsored success coaches. We see a 95% retention rate um from fall to spring for the students who are engaging
in those one-on-one coaching sessions. So, as you can see, um we're working hard to build pathways, remove barriers, and really help students see that, um this is a place where they belong and that they can thrive. So, with that, we thank you for your time and partnership.
Um we're happy to answer any questions. Um Oh, yeah. Kathy, go ahead. I just have a I just have a comment on your parent university that is so uh creative and I think that is really fantastic. Um I'd
love to hear more about that being in the future something of you know what are more responses from the parents and how are they engaging um and then are any of the parents considering coming back to school themselves. So that's that's really I think that's really great. It's full circle.
Thank you. We can provide some of those comments as well. Um we have quotes from more parents. Yeah. So we do have a lot of parents who attended parent university some of which are considering coming back as well. Um and I'm happy to share a ton more of information with you about
the event and how it's planned and implemented and some of the extra components that weren't part of the slide today. Thank you. Fantastic report and certainly encourage other questions. Chris and I were actually offline talking about that and the parent
university is a great example of something that is a best practice that I'm hoping can be shared across the state every other partner uh and every other region. I think that would really brilliantly. Thank you
team. Outstanding presentation. At the risk of sounding dramatic, I would even say brilliant. So the the comprehensive nature, the strong integration, a high level of sophisticated vault in this from A to
Z. I commend you all. Yeah, please be encouraged. I have a a question and and then miss the fall regarding parent university. But the question again very thoughtful about starting your counseling with
athletes as your test. Any insights from from that cohort of athletes? Any takeaways? Any ahas? Any great insights from the athletes that you all decided
on the first year advising? the athletes that they are our model for how we want all students to experience college because they get those wraparound services from day one. They have their coaches that they're paired up with. They have their academic adviserss but
they also have advisors within the athletic department. And so they're our model of how we want to run every department, every college so that those students have those resources. They taught us that there are some barriers that we weren't aware of. Just
understanding some of the language that we use. Um they don't know what a provost is. They don't know what um academic notice necessarily means. Um so just providing them with kind of a glossery of terms and understanding these are some of the terms you're going
to come across as you are in college and just understanding that we need to be available to them. We don't want them to feel any sort of hindrance in trying to reach out to an adviser to get that extra help. Our adviserss are also uh trained in mental health. Um they're not
counselors by any means, but they're understanding the first signs of struggle that students may go through. So, we're trying to help them on all aspects. But we use the athletes because they are kind of a concentrated group that we can work closely with and see
how that works. And and it was successful. So we took it from there. Yeah. Thank you. Very impressive. And then to the parent university, I didn't see it specifically list it and and maybe you all do, but that you do not. I
think it's it's a tremendous excuse me a tremendous maybe additional element to add to the parent university and that and to the students as well. and that is really introducing to the families to
the influencers a outstanding student prototype. So again, especially if you're talking about first generation, we we don't know it would be good to introduce what studentship looks
like. So parents, we want you to go to Purdue or some other place. They're in sixth grade, eighth grade. This is what you should be seeing at home. This is what a model student looks like. Here's things you should be
looking for in terms of what you're the amount of time they're studying, what the environment looks like. Again, you aren't assuming they know, you're just really coaching them around. So, it gives parents a pattern to take home. So, that they're evaluating against that
that student shift prototype. Okay, outstanding presentation. Kudo. I'm gonna pile on. Um, Dennis, I don't in the room to put it as well as you just did, and I'm just going to deal with it. Um, if you don't
know commission member Bland, and you should, uh, he has led for years, the Center for Leadership Development in Indianapolis, pick his brain and add to what you're doing here. He's picking yours. will be having in his circle to influence what you're doing. Um, yeah, I
I just have to riff on the parent university for a second. You you may or may not know, not long ago, we wrapped up some very comprehensive research with parents and students in Indiana. And one of the three big nuggets that we got out of it is the big
we higher ed do a crummy job with parents. You all did outstanding job as parents. I think I think your presentation is just replete with best practices. Um if I looked like I was on my phone,
Geraldine was not asking me to pick up milk tonight. Um it was with my colleagues from my office. This this this so it's just outstanding. Um we we've coined something in our at our team and I'll
apply to all of you but we've really started focusing on R&D as a team stands for rip off and duplicate um institutions to be ripping off and duplicating what you're doing. It's it's just outstanding. And I'm going to put a fine point on something Dennis said
about the model student. Um he knows this. There's something written on the whiteboard wall in my office and it's been there for a couple years now. Um, it looks like a phone number. 2151770. Students ought to be spending
at least 2 hours a day, I believe, in homework, reading for 15 minutes. I always say something they would not otherwise have been interested in reading. 177 students ought to be in school 177
out of 180 days. And if there's an absence, zero of those should be could be cause of expulsion or suspension on a closing, right? It I'm not that bright. I remember it, right? And and it just
sticks with you. And um yeah, all that just to say this is this is just really great work. This and and I know commission members know this. This is why we made this a a committee of the whole that a handful of people commission members aren't kind of
showing up on a odd Thursday every couple months, you know, talking with ourselves uh about what student success looks like, but instead coming out and seeing what you and your peers around the state are doing. So, uh this is this is just
nothing but inspiring and thank you for the stickers. Yes. So I think I just have a a challenge potentially. Um often uh I get flagged for uh I provide a lot of input data. This is the number of students
here. This is the number of parents. Here are the number of teachers doing the training and um more and more uh primarily by business leaders uh top business leaders in the state. They're directing me and asking what is the outcome based on the in input. So my
favorite slide was the very last one and it hit on the outputs. Uh I think a a step further and maybe you have that is uh you know each of those tactics uh cost money. So what is showing the
greatest return on investment and what you're investing in to move the outcome needle. And again I'll just echo that's what I'm being pressed on every day as well. So, I'm in the same boat, but would love to hear if you are looking at
ROI data. So, we are tracking the information. Um, so when I mentioned that Christina had the the bolds and the numbers and she put a few of them in here. Um, we we do track that. Um, and because they're so new, um, we don't have the results of it
yet. Um, but that's something that we're working on. We're collecting the data so that we can provide exactly that. Um, we like you all could talk about this all day long. Um and so uh to shorten it and to really help understand the work that's being done, we left out some of
the numbers except that last slide. Yeah, I would like to see that in followup if you have that because again nearly every college in the state is trying to figure out what will drive ROI. Yep. We're tightening our belts. We've got to be very intentional. Thank you for that followup. Thank you.
Wonderful. Any other comments or questions? Thank you all very very much. So, in the spirit of mixing up our agenda yet again, I think just to keep consistent, we're just going to keep mixing as the rest of the day. Um we're going to move we're going to move next
actually to our capital budget uh budget capital project items um departure. So, I'm going to turn it over to our budget and productivity committee to Mike and then obviously uh
we did have one project for consideration that we reviewed this last week our uh at our committee meeting and we uh from Ball State University for uh some new u um athletic facilities from Ball State University and we do
recommend it. But we will go ahead and um turn over to Brooke and probably Becca is she's still in there. Yeah, the presentation. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, again, this is an expedited action. Um, but we welcome any questions that Becca can
answer if there are any. You'll find more information in your agenda packet. Um, this is a request of $8.8 million for Ball State University for new baseball and softball clubhouse facilities. Uh, this capital project is being financed from private donations
and existing reserves of the institution. Um, this project is going to replace the current team locker rooms that are 1.5 miles away from their uh uh fields right now. So, as much as the students would like to keep the bragging rights of walking a mile and a half, as
Becca said to BPC, um, this would be a welcome addition and the staff recommends approval. According to a motion u, any comments or questions? Any further? All right. Very good. Uh, hearing none. All in favor, please say
I. I. Oppos. Great. Thank you very much. At the risk of embarrassing our friend colleague, Becca. Becca, travel safely so you can see George's prek graduation. Another good excuse. All right. Very good. Now we now back I
think we're going back to you. Is that right? It's not all we've got left. I think uh well we've got information. So we're back to Matt for a couple of wrapup items. I believe we've done some expedited uh and Dennis some expedited
academic programs. Couple other quick report outs. Yes sir. Y you all the academic affairs and quality committee we review eight programs and between the dates of March
24, 2025 and April 28, 2025 and and so you'll see listed in your book and I I I will not list all the programs but Yes, they have been recommended for
expedited for expedited action. And then Dr. Butler, I don't know if there's anything that you want to share, but before we turn it over for a vote, I just want to say thank you to the committee and Dr. Black transition.
Also, just want to say Dr. Thank you for your great contributions to the committee and its work. and I just love your remarks on the day. So you'll be missed. Thank you, sir. Thank you. One thing I might add, there were, as
chairman Bland mentioned, there were eight new degree programs. Um, three bachelors, four masters, and one doctoral. Uh, three are in a business area, three are laboratory science intensive, one is digital, and another is extremely timely. I'm sorry the
secretary is still here has to deal with science and reading. So I'd say all of them reflect responsiveness to state needs and uh the respective institutional missions of of their the institutions that will be providing them. So other than that
I to follow up on the chairman's report I move approval. Chris and I were just talking I can't my brain fall. Um, we can approve these all in mass, right? Expedited versus individuals.
You can Okay. And that's what the motion is to do. Thank you. And we can and we have and we were there were there any questions or comments uh from anyone either on the
academic affairs committee or Okay, hearing none. All in favor for approval for our eight expedited academic programs, please say I. I. I. Say, thank you. All right. Now, now we have a
presentation, I believe. So, also make a note that uh Chairman Peterson was temporary chairman one month the AQ because Dennis was, I think, taking a well- earned vacation on time. So,
Well, going to do a shuffle. I'm going to start off and then I'll start off and then pass the mic to the actual expert in in raw reciprocity, but maybe foolish enough to
actually use it. I think I think it it was fortuitous, but I think it's it's good timing. We have this uh topic today following student success, following the tuition uh holding tuition uh flat for the the short theme. U discussing pre-missions.
This is a topic that deals with access and affordability as well. It's just probably not on as many people's radar. Uh today he'll be considering uh a two-year uh Ohio reciprocity agreement and a 4-year Kentucky bilateral tuition
reciprocity agreement. And I think it'd be helpful to consider the advantages of reciprocity. We can go to the next. Oh, you got and that's why I think it it's it's it's well placed in the dubtales of what we've been talking about already. And
what are some of the macro and individual aspects of tuition reciprocity? The first one being who's your students will receive access to more program options within their geographic area, their region at instate
tuition prices. Very good. Uh Indiana as a state, we're able to expand uh programmatic offerings to our our citizens without further expenditure. In a way, we're expanding our portfolio of offerings. Our own institutions are able
to bring in enrollment and drive enrollment and fill spots that might otherwise go unfilled because they're able to offer them at a rate that attracts an outside out ofstate student. And then the last two I think are kind of fun because they're a bit of like an in a competition aspect here. Crossber
students come to experience Indiana and I think they may relocate here. So I think that puts like some onus on our institutions to uh really roll out the red carpet maybe make that relocation seem uh a good idea once they finish expose them to area
employers expose them to amenities quality of life and then the other uh typically if the student goes out that there's a good chance they'll come back. So our students who are going cross border there's also a highlighted that they'll return as well. So I there's a dynamic there where I think perhaps with this reciprocity of these bilateral
agreements Indiana could have an advantage and net when there's the net accounting is done we'd have a net advantage um here and so before I turn it to Ross want to bring up that there are several kind of levels of reciprocity there's
multistate and we are part of the Midwest higher education compact they themselves then have within in their region, a Midwest student exchange program, MSEP. And then we have we're part of
that as the commission. And the other two that we have a part to play with are the bilateral agreements with our neighbors to the east and our neighbors to the south. And then there are others that really aren't on our radar and aren't our responsibility. And those would be say like coalitions of private colleges and universities. They can have
multi-state agreements. And the individual institutions we do know have uh tuition reciprocity or tuition discounts for out of state certain out of state students and that's their prerogative. We don't keep a track of that. But the ones we do keep track of we are going to discuss today and they're the last two are up for
consideration. Um and I'll I'll talk about MSEP. I'll let Ross talk about bilateral and then for the next slide I'll chime in again and I promise Ross will take over. Um the the MSP uh was started in 1994 and it applies to both
public and private institutions. Uh for the publics uh they have to promise to provide instate or up to 150% instate tuition. And then for the privates, it's a 10% reduction on tuition. However, only eight of the 12 uh mech
states participate in M7, which means a total of 72 institutions, 11 of which are in Indiana. That's Ball State, Indiana State, IvyTech, Purdue, Port Wayne, and then all of the IU regional. So, it's not all of our state institutions and you want to talk about.
Yes, thank you, Matt. So, I hope I live up to the remaining meat here. So going back to um there currently is are no uh private nonprofit institutions. It's all public institutions. Um over time a lot of the
institutions have voluntarily um decided not to participate. Uh so if you're wondering why only eight states that is the current reason. Um these are the states. Um,
so I think the most recent states that actually uh no longer had institutions participating were Michigan and Illinois. Um but Mech and the uh Mech or the ISEP council is working to try to uh
increase um voluntary participation in those programs and get some of those states back including u launching a new website or maybe even a tool for students to look at um in order to increase u
participation. So, um, we have two reciprocity agreements, as Matt was saying. One is the Indiana Ohio reciprocity agreement, which is, um, a 2-year agreement. Um, and that's by state statute, Ohio State statute, and
then we have the Indiana Kentucky Commonwealth of Kentucky four-year agreement. Um the let's see the uh Kentucky agreement it goes back uh back to 1991. Um there have been multiple
changes over the years. Um if you're looking at the map I think I got into this last time I presented. If you're looking at the map in some of the areas, there are counties that are two and three uh
counties from the border from the Ohio on either side of the Ohio River. And then other places uh there's just single counties on either side of on the western side of the um Ohio River. There's just two counties on either side. And then we're missing a county
called uh a spot there called Breeridge. Um that's between Hancock and Me County, Ohio, uh Kentucky. Um for this agreement, um we wanted to add two counties for IU
Southeast and those counties were Harden and Nelson County. And we eventually hope to get um in Breenriidge County into the agreement. Um, a number of years ago we added IvyTech uh counties
um to uh the agreement so that they could draw more students. And currently, let's go through this real quick. These are the counties and this is how it this is how it varies between Kentucky and Ohio. Kentucky uh the Kentucky agreement there's institutions
and under those institutions, those are the counties that they may draw students from. um where and I'll get into Ohio later and these are the Kentucky institutions and their counties. Um even though you see probably a whole lot more
institutions or looks like a lot more institutions and more counties actually we have almost near par um in the inflow and outflow of students. Um you could consider that good or bad. um either you
know heritage is the ultimate goal or maybe in you know inflow or outflow either way um I always and Matt again we talk about how either way is probably good um you can have outflow Indiana residents
attending Kentucky institutions however it still is positive because those students would probably come back to be residents here in Indiana Um, and yet Indiana is not having to expand funds for new programs and also it fills seats
in programs that might otherwise go unfilled. And that's that I think that was the original idea. And also um maybe students that would have only considered an in-state institution uh because of geography may consider an
out ofstate institution and they're going to attend and they may graduate and hopefully they graduate and they stay here in Indiana. So we have near parody um those numbers um back in 2013. I think we also
had almost exact parody in those numbers which is it flow es and flows over the years over the decades. This is um been around since 1991 so it has eb and flowed and then we have the Indiana Ohio
reciprocity agreement. Um this goes back to I think it was 1994. Um, and that first agreement between our two states, uh, was just a one-year agreement, and then, uh, since then, it's been renewed, and by Ohio
statute, it can only be, um, 2 years in length. Um, again, we've had, well, I'll get into the enrollment or the data a little bit later. These are the, uh, Indiana institutions and the
Indiana counties that participate. The difference with this uh reciprocity agreement is that a resident of any of those counties can attend institution of reciprocity um in any of the uh adjoining state. So
it does it's not tied specifically to a particular group of counties in a region. It's all up and down the board between um Indiana and Ohio. Um we've had various changes with that um
agreement. At one point there were only Next slide. At one point there were only six counties in Ohio that participated. And if you look in the northern part of uh the northwest corner
of Ohio, uh we added I believe it was eight counties um a number of years ago. Um and we go back and also again uh with the counties
um in uh Indiana that participate a number of counties in the northeast corner of the state. They were added uh a number of years ago. And here we get into the actual um it's been simplified. We get a lot of
data from Kentucky and from Ohio. Um all of which doesn't go into this because this is very busy. So just to simplify things, [Music] um we do have a little bit of a disparity in the number of students
attending cross border. So a lot of Indiana residents are attending there more of them attending Ohio institutions. Um that's been the case for a number of years. At one point, I believe it was in
2012, we did have almost near parody. Uh we had one one institution that dropped out and then we've had um institutions um on the Ohio side that wanted to join, which is not necessarily bad um because
again, you have could have graduates going to Ohio and returning back to Indiana as graduates. So, um, in order to get parody, um, Matt thought that adding Montgomery County,
um, might be a very good idea. So, Montgomery County, if you look that, um, let's see that right there by quite read it. It's down towards the bottom. Uh the southern the
soping the southern uh pointing the southern county um one in two from the two from the bottom. Um that would be added and that would add a population of over half a million. Um so that would
probably go a long way in reaching parody. Uh, one request that did come in from Ohio um at the last minute was to add Miami University, the main campus which is located in Oxford uh in Bullet
um actually in county and county is already in the agreement. So um and looking at those statistics um they did an estimation probably in
2025 and 26 it would add between maybe 140 to 160 students in total both undergrad and graduate but I think we would probably still grow our uh Indiana participation or Indiana enrollment by
adding Montgomery County. So those were the changes. Um and L range adding L range [Music] Indiana which is almost near the top of the state. Uh see uh second from the top
there. Um adding the range which is a population of 41,000. Um so not nearly as many as Montgomery County. Um but that um just closing in that twocount over from the border basically. Um one
thing I would like to add, you may have wondered this. Oops. You may have wondered if you um geography there are a number of counties down at the bottom of um Indiana. There
are I think I counted like six of them. They actually do not border Ohio. They border Kentucky. Um and then Dearborn County, which actually borders both Ohio and Kentucky. Um those were added. I'm
not sure why. It was just trying to get balance at one point. Uh but those were added prior to 2015, I believe. So there's been a number of changes over the years. uh but it's basically reciprocity has just basically
grown in the number of counties and the number of institutions. Yes. Yes. From South the obvious question is what about Michigan? Okay that's a good question. So um we spoke with uh the state of Michigan um a
number of years ago that many years ago two years ago there hasn't been a big interest among their institutions in doing reciprocity and it was the same case with MSEP. Uh actually their institutions dropped out of uh MSE
Midwest Student Exchange Program prior to us speaking to them about reciprocity and again with Illinois uh the same thing. Interesting. We have we actually have it I think it
came up at a previous commission meeting. Why not Michigan? Why not Illinois? And so we did speak with those states about having them join or trying to get some sort of agreement. The other thing that um many of you may have wondered is or you may be aware of
there's institutions that have their own reciprocy outside of agreement. Um they're offering instate tuition rates. Um, one of them, there's actually a couple in Kentucky that are, uh, Northern Northern Kentucky University, I
believe, that's offering a program called uh, three for one. That means uh, instate tuition for both Indiana residents and from Ohio residents. However, they're still in agreement um, because they just wanted to support the
agreement. um so they ever make again and also it's a good advertisement for um try to get students to enroll. Other questions? Is there actually an ability to track, you talk about the students that either
go in either direction, track what's what does happen to them after they graduate and and understand how many people come back to Indiana who may have gone over to Ohio. Maintain residues. Is this on? Um I need your teaching voice. Yeah. Um,
we have the data and we're working with the the US Census Bureau to look at resident reciprocity and non-resident outcomes hopefully in the next year or so with the outcome dashboard. Cool. Thank you. And I think going for another
quick question. Is it University of Cincinnati that's taking the most of our students in Ohio? you you referenced there's a certain institution but didn't name it and if so or not do we know what's so attractive that they're taking our students that we could rob and
duplicate actually it wasn't um it wasn't Cincinnati it was the University of Louisville which was uh attracting so many students about half and then also for Indiana it was IU southeast and
IvyTech seller It was uh gathering so many moments. [Music] Um actually the yes it was Sinclair Community College uh including Warren
County campus that was um oh I apologize it was the University of Cincinnati. I don't know why uh it's probably the name recognition is probably the reason why they've gathered so many students maybe just geography with the population um in
that in that area. So I think going forward our probably our next goal for the next reciprocity agreement is to gather more um Ohio counties um into the agreement so that um we could Indiana institutions could
um in more any other questions thank you um so I would entertain do we need to separate these for approval or Yes, please. We've got We're still on.
Um, so I would entertain a motion for approval first of the Indiana Kentucky reciprocity agreement. Thank you. Thank you. Any comments, concerns, questions? All in favor, please say I. I. Same. Thank you. And now, uh, likewise,
Indiana Ohio reciprocity agreement approval. Okay, thank you. Comments, questions, all approved or saying I I
saying thank you. All right. Very good. Thank you. Uh Rosroity was 12. Would you stick around and do maybe a reciprocal tariff discussion those that are interested after that carries
over if Mr. Mr. Chairman, if I may add one thing about, we probably didn't emphasize it enough with the adding of Montgomery County. The pre the status quo before these agreements are ratified. Um there's roughly 900 something thousand Ohioans of population
eligible for [Music] resp Montgomery County 500,000 gets us basically to 1.5 1.5 equal and that should help as we hope bring more Ohioans to our institutions and as you
know also my Montgomery County is Dayton big air force base metropolitan area and it's also on the I7 corridor So, uh, three of our institutions are, uh, IE, um, IVS en Richmond and Polytech Purdue Polytech enrichment. So, we're hoping we're hoping that could be a good
corridor for more students coming in. So, that we we were quite happy about that, and we had initially proposed um, it's Hamilton County, which is Cincinnati, and they said no. So, this is our second. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just just a quick note I brought not let it down Ross process the last well but it's welld deserved that's the purpose of my comment heard to Ross is an expert and he is um you know
Ross works with great efficacy and whether it's BP whether it's corporate criteria education whether it's reciprocity and so forth he he is an expert at what I think are just a bunch of incredibly talented folks on
our staff. And uh I thought of him as I'm going to say this publicly for the first time. He's also like Mikey from Life Serum. Given Mike and I mean that with great compliment, Ross, because he has this institutional knowledge of what we do there. He's forgotten more than I've
learned in my 3 years. And when there tricky things that come up and we go like, "What do we do with that?" or "Who do you give that to?" it ends up with Ross. So, Ross, thank you. Thanks for this. This was really great and it's great work. But just thanks for that expertise you bring. And as I said, you
will not let it down a little. Great. Well, I think that's bringing us to the end of a of an excellent meeting. Um, you can find your information items starting on page 67 of your agenda book, which I know you've all looked at. Um,
is there any old business for the good of the order? any new business that haven't hasn't been uh touched upon. Okay, hearing none, we are uh adjourned and next we will see you in July in the opposite end of the state in Madison. So
looking forward to it. Lots of driving. Thank you all.