Q: Please tell us a little about your background, how you rose through the ranks of academe, why you've been successful, and perhaps some of the challenges you've faced as a woman in higher education.

Gora:   I have a very traditional background for a university president. I am a sociologist with a specialization in criminology; I started out teaching and doing research and published two books and several articles. As typically happens in higher education, if you are a good classroom instructor and dedicated to your students, somebody comes along and says, "Well maybe this person would be a good administrator." So you get invited to take on an administrative responsibility, and I did that. That responsibility led to another which led to another which led to another which ultimately led to my winning two fellowships. One given by the American Council on Education that enabled me to spend a year at Barnard College and Columbia University working with the president and vice president for academic affairs, seeing how they exercised leadership in that environment. Subsequently in 1989 I won another fellowship to study at Harvard for the summer. Their Institute for Educational Management is designed to transform faculty members into administrators. Over the years I became an associate dean of a college of arts and sciences, and then a dean of a college of arts and sciences. I moved on to become provost and vice president of academic affairs at Old Dominion University. I then became chancellor at UMass Boston. Now I'm president at Ball State. So a pretty traditional career in terms of how faculty members turn into college presidents.

The challenges for women revolve around life cycle timing. The years when most men and women lay the groundwork for their careers are also the childbearing years. It becomes a real juggling proposition as you try to figure out how to pursue a career and also have a family. So I think that's a challenge that even in 2005 women confront. It's that balancing act of having a family and also laying the groundwork for their career and their future in their profession. It's all about being really well organized, establishing priorities, and making sure that you find time to do the things you love to do and sustain you and give you energy.

Q: So the balancing act is really important. How do you balance your work life and home life?

Gora:   I guess I'm very fortunate because my son is grown. I have a 32-year-old son who's a clinical psychologist. The best part of that is when I call my son and say, "How are you?"  He always says, "No, Mother, how are you?" And that always leads to a long conversation with him asking lots of questions and my thinking, "How does this happen that the son is the mother to the mother?" That's what you get when you have a clinical psychologist in the family. So my son is grown, and I have a stepdaughter and a wonderful husband who likes to go to events with me. I think one of the things that makes my life easier is that my husband likes to be with me at all kinds of events. Since our evenings are frequently spent at the university at either athletic events or plays or recitals or something involving students, if we're together it feels better than just sitting at a desk and being at work.

Q: What is the most difficult part of being president at a large institution like Ball State University?

Gora:   There are two significant challenges. Ball State is a very large, complex organization. Getting to know the organization, people, facts, and data is really a challenge because we have more than 2,000 employees, 18,000 students, 52 academic departments, and seven colleges, but I'm just one person. I'm really trying to absorb all the information and data we produce about ourselves. But also trying to get to know the people and understand the issues and challenges each group is facing is difficult and important and has really been something that has absorbed me especially during these first few months. I've just about met with every academic department, and I've started meeting with administrative departments. So I really feel as though I'm truly getting to know the institution well, not just from written documents but now from having talked to people and listened to people and what their concerns are.

I think the hardest part of being a president is that you have to make difficult decisions. A leadership role requires you to look toward what is in the long-term best interest of the institution. That means you're sometimes going to disappoint people. You're going to make decisions that some people understand and like and other decisions people think not so well of. Inevitably you're going to hurt some people, because there are never enough resources to do everything you want to do and changing times require changes in the administration and in the focus of an institution. Change is difficult for people. I struggle all the time with those decisions that have to be made that I think are in the best interests of the institution and that will really move us along and steward our future while at the same time being mindful of the fact that I am undoubtedly making some people uncomfortable and even hurting some people.

Q: What do you like most about being president?

Gora:  What I like most is getting to know the people that make up the institution, being excited by what we're able to do, and listening to our students and our alumni talk about how meaningful their experience at Ball State has been. Alums have said to me that they wouldn't be where they are today if it weren't for Ball State. That to me is the highest compliment a president can hear. It makes my day so worthwhile because I know we're changing lives. We're helping students fulfill dreams. And we're impacting this economy. We're doing what Ball State can do to help this economy grow and prosper, and that's incredibly important work.

A lot of what I do is try to solve problems, try to figure out what the problems are, and try to help everyone figure out what the solutions are. I certainly am not the reservoir of all the solutions, but I think the people who work at the university do know the answers to the problems. It's a matter of framing the questions and helping individuals to develop the solutions.

Just today I was meeting with faculty from the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities, which is a part of Ball State University. Some people are perhaps less familiar with this residential school for gifted and talented students that also offers advanced courses to more than 500 students across the state through distance education. That means that courses we're teaching here at the Academy are being broadcast throughout the state. Courses in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, advanced placement calculus, and advanced placement biology. It's just an incredible range of courses that students in the far reaches of Indiana might not have access to if it weren't for Ball State. Learning about all the facets of the university—that's a wonderful aspect of my work.

Q: So it's really touching people's lives, helping them move along even though you have to go through the administrative bureaucratic kinds of things. In the final analysis you feel good about the kind of work you do.

Gora:  Absolutely. I wouldn't put in 12- and 14-hour days, day after day if I didn't think it was worthwhile and if I didn't think that we were changing lives. One phrase that popped into our minds (and out of my mouth) as a result of the announcement of the Inaugural Scholarships is to say that it's not about filling a hall―it's about fulfilling dreams. That's really true. That is what we try to do here at Ball State. We try to fulfill dreams.

Q: Let's shift gears and talk about technology. How much do you use it? Do you carry gadgets? Do you like using it? What do you use it for?

Gora:  I love technology. I should preface this by saying that many years ago when computers were just invading college campuses and I was the dean of a college of arts and sciences, the head of the biology department walked over to my office one day and presented me with a Mac and said, "Here. Use this." At the time I was a very busy dean and I thought, "What is this thing?" And I never really did use it. I looked at it a lot, and I played around with it, but I didn't become very facile on it. At that time Apples were the easiest things to use. Computers had just arrived on the scene, and we were just sort of figuring out how they were going to transform higher education. But I have become a true believer since those days. I now believe technology is the revolution that has come to higher education and will transform the way we teach and the way we learn.

Personally, I like any gadget. I was one of the earlier users of a Palm Pilot and then moved on to a BlackBerry because I could access my e-mail in an airplane, which to me was a wonderful solution to all of my problems of falling behind when I was traveling. So I am wedded to my BlackBerry and always looking for what other technology tools can make it easier for me to do my job well. I would like a tablet PC but I haven't been willing to spend the money for it yet. Obviously I have a computer at work, and I have two computers at home.

Q: Are there other ways you use technology that help you?

Gora:  PDAs can help you organize every aspect of your life―and you can carry your phone book with you and change your to-do list with the agile movement of your thumbs. I just think they help us manage our day-to-day life.

I wish it were easier for senior citizens to become adept at using technology. One of the things I'm aware of because I have a 90-year-old mother is how hard it is for senior citizens to use mail stations, which are very simple computers, because of the dexterity and eye-hand coordination involved. I'm sure that in time senior citizens will become more comfortable with technology. Of course, I used to say every computer should come with a six-year-old because they're the only ones who really know how to use it to its full capability.

Q: Let's talk about the use of technology in instruction and how we use instructional technology at Ball State.

Gora:  We talk a lot about the infrastructure at the university, and college presidents love to brag about how fast their wireless networks are. I really believe that Ball State has the fastest network not only in Indiana, but perhaps in the country. We have a 54-megabit- per-second wireless network. We provide students with an average of four gigabytes of storage. We're on a 10-gigabyte core fiber network. So we have a great infrastructure. But it's not about the infrastructure. It's really all about how we use it to improve the teaching and learning process.

I'm really proud of the fact we have 192 computer labs on campus. We have over 7,000 computers on campus. But once again, that's all infrastructure. It's what we're doing in the College of Architecture and Planning to create 3-D modeling and simulations. It's the way, in our telecommunications program, we're using technology to enable students to do animation, video editing, and high-speed, hi-definition broadcasting across the Internet. That's really what's going to make the difference―how we use the technology. We're a wireless campus, and that gives our students a great deal of facility as they move from building to building and as they use the beautiful green spaces around campus. What we're always looking for are new ways to help faculty use technology to improve the learning process.

Q: Do you have a vision for where the university will be in three to five years?

Gora:   The strategic planning process has just been reenergized. Provost Beverley Pitts has convened a strategic planning committee that is going forward and hopes to have a strategic plan developed within the next year with the goals that will then guide the rest of the university.

I set forth a series of assumptions to guide that strategic plan. One of the assumptions I put in the strategic planning charge was that we would continue to be a best practice institution in the area of instructional and information technology.  We need to always be thinking about how we can use technology to improve the teaching and learning process, and I think there are many opportunities for us to do that.

Another element in the charge I gave to the provost was that we'd try to guarantee to every academically qualified student an experiential learning opportunity that would be part of their major. I feel that nothing benefits a student more than having an opportunity to work in a business or in a social service agency or in a foundation or any kind of environment outside the classroom in which they put to practice what they're learning in the classroom and get to see how what they're learning in their major is really going to be helpful to them as they develop their careers. So we do a lot of immersion experiences at Ball State, and a lot of experiential learning opportunities are available to our students. I'd really like to make sure that's the hallmark of a Ball State education. As I've gone around and talked to students and asked them what they've enjoyed about the university, more times than not they talk about some kind of in-the-field experience tied to their major that made a real difference for them. I've heard from a lot of students involved in Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry how exciting that opportunity has been for them. That's a real immersion experience that gives the students an opportunity to use what they're learning in a classroom to produce a product or offer a service that's going to make a difference.

Q: Tell us about the Business Fellows program.

Gora:  Business Fellows is all part of how Ball State tries to impact economic development in Indiana. We're fortunate to have a $1.5 million grant from the Lilly Foundation to help us develop what we are calling Business Fellows projects. These are opportunities for a faculty member to identify 12 to 15 students and then to identify a challenge in either the corporate sector or in a social service agency or government agency and enable those students to work with the agency or corporation to either improve efficiency or effectiveness. It's an exciting opportunity for students to apply what they have been learning in the classroom and a great problem-solving opportunity for students and faculty. It's also a tremendous enhancement of the community service we offer and a win-win situation for the university and the communities we serve.

Q: Sometimes student teams are coupled with a Building Better Communities initiative.

Gora:  Building Better Communities is an umbrella term referring to a range of different projects that use faculty, staff, and student expertise to help communities thrive and prosper. We do everything from community and economic development to Business Fellows projects. We're involved in technology transfer projects with our Center for Computational Nanoscience, but we're also involved with helping existing businesses become more entrepreneurial and helping grow new businesses too, all through the Building Better Communities initiative.

Q: What are you doing to help continue the programs started by the iCommunication grant? In the telecommunications department, they did immersion with Newslink Indiana, but that won't be continued after this year. I wanted to know how you're handling that.

Gora:  We're very excited about what we've been able to build through the $20 million iCommunication grant from the Lilly Endowment. Specifically, the Center for Media Design is part of that project. That's a great example of something that is ongoing even after the soft money goes away. We're delighted we're able to continue the Center for Media Design. We believe the university has a real area of expertise in the field of digital media content design, analysis, and evaluation. The fact we developed new academic programs ― the master's in telecommunications with an emphasis in digital storytelling and a digital storytelling minor ―is another legacy that comes out of that grant.

We're trying to get additional monies to carry on many of the projects. We have successfully gained almost $1 million of federal funding that has gone into the development of Digital Middletown, which will help us understand how students use digital media content, evaluate and assess the use of it, and come up with new projects and products.

We're also going back to Lilly and asking for additional funds to help us continue the Center for Media Design and to continue to build upon the expertise that has grown out of the initial project.

Q: Can technology help Ball State attract more nontraditional students?

Gora:  Absolutely. That's exactly what I mean when I say that technology is a revolution that has come to higher education. That is what distance learning is all about. Distance learning or online education or closed circuit television education helps us access nontraditional students. By nontraditional we mean older students who are no longer 25 years old. It might be somebody who has family or a job and a career. Maybe they started a degree and didn't finish it. Or maybe they have a degree and want to move up.

We are really proud of the fact that we have a thriving and growing online education and television program because it really provides access to the older student. I think it's the wave of the future. We have about 11 programs that we offer via television or online instruction. We have in excess of 500 full-time-equivalent students, which translates to almost 1,500 head count. These are all people who are trying to complete a degree, usually a master's degree. We have the country's second largest online degree program in our master's in nursing. We're even providing a nursing degree to a student who's one of our soldiers in Iraq. That's just one example, and I'm sure there are many students who are in far away places, who can't get to a college campus, and who want to complete an MBA, which we let them do, or a master's degree in nursing. We also have a lot of education degrees.

I really think online education is going to help all of us engage in lifelong learning. When our parents were kids everybody talked about their career. They meant one career, and frequently it was one career with a large employer. That doesn't happen anymore. That's not going to be the way our students and young people spend their careers. It's not just because people are moving around; it reflects more profound changes in the marketplace, and it means educational needs are constantly expanding. That's what online education is all about. It helps people learn a new field, take on a new career, or advance in either their chosen career or a new career. That's a wonderful opportunity. So I think distance education is a growing field and one this university should embrace even more enthusiastically than we have.

I've been involved in online education since 1992. When I was at Old Dominion, we developed a program in which we partnered with every community college across Virginia and offered the last two years of the baccalaureate degree in 30 different fields. By the time I left Old Dominion in 2001 we were offering 30 different majors in over 60 different sites and six different states. It just shows the incredible demand there is for online education, especially for the talented and motivated learner who really wants to complete a degree or who has career aspirations that are now stymied by the fact they don't have a baccalaureate degree or master's degree. Here at Ball State we're offering a lot of master's degrees and also helping teachers to become certified in various fields and maintain their certification. That's incredibly important work. I think there are even more opportunities to do that in a broader range of fields.

Q: What programs or opportunities at Ball State help young women pursue careers in science or technology, or other careers not traditionally pursued by females?

Gora:  All of our areas of study are open to both women and men. We have some very sophisticated programs in science and technology. We have unique expertise here at Ball State in the areas of telecommunications and broadcasting. We offer our students very sophisticated laboratories in which to develop their skills. So they're working on highly sophisticated video editing machines and animation. They do a high level of production that would be hard to find outside of industry. We recently opened a Music Instruction Building that helps us offer our music technology degree, which is involved with developing digitally mastered music. This is state-of-the-art technology that's available to our students and makes our students very attractive to employers both within Indiana and outside the state.

Here at Ball State more than 50 percent of our students are women. We have more than 100 degree offerings. We try to encourage women to go into all of them.

I think what makes a difference in the areas of science and technology is the fact that we are a very student-centered university so we offer more hands-on and more one-on-one opportunities with faculty members than you might find at a larger university.

One example is our chemistry program, which offers undergraduates the opportunity to do the kind of research with faculty members in the summer that would typically be reserved for graduates at another institution. There were 62 students who took advantage of that last summer. I think that's a great example of a science field where we are going the extra mile to help students become engaged in a discipline. The way we're doing it is by giving them the opportunity to work outside the classroom with a faculty member. It harkens back to a theme that I articulated a few minutes ago, that I think is the hallmark of a Ball State education.

It's also true that in that chemistry department now one of our faculty members is a woman who has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) career award for faculty early in their careers and has quite a large grant from NSF that is being used to support students who are working with her. So role models are incredibly important. We're very mindful of that here at Ball State and try to make sure that our students have those role models that help them picture themselves in these careers 10, 15, or 20 years from now.

I really do believe what helps anyone become comfortable in a field where they may not initially be is more time on task. Let me tell you a story about the year I spent at Barnard College at Columbia University. For those of you who may not be familiar with Barnard College and Columbia University, when I was there the world thought that Barnard was the women's college and Columbia was the men's college. The year I was there was the year Columbia decided to go co-ed, which was a devastating action to those folks who ran Barnard College. They thought, "What will happen to our market now? Women don't have to come to Barnard in order to go to Columbia. They can just enroll at Columbia." As it turns out, Barnard did just fine. They continued to have high admissions standards, recruit an excellent student body, and turn out talented graduates. But in that year they realized that students came to Barnard because they thought they were going to Columbia and graduated happy that they went to a women's institution. The key to that was time on task.

One of the reasons I was interested in being at Columbia that year was that Barnard had the highest number of women students going on to medical school of any of the Ivy League institutions. I was curious why. What was it about what they did at Barnard that allowed more of their students to go on to medical school? The time frame here is the early 1980s when opportunities were really opening up for women, but still it was a little bit unusual. I discovered that Barnard for years had practiced my notion of what I call more time on task. Their chemistry labs, biology labs, and physics labs were all an hour longer than they were at other institutions. They had figured out that if they wanted their students to get very comfortable in the lab setting, students needed to spend more time there. So they gave them more time. That was one of the reasons they were so successful in encouraging women to go on to medical school.

I have taken that principle that I saw in action in the early 1980s and seen it reenacted multiple times over; that it is time on task that helps people become more comfortable in areas where they're less comfortable. And it is one-on-one attention, too, which is once again why I am so enthusiastic about experiential learning opportunities and opportunities for students to work closely with faculty members, whether it's in a business or in a laboratory, a research setting, or the marketplace. These things help a student develop his or her own talents and abilities, and that's what we're all about.

So I guess the short answer to your question is yes, we do encourage and facilitate women's involvement in science and technology, and in every field at Ball State, by giving them more time with faculty members, more one-on-one time, and more opportunities to interact with faculty outside the classroom in their areas of interest.

Q:  Were there any women who were particularly important mentors or role models?

Gora:  One woman who was very significant in my life was Matilda White Riley, a very famous sociologist. My first year in graduate school I had a devastating loss. I will never forget the letters she wrote to me encouraging me not to be swayed from my career path. This was 35 years ago, and the emotion is still there. She was a very powerful role model especially because she was a sociologist, methodologist, and gerontologist of international fame without a Ph.D. When she was growing up, women didn't get Ph.D.s. When she went into the field of sociology she was the research assistant. Things turned around, and she became the well-known researcher. And I guess it was the support I received from her that was very critical for me.

During the course of my career I've also worked closely with many men who have been wonderful role models and given me lots to think about.

I certainly never had anybody who said I want to mentor you or was that proactive. So I always stumble over the mentor question. But you can't go through life without observing role models. You see people who do things well and you watch them and try to learn from them.

It is the reaching out we do that makes a difference in the lives of individual students. It's also the reason why I always say that there's no better career than being a professor. You have the opportunity to impact the lives of individual students. They will never forget you for that, and they tell you that.

Q: Where do you see higher education and K-12 education in the future?

Gora:  I think technology is really going to transform how we teach and how we learn. The advantage of technology is that it helps people who have different learning styles. It enables them to access knowledge in many different ways. I certainly believe the Web will be increasingly important in how we teach and how we learn. Students no longer have to be passive learners. They can be active learners, and we can demand they be active learners because they have the Web available to them. They have the ability to research and to absorb knowledge in a variety of different ways that makes it easier for them depending on their learning style.

Right now there are faculty members in our Department of Theatre and Dance who are working with Allyn & Bacon to develop a Web-based textbook. The advantage of a Web-based textbook is that you no longer have to read about a lighting design for a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." You can go to the Web, see the lights that were used, play with those lights, and change those lights. You can watch a rehearsal. You can go in and talk to a casting director.

The ability to interact with people at so many levels is being changed today by online learning. Right now in Ball State classrooms and all across the country we have videoconferencing going on. We're here talking to Indianapolis, but we could be talking to India or Sri Lanka. Imagine how that opens up the learning process. Those are just simple examples of the way we're able to use the new advances in technology that change the learning process.

I have one last comment on this. What online learning and the Internet are going to do is change the faculty member from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side. Now the faculty member becomes a partner and a companion with the student as the student goes about deciding what questions they want answered and where the answers to those questions are. What the Internet has enabled us to do is make the learning process so much more dynamic and active. This is true starting in the first grade, which is why we see students so excited about what we're doing with Digital Middletown. By bringing in a broadband wireless network, we're enabling students to engage in simulations and models. All of these provide a much stronger learning process for students. They'll be able to absorb the information faster and more deeply.

Our Electronic Field Trips are another example of how technology is bringing learning to students in a dynamic way. We visit the Holocaust Museum or the Grand Canyon or NASA and we provide students who are sitting in classrooms all across the country the chance to talk to students who are sitting on the rim of the Grand Canyon and learning about geology. That's so much more exciting than reading about it in a textbook. That's what technology enables us to do today.

Now we're working with Best Buy to put electronic field trips on a DVD so you can go into your neighborhood Best Buy and get them to bring home and play over and over again. It's the ability to play them over again that's going to be so advantageous in changing the learning process. Lots of people need to hear the information more than once. That's what online education enables them to do. That's what video streaming enables them to do. That's what the Web enables them to do.

Q:  How are we going to handle the cost of this technology so we can do these exciting things?

Gora: We're all hoping that as time goes on the cost of technology will go down. We all know that has been true in our lifetime so we have to assume that will continue to be true. In addition to levying instructional technology fees, which all institutions do, we're also seeking support from foundations, the federal government, and individual state sources. So, we're always trying to figure out ways to reduce the cost of technology―but the one thing I don't think we can ever do is lessen our use of technology.

Q: What kind of disadvantages do you see with technology moving into education?

Gora:  The only disadvantage I see is that sometimes students become so attached to the Internet that they stop communicating one-on-one, face-to-face. When I was a provost and vice president for academic affairs, every year we had one or two students in our honors college who dropped out just because they never pulled themselves away from the computer screen. They got lost, if you will, in cyberspace and stopped communicating. It can be totally absorbing, and I guess for some people it can actually make face-to-face interaction more problematic for them. That's a relative minority I think.

One of the things I've marveled at is how the Internet has encouraged all of us to read and write more. I can remember when my son was growing up and everybody was concerned about the impact of video games on kids.

The most fabulous thing about computers is how everybody's writing to each other. It makes writing so much easier. I remember carbon paper. How many people remember carbon paper? You never wanted to change anything because it was such a hassle. Computers and word processing make it so much easier to change, edit, revise, and improve. This is just a wonderful opportunity.

I must say it emboldens people, too. As a president who makes her e-mail address available to students and alumni, I'm amazed at what's written to me.

Q: What is your viewpoint on basic science and how Ball State can be more competitive with other state universities such as Purdue and IU?

Gora:  Basic sciences and basic research are very important to us. My only regret is that Ball State doesn't offer Ph.D.s in basic sciences. If we did we would have the graduate students that would be helpful to faculty members as they pursued their research agendas. It's more of a challenge for our faculty because we don't have Ph.D.s in biology, chemistry, physics, and math.

What we can provide for faculty, however, is the infrastructure that they need to do good research and the laboratories they need to pursue their interests. We can also help them gain the external research funding that is critical for their research. Hopefully in our lifetime we'll be able to see the introduction of doctoral programs in the hard sciences that will make it easier for scientists to pursue basic research here.

Q: Do you have any advice for young women or men on how to achieve their dreams?

Gora:  I think it's important to know what your dreams are. That's a starting point. You need to figure out what it is you would like. That doesn't mean you need a 10-year plan. Frankly, a three-year plan is just fine. People have always said to me, "What do you want to do in five years or ten years?" I've always thought that was a horrible question. I don't know. It depends on what the opportunities are in five or ten years. But I think you need goals. You need to understand what you want. That can be a short-range goal; that's just fine.

Then I think you have to be very organized in pursuing that goal. Too often young people are dissuaded from pursuing their goals because they can't figure out the intermediate steps they need to take to get from here to there. I think learning how to figure this out is a very important exercise that young people need to engage in.

Understanding your own priorities is critically important. I think you have to figure out what your priorities are and organize your life around those priorities. That's the best advice.

Along the way you should develop a lot of friends. Life is not just about work, and you need a good support system to be happy in life. I think it's important to build strong friendships and relationships in order to help you achieve whatever professional goals that you have.

Q: You've been to many different places including the South, Midwest, and Northeast. What do you see as the regional differences of those areas?

Gora:  That is really tough. When I moved from the New York metropolitan area to Virginia and was a provost and vice president for academic affairs, we were going great guns. I was leading a 60-person committee that was developing a strategic plan for this doctoral-extensive university. I thought we were making incredible progress. Everybody was going along with all these ideas that were coming forward. I was doing a great job of focusing and summarizing the conversation. At one point when I thought we were just about done, one of my staff members came up behind me and said, "Silence does not mean consent, Jo Ann." I turned around and said, "In New York it does." And that is a geographical difference. Because, he continued to say, "That's not the Virginia way." And I said, "What is the Virginia way?"  He said the faculty will never disagree with you in public; they just won't do it. I said it was time to double back, because if we don't have faculty support we can't do anything.

This was an interesting learning experience for me, because I had been born and raised in New York City. I had worked 20 years in northern New Jersey, which is really a suburb of New York City. If people don't agree with you, they are, to use the vernacular, "in your face." In other words, they are very comfortable disagreeing with you, and having arguments is normative. It's just commonplace. Nobody takes it personally. It's just the way people do business.

I learned when I moved to the South that is not the way people do business. Confrontation made people very uncomfortable. They would never engage in that kind of behavior. So I learned the most important lesson a provost and vice president can learn is: stop talking and start listening. So what I did as a follow-up to that seminal conversation was meet with department chairs in small groups and say, "Let's talk about this broad outline of a strategic plan that we've got, let's talk about what makes you uncomfortable, and let's see if we can figure out how to make it better." In those small groups they were willing to be frank and honest and talk about the problems. We did work it out and came up with a solution. It extended the process by a year, but in the end we had a strategic plan that everybody bought into, was very successful, and really did wonderful things for the university and our students.

It was an incredible lesson for me because I realized that this is a wonderful country, and people really do differ. I think we enter a different culture about every 200 miles. I certainly learned that in the South you don't get immediately to business like you do in New York. You spend time getting to know people and you ask about their family. They get comfortable with you. Then you talk business. If you want people to tell you what they really think you have to enable them to do that. You have to give them permission to do that. That means you have to spend a lot more time asking questions and listening to answers than talking. These are truly styles that are dramatically different. The more north you go and the more south you go, the more dramatic the differences.

I have found that in the Midwest people are much more polite. Four-way stop signs don't exist in the Northeast. There's a reason for that. People will not stop and just be courteous. When my southern husband, who is an eighth-generation Virginian, moved to Boston, every day he came home with a story about how rude the Boston drivers were. I just smiled, thinking, "That's the culture here. That's the way people are." But when we moved to Indiana, we both marveled at the four-way stop signs. I said, "You see? Here what they learn in the first grade, they retain. You're supposed to be nice to your neighbor. You're supposed to be thoughtful. We all learned that in the first grade but somehow they didn't forget it here." I think those are some of the differences.

Q: When you eventually leave or retire from Ball State what would you like your legacy to be?

Gora:  I would like them to say that while I was president Ball State became renowned for the quality of education that it offered students. Not just a nicely kept secret and not  something that only Hoosiers knew about, but truly renowned. I would like the impact we had on the Indiana economy to be well known to everyone. It's a simple legacy.