Buckner, a vice president of Pacers Sports and Entertainment, is in his second three-year term as a trustee.
(Devan Ridgway)
Quinn Buckner is confident the IU trustees made the right choice when they selected Pamela Whitten to be Indiana University’s 19th president.
“I think she's done a very good job,” Buckner, who chairs the university’s governing board, said in an interview. “She's done what the trustees expected her to do.”
In just over a year on the job, Whitten has impressed the trustees with her communication skills and her focus on students, Buckner said. They see her as someone who can make prompt decisions while engaging with IU’s large community of stakeholders, from freshmen to donors to state legislators.
“This world is about communication,” he said. “It’s about communication, it’s about a warmth, a touch, a genuineness, an authenticity. And she has that.”
Buckner, a vice president of Pacers Sports and Entertainment, is in his second three-year term as a trustee; he was appointed in 2016 by Gov. Mike Pence and reappointed in 2019 by Gov. Eric Holcomb. A former basketball star and longtime TV sports analyst, he was a leader of the 1976 IU team that was the last college men’s basketball team to go undefeated and win an NCAA championship.
Whitten’s personal style contrasts with the more cerebral and sometimes formal approach of her predecessor, Michael McRobbie, who led the university for a remarkable 14-year period of progress and change: new schools and programs, ambitious fund-raising and expansion of facilities.
“Let's be clear, Dr. McRobbie did a heck of a job,” Buckner said. “I want to make sure that everybody at Indiana University understands that.”
Whitten, who was president of Kennesaw State University and provost of the University of Georgia before coming to IU, says her priorities are students, research and service to Indiana. The emphasis on students resonates for trustees.
“Our responsibility is to grow people,” Buckner said, “to help them become better than they ever thought they could be. And I think she does that.”
Trustees, in their goals for Whitten, also put a premium on DEI: diversity, equity and inclusion. Buckner pointed to her record at Kennesaw State, where students who identified as minority increased from 43.1% in 2017 to 48.7% in 2020.
“There are many who, when you interview, will tell you what they aspire to do,” Buckner said, “but they haven't done it. She had done it. And that's one of the things that made sense for us.”
Trustees also liked Whitten’s explicit understanding that athletics matter at IU. “It matters at all universities, whether they will admit it or not,” Buckner said.
Scott Dolson, IU vice president and director of intercollegiate athletics, said the president’s role is crucial in the Big Ten, where a council of presidents and chancellors serves as the governing body. It’s a time of change for college sports, Buckner said, with Name, Image and Likeness rules and the athlete transfer portal reshaping the revenue sports of football and men’s basketball.
Another issue for university leaders is public skepticism about the usefulness and cost of college. Buckner said it’s important that an IU education give students something with concrete value.
“When you and I went to school, we just wanted to degree,” he said. “Young people today want a career path. We’re responsible for that, and I'm proud of that.”
A recent report from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education found the share of Hoosier students who pursue college or postsecondary training has fallen sharply. Buckner said the trustees are likely to ask Whitten to focus on IU’s regional campuses, which can best address college access issues.
“They're very important to not only the enterprise,” he said, “but they're very important in the communities they're in, from an educational standpoint and from an economic standpoint.”
Another priority: Ensuring the success of students at IUPUI, the university’s urban campus.
While some students will always want to attend a residential campus like IU Bloomington, he said, “some want to be in an urban environment, and you have to make sure that you have all the necessities for that.”
Steve Hinnefeld covered K-12 and higher education as a daily newspaper reporter for The Herald-Times in Bloomington, before working in communications and media relations at Indiana University. He’s been an adjunct faculty member at the IU Media School and for more than a decade has written about education issues in a blog calledSchool Matters.
