More Than One Kind of Growth (Sponsor Letter)

SBJ file

Jeff Frederick, Ph.D., President, Drury University

I grew up in Orlando, Florida, a city that greeted my arrival to town as an elementary school student with orange groves, theme parks both in operation and on the drawing board, traffic, a heaping helping of humidity, and a host of community conversations about growth. While the orange groves are mostly gone, the other issues are still served up daily as folks wrestle with what’s next for the metropolitan statistical area noted by the Census Bureau as the fastest growing in the country. Immediately before coming to Drury and Springfield last year, I lived for four years just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, the fifth fastest growing MSA and the fourteenth largest city in the country. Charlotte, like Springfield a Queen City, has a net migration of over 100 people per day. I’ve witnessed some growth.

Springfield should not aspire to be either Orlando or Charlotte, but to be bold in our own way, accentuating our advantages in education, healthcare, banking, non-profit, manufacturing, recreation, and lifestyle, while intentionally honoring what’s unique about our city, community, and region. While admittedly only a resident for a year, I’ve seen firsthand the power of partnerships, community and civic engagement, and what can come from civil, honest, respectful conversations. Our food, music and arts scene, outdoors, airport, and growing population set up ideally for future workforce that wants a career but, just as importantly, wants a home. Springfield, like Orlando and Charlotte, has a bustling college scene with a range of choices. Universities are economic magnets and can drive industry growth in virtually all sectors given the proximity to emerging talent, innovation, faculty expertise, and fresh perspectives. By the way, if you haven’t had an intern from Drury or any of the other colleges or universities in town, get in touch; you will see what I mean by fresh perspectives and it will be mutually beneficial.

Springfield has positioned itself well in the last two decades to be a true third axis in the state, but we have to seize that opportunity. With thought leaders in the legislature, new leaders in many anchor institutions, and a tradition of cooperation, Springfield is poised to add to our growth profile in many ways. Growth is not just population; it’s impact, and it depends on leaders all over the region that think, listen, learn, build relationships, and are intellectually curious. Growth is more than just new and expanded businesses; it’s a process of gaining depth and breadth of economic and natural sustainability. It’s not just adding more of what we have; it’s including all voices until our city’s tremendous advantages are available to all who want to grow alongside us. Growth is a conscientious effort to provide a metropolitan living and working environment that helps our residents, current and future, to reach their dreams. Will we get more traffic? Maybe. But it will be people who have come to Springfield because they know that can get to everything they want and need in our city. Will growth make our problems go away? Surely not all of them, but it will open opportunities to find plenty of solutions that are not quite within our collective grasp today.

The antithesis of growth is either stagnation or atrophy, and neither are desirable. Be bold, Springfield; we are ready. We’ve got this. 

—Jeff Frederick, Ph.D.
President, Drury University