Sue Sciame Giesecke, Chancellor, IU Kokomo

Greetings from the Campuses

Good morning.

As someone who, like Nasser, has spent her entire career on a regional campus of Indiana University, first as a faculty member and now as the chancellor at IU Kokomo, it is a great honor to represent all the IU regional campuses, or as we like to call ourselves, “the IU Power Five.”

We are passionate about our mission. Those five campuses include IU East, IU Kokomo, IU Northwest, IU South Bend, and IU Southeast.

So, as you can see, we cover the entire state, from top to bottom, making an Indiana University education accessible to a broad range of Hoosier students and citizens.

Many of these regional campuses, like my own, had very humble beginnings.

As the story goes, in 1945, the then-director of the IU Kokomo regional campus, Virgil Hunt, arrived in Kokomo to the building that was supposed to be the start of the campus, only to find the doors locked and no keys. So, he found an open window, pushed it up, crawled in, and slept on the couch that night. The next morning, he got to work and built a remarkable regional campus in Kokomo.

Since that time, all five regional campuses have grown and thrived and now are an integral part of Indiana University across the state, with almost a third of the IU student body taking classes on our campuses, and thousands of alumni who have graduated from our campuses serving the region, our state, our country, and the world.

Our mission on the regional campuses is to be learner-centered and community-engaged.

We see ourselves as stewards of place in the regions that we serve.

We hold our regions in trust, and try to lift them up both from an educational perspective and an economic perspective.

We are strong campuses building strong communities throughout the state of Indiana.

On behalf of my colleagues who are here today, we are proud to be part of Indiana University and to join in this special occasion.

Thank you.