Speaker: David Letterman and Caitlin Clark would like to come and shoot their Netflix special on campus.
Speaker 2: That's David Letterman.
Speaker: That's incredible.
Speaker 2: They said If you give a quarter that will buy one brick in this new performance venue, the generosity extends from generation to generation.
Speaker: I wonder if there is someone with Ball State ties at almost every high school in Indiana.
Speaker 2: I would be willing to take that bet.
Speaker: What was Hugh Jackman's candid feedback of Muncie, Indiana. From South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between. This is Get IN, the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation.
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Speaker 2: My guest today is
Speaker: President Geoffrey S. Mearns. He serves as the 17th president of. Ball State University during his tenure, President Mearns has pursued initiatives that have sustained and expanded the university's enrollment. Despite the adverse impact of the pandemic and increased alumni engagement and fundraising, President Mearns has also strengthened the university's relationships with the community.
Most notably, through its innovative partnership with Muncie Community Schools and its ambitious plans to revitalize The Village. I'm really excited to dive into President Mearns' very, I'll say charismatic presence here. I mean, obviously being a podcast host, talking about joining the city of Muncie and Ball State even more.
I mean, I'm really, really excited to dive into it today. President Mearns, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Well, it's great to be with you, Nate, and thank you for coming to campus today on this beautiful, sunny day.
Speaker: Absolutely, and I mean, I will say I'm, I'm a little bit, uh, nervous getting started. Right before we pressed record.
President Mearns says, yeah, the last person to sit in that chair was Hugh Jackman. So big shoes to fill. Hopefully we can, uh, we can make it happen. I do wanna start by saying when you know, you were progressing through your career and the opportunity to come to Muncie, Indiana for the Ball State job, arose, what really sold you on Muncie and sold you on Ball State?
Speaker 2: So there probably were a few factors reflecting back, you know, I'm in my ninth year here, so I started in. May of 17, but during that process in 20 16, 20 17, there were several things that resonated with me. One was, um, so first of all, I believe in the transformational power of education, including earning a college degree.
Ball State does a great job, you know, still 30% of our undergraduate students are first in their families to go to college. My father was the first in our family to go to college, and that college education changed their trajectory, not just of his life, but of our entire family. So Ball State does.
provide those transformational educational experiences. Um, second, you know, we've got a beautiful residential campus. Uh, if you've had a chance to walk around or been here before, it's a beautiful campus and Jennifer and I wanted to be in a more residential campus than we were at that time, so that we could.
Participate more actively in going to theater events and concerts, seeing students walking on campus, going to athletic events. Um, we wanted to really dive in to the broader, array of, student activities. Um, the third thing, and you touched on it in the introduction. You know, the conversations I had with the board during the search process was, I believe a college or a university also needs to be good stewards of the community in which they're situated.
Particularly, I think that's particularly true of a public university. And so during the interview process, I literally said. To the trustees. If you're looking for a president who's just gonna confine his work to the four corners of the campus, I'm not the right person. You need to find another, person to lead.
But if you share my view, that Ball State should be an engine for growth here in Muncie, Delaware County and East Central Indiana. Sign me up. And then really the last thing, um, is, you know, the, the, the statue that is representative that you see on our logos is a statue called Beneficence. And we can talk a little bit more about what that means and the origin of the statue.
But what it means as it en as at its essence is it represents the enduring values of our institution. The character of the people, the culture of the institution. And as I learned more about Beneficence, as I learned more about the values of Ball State, as I learned more about the culture, those, I'm one of nine kids, those were the values that my parents wanted to instill in their children.
I now have, Jennifer, my wife and I, we have five children. Those are the values I hope that we have instilled in them. So I. We thought that if we could find a university that resonated with us on a professional level mm-hmm. But also find a campus culture and character that that really spoke to us in terms of our own values personally, that that was a perfect fit.
So that's why I'm here in year nine, because I was so fortunate to get this opportunity and I'm fortunate every day to continue to serve the folks here at Ball State in the community as the president.
Speaker: Okay. So you were at Northern Kentucky before this, correct? Correct, correct. So. You come to Muncie for the first time, like you're, you know, you're in the process of, you know, okay, maybe, maybe this is the right role.
What did Muncie change about your perspective when you stepped foot in Muncie?
Speaker 2: The first time that Jennifer and I came to Muncie was during the search process and driving up from the Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky area. Typically, you come up through the south side of Muncie.
Speaker: Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that is the place where 25, 50, 75 years ago, the factories were humming.
Now if you drive through the south side of Muncie, you see the remnants of many of those factories, and you see the impact of the transition from a manufacturing community to what it is today and see the, you know, the adverse changes that have came from it. So initially, Jennifer and I looked at that and said, Hmm, I'm not sure that's necessarily where we wanna live.
Speaker: Yeah. That's your first impression, you know, right. You're driving up from the south side and you're like, oh, what the.
Speaker 2: Then we come to the campus. Mm-hmm. And then we learn more about the university. We realized that wasn't something that was a negative about coming. We realized it was an opportunity to participate in the growth and revitalization of Muncie and Delaware County.
So we saw it as an opportunity. Um, and that has been the case.
Speaker: Muncie has such a vibrant history. Like we were just over at Minnetrista, I've been messing that word up all day long. That's
Speaker 2: okay.
Speaker: But hearing about. The Ball Brothers and the Ball family, what was it in 18, the 1890s?
Speaker 2: About 1880. 1890s.
Speaker: Yep. Okay. Yeah.
Moving from Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker: Uh, into Muncie for on the natural gas boom.
Speaker 2: Exactly
Speaker: right. And then their just impact in not only business and industry, but the community as a whole. Right. You think of Ball State, you think of Ball Memorial Hospital, the Ball Foundation, like all of this. It's, it's really, really impactful.
The, the link between the Ball family. And Indiana State Normal School is very interesting. Can you talk about a little bit about the history of Ball State and how it ended up coming to be?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're sitting today recording this conversation in the oldest building on our campus. It was, it was built and opened in 1899.
The Ball Brothers acquired this building and the land surrounding it. In 1917, prior, between 1899 and 1917, there were three or four attempts to, start a higher education institution in this building, and all of them failed.
So in 1917, uh, one of the Ball Brothers approached the governor of Indiana at the time and said, here's the deal.
We'll buy that building. We'll buy the surrounding land, and we will then donate it to the state under one condition that you create a public. College here on this site. And so that's what became the branch of the Indiana state became the East. I'm not sure I'm gonna get the name right, but it essentially became a branch campus of Indiana State Normal School, a normal school, a teacher's college.
Speaker: Yeah. The term normal school like this was the normal school, which is like was a term around the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The, the term of a normal school in the early 20th century was, uh, a higher education institution that was exclusively focused on training teachers. Oh,
Speaker: and
Speaker 2: so many normal schools that were founded in the early 20th century that have grown into larger institutions with a much more robust and diverse portfolio of academic programs have become, as we did, became Ball State Teachers College, and then Ball State University.
Speaker: Yeah. And so, I mean, still to the day, education is one of the biggest majors here at Ball State.
Speaker 2: Right? Right. And in fact, our teacher's college based on enrollment is the fifth largest teacher's college in the United States of America.
Speaker: No way. Wow.
Speaker 2: So while many colleges and universities are either shrinking their enrollment and shrinking their school of education or college of education, ours is stable and growing,
Speaker: which is such an important, like the people who are teaching the teachers, that is such an important role in in any society.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, so we estimate, and this is just an estimate.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That there are 30,000 teachers, administrators, coaches, band coaches, band directors, whatever, 30,000. In the state of Indiana who have one or more Ball State degrees. That's the impact that we have all across the state in metropolitan areas.
Small school districts, private schools. Um, we are the engine for K 12 education in the state of Indiana.
Speaker: Well, yeah, and the interesting piece about that is so many Ball State grads stay in Indiana. I think you are the largest public institution that. Retains talent in Indiana or there's a, there's a way you phrased
Speaker 2: it.
Yeah, so we have, so about 80 to 90% of our undergraduate students are Indiana residents when they enroll and after they graduate from Ball State, 80% of them stay in Indiana. Those that are choosing to work as opposed to go on to graduate school, 80% stay in the state of Indiana. We believe that's the highest percentage of any public institution in the state.
Yeah,
Speaker: like in any given year, what's the. Range of graduates, like what's the number? How many graduates come out of Ball State?
Speaker 2: About five, 5,000 people on in a year earn a degree.
Speaker: Okay. 5,000 people
Speaker 2: a degree, some of, some of an under, some of it undergraduate, some of it master's, some of it doctoral.
Speaker: Amazing.
And then of the ones that are going into the workforce, roughly 80% of them are staying in the state of Indiana. Correct. And that is counterintuitive to the large narrative that I feel like I hear a bunch about brain drain in the state of Indiana. You know, we're really good at import. Students and then exporting them, uh, after their, their four years are done, which isn't the case with Ball State.
Speaker 2: That's right. And, and we are very intentional. We have a variety of intentional programs to expose our students when they're here. You know, sometimes people, um, think that it's only successful if I, you know, if I'm, if I grow up in Indiana, it's only a success if I go to college and get a job in Chicago or New York or California, and I get it.
For some students and their families and for some institutions maybe that's a measure of success for us. We believe there are extraordinary opportunities to work and raise a family and serve communities all across the state of Indiana. Whether it's a large city like Indianapolis or smaller cities like Kokomo or rural areas all across the state.
Speaker: That would be really interesting to think, okay, there's, you know, three to 400, uh, high schools in the state of Indiana. I don't know roughly what the number is, and I wonder, let's say that each one of them has. On average 50 teachers or 30 teachers or whatever it is. I wonder if there is someone with Ball State ties at almost every high school in Indiana.
Speaker 2: I would be willing to take that bet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That if you went into every high school in Indiana, there is somebody in that building, in that high school building who has one or more Ball State degrees.
Speaker: That's so cool. The teacher,
Speaker 2: and what we need them to do is put penance and posters in every one of their classrooms and hallways and locker rooms.
Speaker: Yeah. Chirp Chirp, right? Chirp. Come on. Chirp. Chirp. Okay, so you talk about the Indiana Teacher's College being what really started to, uh, you know, dig roots here in Muncie after, you know, several different, the normal schools and, and things had tried and, and failed the. Ball Family gets involved and ends up starting what ends up being Ball State Teachers' College.
Right. When did it expand outside of just the teachers' college, do you know?
Speaker 2: So it, it became a university sometime in the 1960s. Yeah, so I think it became Ball State University in somewhere, I think it was 64 or 65.
Speaker: So when I think of Ball State, the number one thing I think about isn't the teacher's college.
It isn't nursing, it isn't even architecture. It's media like I think that the media students, uh, that come out of Ball State are, are world class
Speaker 2: and, and the reason they're so good. If you've had a chance to get around campus and see some of our facilities, we have some of the most outstanding facilities to train broadcasters and, and journalists.
Um, whether it's writers in print or whether it's digital or whether it's in, in the camera. In fact, some of our students will tell you after they graduate that the studios where they. That they, that they learn and then do productions are better than the news stations that they go to
work.
Speaker: Oh, I'm sure.
Like if you're getting your first job out of Ball State and you're going to market 212 or whatever, it's like, I don't know. There's a, there's a, and we were just touring it and there are some incredible stuff there.
Yeah.
Speaker 2: also, and, and our sports. Uh, media production and broadcasting called Sports Link is the number one collegiate sports media production program in the country.
Speaker: No
Speaker 2: way. It's ranked number. We just surpassed. Syracuse had historically been number one. We were moving the rankings and so, uh, we're now number one. So they now say Syracuse is the Ball State of the East.
Speaker: Whoa. There it, that clip that. Please. That's a great one.
Speaker 2: And send it on to our good over.
at Syracuse
Speaker: Yeah.
we walked through there. There are. You're gonna need more trophy cases.
Speaker 2: And so the students in the program, sometimes they're behind the camera. Sometimes they're doing play by play at a basketball game or a football game. But if you're a sports fan, you, you know that ESPN 30 for 30.
Yeah. Which is a storytelling. Our students produce a lot of those storytelling. 'cause they, they understand. Yeah. You can broadcast a game. One of the reasons so many of us like sports is we wanna know the story behind that athlete, behind that swimmer. Um, behind that gymnast,
Speaker: one of my favorite Ball State grads, his name is Aaron Hep, and he works in media and the athletic department at the University of Alabama.
And he like did a bunch of hype videos and he played football here at Ball State. And I always go and watch the stuff that, that he's put out over the years. He's, you know, Muncie trained Ball State trained and now creating content. For the University of Alabama. So like, I feel like the world is seen as work
Speaker 2: well.
So anybody's listening, if you wanna see the quality of their productions, go on YouTube and type in Thy Will Be Done. Yeah, so this was a th it was a 30 for 30 like episode produced by our students about a Ball State football player who has a freshman driving back to campus after the Christmas break on an icy road, went off the road and nearly died in a single car accident.
And he was so severely injured that he was never able to play football again. Almost lost his life, was never able to play football again. But the title of the, of the, of the production is he was a person of great faith. Yeah. And it shows his, the evolution of thinking that really his reason for living was sports, was football.
And, but as a result of this accident, realized that, that he had another purpose. Yeah. Thy Will Be Done. Which, you know. Came from, you know, came from the New Testament. But when you re, when you see this story, it's about a 30 minute production. It's a compelling story about an outstanding young man who graduated from Ball State.
But to me what's even more impressive is the ability of our students to tell that compelling story. Yeah. So if you pull it up, I encourage you to watch it, but also, uh, put a couple tissues in your hand. 'cause you're gonna need 'em before it's over.
Speaker: They will be done. That's amazing. Okay, so then here's the question.
When you think of media and, Ball State, you obviously have to think of David Letterman.
Chicken or the egg, was the media school always here and was as vibrant as it was when David was coming through or after he rose to prominence? And you know, obviously as partnered back and, and invested back in the school.
Did the media program really start to stand out then?
Speaker 2: I, I, I I think he certainly contributed to the growth. I don't think it was anything what it was today. So certainly his participation and the fact that he comes back from time to time to engage with our students, uh, has certainly helped to elevate the program.
In fact, you know, we're always. Grateful to have, uh, to have him back. Um, you know, he did an episode, that they recorded of his show. My next guest needs no introduction. Yes. Again, those who are listening, it's a Netflix, you know, he's got a show on Netflix.
Speaker: I mean, if you're listening to this podcast and you don't know what that show is, like, what's, like, you must live under a rock.
Speaker 2: So he interviewed Caitlin Clark. Caitlin Clark. Um, and so watch it. It's a great bit about Indiana. 'cause they did stuff in Indianapolis. They do stuff on our campus. They
Speaker: were at Moms Donut. It's the whole
Speaker 2: nine yards. Exactly. Oh yeah. You've
Speaker: seen it. I, I need to know then your perspective. You're just like going about on average Tuesday you get an email, it's like, Hey, president mes. David Letterman and Caitlin Clark would like to come and shoot their Netflix special on campus.
Speaker 2: Well, so that's not how it came about.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker 2: The The way it came about was we're always looking for ways to entice Dave to come back to campus, to engage with our students, to engage with, um, you know, the broader community.
So, um, one of my colleagues who works in my office, Stephanie Arrington, uh, came into my office one day and said, I've got an idea. What if we can persuade Dave to come to campus to interview Caitlin Clark for his show? And I looked at her and I said, Ooh, that is a good idea. So we contacted his assistant, one of his assistants that we work with.
Regularly, Mary Barclay, and we shared that idea with her and she said, wow, that sounds like an intriguing idea. She called back within 24 or 48 hours and said, Dave loves the idea. If you can get Caitlin Clark on campus, he will come out. He will clear his schedule and he will come out to do it. So then we had to engage with.
Kaitlin's agents and producers, and that took a little while. Uh, but of course when she saw the opportunity or heard about the opportunity. Yeah. What was great about Dave was, um, the Netflix people were, have never done a, produced a show in an auditorium like Emens Auditorium. So they were saying, yeah, we'd love to do that episode, to have a, to have her on it but let's do it at a studio.
And Dave said, no, we're gonna do it on my, on the campus of my alma mater. Yeah. So he was responsible for ensuring that the. Program was taped here. Yeah.
Speaker: How cool is that to have an alumni, you know, it could have been in la, could have been in New York, could have been at any of these studios, or could have even been in a studio, like a closed studio setting on campus somewhere.
But to say like, no, we wanna, we wanna give these media students in the entire community this opportunity. Like was it like a ticketed event or how did it go? Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was ticketed. We weren't selling tickets, but you had to get a ticket Yeah. They filled Emens auditorium with about 3,400. The, and he also came up with a great idea if you, as you've seen the show.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The, our marching band and spirit squads come running down the aisles at the end of the episode. That was his team's idea. Another way to promote they're playing our fight song. And, you know, uh, as part of the, uh, as the final scene in the episode, well, also, you, you've probably seen Peyton's Places.
Yeah. You know, the show on ESPN, Peyton Manning's show. So, Peyton Manning wanted to film an episode with David Letterman. He agreed to do it under the condition that they filmed it on our campus, at our football stadium with our football team. So again, put a plug. Watch Peyton's Places. I don't know whether it's season two or three.
Yeah. But again, so when he takes advantage of his access, he is, we're so grateful that he's promoting the institution. Yeah. Even when he is doing these, these world renowned programs.
Speaker: Which is a testament to his character, I would say, you know, like, again, it was probably easier. You could probably get more access, more shows, more this, more that if you were somewhere else.
But to say, no, Peyton, let's go back to Indiana. Let's do it in Muncie. Let's get the ball. State football team involved. That's incredible.
Speaker 2: As you know, his roots are here in Indiana.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He believes those roots have defined who he is. I think it What is, what made him so successful? I mean, I'm not a, you know, I'm, I'm not a professional.
To me, the reason he was, he was, I think what was, you know, he was on late night television show for, what, 20 years going into everyone's living room.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Their, their bedroom, their den. It's because he had this modest self-deprecating humor. His humor was, was generally not directed to make fun of somebody else.
His humor was often. Directed to make fun of himself. Yeah. That Indiana modesty.
Speaker: Exactly. And it's like he didn't ever take himself too seriously. No. And it's just like a, I feel like today, you know, now the access to, you know, social media and people like, like a lot of that humor has taken off. But he's really like, I dunno one of the early founders of that style
Speaker 2: and, and when he comes to.
To to campus. He'll just pop in at a, at a coffee shop in downtown Muncie and hang out with people there. When he finished filming the show with Caitlin Clark, you know, he doesn't come with a big entourage or security detail. He went out the back door and there was a group of students who had waited till almost midnight.
To see him and he, we engaged with him. I'll tell you another story. Yeah. About how special he is. So we have also a great, um, eSports program.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he came out when we dedicated the opening, the grand opening of that space. I don't know whether you got a chance to see our Yeah, we did.
Speaker: Yeah. Crazy. It
Speaker 2: was a great facility.
So this was shortly, we were still in the early post COVID. Uh, timeframe. So he was there, some other people were there. And so, um, were, as you know, the door was closed, but people could see through the glass. If you walked down the hallway, you could see it. So outside, there was a group of students who had gathered.
And so when the program was over and he was talking to the media, the students were waving to me and I walked out into the hallway and I met with the, I saw the students and um, it was probably about 40 of them. And they said, is there any chance, you know, Dave would come out and just say hello with us and take a photo with him?
I said, I'm pretty sure he will let me go ask him. I go back in, he says, yeah, I'll go out there after the interview. So he goes out into the hallway, chats with them for a while, and they said, you know, can we take a photo? And he's, we're in a kind of a, it's a crowded, narrow hallway, and he looks around and he says, well, we can't take a group photo.
Let's do it one at a time. He spent about 45 minutes engaging with each one of those students, talking to them and taking a, a, a selfie with them. So 45 minutes, one by one. That's David Letterman.
Speaker: That's incredible. Okay. I have to know then, coming from Northern Kentucky, I don't know who the most famous Northern Kentucky alumni might have been, but you get on campus here in Muncie and like the first time that you get, I don't know.
In the same room and they're like, oh yeah, president me, like meet David Letterman. Were you a little bit like starstruck?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean I, the opportunity to meet extraordinary people like that. Um, the first time I met him actually when I, it was shortly after I arrived. I met him, um, when I was in New York.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And we spent 45 minutes, maybe an hour together. What was remarkable about him was he spent 90% of that time asking me questions. He wanted to ask me questions to learn about me. It wasn't about him. Um, you know, I got a little bit of conversation about him. Yeah. But you know, again, that's who he is.
It's not about him, it's about how he can use his, you know, his fame or others to Yeah. To learn about you and promote you Abso and promote Ball State and promote Indiana.
Speaker: Absolutely. It's incredible. I. Uh, I mean, he's not the only famous person that's been coming to campus. Yep. I, Hugh Jackman, I think starting last fall, like, I mean, he was just on your podcast.
He's been coming to Muncie. Talk to me about what that means to have another person in the entertainment industry coming and pouring into the students of Ball State.
Speaker 2: Hugh Jackman is also an incr, obviously very successful wide range of theater and movies. Um, so he came because he has, um, uh, Sutton Foster, who is another Broadway star, she's been an adjunct faculty here at Ball State for 15 years or more.
Oh
Speaker: wow.
Speaker 2: So Sutton and Hugh Jackman, uh, have developed a relationship. So she encouraged him to come to Ball State to see why she thinks it's such a special place and why she's been coming back to engage with our students. So, uh, when he came on campus, as you say, it was back in the fall, it was in September.
And so, um, Sutton was off with my wife doing their thing in the morning. And my job that day was to give him a tour of, of campus. He would engage with students and engage with others, and he would use those in those occasions to. Engage with them, learn about them. And he said something very interesting when I asked him, how do you navigate that?
I mean, he will, he will walk in midtown Manhattan without an entourage, without a security detail. And of course everyone recognizes him and comes up and says, Hey, I wanna take a selfie. What he would say to you is, you know, if you stop him, he says, first of all, his first rule he is walking is he can't stop.
You gotta keep walking or else he'll never get anywhere. But the second thing is, if you ask him for a selfie, he says, no, I'm not gonna take a selfie. Gimme your phone. So let's say I stopped him for a, a selfie. Yeah. I give him my phone and he says, what's your name? My name is Jeff. Jeff, who's the most important person to you in the entire world?
It's my wife Jennifer. I love her very much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Turns on on my phone, turns on the video and says, hello, Jennifer. This is Hugh Jackman. I'm here with your husband Jeff, and I just asked him who was the most important person in the world, and he said, it's you. He said he loves you very much and I thought it was important for you to know today that you husband, Jeff, Jennifer, she, he loves you so much.
See you. He takes that opportunity instead of a five second selfie to take a minute to give you the opportunity to tell your wife. That you love her.
Speaker: And that's actually a deeper, a whole deeper thing where you think about like going up to someone famous and like, oh, I wanna get a picture with you. And then he uses that time to point it back to someone in your life.
Speaker 2: That experience is not about getting a selfie and you get to show it to all your friends or whatever. Oh, look at me, I'm standing with Hugh Jackman. He turns that moment around to make it about you, to strengthen your relationship with your wife, your kid, your best friend, whoever it is. He's a special, he's, he's obviously an extraordinary talent.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Again, he's a person of the character and integrity and compassion that you just wanna be around.
Speaker: What was Hugh Jackman's candid feedback of Muncie Indiana?
Speaker 2: He really enjoyed his time here. Yeah, so that's why he came back a few months later when he was promoting his, his movie that just came, well, didn't just come out, it came out over Christmas song Song Sung Blue.
He told us, he spoke to his production company and he, he actually did the. Beginning of the worldwide promotional tour in Muncie, Indiana, we rented the entire, his production company, rented the entire multiplex out on the north side of Muncie every theater and, and showed the movie. And so when he told his production company that he wanted to start in Muncie, their response was.
Like Indiana and he was like, yes. And it's because the movie is is set in Milwaukee, you know, blue collar town, post-industrial town. And he said Muncie is the perfect place. It's good people doing good things, overcoming challenges. Yeah. But a great community. So that's why started in Muncie. So he is been back two times, I think we'll get him back again.
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Let's get back to the episode.
Speaker: The final thing I want to wrap out about, whether it be entertainment, celebrities, or really just interesting individuals coming to campus is the Letterman's. It's the Speaker series, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, I saw a poster of like Oprah. Coming to campus. Talk to me about what that means for your students to get exposure to like the, the coolest of the cool people coming to campus, but not just doing a keynote, like they're doing workshops and talking and engaging with students.
Speaker 2: And so we're grateful again, David Letterman created that fund that will enable us to attract people like Oprah Winfrey and others who will come to campus. As you say, they may do a, a large. Presentation in Emens Auditorium, but they'll also do workshops and, and small, uh, group conversations, uh, with our students.
So it's a wonderful experience because our students are wondering how do you get to that place and who are you when you get to that place, what is your responsibility to help other people? When you get to that place,
Speaker: who is the most recent one or who's coming up?
Speaker 2: John Meacham, great historian, great author.
He's coming in in March.
Speaker: That's incredible. So, so, so cool. Well, we could sit here and we could talk about famous people coming to Muncie, Indiana. Including
Speaker 2: you, Nate. Right,
Speaker: right. Go. We're working on it. Same caliber. We're working on it. Right. We could talk about, you know, obviously everyone's favorite mention of Muncie in the Toby Keith song.
You can't miss that one. I don't know if you're a country music fan.
Speaker 2: Well, I haven't heard that song.
Speaker: All right. Well, he, that's the first time I ever heard about Muncie was from a Toby Keith song, legend. Okay. But what I do wanna talk about is how Ball State. The city of Muncie have continued to grow closer and closer together.
And one of the most interesting ways that this has happened is with the public school system in Muncie. Right. And this was something that, I mean, pretty quickly into your tenure, uh, you guys got involved with the Muncie public schools. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 2: We have a distinctive relationship, distinctive.
Partnership with the Muncie Community Schools. I started in May of 17. Uh, this legislation that created this partnership was passed by the General Assembly in the session in the spring of 2018. It came about because, you know, frankly, as, as the population Muncie has decreased, uh, since the 1970s, the Muncie Community Schools has, has faced some difficult challenges financially and otherwise.
So, um, the legislation was created to give us an opportunity to serve as a. Convener a partner to see if we can revitalize working together in partnership to revitalize the Muncie Community Schools. And what I've learned in being here was, you know, there was a time when Muncie was thriving and this institution was just in its fledgling state, just getting started.
And now the fortunes have shifted a. We are a worldwide recognized public research university and there's some challenges in Muncie. Yeah. And so my view and the view of the board of trustees was not only did we have the capacity to convene a community-wide partnership to revitalize the public schools, but I thought we had a moral obligation to do that.
Speaker: Uh, and we just got, we, we were talking with, uh, mayor Rideau this morning and. One. The other cool piece is that kind of as you were getting involved with the schools, then the population growth, the after being de after decreasing for the last 50 years, I think for the past three years has increased.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker: So it seems as though something's going right,
Speaker 2: and the enrollment and the, and there's a relationship. You know, when, when a family is thinking about where they wanna live, one of the things one of, maybe one of the most important, maybe not the most, yeah. But one of the most important things is are there high quality public schools Yeah.
That their children can enroll in? So this is improving. The outcomes in the Muncie Community Schools is gonna contribute to population growth over the next, uh, 20 years.
Speaker: And Muncie Community Schools is historic. I think they started in 1855, right? Yep. So this is something that, that. You know, obviously needs to keep going forward.
It needs to be a world class, uh, institution. Especially as you think about getting world class faculty members to move to Muncie, to move to Delaware County.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker: Were you getting that feedback from different faculty of like, Hey, what can we do for the public schools here and, and how can it be a place that we'd be.
Amped up to send our our kids to.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So for, for decades, we've been recognized by the Carnegie Endowment as a community engaged institution on many levels supporting Habitat for Humanity, the Muncie schools, a variety of of programs here, and activities in the community. And we had educators who were working in the Muncie Community Schools.
What this was different was taking that relationship to a much deeper and more enduring level. What we heard a lot of. You know, in 2010, 2015, 2017, is the young faculty who would come, or the young, uh, staff who would come. They had heard that that Muncie Community Schools was not necessarily the place that you wanted to send your children.
So they would move to Yorktown or they'd moved to Pendleton, or they'd moved to Fishers, Noblesville Carmel and Commute. And that's not good. On many levels, that narrative has not entirely shifted. But now what we hear from folks that we're hiring or folks that are being here is they're gonna consider living in Muncie.
Because of the quality of the public schools. Yeah. We've got more work to do. Outcomes have, IM improved. Kindergarten readiness scores are improving. Third grade reading tests. We were recognized, uh, last spring by the Secretary of Education as one of the highest growth in terms of the third grade reading tests.
Mm-hmm. The high school graduation rates now. Ticking above the average of high school graduation rates in the state of Indiana.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we've made good progress over the last eight years, but we've got more work to do and we're committed to doing
Speaker: it. Yeah. Well, how, how wild was that, that you take the job, you moved to Muncie in 2017 and then July of 2018, you know, the, I think it was like a whole thing with the State House, right?
Right. They created oversight over Muncie. School corporation for you all. Like, and you're going from thinking, okay, I'm, I'm running an in a higher education institution, I'm running a college, I'm running a university, and now all of a sudden you're thinking about third grade reading levels as well.
Speaker 2: Again, we're an educational institution.
We're founding as a teacher's college, and if I can, if I got time to tell you a story, I was reading the history. Ball, state Ball, state University, and I read about President John Emens. Uh, president Emens was the president here for 23 years, from 1945 to 1968, and I've mentioned in this conversation our large auditorium is Emens Auditorium.
The actual full name of it is the Emens College-Community Auditorium. And what I learned is, you know, at the time he had to raise what was an enormous sum of private philanthropy, about three and a half million dollars to build this auditorium, 3,600 seats. So of course, he went to the Ball corporation, the Ball Brothers, the ball foundations.
But what I learned in reading this story was President Emens also went to the break rooms in the factories on the south side of Muncie when those factories were humming. And he asked the women and the men who were working on the front lines in those factories to do payroll deduction. To contribute to the design and construction of Emens Auditorium.
And they did, thousands of them did payroll deduction, nickels, dimes, and quarters from their paychecks. And so what had occurred to me was the children that are now in the Muncie Community Schools. Are the grand, many of them are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those factory workers.
Speaker: Yeah,
Speaker 2: we have an obligation, we have a moral obligation to do what we can to help those people, the descendants of those generous factory workers to get an opportunity of equality education.
Then I, so I told that story once at a event here in Muncie, and somebody told me he was a kid growing up in Muncie at that time, and he was a paper boy. So in addition to going to the factory workers, one morning, president Emens met with all the paper newspaper, the morning newspaper, paper delivery boys, and he asked them to give a quarter from their earnings.
And he said, if you give a quarter from your earnings that will buy one brick in this new performance venue, and this gentleman who's now lived in Muncie his entire life says that every time I drive by an Emens Auditorium, I look up and I said, I bought three bricks.
Speaker: That's incredible.
Speaker 2: That's the nature of this, of this community.
Yeah. The generosity extends from generation to generation, and each generation looks for an opportunity to pay it forward to the next generation.
Speaker: Yeah. That is so powerful. I heard another story about EM'S auditorium. Yeah. Being, you know, uh, an, a public education institution, but also wanting the, that space to be a community.
You know, a community place. And there was something, and maybe you can outline it better, where it was, if you put three classrooms around the auditorium and then you could put the auditorium in the center, it could be public and and educational.
Speaker 2: So this is where President Edmonds was also pretty strategic.
So the state of Indiana provides generous support, generous investments in capital projects, buildings on public university or and college campuses. But they don't build performance venues. They don't build dining halls, they don't bring stadiums. They don't. Bring, uh, build residence halls. They build academic buildings.
Yeah. So President Emens over a series of years got state capital projects to build academic buildings that would form the U-shape around where he build, wanted to build the auditorium. So the state funded those. So essentially he got three walls. Of the auditorium built by state funds. So he had to raise less money to actually build the, the performance venue.
He was a smart, that's craft. He's a smart and strategic guy. He was, he was thinking the long term.
Speaker: That's incredible. And I mean, now there's this new opportunity of, you know, you talk about the expansion in The Village, right? And really, you know, connecting this next stage of development. Talk to us about the investment that's going on.
All the new, I mean, Robert is a, he's a producer. Everyone who listens to the show knows Robert. The dorm or the building that he lived in is now a new, uh, collaborative work space. Is it
Speaker 2: probably the, the, um, center for Innovation and Collaboration there just to the south of the Alderdice Gates? Yeah. So, you know, The Village historically f.
Fifties, sixties, seventies was a commercial district that attracted people from not just across Muncie, but all across Delaware County, even into East Central Indiana. And then probably since the eighties or nineties, it really, the character has changed. Certainly there's some restaurants there. There's some bars that our students go to, but there aren't the places where people will go to buy.
Shop for clothes or ice cream store and things like that. So back as far back as 2009, uh, the university started acquiring property in The Village with the long-term view of when we had acquired a critical mass of property, we would engage a private develop. To help us revitalize The Village. So that happened.
We selected that developer back in 2021, and now we're in the construction phase. So it's about these, this, these first five sites, it will be about 190 to $200 million. Public private investment. So it's, um, we've raised about $55 million of private philanthropy, including $35 million from the Lilly Endowment, which is an extraordinary treasure for the state of Indiana.
Uh, we've raised an additional 20 million of private philanthropy from individuals in foundations. The university is investing about $50 million in the project, and it will generate, and then some state investment and city investment, and it will generate. Between 75 and a hundred million dollars of private investment.
And that's just in this first five sites, first phase. So a new performing arts center for our outstanding, uh, theater and dance department. A, a beautiful boutique hotel that you see right outside the window. I
Speaker: heard, I heard rooftop bar.
Speaker 2: Rooftop bar. You can see the construction right now. Alright,
Speaker: so Nick, when I come back for, uh, for homecoming, then in the fall we're gonna have to catch a drink up there.
Speaker 2: Yes, we'll have to do it. Hopefully it'll be opened by homecoming. It's our hundredth homecoming. So any Ball State graduate who's out there is listening, gotta come back to campus for homecoming in late October this year. It's our hundredth homecoming. Absolutely. In the history of the institution. Also the Center for Innovation and Collaboration, which is an academic.
Building that really will bridge the gap between what our students do in the classroom and in laboratories and what businesses and other, uh, organizations need to support their businesses out in the community. There's a residential component, 25 owner occupied homes on the southeast corner heading into the neighborhood that goes to downtown.
And just today as we're recording this conversation, earlier today at our board meeting, they approved the plan and design for The Village Green. We're gonna demolish an old First Merchants bank branch building, build green space, and places where you can have outdoor games. You can have maybe small, uh, you know, pop-up concerts and the like.
Yeah. Uh, so they'll, it'll be the first green space directly in the commercial district.
Speaker: Well, I know that, uh, I'm sure lots of the grads are wondering the new development in The Village. Will The Chug remain
Speaker 2: so we don't own The Chug. So yes, it's my understanding it will remain. All right. It's not part of our revitalization plan, but we also wanna support the existing businesses.
Speaker: There we go. I love it. We actually just got a cup of coffee at The Cup.
Speaker 2: Okay. Cup.
Speaker: Great little spot. Come on.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker: That's so fun. Okay. Uh, we're getting close to the end of our time together. Okay. And this has been. I mean such a wonderful time. Before we dive into, at the end of the show, we wrap out with a bunch of Indiana questions.
Uhoh, I wanna learn about your cross country career real quick.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker: Because I heard through, and you know, correct me if I'm wrong, so you went, you ran cross country at Yale?
Speaker 2: I did cross country, indoor out track and outdoor track.
Speaker: Wow. So. Runner one, I've heard that the Cardinal Greenway and the other trails around Muncie are incredible.
Can you?
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the Cardinal Greenway, which goes right through Muncie, is the largest rail to trail in the state of Indiana, goes all the way from Gaston down to Richmond, um, and then the White River Greenway, which the segment through Muncie is probably 15 or 20 miles. You know, bisects it. So you can get from a bike lane on campus to the White River Greenway, to the Cardinal Greenway, and if you're really fit, you can ride your bike all the way down to Richmond, Indiana on a bike trail.
Speaker: Incredible. That's pretty cool. Uh, especially if you're a runner.
Speaker 2: I'm not running from Muncie to Richmond, Indiana.
Speaker: You could probably make that happen.
Speaker 2: No, that's about 40 miles. Uh,
Speaker: yeah. There we go. Um, but did you once break. An Olympic gold medalist record or something along these lines. Yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah. I need to hear the story.
You're digging pretty deep, so I
Speaker: need to hear the
Speaker 2: story. So my idol, when I was 12 years old, 12, 13 years old, I saw Frank Shorter win the gold medal in the Olympics. Yeah. In the marathon. His first American to win the gold medal in the marathon in 75, 80 years. So I told my father at the time, that's what I wanna do.
I wanna try to represent the United States. Yeah. In the Olympics, in the marathon.
Speaker: Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 2: So that, we were living in Cincinnati, Ohio at the time. So fast forward through high school and into college. I ended up going to Yale, which is where Frank Shorter had gone to school. And so as a freshman, uh, at Yale, I broke his freshman indoor two mile record.
So, and then in 1983. I qualified for the Olympic trials in the marathon, so I was getting pretty close to seeing if I could. What's
Speaker: your time? What was your time that
Speaker 2: year? My fastest time in the marathon was 2:16. Oh, that was before the, these shoes that can make you run like. 2:10 and 2:05. Oh super.
Back in the old days you had super
Speaker: shoes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But anyway, that's a whole nother topic. But
Speaker: I mean, wow. So you were in 2:16 and you broke, well before that, you broke Frank Shorter's freshman two mile record. Yep. And you crossed the finish down and you're like, baby, I'm going to the Olympics.
Speaker 2: I, what was more important, I didn't know what the, what it was at the time, but I was a freshman and it was the Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet.
So as you might imagine, you know, that's a. That's a strong rivalry. And so as a freshman to win that race, uh, was a big deal.
Speaker: I mean, that's, that's pretty
Speaker 2: cool. It was, it was a pretty big day.
Speaker: Wow. And to make the Olympic trials is, I mean, an honor.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Wow.
Speaker 2: Very fun. It was. Yeah, it was. It was. I felt lucky.
Speaker: That's so cool. All right, we're gonna talk all things in Indiana as we round
Speaker 2: out. Is this like a tri.
Speaker: No, not trivia. Okay. This is all about your perspective, your opinion. Okay. What you've grown to love about Indiana. So this question is brought to you by our friends at J.C. Hart. They're a leader in creating enjoyable living experiences at apartment communities all across Indiana and beyond.
Check them out at homeisjchart.com. My question for you, president Burns. Why do you call Indiana
Speaker 2: home? I'll start with what is visible and tangible. There's great opportunities to live recreation, everything from the lake in the north and all the lakes in the north, uh, northeast of the state to the wonderful parks in the south, large cities, rural areas, beautiful things to me.
What makes Indiana truly special is the character of the people. So my wife and I, when we were young kids, our families moved around a bit, uh, as a family together. Jennifer and I have moved a bit. Um, what we have found is whether you're living in Brooklyn, New York, or Muncie, Indiana, everyone really wants the.
The same thing. They want a good job, an opportunity to take care of their family. They want an opportunity to raise their children, uh, and to have good friends. What was different about this move was when we came to Muncie, it, people not only said, welcome to Muncie, or Welcome to Ball State, or Welcome to Indiana.
That happens virtually wherever you go. What was different here is people said, thank you for coming. They recognized that in those that that many other people, you have choices about where you live and that it meant a lot to them that we chose. To come to Indiana. Now, of course, it's great to be a Hoosier by birth, but they also recognize that people like me who are Hoosiers by choice and they say thank you.
Speaker: Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's special. And it says something about the people that they have that recognition. Yeah, so it's the people of Indiana.
Speaker: I love that. And again, I'm like a a through and through Hoosier. So when I say that, it's like, okay, yeah, you're the Hoosier guy, right? But when, when you've been in a lot of places and, you know, gone to Yale, been in New York, like Northern Kentucky, you know, to come to Muncie and to have that experience just like fills my heart, makes me so happy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The only problem, there's only one deficit. You're not gonna ask me that question, but I'll volunteer it anyway. Yeah, you can get much better pizza in Brooklyn, New York than, and in New Haven, Connecticut than you can get in Muncie, Indiana.
Speaker: Uh, pizza King has issues with that comment.
Speaker 2: That's okay. But we're, you know, we're being honest here.
Speaker: Yeah. All right. That's fair. Okay. What's one word to describe Muncie?
Speaker 2: Vibrant.
Speaker: Vibrant. I like that. What's your favorite Ball State tradition?
Speaker 2: Probably the bed races. I'm never getting on one of those beds or pushing one of those beds. Yeah. But it is fun to watch.
Speaker: What's your favorite? Restaurant in Muncie.
Speaker 2: So it depends. If you want, you know, a um, you know, 1925 PubHouse that's located to the hotel, great sports bar, Elm Street Brewing Company. No televisions, no sports bar, great people, great food, great environment. Adams Street Chophouse. Great place for, for fine dining. Lahody's also on, uh, you know, downtown. Yeah. And they've expanded it from not just the Lahody's restaurant to now this great lounge area.
So you can go either for dinner or you can go for a drink before dinner or after dinner. I mean, I could continue on and on. Um, also love. Love ice cream. So my favorite treat on a Saturday is go to Culver's up on, uh, McGalliard. Um, so, and of course there are a lot of fast food choices up there. Yeah, yeah.
But Jennifer and I, other than going to Culver's, we tend to support the local businesses and restaurants in Muncie because we wanna own, we wanna support those
Speaker: folks. Yeah. Okay. So one big initiative, right? Yeah. You talked about combining Muncie, just talking about the city of Muncie and Ball State University.
Right. So I'm sure there's gonna be some residents of Muncie that listen and I'm sure there's gonna be some Ball State students that listen. Right. So if you had to give one recommendation for Ball State students to explore Muncie and one recommendation for the locals of Muncie to explore Ball State, what would you tell them each to do?
Speaker 2: Okay, so I tell the local residents, and this is not just folks in Muncie, but Delaware County, east Central Indiana, we have here on our campus and in our community, the greatest collection of high quality arts and culture assets anywhere in the state of Indiana. So we have the Charles W. Brown Planetarium. Charles W. Charles W. Brown Planetarium largest planetarium dome in the state of Indiana, and one of only 10 planetariums in the country that has dual projection systems.
The David Owsley Museum of Art, the Glick Center for Glass, the Rinard Orchid Greenhouse, you know, the Rinard Orchid Greenhouse. We have the largest collection of orchids of any college campus in the United States. Right here on our campus. Most of these assets, Sursa Performance Hall, Emens Auditorium, the new performing Arts Center, and then downtown Muncie Civic Theatre, and others there are great.
Arts and culture assets. So I'd encourage anybody in Muncie, but anybody listening all across the state come to Muncie because the arts and culture scene here Yeah. Is diverse and really high quality. What I would say to the students who are new is go downtown. There's a perception among some students that it's really far away.
It's a 20 minute walk, right? It's about a mile from the, the center of campus to downtown Muncie. There's shops there. Art opportunities. There's outdoor concerts at Canan Commons. There's, yeah. Holiday festivals.
Speaker: We just got lunch at Savage's Ale House.
Speaker 2: Savage's Ale House. There you go.
Speaker: Great food.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Did you get one of those deep fried pork tenderloin sandwiches?
Speaker: No, I, I kept it clean today and I went with the grilled cheese, but it was made with mozzarella sticks.
Speaker 2: Yeah,
Speaker: like
Speaker 2: Savage's Ale House, great bar, great food.
Speaker: Yeah. Spectacular. Okay. I like that. You know, go down there, check out downtown. Give it a little laugh. There's a, I was blown away. Like it was not, again, our visit to Muncie, it's not been what we expected.
It's been very vibrant. You were spot on with that word?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay. We're at the end of the show. Okay. Where we ask the same three questions to every guest that comes on.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker: All about the state of Indiana. So first, you've been all over, right? But if you could shout it from the rooftops, what's one thing the world needs to know about Indiana?
Speaker 2: The. Opportunity to see high quality sporting events in Indianapolis?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Between Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and Gainbridge is a company, CEO is a Ball State graduate, and of course, professional football, professional basketball in, uh, the Indianapolis 500 great sports, uh, town.
Speaker: Absolutely. That's a really good one.
Alright. This is your opportunity to shed some light on a part of the state that more people need to know about. What is a hidden gem in Indiana,
Speaker 2: the lakes in the northeast part of the state. How much, you know, people think, oh, you're the Midwest, it's landlocked, maybe the river and whatever. Those lakes are great places and they're so convenient from Indianapolis and any place north, uh, to go to the lakes on a, on a summer weekend.
Speaker: Absolutely. I think that the nature of the state of Indiana is. Severely underrated from the rolling hills down south to the lakes up north it's, and to the, even like Lake Michigan.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker: Like, look, stand on that beach there and tell me it's not an ocean.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker: I wouldn't believe you. Right? I agree.
Alright, final question for you. Okay. This is where we get future guest recommendations and we learn about, uh, other interesting people with ties to the Hoosier State, who's a Hoosier. We need to keep on our radar. Someone who's doing big. Things.
Speaker 2: Well, Dan Towriss, I mentioned Gainbridge, so Dan Towriss, Group 1001, um, Dan through Gainbridge, um, you know, has, is Gainbridge.
Fieldhouse sponsors the 500 and he is the person who's brought the first Formula One team to the United States. And he's building a huge facility, uh, where those cars will be manufactured. Um, he's a Muncie kid, grew up in Muncie.
Speaker: No
Speaker 2: way. Yep. Went to Ball State. Um, and he is passionate about the state of Indiana.
Yeah. That's why when he, when he, he and his partners who invested all of this money to acquire, to procure a Formula One franchise, he was insistent that they were gonna manufacture it here in the state of Indiana to give really good jobs and bring Formula One, not just to the United States. To the Hoosier State?
Speaker: Absolutely. Uh, we got to go out to the Gainbridge suite for the Brickyard this past year. Incredible. They had just like done a big renovation as well. Like
Speaker 2: is that, that one at the top of
Speaker: the pagoda? Yeah. Pa the floor 10 of the pagoda, the bricky yards going on and it was awesome. Dan and the team at Gainbridge Group 1001, they're doing spectacular things and uh, they are off to the races.
Like they're literally just rocking and rolling. Yeah, literally off to the races. Amazing. President Mearns, it's been such a pleasure to share the microphone with you. I know this is a little bit different 'cause typically you're the host, right? If you, if people wanna go check out your podcast, how can they do that?
Speaker 2: It's on anywhere you get your podcast. It's called Our Call to Beneficence.
Speaker: And the final thing I'll say is, what does that mean to you? When you talk about the word Beneficence and you have Ball State grads out there, you have current students listening, Muncie residents. What, what does that mean to you?
Speaker 2: So it's ironic. Maybe you've, have you listened to the podcast? 'cause that is literally the last question I ask all of my guests. What does Beneficence mean to you? And what it means to me is doing good for other people through service and philanthropy. That's when you distill it all down. It's your obligation professionally and, and personally.
To be a good steward of all of the gifts that you've received. And so it's doing good for other people through service and philanthropy.
Speaker: You guys have done incredible work. Thank you. I'll, I'll be one of those Hoosiers that do say that. Uh, the state of Indiana continues to do great things because we have amazing leaders like you that are put into these positions and really.
Go the extra mile to make an impact.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for your kind words, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to visit with you today. Awesome. Talk to you soon. Take care.
Speaker: This show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level, click the link in the description to see all my gear recommendations at Sweetwater.
If you want a behind the scenes look at everything we're doing across the state. Make sure you follow me on Instagram and TikTok at Nate Spangle. Thank you so much for listening and being a part of what makes the Hoosier State. Great. We'll see you next time here on Get IN.
