Byers’ Inaugural Address

Good afternoon!

Trustees, Delegates, Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, Community Leaders, Family and Friends. Thank you all for being here today as we come together to celebrate the exciting future of Simpson College. It is truly an honor and privilege to serve as your 25th President.

Thank you to all of today’s speakers for your thoughtful words and to all of the singers and musicians for your meaningful performances. 

Thank you, President Hayes, for your longtime friendship and now mentorship and for making time to join us today. While Simpson and Coe may be competitors, it is more important than ever for Iowa’s small colleges to work together in support of the private higher education industry in our great state. And you never know when it will be time to get the band back together!   

Special thanks to our Board Chair, Terry Handley, for your steadfast leadership. I am forever grateful for the support and continued guidance you provide to both me and the college. 

I also want to thank my wife, Katie, and my daughters, Sophie and Charlotte, for their unconditional love and support. And thanks to my other family members and longtime friends who are here today. I truly appreciate each and every one of you.

As a Simpson College alum, I find it particularly meaningful to be celebrating my inauguration in conjunction with this year’s Homecoming festivities. To all Simpson alumni who are visiting campus today, welcome home! Doesn’t the campus look great? We even started today by planting a new maple tree in the middle of campus. As I have said many times, there is nothing better than being on a college campus on a beautiful Fall Friday afternoon.   

I still very much remember my visit to the Simpson campus as a prospective student during my senior year of high school on a sunny day in the Fall of 1988. My Dad, who was a high school guidance counselor at the time, encouraged me to consider Simpson as he was friends with Bill Gieger, whom many of you will remember as the longtime director of financial aid. I remember the campus looking like what I thought a college campus should look like. 

I remember meeting with Dr. John Epperson, today’s Medallion Bearer, who ended up being my advisor and mentor. I ultimately chose Simpson College because of Coach Bruce Wilson and the basketball program, the political science department, the beautiful campus, proximity to Des Moines, distance from home, a competitive financial aid package, and the opportunity to be part of a college that was on the rise.

I still remember vividly when my parents dropped me off on campus in the fall of 1989. As they drove away, I thought to myself—FREEDOM!!!  

I soon realized that I had clearly made the right choice as my experience at Simpson as a student far exceeded my expectations. Although I only played basketball for a year, I was highly engaged in wide range of co-curricular activities during my time at Simpson, including the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, Model United Nations with advisor Eduardo Magalhaes, The Simpsonian with advisor Brian Steffen, Pre-Law Society with Marilyn Mueller, and so much more. I also had the opportunity to work for three years in the Office of Student Development with Dean of Students Jim Thorius. 

For those of us who are Simpson alumni, we each have memories of what Simpson was like during our time as students. Who were the professors and staff who inspired you? What activities were you involved with? What traditions meant the most to you? What were those fun times you shared with your friends? What experiences helped prepare you for your careers?

Never in my wildest dreams during my time as a student at Simpson did I think that I would one day be President of the college. And I am quite sure that my Simpson friends who are here today would say the same thing! 

After graduating from Simpson, I went on to the University of Iowa College of Law where I met my wife Katie, President Hayes, and so many other great people. My first job out of law school was with a large law firm called Ice Miller in Indianapolis. I mention this because a Simpson alum, S.R. “Chic” Born was a partner at the firm and helped me get my foot in the door as a summer associate. 

I boomeranged back to Iowa and Indianola because of another Simpson grad, John Norris, who was also a law school classmate. John, who at the time was Congressman Leonard Boswell’s Chief of Staff, hired me to be District Director.  

After returning to Iowa, I also taught as an adjunct professor teaching political science courses at Simpson for multiple years. 

As a Simpson alum, I made it a priority to remain actively engaged with and give back to the college, including serving on the Board of Trustees for 11 years.  

As you can see, my roots with Simpson college run deep!   

When I started as President, I set out to focus on three key priories: Build the Brand; Build Community; and Build the Future. And building and growing is exactly what we have been doing over the past year as we continue to make significant progress on all of these fronts. 

Having now served for more than a year in this position, I am now more optimistic than ever about the future of Simpson after working closely with our talented and dedicated Board of Trustees, Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, and other stakeholders.

There is tremendous excitement about what is happening at Simpson College. Our first-year class this year is the largest in more than a decade, and first-year student enrollment is up 27 percent over the last two years. Our retention rate this year for first to second year students increased by 5 percent. 

We continue to rack up multiple rankings from a number of different publications.

The Dunn Library renovation is complete and now serves a new home for Simpson’s teacher education program and offers more collaborative learning spaces and educational resources for our students. 

Over the past couple of years, there have been significant enhancements to several athletics facilities, including new sports turf and a resurfaced track at Buxton Stadium, new sports turf on the baseball and softball infields, a new floor, locker rooms, and HVAC system at Cowles Fieldhouse, a new wrestling facility in Hopper, and more.

We launched a 3-1 nursing partnership with Mercy College of Health Sciences, allowing students to earn two degrees in four years.

We recently announced a new comprehensive partnership with Des Moines University to create enhanced pathways for Simpson students seeking medical and health sciences careers.

Each year, more than 100 students present research and creative projects at Simpson’s Research and Creativity Symposium.

Simpson students participated in more than 600 internships from 2021-2024, 93% of which were completed in Iowa.

9 percent of Simpson grads are employed, in grad school, volunteering or in the military within 6 months of graduation. 

Our Speech and Debate team has won 7 of the last 8 national debate tournaments.

We recently launched four new intercollegiate athletic teams and our now 25 NCAA teams and 4 varsity club teams and individual athletes continue to experience more and more success.

Our investments in facilities and programs to enhance the student experience and our commitment to maximizing access and affordability through are All-In for Iowa initiatives are making a big impact. We are proud to lead the way in making a great education affordable for all qualified students, regardless of economic circumstances.

Simpson College today is still very much a college of social mobility and continues to be a great equalizer. Of our current students, more than a third are first generation college students and 40% are Pell grant eligible. And our student body is significantly more diverse that we were a few short years ago.   

While it is important for us celebrate these successes and to honor Simpson’s rich history, it is even more important that we look to and embrace the Simpson of the future. My favorite quote is by Peter Drucker: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
 

While there are certainly many headwinds currently facing higher education, it is up to all of us as trustees, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and other stakeholders to collectively maximize our current momentum and create a bold future vision for the Simpson College of the future.

We must continue to step up our game to show an even stronger value proposition for our students, parents and community partners. We must dig deep to be innovative and creative in our collective efforts to take our future by storm.

In doing so, I am pleased to share that we are launching an exciting new strategic planning initiative that will fully engage our trustees, faculty, staff and students. There are a number of big ideas that will be part of this collective effort.

We must continue to create a culture of engagement, open communication, excitement, and fun. We must actively support Simpson’s sports, performing arts, Greek, and multiple other co-curricular activities. We must continue to identify and execute on visionary opportunities in academics and co-curricular activities. And we must not fear, but embrace, new technologies, while at the same time ensuring academic integrity.  

Simpson has a long history of delivering best-in-class personalized classroom instruction in core academic competencies. Simpson also instills a commitment to lifelong learning and is effective at teaching those soft skills, or as I like to call them, power skills or life skills, such as leadership development, teamwork, collaboration, communication, problem solving, analytical reasoning, adaptability, project management, and more. These are critically important competencies that transcend a lifetime of jobs and careers and cannot easily be replaced by artificial intelligence or machine learning. Moving forward, we must elevate our efforts to integrate these critically important life skills into our curriculum and overall student programming. 

One of our top objectives as a college is to deliver an experience that prepares students for life post college – both within careers and also as people. About 10 years ago, Gallup established what they termed as the “Big Six” student experiences that have a direct positive impact for college graduates on career engagement and overall happiness and well-being.

Those experiences include: Having a professor who made the student excited about learning; Feeling that professors cared about the student as a person; Finding a mentor who encouraged the student to pursue goals and dreams; Working on a project that took a semester or more to complete; Having an internship or job that allowed the student to apply what they were learning in the classroom; and Participating actively in extracurricular activities.

These six factors are strongly correlated with being prepared for life after college. How many of these experiences did all of you have as a student? Graduating Simpson students are asked if they feel they have had those experiences during their time on campus. Nationally, the most common response was only one of the six. At Simpson, it’s five. Moving forward, we should strive to give our students an opportunity to achieve six out of six. 

Similarly, the National Survey of Student Engagement measures high impact experiences, including studying abroad, having an internship, conducting research with faculty, service learning, learning communities, and a culminating senior experience. In the most recent survey, 94% of Simpson seniors reporting having at least two of these experiences. This score led every peer group we were compared against, including besting the national average for similar institutions by a full 25 percentage points. Moving forward, we have to opportunity to further increase the number of these high-impact experiences for our students.

As part of these efforts, we also have the opportunity to strengthen our workforce development strategies. Simpson College has for many years played a pivotal role in helping our region and state meet its workforce needs. Approximately 74% of our students currently are from Iowa, whereas 80% stay in Iowa post graduation. We are a net importer of talent and play a key role in recruiting, retaining, and skilling up Central Iowa’s workforce.   

Simpson is uniquely positioned to build more and stronger talent pipelines with Central Iowa employers and create closer alignment with their current and future workforce needs through our curriculum, internships, and career planning and placement strategies. We also have the opportunity to be a key partner with Central Iowa employers to develop innovative learning models to help upskill the current workforce.

We must also continue to expand, build out and integrate our Simpson Online and Graduate Studies. This should also include offering more certificate and stackable credential courses.

Liberal arts education was in many ways founded on the importance of creating a highly informed, actively engaged citizenry that is committed to public service. These values are deeply embedded out Methodist tradition and in Simpson’s mission that is focused on transforming students to transform the world. I would argue that our state, country, and world need Simpson graduates with a commitment to these values now more than ever. 

In today’s world of extreme political polarization, what role can and should Simpson College play? You may be surprised to learn that our 2023 Diverse Learning Environments survey found that almost 40% of our students identify as middle of the road, one quarter as conservative, one quarter as liberal, and the remaining of those that responded spread between far left and far right—A true bell curve of political beliefs.  

The All In Campus Democracy Challenge recently recognized Simpson for our nonpartisan democratic engagement efforts that fostered high levels of student voter engagement in the 2022 midterm elections.  

How can we continue to build on this non-partisan civic success? Can we help bridge the gaps between urban, suburban, and rural Iowa, between Democrats and Republicans, between red and blue? Can we be that place that can be a model of civility; a place where it is OK to be a strong advocate and to disagree without being disagreeable? Can we seek first to understand, then to be understood? Can we be a place that is truly welcoming to all?  

Can we continue to embrace free speech, academic freedom, and true diversity of thought? Can we help change the narrative from my side is right and your side is evil? Can we try to better understand opposing arguments and perhaps even find common ground? Can we help teach our students to not only survive, but thrive in today’s political environment. Can we be a place that can bring together a diverse set of stakeholders to find research-based common-sense solutions to complex community challenges?  

Being part of the robust Greater Des Moines region is a distinct advantage for us. We must continue to focus on strengthening our town and gown relationships with the City of Indianola, Warren County, and Indianola schools, along with other longtime key stakeholders, including the United Methodist Church, the Des Moines Metro Opera, the National Balloon Classic, the Indianola Chamber of Commerce, the Warren County Economic Development Corporation and many others.  

A stronger Simpson makes our city, county, region, and state stronger, and vice-versa and a strong, vibrant community makes Simpson stronger.

We must continue to work together to advance prioritized infrastructure projects and identify the resources to make it happen. These projects include re-envisioning Pfieffer Dining Hall and Great Hall, upgrading and adding to our housing portfolio, continuing to invest in our athletics and performing arts facilities, and addressing a long list of other deferred maintenance projects.  

I am pleased to share that we are working on putting together the framework for a building new comprehensive campaign. We must continue to strengthen connectivity with our alumni and grow our donor base. 

Together, we have the opportunity to make Simpson College a national model of success for small liberal arts colleges. Together, we can and we will take our future by storm.

Let’s make it happen! Our time is NOW! Thanks again for being here today. Roll Storm!