Balancing Mission and Market at Huntington University

How does a small, faith-based institution in northeast Indiana serve a wide range of student demographics including traditional residential undergraduates, working adults, online learners, graduate students, and more?  Dr. Rob Pepper, President of Huntington University, starts with three simple questions. What’s the problem we’re trying to solve? How does this impact students? And is there a better way to do it?

For Pepper, these questions are essential to run a student-centric institution, stay true to mission, and move with the speed needed in today’s market. Just over a year into the role as Huntington’s new President, Pepper shares strategic moves he’s already implemented, how he continues to remain curious, and what it takes to reconcile mission and market in today’s environment.

Remaining Curious & Acknowledging Gaps to Serve Different Student Segments

While Huntington does offer a traditional residential experience, Pepper is quick to mention the institution’s large population of commuter students and high school dual enrollment students. While these students may not live on campus, he still sees it as a responsibility to ensure these students feel part of a community. “Students have jobs and we think about where students spend their time. We have to make sure they have the services they need. Are our offices open? Do we have a space for them to go hang out between classes? Do they feel comfortable joining in all the other activities we have on campus to keep them engaged?” Offering the right services and spaces at the right times can make or break whether a commuter student feels like the campus also belongs to them.

Pepper is quick to acknowledge that asking ‘how do we best serve students?’ leads to very different questions from one student population to another. Huntington serves a couple hundred dual enrollment and early college students, drawing students from homeschool, private, and public school settings. For Pepper, it is critical to acknowledge that universities operate with a knowledge gap when it comes to K-12. “There's a big push to track students early to gather credits, and so we have to serve those students as well.” Pepper leans on alumni working in K-12 to close that gap, describing the exchange as a kind of double-loop learning. The university provides college-level content while high schools teach the university about relevant issues such as the post-covid academic slide and social-emotional wellness.

Restructuring the Honors Program to Provide Prospective Students with a Comprehensive Offer

As a new president, finding the balance between honoring past work and bringing in new best practices is an ongoing balancing act. Pepper’s advice: ask a lot of questions. Rather than assuming, pose questions such as, “I’m not familiar with that? Can you tell me more about that?” However, Pepper also recognizes that today’s environment can require swift action. One change Pepper implemented early on was a reimagination of how they structure and market Huntington’s honors program. Previously, the honors program was separate from the academic merit aid process. A student could compete for academic merit funding, enroll, and afterward apply to the honors program.

After the institution implemented a new general education core, they could now offer a single combined pathway for the honors program. “Can't we have an academic merit aid system at a high school where students apply to the university, they get accepted, if they're identified as a high achiever, we invite them to campus for an interview process, they get their aid, and then we also offer them a spot in the honors program?” Pepper posed. With the new standardized core, the honors sections now offer a deeper version of courses every student already takes, rather than a separate curricular track.

Once faculty agreed to the concept, Pepper set a deadline that gave enrollment and marketing time to promote the program for the upcoming academic year, rather than having to wait until the next cycle. Pepper shares how this change is already yielding results. “It's working. Our deposits are up right now. As of three days ago, we have more deposits at this point in the cycle than we've had in the last 10 or 12 years for first-year students.” For a class goal of around 300 students, he notes that even enrolling a handful of students they might not have originally attracted makes a big difference. Simply put, “It's a game changer for us.”

Maintaining Identity & Meeting Needs Through Partnerships

As a faith-based institution, mission will always be central to how Huntington operates. However, Pepper knows that mission isn’t the only factor at play. “We need to be mission-driven, but we need to be market-sensitive.” These two factors require a careful balance, as institutions that chase the market too hard risk losing their identity. Pepper explains what this overcorrection looks like: “If you're market-sensitive, then you have mission drift and people don't know who you are.”

To understand how Huntington can remain true to who they are while still remaining competitive in the market, the institution is currently running a full mission, vision, and values refresh, precisely so market responsiveness doesn't come at the cost of identity. Pepper distills this exercise: get clear on who you are, then ask the community what problem it has, then decide honestly whether the university has the expertise to solve it. Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes this requires tweaking what the university already offers.

Pepper highlights what real alignment with community needs looks like. One example includes the university's vet science partnership with Purdue, a four-year animal science degree paired with an associate's degree in vet tech. While this is difficult to replicate across all programs, Huntington is exploring select areas where this type of partnership makes sense.

Another lens examines how Huntington can give students an undergraduate experience that builds directly into their post-graduate plans. Pepper poses a scenario the institution is actively exploring: “What are the predetermined pathways from undergraduate to graduate? We might attract a student here because we're a residential faith-based university, give them a great experience for four years, and then they say, ‘I want to go to an R1 for graduate school.’ If we can develop these partnerships with pathways directly — whether it's a preferred admissions criteria, or a summer residency, or a guaranteed interview.”  

Making Tradeoffs to Continue Delivering on Mission

While partnerships and pathways are one piece of market alignment, Pepper knows that the programs an institution offers internally are just as important. In an environment of tight university finances, he explains, “Where there's no margin, there's no mission. Just because we think we want to do it and we think it's the right thing, we have to figure out how to fund it.” Pepper believes this is the new normal and points to policies such as Indiana's funding thresholds, which only fund programs that achieve certain metrics. He uses an analogy that directly cuts to the truth of the matter: “There's a lot of ponds; we can't fish in all of them. We have to decide the ones we're going to fish in.”

When it comes to program viability, Pepper has learned that programs need a regular understanding of how they’re doing so bad news doesn’t come as a surprise. He frames it as a yellow-light, green-light, red-light approach that helps programs make adjustments before it is too late. In-the-moment signaling gives departments time to adjust before a decision is final. Pepper acknowledges that closing a program you care about is hard, but “it's harder to keep a program that you really love and have no students in it … If there's no demand, then you just can't have it. It's unsustainable, and that's for any college.” While never an easy decision to make, these decisions ensure an institution can still successfully operate and serve students.

For Pepper, Huntington is a place where students can receive a faith-based education and really be known. He wants to ensure Huntington can continue to deliver on this mission, while aligning with student and market needs. “What makes Huntington special is, we see you, we hear you, we know you … Someone's going to know when you're not showing up, someone's going to know when you need help, and we're going to connect you with somebody to help you be successful.” Pepper believes continuing to ask the right questions, moving quickly, and staying true to mission will enable Huntington to continue to deliver this type of relationship-based education.