For an organization to be successful, it must find a way to stand apart from others in its field; this is true in any industry and applies to business entities and nonprofit operations alike. The logic behind this idea is quite simple, but like most things in life, it’s easier said than done. This has not stopped the team at Ohio Northern University (ONU), an Ada, Ohio-based baccalaureate school, from achieving great things.
Liberal arts schools are one of the most popular options in today’s market for those seeking a higher education, but they’re certainly not the only choice available, and in recent years, baccalaureate colleges have started to gain momentum. Baccalaureate institutions, like many liberal arts schools, are primarily focused on undergraduate education. The difference between the two categorizations is simple: fewer than half of the degrees granted at a baccalaureate school are in liberal arts disciplines.
ONU was ranked second overall in US News & World Report’s 2010 list of the top baccalaureate colleges in the Midwest. The school has placed in the top five in its region for the last seven years straight, and it has been in the top 10 for nearly 20 years now. The school has earned a number of additional honors from the magazine throughout the years, including a seventh-place position on its regional list of Great Schools, Great Prices, an accolade that recognizes institutions’ value propositions.
Dr. Kendall Baker, who has served as president of ONU since August 1999, attributes the continuous recognition to the school’s faculty and staff, which he describes as both hardworking and talented. The organization employs a team of roughly 650 individuals, 207 of whom are full-time faculty members. Of those 207 persons, 83% hold either a PhD or terminal degree.
It’s easy to see how this team is able to deliver high-quality education to its students, but many more factors contribute to the school’s overall success. ONU was established in 1871, and although many of the same missions and principles direct operations today, much has changed during the last 139 years.
As it stands today, ONU offers students a unique blend of liberal arts and professional programs through five colleges: Getty College of Arts & Sciences, The James F. Dicke College of Business Administration, T.J. Smull College of Engineering, The Rudolph H. Raabe College of Pharmacy, and Claude W. Pettit College of Law.
An easier process
Prior to joining the team at ONU, Baker spent several years working in the public sector of higher education. Organizations in the private sector have very different operational structures than those in the public realm, namely because public institutions benefit from state funding.
According to Baker, however, the financial situation is beginning to change. “The size of the pie for public universities has continued to decline dramatically in recent years, and there are a lot of people that’ll tell you the public schools really aren’t state-supported institutions—at best, they’re state-assisted these days,” he said.
“Despite the continual reduction in funding, public institutions still operate as part of state agendas, and a single board of directors can be responsible for running three of four universities,” Baker added.
The board of directors at ONU, on the other hand, is focused exclusively on the welfare of its organization. This discrepancy greatly influences the decisionmaking process, and, ultimately, it means investment ideas can be approved and rolled out much more quickly.
Although ONU doesn’t have access to public funds, the school benefits from private donations, and as a result, it has been able to invest significantly in its physical infrastructure in the recent years. Baker named the construction of two state-of-the-art facilities, one to house the business college and one for the science programs, as among the most notable.
Committed to quality
When Baker arrived to the school 11 years ago, he recognized the institution already offered a great deal of high-quality programming, and although he wanted to further strengthen that, something else stood out in his mind as a priority.
“ONU has always had a lot of high-quality programming, but when I came here, I realized it wasn’t as well known as it deserved to be. We wanted to change this, so we focused a significant amount of effort on advocating and promoting the institution,” he said, noting that total enrollment has risen from 3,000 to more than 3,600 since that time.
With its outward reach, the ONU team worked to convey a message that spoke of the school’s unique offering. There are many factors that contribute to the school’s success as a whole, but according to Baker, there is a single defining factor that helps set it apart from other small, private institutions: its ability to integrate professional programs with a liberal arts education. The organization’s rich history plays a major role in this process, Baker explained
“The primary reason more small schools aren’t doing this is because you have to have the right programs in place, and developing them takes a great deal of time and money. We started many of these programs early on and continued to invest in them throughout the years,” he said, adding that the institution’s engineering college, pharmacy college, and law school allow it to offer many of the programs typically reserved for larger state universities. Its pharmacy program, for example, was established 125 years ago, and its law school, which is the second oldest in the state, will celebrate that same milestone next year.
At ONU, programmatic development is an ongoing, multi-faceted process, and as Baker explained, the school’s team is focused on cross-college programming. “We have a pharmacy business program, for example, that’s suited to fit the needs of students interested in a number of business and management positions in the pharmaceutical industry,” he said.
The unique integration of ONU’s assets is what ultimately sets it apart from others. Baker and the rest of the school’s team realize this, and so, they plan to continue in a similar fashion in the years ahead.
