NEWS
NEWS
New Multicultural Center Will Champion Enduring Values
Photo by Bobby Ellis
By Marc Ransford, ’83 MA ’07
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t Homecoming 2019, ground was broken for Ball State’s The policy took effect for the freshman class that started new Multicultural Center, east of Bracken Library. classes in Fall 2019. It is based on research that shows high The $4 million, approximately 10,500-square-foot facility school grade point averages are the strongest predictor for will open in 2020. It will contain open collaboration space student success. The policy enables Ball State to provide for student organizations and peer advocate leaders; an exceptional educational experience accessible to more a multipurpose room for meetings and presentations; first-generation and minority students. Results can be seen administrative offices; exhibition space for cultural artwork with this year’s freshman class being the most diverse in that represent the values of inclusive excellence; and a Ball State’s history. small café. The center will be adjacent to the new East Mall, which will make the campus friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists and connect them to the north end of campus and The Village. As President Geoffrey S. Mearns explained, the location was deliberately selected to be “in the center of our campus. That is the message we want to send — that diversity and inclusion must always be at the center of all that we do.” For the fourth consecutive year, the University received a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity, the oldest and largest diversity magazine and website in higher education. About 20 percent of Ball State students are from underrepresented populations. The University continues to make enrollment of underrepresented students a priority and last year announced a new test-optional This artist’s rendering shows what the new Multicultural Center will look like when completed undergraduate admissions policy. in 2020. University leaders break ground on the center, to be built at the center of campus.
Photo by Don Rogers
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Ball State University Alumni Magazine
Partnership Takes Flight The dream to transform Muncie Community Schools moves forward. By Kate H. Elliott
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avid and Christina (Saylor) Smith, MA ’00, could have left. They could have taken their boys out of Muncie Community Schools (MCS) when the “distressed” district closed their neighborhood elementary school. But they didn’t, and they won’t. “This is where we live, and we’re going to give it everything we’ve got,” said David, MA ’08. “Our boys have great schools and opportunities. My hope is that our city will embrace what we have and fight together for what we can be.” Chuck Reynolds, associate superintendent of MCS, could have stayed in his job as an administrator for a nearby district. Instead, he came back to MCS, where he attended as a boy and where his two sons have been enrolled since kindergarten. Reynolds taught or served as a principal for the district for 14 years, and also led the “Spirit of South” Marching Band & Guard to statewide acclaim. “I grew up in a single-parent, blended family home, struggling to scrape by even with government assistance. But, thanks to caring MCS teachers, I knew I didn’t have to let my circumstances define my future,” said Reynolds, ’98, who later earned three post-graduate education degrees from Ball State. “Because I grew up here, I know of the district’s unparalleled academic, cocurricular, and extracurricular opportunities. I will, and we must, invest in MCS students and families to realize the full potential of tomorrow.”
Students at West View Elementary play under a parachute during the last day of the school year in 2018. With the partnership, the district has stabilized enrollment and expanded high-quality preschools.
That grit and determination has taken hold as Ball State and MCS embarked this Fall on Year Two of the nation’s first public school district–public university partnership, one that is striving to transform the district into a national model for innovative education.
Shared purpose The financially struggling district had been under state supervision for a year when the Indiana Legislature approved the partnership in May 2018. In the Summer of that year, University trustees approved a seven-member school board that Ball State appointed, and within days the board began collaborating with MCS administrators to re-imagine education for the district’s nearly 5,000 pre-K-12 students. So far, the partnership has yielded enrollment stability, millions in philanthropic investments, and the first pay raise for teachers in eight years. Other accomplishments in its first academic year included a budget surplus, about $9 million in improvements to MCS buildings, and expansion of high-quality preschools across the district.
Fall/Winter 2019–20
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