In an effort to give every student what President Jo Ann Gora considers the “hallmark” of a Ball State education, the new strategic plan will expand immersive learning programs to each individual college.
Some graduates, such as Joe Frost, owe their current employment to their immersive learning undergrad experiences.
In spring of 2010, Frost participated in an immersive learning project through the Building Better Communities Fellows Program, partnering his group with the Wayne County Heritage Program. A year after graduating in December of 2010, Frost’s previous immersive learning experience opened up a new job opportunity with Indiana Landmarks through professor Ron Morris.
“I had worked with him and he was able to get me a great reference,” Frost said. “I really think that if it weren’t for that immersive learning experience, I wouldn’t be sitting at the desk I am right now.”
Immersive learning experiences, which formally entered Ball State’s goals as a university in 2007, when it became part of the Strategic Plan, has since grown exponentially and is now hailed as the “hallmark” of a Ball State education.
Between 2007 and 2012, about 16,400 students from all seven colleges have participated with faculty mentors and community partners in immersive learning projects.
GRANTS ENCOURAGE IMMERSIVE LEARNING
Faculty members who cannot secure funding for their immersive learning ideas have the opportunity to submit proposals to receive a provost grant. Thirty-two proposals for projects spanning from summer 2013 to spring 2014 were submitted to the Office of the Provost in the beginning of February.
Assistant to the Provost Jacquelyn Buckrop said the amount of money to be awarded is not known, but 14 grants were awarded for a total of around $209,000 in fall 2010.
The grant recipients are chosen by the Immersive Learning Faculty Advisory Committee, which consists of a representative from each college and representatives from both the Virginia B. Ball Center and Building Better Communities Fellows Program.
Chairperson of the department of sociology Melinda Messineo has been involved in immersive learning from all sides for the past ten years through the BBC Fellows program and the Virginia B. Ball Center.
She said the committee is open to a wide variety of ideas and looking to see innovation in the proposals.
“They really want to reward creativity and that’s exciting,” she said. “It encourages risk-taking. This process is encouraging faculty to get out of our rut and take some risks—risks we wouldn’t have taken otherwise.”
The committee will begin their debilitations on Feb. 18.
DESPITE FUNDING ISSUES
While Ball State is losing funding compared to schools like Indiana and Purdue universities, Gora said Ball State will continue to push “quality” education over “quantity,” through educational experiences like immersive learning.
“I think this is the right strategy for the university,” Gora said. “It is our hope that once we are able to speak with members of the legislature, that there will be recognition that a formula that is basically one size fits all is not a formula that can work for every institution. This is not the best way to support higher education in Indiana.”
For the third biennium in a row, Ball State received budget cuts from the state because of Indiana’s performance-based funding formula, which focuses on on-time graduation and rewards graduates in math and science fields, also known as STEM fields.
She said instead of pushing STEM graduates, the state should focus on retaining the college graduates it produces. Indiana is in the top half of the country in terms of college graduates, but many of these graduates then leave the state.
“The assumption is that the state needs more STEM graduates,” Gora said. “The problem in my mind is not the production of graduates, the problem is the recruitment of business and firms that will recruit the graduates that we and the other institutions in the state produce.”
Under the new Strategic Plan, a goal is that each undergraduate department offers at least one immersive learning opportunity each year. Another is for immersive learning to be recognized in promotion and salary documents, and for ten scholarly articles reporting on immersive learning to be published.
The university also encourages immersive learning with monetary incentives for the departments that sponsor these experiences. Faculty can fund their immersive learning projects through their department or by going through either the Virginia B. Ball Center or Building Better Communities Fellows, both of which are selective in their program offerings.
REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE
Gora said the university’s initiatives to promote immersive learning have been successful because of the dedication of the faculty.
“It’s hard for other institutions to replicate because it requires such a commitment on the part of the faculty as well as the students,” Gora said.
The hope with immersive learning is that with real-world experience, Ball State students can graduate with more than just a transcript and be more successful in the job search, where 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed in 2011.
While there is no data on recent Ball State graduates and how their immersive learning experience helped them in their job search, Gora said those experiences play directly to what employers are looking for—creative problem solving and project management.
“It’s a lot harder than traditional internships in which students go off and spend time watching things happen at a company but maybe not contributing,” Gora said. “I think Ball State is ahead of the curve in terms of how we give students those experiences and I think that is what makes a Ball State education unique and powerful.”
Frost, who credits his current job placement to his immersive learning experience, said what he learned from the project has carried over into his career, from skills he learned to the actual type of work he is doing.
“I think the immersive learning experience is a must. You learn so much, not only from the experience itself in terms of the coursework but being able to work with other individuals in other disciplines,” Frost said. “I was always so history focused, but being able to sit down next to a business student and get their perspective certainly helped me out in the long haul.”
