‘Growth Mindset’

Jeff Mitchell has hit the ground running since March 20, when he began his appointment as the new Director of Athletics at Ball State University. He arrived in Muncie following a four-year tenure as deputy director of athletics at the University of Southern Mississippi. In addition, Mr. Mitchell held various senior administrative roles for 12 years at Santa Clara University.

So, what are his early impressions of Ball State Athletics? Here’s a Q&A with Mr. Mitchell:

What are your priorities for the upcoming year?

The first priority has been to create depth in our department so that we can deliver on what our ultimate goal is—to dominate the Mid-American Conference (MAC). This is no different than the most competitive athletic teams which win with depth. We also are wanting to win organizationally with our depth, and we’ve been hiring the past few months for several positions as we prepare for this next year.

No. 2 is to build excitement for football season. That includes selling as many season tickets as we can, enhancing the game day atmosphere at Scheumann Stadium, creating an exciting pregame tailgate atmosphere for students and fans, and establishing a homefield advantage for the Cardinals. We then want to replicate that for basketball season and beyond.

We also want to continue to take a hard look at facilities plans that will enhance student-athlete development and show our commitment to student-athlete development.

What is your vision for Ball State Athletics?

I want us to be relentless in developing our student-athletes as athletes, scholars, and people, and I want to dominate the MAC. I want us to be the most comprehensively excellent athletic department in the Mid-American Conference. So that’s winning championships, being the best-in-class academically, having the most advanced compliance office, exceeding fundraising goals, having the most social media followers to promote our brand regionally and nationally, and so on.

I also want our student-athletes to graduate at high rates. In addition, if every student-athlete could win a conference championship at least once in their four years, that would be amazing. But we’ve got to put things in place to accomplish that vision and to sustain it. It’s ambitious, but with our mindset to continually pursue excellence, I believe we’re on track for success. We just won the Jacoby Trophy for the best women’s athletics department in the MAC, which hadn’t been done since 2003. We placed second in the Reese Trophy for the best men’s athletics department. So, it’s there for the taking. We just have to go do it.

What are some opportunities on which you believe Ball State Athletics can capitalize?

We’ve got to be courageous in the new landscape of NCAA athletics and be bold enough to lead from the front, as opposed to sitting back and waiting to react to whatever changes happen. An area where I’d like us to be a change agent is the new holistic approach to healthcare for student-athletes, which is inclusive not only of the traditional sports medicine offerings and strength and conditioning training, but also provides access to mental health services. We are going to hire an administrator who will oversee these areas and blend these elements of wellbeing to create a more healthy and competitive student-athlete who thrives at Ball State. That is a step that some institutions have probably taken to some extent, but not to the degree which I think we can do it in partnership with the experts that we have on our campus and in the Muncie community. I believe we can elevate the level of well-being of our student-athletes and set the bar for what the future of healthcare looks like in college athletics.

What courageous steps can Ball State Athletics take over the next few years to raise its profile?

One of the most basic steps that we can take is to be incredibly proud of who we are as an institution. I challenge all of us to embrace the strength of the Ball State brand and be aggressive in our promotion of the University as a leader in higher education in the 21st century and as a difference maker in intercollegiate athletics. We’re not afraid of change. We celebrate it. We can pivot and adjust with the best of them. We want to be the class of our league, and if we do that, then we will continue to be competitive on the national level.

We won six different conference championships and advanced to 11 postseason tournaments in 2022–2023. That’s remarkable and is a credit to our talented student-athletes and the devoted coaches and staff who mentor and support them. We also had some individual accomplishments that garnered national championships and distinctive acclaim. We celebrate those victories, promote them, and start to see them as the standard. And then we continue to elevate that. We don’t put limits on what we can accomplish together. The idea is to bust through that ceiling and continue to climb. I believe that part of our bold, courageous approach is to have a growth mindset and to not be satisfied with just being mediocre, but constantly seek to elevate Ball State as an institution. It’s crystal clear to me that the institution has that same approach. We’re in a healthy place right now institutionally, and athletics wants to be on the forefront of that effort to help that growth in a first-class way. I tell anyone who will listen that we are operating from a position of strength and that our growth mindset encourages us to make excellence routine.