In early December, during a meet-and-greet with the community shortly after the Rev. Brian Konkol was announced as Valparaiso University’s 20th president, he said being president of Valpo was his dream job.
Now that he’s more than six months into the role and his first full academic year on campus is about to get underway, Konkol feels the same and perhaps with good reason — university enrollment and donations are on the upswing after challenging times.
“Everyone has been telling me that being a university president is supposed to be one of the most difficult jobs in the world and I didn’t get that memo,” he said Thursday morning, sitting in his office and jokingly asking visitors not to look at the shelves along the wall, since he’s still unpacking.
“I’ve never been better and I’m having an amazing time.”
Valparaiso University, like other universities across the nation, has struggled to maintain enrollment, much less see it grow, over the past several years. The COVID-19 pandemic was only part of the challenge as Valpo saw faculty and staff cuts, and the dropping of multiple academic programs.
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All of that came just a few years after the university shuttered its law school, and as the university was mired in a national controversy over the sale of cornerstone artwork from its campus museum to fund dorm renovations for first-year students.
Additionally, the university’s Faculty Senate passed a vote of no confidence in Konkol’s predecessor, José Padilla, in October 2024. Padilla later announced his retirement after five years, effective at the end of last year.
Konkol, who readily admits that he bears more than a passing resemblance to Orville Redenbacher, the Valparaiso native and popcorn icon who also was bespectacled and a fan of bow ties, said he’s excited to share the good things going on at the university.
Fundraising is up by 80%. Just over 98% of all graduates go immediately on to a job or to further their education, and 88% of undergrads finish their degrees in four years or less.
“The data is there, the facts are there and part of my role is shining a light and holding up a mirror,” Konkol said. Shining a light on the university and its mission of service, Konkol said, and holding up a mirror to the faculty and staff, to reflect the work they do.
Additionally, said Konkol and LeAnn Hughes, the university’s senior vice president for enrollment and marketing, undergraduate enrollment deposits are up for the first time in 10 years. The number of new students, including undergraduate, graduate and transfers, is around 680, a 5% increase.
That puts Valpo ahead of other universities, according to statistics from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s website, which issues annual enrollment reports, most recently in the spring.
According to those figures, undergraduate enrollment gains for the last academic year came primarily from public universities; community colleges grew 3.1% and public 4-year institutions grew 1.5%.
Enrollment at private nonprofit and private for-profit 4-year institutions, meanwhile, was essentially unchanged, according to the website. Additionally, master’s program enrollment fell 1.3%.
“We feel, without a doubt, the first year-over-year increase in 10 years is going to happen this year,” Hughes said. “That is not the case across the country or in the region. There are a lot of schools that are down this year.”
Hughes, who started in her role in July 2025, attributed the uptick to outreach by faculty, staff and current students to prospective enrollees, including students reaching out with personal notes and on social media.
An early, personal connection, Hughes said, helps not only with enrollment but also retention.
“I came in and saw this was really a distinctive place,” and the admission staff wanted to share that story, said Hughes, who came to Valpo from Illinois Wesleyan University.
When Konkol started as president, she said, “it felt like a puzzle piece snapped into place because we were aligned with the same thinking. We have a sense of who we are and that we can be unique in higher education.”
The university, she said, is building momentum, and “telling our story is going to be more and more important.”
The work also comes with an understanding of the science and data of the existing student population, Hughes said, and estimating how to build that up.
“I feel there’s so much potential. We are going to continue to grow,” she said, expecting that growth to take four or five years.
The university also wants to expand its international student population, something Hughes said is a challenge at all schools. According to the Clearinghouse Research Center’s website, graduate international student enrollment declined 4.3%.
At Valpo, the number of undergraduate international students for the coming year is in the single digits, Hughes said. To achieve growth for both undergrad and graduate students, the admissions office is sending two staff members to India under memorandums of understanding and partnerships with organizations in that country.
“There’s opportunity out there in the international space,” she said, adding it’s a matter of timing and creating those opportunities.
Konkol came to Valparaiso University by way of Syracuse University, where he was a vice president, dean and professor, and was a member of the Chancellor’s Executive Team. He grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, and has done ministerial work in Guyana and South Africa.
At a time when so much of society is divisive, Konkol said, he sees Valpo as a place that brings people together. The university, he added, wants to see its students get great jobs and also be great people.
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He is excited to see that more people want to know more about Valpo.
“We need to be confident in what we’re trying to do here,” he said. “Clearly, we are resonating in this world that we find ourselves in. More and more people are realizing the world needs more Valpo grads.”
Since arriving in Valparaiso, Konkol has met community leaders and immersed himself in the campus. Konkol spent six months living in the student dorms, moving to a private room in a different dorm each week.
He spent his first week in Alumni Hall and, as he walked through the building with a duffel bag, admitted he wondered what a middle-aged man was doing in a college dorm. At around 10 p.m. on the third night, though, a group of students knocked on his door. They asked if he wanted to play ping pong.
Likewise, he moved his office from building to building so he could get to know the university’s faculty and staff. He only recently moved into his office in Kretzmann Hall and the president’s house after his many moves, which Konkol said allowed him “to meet people who might not otherwise have gotten on my calendar.”
From the faculty’s perspective, said Bharath Ganesh Babu, a geography professor going into his fifth year as president of the Faculty Senate, “between the board, the faculty and the administration, in the last year or so, we’ve had much more open communication.”
The board is listening to the faculty, he said, and so is the current university administration and Konkol.
“He not only listens but he takes advice from faculty and staff,” Babu said. “He really has been wonderful in engaging with the faculty and quickly understanding the dynamics of higher education.”
Babu took part in the interview process when Konkol was under consideration as university president. Konkol, Babu said, sees working at Valpo as a privilege and is very sincere.
“He’s going back to the mission of the university” as a Lutheran institution, Babu said, adding later, “We are building lives for good. That’s what we do.”