A new initiative to bring student-driven change to campus is currently in the making with the help of an Academic Excellence Grant from President Paul W. Ferguson.
My Voice is designed to give students the ability to advocate change within the university, and to let students identify problems on campus and try to get those issues resolved.
Stuart Sipahigil, senior strategist for enterprise user engagement, and Phil Repp, interim dean of the College of Architecture and Planning, were awarded a $147,237 three-year grant from Ball State to work on the project.
“One of the categories that was in the grant proposal [we wrote] was student engagement," Sipahigil said. "So what we wanted to do was make sure that we could figure out a way to have students’ voices be heard a little more maybe than it is. I think it’s very important that students feel like they have some say in how things work around here.”
My Voice is divided into three phases. During the collection phase, crowd-sourcing tools like apps built by the Digital Corps will allow students to submit ideas for things they would like changed on campus, which can include anything from finding a better way to pay a Bursar bill to setting up classes.
After that, the most-submitted issues will be sent to students to vote on. That voting information will be narrowed down again and a “Charter for Change,” containing information on the issue, will be sent to the people who actually consult the problem and those people will work on a solution, Sipahigil said.
The entire three-phase process will be digital, IT director Brandon Smith said. The website will allow students to go online and choose some categories for what their idea may fall into.
“We don’t want a big manifesto, we’re asking for kinda short, Twitter-length sort of ideas to get us started,” Smith said. “Since it’s all digital, on the backend we have a dashboard that shows us in real time how many ideas are coming in for academics vs facilities—all the different categories that we’re going to be monitoring.”
The Digital Corps is currently building and testing the tools. Taking designs for the student voting aspect is up to Jessica Lohse, a senior computer science major, who implements them to ensure they can get all the data back for the campaign.
“I know as a graduating senior I’m not going to be here next year, but to know that my stuff is going to continue and actually change Ball State for the better is my favorite part,” Lohse said.
A marketing team was formed within the Digital Corps to make sure students are aware of the initiative.
“We will be around campus and have everything set up so students can come right up to us and will be able to submit their ideas right then and there,” said Emmelyn Brandt, a junior marketing major. “We’re really wanting people to submit ideas on anything that they see that can make a difference for everyone.”
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