In this competitive environment of winners and losers, individual colleges are working harder than ever to set themselves apart from the crowd. This includes seeking to make the towns or neighborhoods where they are located more attractive to students. Many liberal arts colleges are located in small towns or cities that have experienced significant challenges from disinvestment or declining population. Others are simply disconnected from the place they are located. Regardless of the particular circumstances, many are determined both to improve their town and to better integrate with it.
Indiana has been a hotbed of activity here, in part thanks to the generosity of the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment, one of the world’s largest foundations. In 2023, the endowment created a grant program called College and Community Collaboration that awarded $448 million in grants to Indiana colleges during its first two rounds of applications.
One of the recipients of these grants is Taylor University, a Christian college located just outside the community of Upland, about halfway between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne along Interstate 69. Unlike many colleges, Taylor has actually been on a roll, with record freshman class enrollment. It’s closing in on hitting its growth target of 2,500 students. It’s in the middle of a $500 million fundraising campaign.
Upland has had a number of challenges, though. The town has fewer than 4,000 residents. Its location is too far for an easy commute to a larger metro area. Downtown Upland had seen significant disinvestment. And the anchor institution of the college is about a mile from the actual town.
But Taylor has addressed these challenges through its $100 million Main Street Mile initiative. The effort is backed by a $30 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, with the college, government and private sources contributing the rest.
The initiative’s name comes from a desire to better connect the college to Upland along the mile of state highway that separates them. The centerpiece of this is a complete reconstruction of the road to provide a high-quality multiuse trail and street connection between the school and the town, along with new street lighting. This is nearing completion. A new mixed-use building will be built on a vacant lot downtown and the public library will be expanded.
Taylor will also be doing development on its end of the corridor, with a planned hotel and housing targeted at retirees. The ultimate goal is to fill in the corridor between the nodes at each end. These improvements should benefit other existing businesses that are starting to revitalize the town, including NearSpace Launch, a high-tech manufacturer that is one of the nation’s leading makers of small satellites.
Taylor’s president, Michael Lindsay, wants the Main Street Mile initiative to succeed as a development project, but he has bigger goals in mind as well. Lindsay believes that college contributions to their communities are central to reversing higher education’s plunging public credibility levels. He told a U.S. Senate committee that “it will only reclaim the public’s trust if it pairs academic excellence with moral formation and holistic student learning with community impact.”
Another Indiana institution undertaking a similar effort with support from the Lilly Endowment is Earlham College, a Quaker liberal arts school in Richmond, just south of I-70 on the state’s eastern border with Ohio. Richmond has an incredible history. It’s been called the “cradle of recorded jazz” because it was where Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton were first recorded at Gennett Records. Inventor Charles Francis Jenkins pioneered important technology for moving pictures there. It’s home to Indiana’s oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1836.
Richmond boomed during the industrial age, then, like many such smaller cities, fell into decline and lost population after 1960. As with Upland, Richmond is a bit too far from either Indianapolis or Dayton for strong economic integration. However, many of its older buildings are intact if underused, and there are great historic neighborhoods in the city.
Earlham, ranked 74th among national liberal arts colleges by U.S. News & World Report, got $25 million from the Lilly Endowment for its $108 million Revitalize Richmond initiative. This too is focused on building a high-quality multiuse connection between the school and downtown. It will include investment to renovate some of Richmond’s historic downtown buildings, along with beautification efforts and economic development plans to provide a new makerspace and business coaching.
Not every element of these efforts will succeed. It’s much easier to build a trail than to conjure up a thriving business community. But Taylor and Earlham see civic improvement as vital to their own institutional success and the broader credibility of higher education.
The Lilly Endowment’s efforts show the power of matching grant programs to mobilize outside capital and catalyze these kinds of projects. While not every state has a foundation like that, there are other potential sources. Help can come from state governments, community foundations and individual wealthy patrons of a school. Given the clear need, civic and political leaders should look for ways to provide incentives, particularly financial ones, for colleges and their towns to engage together on positive transformation.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
