How Industry Partnerships Fuel Growth at Wichita State

0:00:11.0 Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. Today, Wichita State President Richard Muma shares how industry partnerships combined with an unrelenting focus on applied learning are powering innovation and opportunity for students and the city of Wichita. So give these folks a listen and enjoy.

0:00:36.7 Sally Amoruso: Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. My name is Sally Amoruso and I am EAB’s Chief Partner Officer. In this capacity, I have the great privilege of meeting and learning from university leaders from all over the country. And they are often eager to share their wisdom and experience, particularly about what’s working at their institutions in an effort to help other schools improve. With me today is one of those leaders, Dr. Rick Muma, President of Wichita State University. Rick, welcome to Office Hours with EAB.

0:01:10.5 Richard Muma: Well, I’m glad to be here, Sally. Thank you for the opportunity to have more conversation with you today.

0:01:16.8 Sally Amoruso: First off, let me congratulate you on winning EAB’s Changemaker Award for inspiring progress and sparking transformative change. Really excited to have you be the inaugural winner of that award.

0:01:30.2 Richard Muma: Well, yeah, I am very honored to receive that and totally unexpected. But I did want to tell you what it means to me is and I’m reminded of all the people that I work with who are in it for the change. And that really does make a difference. And so, yeah, thank you so much for the honor. And I didn’t know it was inaugural.

0:01:50.9 Sally Amoruso: It is. You are the first winner. And we’re going to dig into several of the reasons why that award is so richly deserved. But first, tell us a little bit about Wichita State. Tell us about the students and the community that you serve.

0:02:07.4 Richard Muma: I’d be happy to. Well, Wichita State’s been here 130 years. We were founded as a congregational university or college, Fairmount College, back in 1895 and then transitioned to be a municipal university back in 1926 and then entered the state system in 1964. One of the common things about our university and its different configurations over the years is our connection to the community. We’re in a community that would be considered a geographic area of interest or importance because we are in the middle of a community that’s one of five aviation clusters in the world. Many of those planes that you fly on, Sally, a lot of the parts, as you know, are built here in Wichita. And we’ve had this long history, more than 100-year history of aviation. And anyway, our student body, people who come to Wichita State who choose to go to Wichita State, is very diverse. We’re the most diverse campus in our state. We are very keen on making sure that our students have this applied experience the moment they show up on campus to help fuel the town pipeline, help create jobs, opportunities for our companies here in Wichita to grow. And so you can’t talk about Wichita State and be separate from the city of Wichita. We are one and the same.

0:03:45.4 Sally Amoruso: And I know we’ve had previous discussions about this, but certainly leaders of public institutions are often asking me, how do I get through to legislators? And what is the message that I need to be bringing? And one of the things that struck me is that you were very clear about the message because the message was a win-win for your students and for the state and for the region. Can you talk a little bit about that messaging?

0:04:08.8 Richard Muma: Yeah, you know, we’re the state’s only urban public research university, and that means two things, that we’re here to provide affordable, accessible education to anybody who wants to come here. So we’re not a selective university at all, never have been. And it wouldn’t make sense for us to be anything but that. And then the second thing is that we already solve problems. And for our community, for our business partners, for people in this state, we do that through research and creative activities and other service initiatives. And every day we’re driven by that affordability and access, feeding the talent pipeline, increasing economic prosperity for our community. And that’s all I talk about. That’s all I talk about on campus, out in the community, with the governor, with the legislators. And it resonates with them because they see that we’re fully connected to some of their goals, particularly around the economy, growing jobs. You know, we have economic verbiage in our mission statement, and that really does resonate with them. And we have lots of outcomes to suggest that all of that’s working for the state.

0:05:23.8 Sally Amoruso: Well, you have been at Wichita for a long time, but you became interim president in the middle of COVID, right? 2020-ish, and then later president in 2021. And you’ve talked about this mission, which is really centered around Wichita as a talent and innovation hot spot, if you will. Can you talk a little bit about those employers, that set of private industry partners that you have cultivated, and how those partnerships have actually helped to shape Wichita State?

0:05:57.8 Richard Muma: Yeah, so about 10 years ago, we knew that we needed to do something different to help our community. And that’s when we really started to pivot as an organization, as an institution, as a university. And a previous president who hired me as pro… I’ve been at the university for 30 years. I came as a member, became a department chair, became an associate vice president of academic affairs, and then provost. I was hired by John Bardo, who really had this vision of how can we connect industry, whoever hires our students, more closely. And he developed the concept around the innovation campus. We have this rich tradition in aviation. And so one of our first partners was Airbus. And it was a key partnership, obviously, for us. Airbus has their North American engineering headquarters in Wichita. They were thinking about leaving. We developed all kinds of different concepts around what is it going to take for you to stay here? Why are you thinking about leaving? And it really was, you know, they didn’t feel they were supported, and not necessarily by us, but just the community. And so we started working with them. And so what about this model of you joining our campus, coming to our campus, and we could work much more closely together?

0:07:27.4 Richard Muma: So that was kind of the index company that moved to our campus. We built a partnership building for them on our campus. And then it’s just exploded. We have almost 50 companies here now, Textron, NetApp. We have branched into criminal justice. So we have a large operation with the ATF and many other aviation-focused companies. The goal is for us, and the reason why this has been working is that the moment students show up on campus, we connect them to these business partnerships and start having them professionalize with our business partnerships and our industry partners who are on our campus and others in our community, and not wait until it’s the very end of their educational process. And these sometimes students are working with these companies the entire time that they’re in school here on our campus, learning in the classroom, walking across the street, and working with them. So we developed this very close, tight relationship around this effort. And the agreement is when they come to our campus, when they build on our campus, they also hire our students, and that’s part of the relationship.

0:08:49.0 Sally Amoruso: So I have had the pleasure of spending time on that Innovation Campus, and I know this is an audio conversation, but I want you to paint the picture of what I experienced, because it was pretty remarkable. It was pretty remarkable to see those students working, to see the environment, to just experience it. So can you just describe it a little bit for the listeners?

0:09:15.0 Richard Muma: Yeah, let me just go way back 75 years ago, just so people understand how we got to where you saw here and what’s here on our campus now. So 75 years ago, Walter Beach, who was the head of Beach Aircraft, and we’re the ones that make airplanes for World War II. It’s what gained the U.S. In terms of air superiority and helped win the war. They were branching out of military and more into general aviation, and they needed a wind tunnel to do research. And so they came to the president at the time and said, would you be willing to house a wind tunnel so we can work with your faculty to do research? And so the president at the time said, yes, we would do that. But the only condition was, can other aircraft companies use that? So we have Boeing, we have Cessna, and so that wind tunnel is still here. It’s an active lab. It’s 75 years old. Everything’s kind of grown around it. You can’t really see it, the structure anymore outside of the university. It’s just all embedded into all these labs that we have. But that’s what started our kind of philosophy of working with industry to help solve their problems.

0:10:32.3 Richard Muma: And now we have 2 million square feet of laboratory space. And some of it’s here on campus. We have a location north and south, which you went to. Yes. I remember you and Colin said to me after we toured that south facility where I had you crawling up into airplane collages and seeing the students working in that environment. You said most of the time when we go to a university, we go to a new research facility, like a new building, a new library. Climbing to an airplane. And so that’s where it started. And then 10 years ago, we had a golf course that was contiguous to our campus, 120-acre golf course, which was purchased for the purpose of expansion one day. We closed that golf course and opened up an innovation campus. And now it’s home to about 50 companies. And you saw it, Sally. It’s like a research park that has all the research facilities and businesses intertwined, but also some amenities for people to eat and there’s a hotel or those sorts of things, ponds, walking paths. It’s really incredible that that’s actually where it is today.

0:11:57.0 Richard Muma: Actually, we closed the golf course 10 years ago, but the construction really didn’t start until about eight years ago. So how rapid that happened is pretty amazing. Understanding how higher education works, and I just think this momentum with Airbus just in this past history just exploded. And the right time for this effort to help the city grow and everybody’s embraced it.

0:12:22.7 Sally Amoruso: It strikes me that as higher leaders are thinking about experiential learning and applied learning and internships and so forth, this is actually well beyond that, right? I was watching students working on a stealth bomber, I was watching them do robotics, digital twinning, high level work, and partnering with faculty and practitioner managers from the company. So it was all blended together. And I can imagine that the employers are also able to observe these students and see which ones will be the best employees and hire them and create a talent pipeline that is ready to go from day one. Is that what you’re hearing from some of these employers?

0:13:11.6 Richard Muma: Yeah, absolutely. And so just to give a little bit more context, this applied learning model that we have, and we actually developed a whole physical presence on our campus that’s associated with our admissions office, which we call the Shocker Career Accelerator. So those have been joined together into one facility. So the moment a student shows up on campus to even learn about the campus and the majors and what it takes to get admitted, they walk through this walk that shows them this experience of applied learning at Wichita State and what it means to be a Shocker when they get here, and then it opens up onto the Innovation Campus and they see Airbus and NetApp and Textron and DeSoto Systems and all these other entities that are on our campus. And now we have about 12,000 students. The numbers have gone up from 9,000 this past year, 12,000. We received some additional state funding to help bolster applied learning, and they’re earning almost $40 million collectively to help them stay in school, help pay their bills and so forth. And so to your point, them being deployed in many of these facilities and these business and industry partners, that is what it’s meant to be so that these companies can see these students working.

0:14:31.1 Richard Muma: And to your point, Sally, you saw students actually doing digital twin reverse engineering. It’s actually a part of a research project or a testing project or an evaluation project for an aircraft or the Department of Defense. These students are doing very high-level things that you wouldn’t normally expect to see in a typical internship or a Co-op.

0:15:03.4 Sally Amoruso: And I was a Pell student, and I know for me I had to work to make my way through university, and I think your student population needs to work. And so while they are having these amazing experiential learning opportunities, it also enables them to learn and earn at the same time. Talk a little bit about what this means for the student population that you serve.

0:15:28.5 Richard Muma: Well, this is one of the things I talk to parents about all the time when I’m out on recruitment trips or just have the opportunity to visit with parents. I said, why are you considering Wichita State? And they said, well, two things, is that I know that my son or daughter or whatever the relationship is when they come here, I know that they’re going to have this very hands-on, meaningful experience. And it’s experience. I’ve been to lots of universities, Sally. I know you have, too. It’s a different kind of experience. And then you couple it with resources, real resources. And sometimes our students are making close to $20 an hour. You know, that’s an incredible wage. And then they don’t have to get another job at a grocery store or a restaurant, and they’re actually utilizing these facilities to help apply their skills. It’s just a nice life-changing for these families. A lot of families, particularly here locally, they wouldn’t even be able to think about an experience for their son or daughter. And it is just an amazing setup that we’ve got here.

0:16:41.5 Sally Amoruso: Yeah, that is amazing, and you’re speaking to a former college waitress, so I completely understand the point about not having to get a second job. You mentioned the research funding, and this is another point that I wanted to draw out because your research, your industry-funded research is remarkable, and you are close to being an R1, but it is not something that has been sort of a focused climb of the Carnegie classifications. This is something that grew out of your focus on serving your student and your communities. But talk about that research funding and where you are and where that’s going.

0:17:26.2 Richard Muma: Yeah, so you mentioned R1, and that is an aspiration, but I just want to make sure that the listeners understand what we mean by that. We’re not chasing the R1 title just to be chasing it. We will eventually become R1. We’re now, just this past year, we were awarded half a billion dollars in research, or as expenditures as lag awards. We’re about $400 million in research expenditures. We expect we’ll be $600, $700 million.

0:17:58.9 Sally Amoruso: Wow.

0:17:59.5 Richard Muma: We know that what’s ahead of us. And you mentioned, just our uniqueness around research. So just so the listeners understand, about 54% of our research is from the federal department, federal department of defense. 10% is non-defense. 30% is industry funded, and that’s a high number when you look across the nation in terms of other universities that receive industry funded research. And another 7% is from the state. We have, just from last year to this year, had a 27% growth in our research funding. If you look at the research growth across the country, about 5% growth, and we’re about 30% overall in the last 10 years, which is an anomaly and is also a challenge for us because of that rapid growth and just supporting that infrastructure. We’re having to think kind of new ways in terms of how financially we manage the university’s budget. So, but one of the things that has helped us and links back to our applied learning model is that a lot of this research is involving students at the undergraduate level, particularly that industry funded research. And I think that’s so important for people to understand the difference between Wichita State and a flagship or a land grant or another elite school that has a large research portfolio is, yes, we do have graduate level funded research and postdocs and that sort of thing, but our main focus is employing these students, these undergraduate students on these industry funded projects.

0:19:46.6 Richard Muma: And some of them are on the defense side of things as well. And that’s a big difference. That’s why we have all these applied learning experience, experiences and numbers supporting that, that our students are involved in is because of the way we do research. And of course, a lot of it’s very applied in nature. And we have been working in terms of our research last 75 years, I mentioned earlier, and that some of that early basic research has really given us the opportunity now to apply that to help solve some of these real world problems that we’re all confronted with, particularly in the aviation area, but digital transformation, advanced manufacturing, smart manufacturing. These are things that really have made a difference. And putting students at the center of that, that really is a big focus.

0:20:50.6 Sally Amoruso: So I know that the grad realm has not been your focus for this research, but I’m very sensitive to the fact that research funding across higher ed is under fire. And I’m wondering if you have any thoughts for other higher ed leaders who are thinking about how they continue to grow their research enterprises in this environment. Any lessons from the private sector partnerships that Wichita State has been able to develop? And is that a viable path for them to consider?

0:21:24.6 Richard Muma: I think it is, but I think people are going to have to think differently. So our approach is instead of going to a potential funder and say, hey, we have this expertise, or one of our faculty members has this expertise, deep expertise in something, how can you help us further his expertise? What we do, and I’m not saying we never do that, but what we more likely do is, hey, we have this expertise, these faculty members, these staff members, our research scientists as a part of our National Institute for Aviation Research, we have this expertise. How can we use that to help solve your problems? That’s why we’re growing our research, particularly in the industry realm, but also in the Department of Defense. They have lots of problems to solve, aging aircraft, sustainability aircraft, things that we have a lot of expertise on. We’re helping them solve those problems. I think that is a little bit of a difference in terms of what we do, and instead of chasing very limited resources that some of our faculty might have expertise in, and again, I’m not saying that we would never do that or we don’t do that, we’re going to be more successful in garnering resources that are more plentiful than the industry side of things by having this approach.

0:22:56.2 Sally Amoruso: It’s exactly what we profiled in our Modern Anchor Institution work, is that outside-in approach, almost thinking about industry as another customer. How do we help you achieve what you need, and how does that align with what we can do on the research side? So, I love that. You recently wrote a book, “Student-Centered, Innovation-Driven, A Guide to Transforming Higher Ed”. What prompted you to write this book, and what are some of the lessons that you highlight in the book?

0:23:29.9 Richard Muma: Well, about two and a half years ago, I hosted a local executive for a move our men’s basketball teams. And he’d written a recent book around leadership. We have a center which has a national reputation about leadership and advancing that. He goes, Rick, I just see what you’re doing here is different. And his exposure to other universities is, have you thought about writing? I said, well, I’ve written four textbooks before, and I thought, oh, I’ll never do that again. Not a textbook, a book about your experience. And so that’s what gave me the bug to do it. Also, we have people coming here almost on a weekly basis, like yourself.

0:24:24.1 Sally Amoruso: Yes.

0:24:24.6 Richard Muma: Learn more about what we’re doing. And so that’s when I decided and had lots of conversations internally that we really do need to tell the story. It was a 10-year anniversary of the Innovation Campus. So that’s what we did. And I also wanted people to understand that a lot of times when people tell stories of universities, they just talk about how, not easy, but they don’t talk about the positive side of things. But there’s a lot of challenges to do what we’ve done in such a short period of time. And I wanted to also make sure people understand sort of the warts and all story of Wichita State and the continued challenges that we have. And not just thinking about our external environment that we’re challenged with now, but just keeping this going, keeping the university growing. And I do firmly believe that we as leaders of institutions have to continue to always think about growth. It never lets up or should let up. I mean, none of this, what we’re doing, none of this works without putting students at the center of things. And that requires a lot of work in the enrollment side and the retention side.

0:25:51.3 Richard Muma: And that’s really what’s happened at the university is that growth mindset, that entrepreneurial mindset, that innovation mindset that we know that we can always go back to what we were doing, but let’s think about what we could do to help this community, to help the state and really help us thrive.

0:26:16.5 Sally Amoruso: And I have to say, you have defied the odds in terms of enrollment growth across a time when a lot of higher ed institutions are feeling headwinds, but it hasn’t been growth for growth’s sake, even though there’s a growth mindset. It is growth that comes out of a really strong value proposition for your students and for your industry partners. Talk a little bit about the growth that you’ve seen because it’s been really remarkable.

0:26:44.1 Richard Muma: Yeah, overall, we’ve grown, I’m not going to know if I have the right percentages, but about 10% over the last 10 years or so. And one of the things that we did about six, seven years ago, we affiliated with an area technical college, which is now called ESU Tech. And that was one of the best decisions that we ever made and really kind of exploded this brand of who we are as an institution and this applied learning model, this earn and learn kind of feature that we provided. And it’s just been tremendous. We have also extended tuition discounts up and down the I-35 corridor. You know, we’re in the center part of the south part of the state. I-35 corridor or I-35 interstate goes down, which used to be the Chisholm Trail or still is the Chisholm Trail where, cattle ranchers came up and down. So it was a nice extension of who we are, the businesses that we have are also in Dallas and Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Houston, and started recruiting more people from those areas. The idea is getting them connected to applied learning experiences, taking jobs with our business and industry partners here in Wichita and staying here and growing our economy.

0:28:11.8 Richard Muma: So that has really also exploded. That one particular segment of our enrollment market has increased by 200% over the last several years. So a lot of it’s been fueled by lots of work on enrollment management. Obviously, we’ve been working with EAB for a long time to utilize and capitalize on the tools that you all have developed. It really has made a difference. I will say that I know that I’m not gonna just say that all presidents are this way, but some presidents sometimes I think become impatient about this work. It doesn’t happen overnight. It is a marathon. It takes a lot of work over time. We’ve been working with you all for more than 10 years and some of this other work that I’ve talked about, obviously, goes back 75 years. This requires very strong convictions around priorities and vision and mission, sticking with those. And then you see this kind of growth. You can see behind me, the listeners can’t see this, but there’s a map on the wall that describes what I just told you in terms of how we’re reaching out to others beyond the borders of Kansas and trying to move them to Kansas and get them connected so they’ll stay here, work, and help support our economy. That’s what we’re here for.

0:29:47.6 Sally Amoruso: Love that. And what is next is not just about aerospace and aeronautics, right? So I want you to talk a little bit about the biomedical campus, which is perhaps your most ambitious project yet. So tell us a little bit about that.

0:30:04.0 Richard Muma: Yeah, this is a project that’s very near and dear to my heart. So some of you may know that I’m a physician assistant. That’s where I got my start almost 40 years ago and worked and trained in the largest health science center in the world, the Texas Medical Center in Houston. So that was my sort of frame of reference when I came to Wichita 30 years ago. The Texas Medical Center is a densely packed two square mile health science center that has several universities, hospital, it’s just a very enriching environment for research and innovation, those sorts of things. And I came to Wichita, not expecting that kind of environment, obviously, just the scale of Texas is so much larger, but I did notice immediately that we weren’t working together as institutions, we weren’t collaborating in a true interprofessional way. Lots of conversations over the years. And of course, I became fortunate to be in leadership roles where I can help drive this a little bit more. And in 2019, we started working more closely with KU about how we could, or University of Kansas, I guess I should tell the listeners, there’s a partnership with the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City.

0:31:22.7 Richard Muma: And then COVID happened. So things obviously slowed down. But you know, there was COVID relief money made available by the federal government. And Kansas received over a billion dollars to help communities transition to a post COVID environment. So we had this plan, we lobbied the legislature and they funded it. It’s the largest capital investment in the history of higher education in the state. It’s the first time two institutions have come together to create this biomedical campus, which is really a health science center where KU’s branch of their school of medicine here in Wichita, or school of pharmacy branch here in Wichita, all of our health professions, we have seven different disciplines. And then WSU Tech’s entry level health programs, which really makes this a unique situation. You often don’t see a two-year school embedded in a health science center, all going to be coming together, working in a facility that’s currently under construction. So largest capital investment in the history of downtown Wichita. It’s going to open and be basically finished construction in 26, end of 26 and open in 27. I’m really excited about this. But what I want to tell you about it, Sally, is it’s just not about bringing those disciplines together.

0:32:48.9 Richard Muma: It’s about how do we create another innovation campus focused around the biosciences. So that’s the goal. We are creating a corridor that’s anchored by a hospital to the north of it and to this facility and to the south. And what we’re hoping is to improve private sector development. We’ve already received some investment already, particularly from our county. They’re building their acute psychiatric services on the campus. And one of our local neurodevelopmental organizations moving their pediatric outpatient services down there. And we have our culinary school, the osteopathic medical school that opened a few years ago is there. So we’ve already created this, the beginnings of an ecosystem focused around the biosciences. And so we’re quite confident that this is going to be another innovation campus that you saw last year.

0:33:47.5 Sally Amoruso: I love that. So you’re taking that playbook and you’re applying it in the biosciences, which is so exciting. I can’t wait to hear how it develops. In closing, and you’ve already talked about the impatience lesson and recognizing this takes time and you need conviction to carry you through. But are there any other lessons or takeaways that you would offer to the higher ed leaders listening to us today?

0:34:16.7 Richard Muma: Well, I’ll just say this. Being at the university for a really long time, I felt like the first several years of my time here that we were spending a lot of time trying to be someone else, trying to fit into this mold of research, this mold of teaching, this mold of applied work versus traditional work. When we had this long history of really being very connected to our community, why not embrace that? We’re the state’s only urban public research university. And why not put the students at the center of everything? And I think sometimes, I get magazines, and no offense to any of my colleagues, I get magazines every day about what they’re doing. But what I see is that they’re all trying to be doing the same thing. And I think that’s a mistake. I think we all need to build on our strengths. We all can’t be comprehensive schools. We can’t all be land grants. We can’t be elite schools. But what we sure should be doing is helping our communities. And that’s what we decided to do and really embedded everything that we do in this community and how we work with this community.

0:35:39.7 Richard Muma: I’ve never seen in the 30 years I’ve been here the synergy that we have with the city and the county and the economic development folks and the state than what we’re seeing today. It’s phenomenal. And we really view the city as our campus. You saw some of the locations. We have 10 locations in our city. We’re obviously building a new biomedical campus health science center in downtown Wichita. You know, a city this size, I think it makes sense to do that. But it also sends a message to our community that we’re here to help them wherever they are. And if that means that we’re going to do something off of our traditional campus, that’s what we’re going to do.

0:36:25.1 Sally Amoruso: You really epitomize what we mean by the modern anchor institution. So thank you for that. So well said. And thank you for so generously sharing your wisdom and your insights and your experience. Loved having you here.

0:36:38.0 Richard Muma: Well, thank you, Sally, for the opportunity. It’s good to see you.