Starting at Bend Gate Elementary School and then to South Junior High School, Henderson County High School, Henderson Community College and finishing his education at University of Southern Indiana, the thought of becoming the USI president never crossed Steve Bridges’ mind.
“I never expected it,” he said. “Never thought about it.”
Bridges last Wednesday was named USI’s fifth president and its first to have been a graduate of the institution. Bridges earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master of business administration from USI.
Growing up, he thought he’d like to be a police officer or maybe a sportswriter.
But a “fork in the road” moment occurred when he met with Mike Thompson, his advisor when he was at HCC. Bridges by this point had narrowed his major to either accounting or business. He chose accounting, on Thompson’s advice.
At USI, he finished his schooling in December 1988 and soon accepted his first job as an accountant for the university. He’s been there since.
Part of his success is “being open to the doors that open,” Bridges said. He tells USI students this very thing—be ready for opportunities you may not have seen coming.
Connected to this is another piece of Bridges’ wisdom.
When a person joins a team, he said, “you look for the places where you can help the team…where you can make a difference.”
In some sense, looking for a place to make a difference has led Bridges all the way to the presidency. One of his first campus-wide projects was the implementation of university cards, those with which a student can buy meals, get into ballgames, etc. That was in 1999.
Later he took a role in which he implemented administrative software that included alumni information, financial aid and the human resources system. That took three years of his life, he said.
Bridges said he didn’t know much about either of those initiatives before he started on them but thought he could help. With that same feeling, he looked at the opening for interim president last summer when former President Dr. Ron Rochon left to take a position at California State University, Fullerton.
As vice president for finance and administration, Bridges worked closely with Rochon for years, and so when the school needed to fill the interim president position, he saw another opportunity to help the team and make a difference.
“I knew the work,” Bridges said. “I felt a sense of loyalty to the institution, and I knew I could keep moving us forward.”
He said in other interim situations, universities bring people in from the outside who don’t know the workings of the institution. Because he knows USI so well, Bridges said he felt that he could keep USI moving forward while the search committee did its work.
He said he expected to only be in the president’s spot during the interim. But then about a month into the interim position “it became clear to me that I had a future in the position.”
That belief came from the feedback he was getting from faculty and staff, students, alumni, donors and officials at the state level, he said. It was also “refreshing” to get away from the financial side of the institution and be more of a people person, he said.
Now at the helm, Bridges said the university has some initiatives to go after. There are several capital projects such as renovating the Orr Center and the Arts Center and building a Center of Applied Technology and a STEM innovation lab. To get those underway, the school has asked for $43 million in funding from the state legislature, Bridges said.
Additionally, Bridges wants to increase enrollment. Currently, USI has a total enrollment of about 9,500 students but more than 2,000 of those are high school students taking some college courses. Bridges said the total of true undergraduate and graduate students is about 7,200. The school wants to be in the 10,000-student range for undergrad and graduate students in the next five years, the president said.
He said that’s a tough goal but “we’re going to push ourselves.”
In all his 30-plus years working at the university, Bridges has trekked across the Twin Bridges to get to and from school. That will change when renovation work is completed at university’s president home, which is scheduled to be finished in January 2026.
Bridges joked that now he’ll switch spots with his wife, Rosemary, who will have to drive to and from work across the bridge. She works the front desk for Holy Name School.
The couple will keep their Henderson home and still use it, but what that looks like exactly they’re not sure. Their family—three children and four, with a fifth on the way, grandchildren—live in Henderson.
In addition to living there, Bridges said the president home will be used on behalf of the university, where they’ll play host to state leaders, donors, students, supporters of athletics programs among other possibilities.
Rosemary said she’ll be ready for the gatherings that go with the life of a president. She grew up in a large family and is used to the busy events that came with that.
“I’m all in,” she said. “I’m here to support Steve and the university.”
