Presidential Perspectives
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Curb Appeal: Little Things Mean A Lot |
Youngstown State University has a beautiful campus in the heart of a declining city. With population loss comes blighted neighborhoods, boarded up store fronts and abandoned factories all to often located on corridors leading to campus.
Unfortunately, this is the view that many of our prospective students and their parents, as well as many others, conjure up when they think of Youngstown and Youngstown State University.
We have often said that, if we can get people here, if we can get them on campus to see the beauty, to talk with our faculty and staff, to visit our classrooms and labs – then the place sells itself.
But, as is true with many metropolitan universities in the Rust Belt, getting them here is the challenge.
At YSU, we have worked diligently over the 10 years of my presidency to improve the gateways to the city and to the campus, inviting students to enter our splendid university grounds and learn more about what we have to offer.
We have done this by developing partnerships with a variety of government and private entities aimed at making the areas surrounding campus and the thoroughfares into the city and the university more attractive.
We have, for instance, successfully partnered with the Ohio Department of Transportation to repair and renovate six bridges along the north side of the campus, including a bridge used by hundreds of students daily to walk back and forth to the campus from our residence halls. These bridges, which once were ugly and even unsafe, are now appealing campus entrances, and they even feature the YSU “red” coloring.
We also partnered with AT&T, which owns a 180-foot transmission tower that soars over the south side of campus. The tower, once a drab brownish color, was painted white, topped with the lighted “YSU” logo and now stands as a central point of the Youngstown skyline and an inviting beacon to the campus.
We took the lead in raising funds to support a non-profit organization, CityScape, whose primary mission is beautification through spring plantings. With support from campus volunteers and others the beautification efforts are spreading along corridors leading to campus.
University Plaza, the main entrance to campus for prospective students and their parents, used to be a nondescript, narrow, two-lane roadway leading to an uninviting “visitors” parking lot where, in fact, there were few spots for actual visitors. We have partnered with the state of Ohio, through the use of state capital funds, and the Butler Institute of American Art, which sits adjacent to the roadway, and transformed University Plaza into an attractive gateway, lined with colorful YSU banners and leading to the offices of undergraduate and graduate admissions and a beautifully-landscaped and –lighted parking lot dedicated to visitors.
And, on the other side of campus, with the help of state and local veterans groups, we have created another attractive gateway to campus. Armed Forces Boulevard, as we renamed the street in a community ribbon-cutting ceremony, is dedicated to all YSU students and employees who have served in the military – past, present and future.
These are but five examples of the many enhancements that have been made to promote the corridors and curb appeal of entryways to the YSU campus. All little things--but they mean a lot when it comes to recruiting students(and their parents). The link between them all? Partnerships.
For these types of projects to succeed, universities and their presidents cannot do them alone. Developing trusting and working relationships – from the mayor and city council to local non-profit institutions and community groups – is time well spent for any university president, especially in an urban setting. For it is only through these partnerships – nurtured over good times and bad – that metropolitan campuses can thrive.
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