Is Wichita State University basketball the key to prosperity?

Carbondale, Evansville and Cedar Falls vs. Houston, Orlando and Philadelphia.

Feel a difference?

The move from the Missouri Valley Conference to the American Athletic Conference will drive Wichita State University’s enrollment and research higher, and, ultimately, lift the Wichita economy.

Or, so says WSU President John Bardo, who led the move, which officially goes into place July 1.

Contrary to what most people think, Bardo said, the switch in conferences is more about university advancement than sports. It’s about associating with larger, more metropolitan, more research-focused institutions, even if the association is technically only through sports.

The AAC includes: the University of Connecticut, near Hartford; the University of Cincinnati; the University of Central Florida in Orlando; East Carolina University, in Greenville, N.C.; the University of Houston; University of Memphis; U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Md., near Washington, D.C.; University of South Florida in Tampa; Southern Methodist University in Dallas; Temple University in Philadelphia; University of Tulsa; and Tulane University in New Orleans.

With the exception of East Carolina and Tulsa, they are all in metro areas of more than 1 million people, and Tulsa has almost reached that milestone. All are ranked as strong or very strong research universities.

That’s a contrast with the Missouri Valley. With the exception of Loyola of Chicago, the home cities are smaller than Wichita. Only a few have a strong research mission.

There’s still plenty of skepticism out there. After all, WSU still draws students largely from Kansas, not Florida or Texas. Faculty members will still have to generate their own research opportunities.

But Bardo sees this as just one piece of an overall effort to supercharge the university’s growth and its economic development efforts, along with developing the Innovation Campus, merging with Wichita Area Technical College, increasing enrollment and boosting the numbers of students living on campus.

“We will be better off in five years than we were because we will have a national direction and a leadership that wants things to happen,” Bardo said.

Bardo’s vision

Bardo sees the new conference largely as a rebranding exercise.

Associating with the AAC schools puts WSU in more prestigious company, both the universities and their cities, and that translates into a higher profile in the minds of more high school seniors across a much larger part of the country, he said.

“Yes, it’s a sports move and, yes, it will have impact,” Bardo said.

“But I see it much more as a recognition of what the institution is. To me that was much more important than having more competitive basketball.”

The university’s enrollment has fallen about 10 percent over the last five years, to 17,100. But recent efforts to boost incoming high-schoolers – including from out of state – are starting to pay off, Bardo said.

WSU has already benefited from increased name recognition, he said. Last fall, WSU had the biggest incoming high school class in history.

The next step, he said, is for the university to figure out how to keep them here. Right now, 25 to 30 percent of incoming freshmen disappear before their sophomore year.

The AAC affiliation will further boost the number of incoming freshmen, Bardo said, by bringing in more out-of-state students because of increased name recognition — especially in the big AAC cities — and creating a positive association with the name. That’s old hat in advertising, and a successful sports team is great advertising, he said.

“This is a background impact,” he said. “It’s on the sports blogs, it’s on social media, it’s in their newspapers, it’s on their television, it’s on their Facebook pages, it’s around. So that you are now part of the conversation.”

Research

Bardo also maintains that the move will lead to higher levels of research, which could spin off technologies and, ultimately, jobs and investment.

Wichita is classified as an R2 research university, with a “higher” level of research activity. WSU has long been a top program for research funding in aerospace and, to a lesser extent, more broadly in engineering, but has relatively little in other areas.

In 2015, according to the National Science Foundation, WSU researchers secured $60 million for research. Of that, 78 percent went to engineering-related research with 64 percent devoted to one engineering sub-sector: aeronautical research. Most of that money comes from corporate grants.

WSU surpassed all nine of the Missouri Valley schools in research and development funding, but will be in the bottom half of AAC schools. The University of Central Florida had $216 million in research and development funding in 2015, balanced across a dozen sectors and subsectors.

Bardo points to UCF, which has enrollment of nearly 63,000 students, as a model for the direction he would like for WSU.

But there is skepticism among some faculty. The AAC is a sports conference, with little formal role in building academic or research ties among institutions.

Bardo sees federal research dollars flattening or declining in the coming years. Already well supported by corporate-sponsored research in aircraft, WSU will benefit from a higher national profile in its efforts to find corporate research dollars in other areas.

“With an increasing reputation, we are now well positioned to get those research dollars,” he said.

Already one WSU faculty member said she is sure there will be a research benefit from the AAC.

Julie Scherz, chair of the communications sciences and disorders department, is WSU’s National Collegiate Athletics Association faculty athletic representative.

The one formal academic program that the AAC offers is the Academic Consortium, which offers research grants to study student-athlete well-being. She has an interest in studying athletes who return to the classroom after sustaining concussions and is enthusiastic about the possibilities of the AAC collaboration.

“Very broadly, the campuses that we are becoming affiliated with are in bigger cities, with access to different kinds of research facilities, different ways of looking at research and academics,” she said. “Many of them have medical schools or other professional schools.

“I just see it as a bigger stage, not just athletically, but academically as well.”

Chess pieces

In Bardo’s mind, the move to the AAC is part of a “chess game” with many moving pieces.

The Innovation Campus will be a stronger way to encourage research, he said, by bringing companies such as Airbus and Dassault onto campus. The expectation is those companies will work with students and faculty.

He pointed to Dassault’s collaboration with the National Institute for Aviation Research to build the 3DExperience, a 3-D virtual reality simulator.

Another piece, he said, is the merger with WATC to offer a seamless connection between a two-year technical education and a four- or six-year theoretical one, such as the move from an aircraft mechanic to an aircraft engineer.

And, he said, it means expanding the university’s student recruitment and business partnership reach up and down the I-35 corridor between Dallas and Kansas City. The university has hired student recruiters for Tulsa/Oklahoma City, Dallas and, this spring, Kansas City. The university will offer students in those cities in-state tuition.

It’s also adding dormitory space to raise the percentage of students living on campus from 9 percent to 25 percent, nearly a tripling of current dorm space. More dorms and services such as hotels and restaurants on campus will increase the university’s ability to bring in more out-of-state students and develop more of campus atmosphere.

“All of these things tie together,” he said. “If you’re sitting there as an outsider you’re saying, ‘They’re doing all these weird things.’

“But they actually are all part of one chess game, and we’re aiming toward checkmate. And checkmate is making sure the university is growing, is positive and supporting the region and community.”

This story was originally published June 24, 2017 at 3:38 PM with the headline "Is Wichita State University basketball the key to prosperity?."