University of Southern Indiana

The University of Southern Indiana (USI) is a public university just outside of Evansville, Indiana. Founded in 1965, USI enrolls 10,929 dual credit, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students in more than 80 majors. USI offers programs through the College of Liberal Arts, Romain College of Business, College of Nursing and Health Professions and the Pott College of Science, Engineering, and Education. USI is a member of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. It is also a Carnegie Foundation Community Engaged University which offers continuing education and special programs to more than 15,000 participants annually through outreach and engagement.[3]

University of Southern Indiana
MottoKnowledge for Life
TypePublic
EstablishedSeptember 15, 1965
As Indiana State University - Evansville
April 16, 1985
As University of Southern Indiana[1]
Academic affiliations
American Association of State Colleges and Universities
Space-grant
EndowmentUS $103 million[2]
PresidentDr. Ronald Rochon
ProvostDr. Mohammed Khayum
Academic staff
677
Students9,027
Undergraduates7,719
Postgraduates1,308
Location
Evansville
,
Indiana
,
United States

37.962589°N 87.67607°W / 37.962589; -87.67607
CampusSuburban, 1,400 acres (6 km2)
ColorsCardinal, Navy, White
     
NicknameScreaming Eagles
Sporting affiliations
Great Lakes Valley Conference
Sports17 NCAA Division II teams
MascotArchibald Eagle (Archie)
Websiteusi.edu

USI athletic teams participate in Division II of the NCAA and are known as the Screaming Eagles. USI is a member of the Great Lakes Valley Conference. The university is home to an extensive student life, with more than 140 student organizations.

History
Members of Indiana State University, Southern Indiana Higher Education (SIHE), Indiana State University Evansville (ISUE) and the Evansville community gathered to break ground on the new campus.

The University of Southern Indiana began as a regional campus of Indiana State University, opening on September 15, 1965. In 1967, Southern Indiana Higher Education, Inc., (SIHE) raised nearly $1 million to acquire 1,400 acres for the Mid-America University Center. Groundbreaking was held June 22, 1968. Since September 1969, the University has occupied 330 acres, mostly donated by SIHE. The first buildings constructed were the Science Center and the Wright Administration Building. Slowly the school built facilities, as funding became available during the Indiana State University-Evansville period.

On April 16, 1985, ISU-Evansville became an autonomous four-year institution, the University of Southern Indiana. Governor Robert D. Orr, an Evansville native, signed the newly independent school's charter. Since gaining its independence, USI's growth has continued to where it is now the fastest growing comprehensive university in the state.[4] The university established student housing, diversified the programs offered, and enrollment has more than doubled since gaining its independence. In October, 2006, the university completed a master plan that provides the framework to double the size of the school and support a campus of over 20,000 students. The master plan features key planning principles to guide the university and help it create a cohesive campus as it continues to grow.[5]

Academics
Liberal Arts Center and Business and Engineering Center

Academic Units

USI offers over 70 undergraduate majors, 13 master's programs, and two doctoral programs as of the fall 2018 semester. Divisions of the University include the Romain College of Business, College of Liberal Arts, College of Nursing and Health Professions, Pott College of Science, Engineering, and Education, University Division, and Division of Outreach and Engagement.[6] Each college is led by a dean who reports to the provost and vice president for Academic Affairs. USI employs 652 full-time faculty, lecturers, and academic administrators, and 239 part-time faculty.[7]

The university is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and carries several discipline-specific accreditations as well, including from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, and ABET.

The New Harmony Theatre

The New Harmony Theatre is a professional theatre operating in nearby New Harmony, Indiana under an agreement with Actors' Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States. In fall 2007, USI Theatre partnered with The New Harmony Theatre on The Repertory Project, which allows top Theatre students to perform with Equity actors. Student actors and stage managers involved in The Repertory Project earn points toward joining the union, a membership that is considered the “gold standard” for theatre professionals.

Historic Southern Indiana

Historic Southern Indiana (HSI) is an outreach organization dedicated to preserving, enhancing, and promoting the abundant historical, natural, and recreational resources of southern Indiana. As a community outreach program of the University of Southern Indiana, HSI hosts workshops, produces publications, conducts visitor research, and facilitates and coordinates with many groups and agencies with the goal of creating a sense of regional identity and pride. The Heritage Area contains numerous sites of historical significance, including Vincennes, Corydon, New Harmony, Madison, and Abraham Lincoln's boyhood home. Forests, caves, rivers, and lakes offer scenic beauty and recreational activities.

Center for Communal Studies

The USI Center for Communal Studies is a clearinghouse for information, a research facility, and a sponsor of activities related to historic and contemporary intentional communities. The center encourages and facilitates meetings, classes, scholarships, publications, networking and public interest in communal groups past and present, here and abroad. The center archives contain primary and secondary materials on more than 100 historic communes and several hundred collective, cooperative, and co-housing communities founded since 1965. Noted communal scholars have donated their private collections and their extensive research notes and papers to the center archives.

Center for Applied Research

The Center for Applied Research (CAR) works with businesses and organizations throughout the region to conduct research, consulting, and other applied projects.

Southwest Indiana STEM (SwISTEM) Resource Center

The Southwest Indiana STEM Resource Center offers a free-equipment lending service to K-12 public, private, and parochial school educators as well as informal educators in a seventeen-county region in southwest Indiana. Teacher professional development as well as an extensive line-up of K-12 student outreach activities are offered throughout the calendar year.

Rankings
  • Online graduate degree nursing program was ranked 15th in the categories of Admissions Selectivity and Faculty Credentials and Training in the 2012 U.S. News & World Report rankings.[8]
  • Students taking the Certified Management Accountant exam from the University of Southern Indiana had a pass rate of over 90% in 2018, one of only 4 schools nationally to cross this threshold.[9]

Student life
USI's University Center

Enrollment

Total USI enrollment is 11,033 for the 2017 fall semester, which includes students in undergraduate and graduate degree programs and 2,016 students enrolled in USI's College Achievement Program (CAP) classes in 27 high schools across Indiana. Students at USI represent 90 Indiana counties, 39 states and 70 countries. Out of state enrollment, including international students, makes up approximately 17% of the student population, and minority and international students comprise more than 14%.[10]

More than 40,000 students have graduated since 1971.[11] About 74% of USI's graduates remain in Indiana. The university serves an additional 16,000 persons annually through comprehensive noncredit programs of short duration.

Housing

Nearly all students who live on campus (with the exception of some freshmen who are housed in modern suite-style facilities) are assigned apartments with full kitchens. USI's four Residence Halls (Newman, Governor's, O'Bannon, and Ruston), located on the South side of campus, are freshmen-only modern suites. The apartments, located on the Northeastern side of campus, accommodate all other campus residents (including freshmen).

Greek life

Fraternities:

Sororities:

Former Fraternities and Sororities:

Campus

USI's campus, located on 1400 acres (5.7 km2) of land west of Evansville, is accessed by University Parkway off of the Lloyd Expressway (IN-62). It is marked at the center by University Center East and West, which houses conference space, campus dining, offices and the campus store and by Reflection Lake to the west. The campus is connected to Burdette Park by the 3-mile, paved USI-Burdette Trail, and multiple lakeside and forest trails are available to the public through the Bent Twig Outdoor Education Center.

South of the University Center is the Quad, an open-air lawn flanked by David L. Rice Library (completed in 2006)[13] and academic buildings for the College of Liberal Arts and Romain College of Business. Academic buildings for the College of Nursing and Health Professions and Pott College, as well as university administration and forum classrooms, are located north of University Center.

The total number of classrooms has more than doubled since the opening of the campus in 1967. Recent additions to the campus include the Business and Engineering Center (opened in 2010), the Applied Engineering Center (2013), the Performance Center (2014) and the Griffin Center (2016).

Athletics and Recreation
Screaming Eagles Arena

USI Basketball and Volleyball games are located in Screaming Eagles Arena, which opened on campus in 2019. Additionally, students have access to the Physical Activities Center, which also houses training facilities for student athletes. An aquatic center featuring a competition-length pool, as well as expansions and renovations to the Physical Activities Center, are currently under construction

Baseball, softball and soccer games all take place on campus. USI students and faculty also have access to the Recreation, Fitness and Wellness Center.

Historic New Harmony

In cooperation with the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites, USI manages programs and properties in Historic New Harmony, site of two historic communal societies of the early 19th century, the Harmony Society and the Robert Owen/William Maclure communal experiment.[14]

  • Rice Library
  • The Atheneum, home of Historic New Harmony
  • USI's University Center
  • Trees on USI's campus
  • Fountain and plaza area

Media

USI is home to the Southern Indiana Review, a national literary journal. Stories published in the Southern Indiana Review have been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories and the Best American Essays.

The university contains within it three media outlets including the award-winning radio station, The Spin/WSWI, the student-run television station SETV12 Access UWSI, and the two-time "Division II Newspaper of the Year" student newspaper, The Shield. All programs are completely student-run entities within the campus that deal with student and community related topics and discussions.

Athletics
Main article: Southern Indiana Screaming Eagles
USI's Physical Activities Center. Known also as "PAC Arena" or simply "The PAC" as it looked in 2012. The PAC is currently undergoing a major renovation.
Display case at the Ford Center in Downtown Evansville, honoring USI's national championship in basketball

The athletic teams of USI are known as the Screaming Eagles. The university competes at the NCAA Division II level as members of the Great Lakes Valley Conference. USI sponsors 17 varsity intercollegiate sports. The school has won four NCAA national championships (men's basketball, 1995; baseball, 2010 and 2014; softball, 2018), finished three times as the national finalist (men's basketball, 1994 and 2004; and women's basketball 1997), and earned two third-place finishes (men's cross country, 1982; baseball, 2007). The men's and women's cross country/track teams have produced five individual national championships since 1997.

Notable alumni

References
  1. "About USI - History". www.usi.edu. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  2. "2015 Annual Report" (PDF). University of Southern Indiana. Retrieved 2016-02-02.
  3. Farless, John. "Carnegie selects USI for Community Engagement Classification". USI University Communications. University of Southern Indiana. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
  4. "University of Southern Indiana". Indiana College Network. Retrieved 2006-12-18.
  5. "USI Master Plan" (PDF). University of Southern Indiana. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-26. Retrieved 2007-04-22.
  6. "About the College". University of Southern Indiana. Archived from the original on 2013-01-27. Retrieved 2012-12-26.
  7. "About USI". University of Southern Indiana. Retrieved 2015-03-31.
  8. "USI online graduate program ranks high - University of Southern Indiana". www.usi.edu. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  9. "University scores in top five nationally on accounting exam". Retrieved April 15, 2019.
  10. Services, USI Web. "USI sets record enrollment in graduate programs - University of Southern Indiana". www.usi.edu. Retrieved 2017-09-18.
  11. Services, USI Web. "Class of 2017 will bring USI alumni to more than 40,000 - University of Southern Indiana". www.usi.edu. Retrieved 2017-09-18.
  12. "USI withdraws recognition of Indiana Lambda chapter of Phi Delta Theta, charter removed". Evansville Courier & Press. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  13. American School and University magazine recognized Rice Library, designed by Hafer Assocatates, PC, and the Indianapolis-based architectural firm of Woollen, Molzan and Partners, in the Outstanding Designs, Post-Secondary category of its annual Architectural Portfolio competition for 2006. See: "Outstanding Designs, Post-Secondary". American School and University. 79 (3): 161. November 2006.
  14. "Historic New Harmony". Retrieved 2008-10-29.
  15. Lindskog, Chad (April 7, 2020). "Lindskog: USI's new coach is a bridge to the glory days. That brings high expectations". Commercial-News. Retrieved April 11, 2020.
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