With a $20 million educational grant from the Lilly Foundation, Ball State is on the brink of becoming an international leader in digital media education and technology as it puts to use the largest monetary donation in the university's history.
The four-year Lilly grant will supply funding for the development of new curriculum, facility upgrades, educational projects and additional research for a program collectively recognized as iCommunication: The Media Design Initiative. It is led by David Ferguson and Rodger Smith, who serve as the director and the associate director respectively.
"Until recently, mass media was impersonal," said H. O'Neal Smitherman, vice president of information technologies. "It was almost impossible for most media users to create media products."
Smitherman said iCommunication has suddenly made this possible in ways such as allowing individuals to produce and edit a movie in the basement of their home and have it reach a global audience.
According to the grant proposal, iCommunication is designed to help stop the "brain drain" problem facing Indiana, in which people with technological skills are leaving for better jobs. The 2000 Census reports that Indiana lost 84,000 people in the state in the 25- to 34-age group - a 23 percent drop since 1990.
The grant proposal for iCommunication - designed and authored by Ball State faculty members Scott Olson, Phil Repp and Jackie Buckrop - suggests that graduates leave the state because its economy is slowly transforming from an agriculture and manufacturing base to an information and technology base. While students are being trained to work in the information and technology era, Indiana is not meeting those needs.
Olson, Repp and Buckrop said they hope the program will create an opportunity for the digital media industry to thrive in the Midwest and attract individuals to the state.
"I want Ball State to be known as the significant place in the Midwest where research and development and education in digital media content are done in a state-of-the-art fashion," said Beverley Pitts, provost & vice president for academic affairs.
The initiative is broken down into three components: the Center for Media Design, the Global Media Network and the Media Studies Program.
CENTER FOR MEDIA DESIGN
The Center for Media Design connects state-of-the-art digital equipment and technology to communication fields. It will symbolize the integration of laboratories and classrooms, said Olson, dean of the College of Communication, Information, and Media..
The CMD will consist of:
n e-texts (online tutorials that allow students to learn at their own pace)
n digital video
n a high-end lab for video imaging and animation
n postproduction and imaging labs
n a Web media lab
n a digital entertainment studio
n a wireless innovation institute will be located in the center.
Construction is currently underway in the Ball Communication Building to convert 6,500 square feet of space into the CMD. The video, image and animation lab is being constructed halfway between the Art and Journalism Building and the Ball Communication Building. Renovations began at the end of May, and Olson said classes should begin in the facility this spring.
THE MEDIA STUDIES PROGRAM
The Media Studies Program will offer six new classes that focus on global communication, including Internet as a global community, digital video audio production, information design, digital story-telling news, Korea I-Net and digital story-telling entertainment.
The program's curriculum is directed toward art, theater, architecture, communication studies, journalism, telecommunications and music engineering technology majors. The classes, however, are not restricted to just those majors.
"A goal of the program is to eventually add communication theory and media production and design classes to the core curriculum for typical students," Olson said.
THE GLOBAL MEDIA NETWORK
The Global Media Network is a division of the CMD. It will generate opportunities in distance learning and create an international network of learning for students and professionals. It will connect BSU students with others from around the world for courses using a Web-based video conferencing system.
Students at Ball State will interact and learn with another classroom across the world via video. Students involved with the network will sit at a table against a wall where a projector screen will hang. The screen will show the other classroom, so that it will appear that other students are sitting in the same classroom on the other side of the table, similar to a mirror.
"In a traditional class setting a professor talks about 200 words per minute. That is too slow," Smitherman said. "There is a better way to do it, and that is with digital media technology. Individuals can see and interpret 90 full images a second. Video only shows 30 images a second. With technology, professors can show students visually in a few minutes what would take weeks of lecturing. iCommunication is devoted to getting us to that place."
The Global Media project began during the summer and was recognized this fall. Participation is open to all majors.
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