Editor's Note: This story is part of The Partnership Project, a series of content written in an effort by The Daily News to follow the formal collaboration of Ball State University and Muncie Community Schools.
A robotics competition in Muncie? It might not be as futuristic as it seems, according to a Purdue employee.
The Muncie Community Schools board received proposals and updates Tuesday evening at Longfellow Elementary, including one that would possibly open up engineering opportunities for Ball State and MCS students in Muncie.
Corey Sharp of Purdue Polytechnic and Jane Ellery of Sustainable Muncie demonstrated to the board how an engineering education benefits both students and the communities in which they live.
Sharp, who has also worked at Ivy Tech for 15 years, said Purdue Polytechnic already operates off-campus in Anderson. Seeing the success of the program, Sharp is looking to bring it to Muncie, where he lives.
“What we’re trying to do here locally in Muncie is become a part of the ecosystem,” Sharp said.
The program would provide dual-credit engineering classes for high schoolers and would partner with Ball State to help students work toward a master’s degree in fields like engineering, robotics and automation.
Sharp told the MCS board he had already been talking to Ball State’s College of Architecture and Planning about sharing students and resources with the proposed project.
If established in Muncie, Purdue Polytechnic would move into Madjax. Jane Ellery, the president of Sustainable Muncie, told the board that having sciences, humanities and arts under one roof is one of the best ways to serve students and the community they’ll eventually contribute to.
“Sustainable Muncie is the nonprofit that oversees the development of returning assets that may not have been reaching their potential in our community and try to bring them to a capacity where they’re helping the community rather than bringing it down,” Ellery said. “Madjax was the first building that was stepped into.”
The project, Sharp said, has proven results of students earning their master’s through Purdue Polytechnic and going on to earn the average salary of one of the program’s graduates -- $54,000.
Sharp also hoped that a culture of manufacturing experts and engineering education would make things like robotics competitions happen in Muncie, where families can cheer on their kids in the same way they would at a basketball game.
While the presentation was only to discuss the program with the board, board president Jim Williams said he sees the program as worthwhile, but still has questions about transportation from students’ homes to Madjax.
Later in the evening, Muncie Central High School Principal Chris Walker presented this past year’s graduation rate of 94 percent to the board.
It might seem like a considerable jump from the previous year’s graduation rate of 78 percent, but Walker said there is more to it.
A combination of the school’s administration misreporting and failing to document some students with a state graduation rate audit marked students who did graduate as an unknown status, bringing down last year’s rate significantly, Walker said.
“Our teachers and counselors are doing the same work they’ve been doing before. It’s just, we have to do a better job in the admin wing of making sure those are reported correctly, and I’m happy to report that it is,” Walker said.
He also said the low graduation rate earned MCS a C grade from the state, a drop from the B grade it had before.
“I would argue with you that we were still a B school,” Walker said. ”It’s just our graduation rate audit hurts a little bit, and we knew that going in. President Mearns knew that going in.”
The next MCS board meeting is scheduled at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 12, at the Muncie Area Career Center.
Contact Sara Barker with comments at slbarker3@bsu.edu or on Twitter at @sarabarker326.
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