Michael Driscoll, President, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Indiana University of Pennsylvania has a proactive approach to student success amid a declining high school graduate population. “Our focus on student success is strongly connected not only to doing our job for the students who come here, but to make sure that we’re getting that educated workforce into the community,” IUP President Michael Driscoll told Invest:. Driscoll also discussed affordability, the growth of its dual enrollment program, and the university’s work toward a proposed college of osteopathic medicine. 

What changes in the past year have impacted the university the most?

We’re seeing a declining population in Western Pennsylvania, and an aging population. That means fewer young people entering the workforce. Our focus on student success is strongly connected not only to doing our job for the students who come here but also to making sure that we’re getting that educated workforce into the community — and we’re starting to see strong results.

A couple of years ago, we stood up a Student Success Infrastructure that provides a navigator — an individual, a staff member — associated with every single student. Their job is to help their students navigate our bureaucracy, overcome any issues they have, and be successful. Maybe they have a financial aid problem, or some other issue, or maybe they just need some help getting to the right adviser for what they want to do as a major. That seems to be bearing remarkable success. We have had great feedback from our students, but we’ve also seen some things increase dramatically. For instance, our student retention numbers from fall to spring is above 90% for the first time. Students are continuing their education in new ways and are being successful and graduating. 

The investment we made in this infrastructure is more significant than many places have done, maybe almost unique in this regard, and it’s helping the students who come here to succeed. We support them to make sure they succeed. We’re not changing our standards for academics. We’re helping them navigate all the other things. We also have continued our focus on affordability for our students.

What have you done in terms of affordability?

We have not increased tuition for seven consecutive years now. That’s remarkable in the inflationary times we’ve been in. We’re a great deal price-wise for our students. We’ve also stepped up how we provide financial aid and other benefits for our students. Recently, our Council of Trustees helped us restructure our housing grants and scholarships for students who live on campus for the first and subsequent years. Students who live on campus have higher GPAs and are more likely to be successful and involved on campus.

This makes it more affordable for them to continue living on campus far past their first year. And we regularly have been distributing somewhere on the order of $26 million in scholarships from the university to our students every year.

We’ve heard our students and our families say affordability is critical, and we’ve stepped up to provide that. Others in the state, others in the country, raise tuition regularly by 4%, 5%, or whatever it might be. We’ve kept tuition flat and we’ve added additional aid to keep this within a reasonable cost of attendance for our students. That has not been easy because that means less revenue for us at some level. We’ve worked hard, and I have to say that this is the first year in seven years, I believe, that we’ve balanced our budget completely.
Since we last talked, we’ve also reached the point of celebrating a birthday — IUP was founded in 1875, so we’re at our 150th anniversary. The real party will start in the fall, with all sorts of activities, bringing alumni back, and we’re also looking forward to the next 150 years.

Another thing that’s worth highlighting is that the Carnegie Foundation and ACE has developed a new set of classifications for institutions — and this connects back to our focus on student success — IUP holds an “Opportunity College and University-Higher Access, Higher Earnings” designation. We are the only university in the State System and one of only 20 public institutions in Pennsylvania to earn that designation; only 16% of all colleges and universities earned that level of recognition. The Higher Access designation means that we provide more opportunities to students in our service area to get to college; the Higher Earnings designation means that our graduates are earning 50% or more than others in similar jobs. 

What are some new initiatives to enhance career placement and industry engagement?

We have been growing our dual enrollment program significantly. That’s where students still in high school are able to take college courses at a lower cost. We reduce the cost that we charge for those courses. That’s a remarkable thing. We also have a $880,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Education that is targeted to 10 or so school districts for students who are particularly interested in health-related professions. That’s about getting students who are still in high school connected with the courses they need in college to be successful in careers in health-related areas.

If we can get them started on that path and they get their education at IUP, they’re very likely to stay in the region, in the state. That’s been true forever. Over 85% of all our graduates stay in Pennsylvania. Most of them come from Pennsylvania, but not all. We capture some folks from outside of Pennsylvania who stay here. That’s a key program that we’ve added as we continue to strengthen partnerships with employers.

Our new science building is also up and running. We’ve been in there for a couple of years now and it’s drawing students in. I would also highlight our cybersecurity program, which is one of the best in the country. I don’t have any problem saying that. We have a Center for Cyber Security Education and we’re funded by the National Security Administration, by the FBI, and by the Department of Defense. We have students who are getting a $50,000-a-year scholarship to be in that program, and they’re going out either to work for the government or to work for local businesses to build that cybersecurity infrastructure that keeps us all safe from that threat.

That’s driven in connection with industry and government advisory boards. We have folks here all the time talking with our students, building those connections. Those graduates who come out of that program are connected directly with potential employers and get jobs.

We continue to have strong programs in education and teacher education. Workforce demand for teachers is incredibly high, and we’ve maintained strong connections with all of our districts for teacher preparation and placement. 

We also have a growing awareness of the need for health and well-being in rural communities. We have a real shortage of health care providers across Pennsylvania and across the United States, particularly in rural areas. Nursing is our largest undergraduate major (in health professions), and our students are passing the licensing exam at 90%, one of the best in the commonwealth. We’re also preparing future nursing faculty through our Ph.D. in nursing. We have an incredible nutrition and dietetics program — nutrition is fundamental to everyone’s health. 

We’re in the middle of standing up a college of osteopathic medicine. We decided that the key thing we could do is to directly address the shortage of physicians in rural areas. Physicians will spend two years with us as medical students and then two years as medical students in clinical rotations. Spots for these students in clinical rotations are a scarce resource, and we were told that we would fail as a medical school because we would not be able to get these clinical rotations. Today, we have signed agreements for more than 200% of what we need for a college of medicine. As we talk about building connections with employers, these are the folks that are going to hire our graduates across the areas of medicine, health and well-being. For these institutions to dedicate their resources to support our (future) medical students at twice the number of slots we need says something about the partnerships we’ve built across Pennsylvania. We hope that our first class of medical students will be here in 2027. 

In Punxsutawney, we recognized the need to replace a very old facility for our exemplary culinary arts program, where our graduates go to 5-star restaurants across the country. With help from donors and our Foundation for IUP, we acquired some older buildings in downtown Punxsutawney to eventually replace a half-block with a brand-new facility with first-class kitchens, classrooms and a small restaurant that will completely transform the main street of Punxsutawney and add to what’s happening there in really great ways. We continue to see strong demand for the program and its graduates; all of our graduates get a job offer. 

What are your key goals and priorities for the upcoming two years?

These are times of incredible, disruptive change, including declining populations and a change in expectations from higher education. We’re going to still have a strong traditional residential undergraduate student population. We’re going to continue to have strong graduate and research programs that reflect us being at the R2 Carnegie ranking. But we’re also going to see fewer students in those more traditional programs.

We need to look ahead to take the great information, knowledge, and skills that we know how to teach to people and package them differently, so they make sense for a different audience. Students may not care about a degree as much as they once did when we look 10 years into the future, but they’re going to care a lot about the specific skills and knowledge they need to take the next step in their life plans or career plans.

Our employers also are going to need specific things at specific times. They’re not caring as much about a bachelor’s degree or a master’s degree. We’re seeing some of that already.

It is about how we package that in smaller pieces so that you can get the skill that you need for your career today and tomorrow, or the skill your employer needs. We are pushing heavily to make sure we are at the leadership level in terms of how we provide those different types of packaging of our great content. That’s a key priority for the future.

Also, as we head toward this 150th year, we are in the quiet phase of a campaign; the college of osteopathic medicine is a big part of that, but a lot of things are going on for a university that is building for the next 150 years.