Members of the public joined Ball State President Geoffery Mearns Sept. 13 as he and other panelists from the Muncie Community talked about issues in education and community in an open public forum. The Better Together forum is one of three scheduled across Muncie in the coming weeks. Staff photo by Corey Ohlenkamp/The Star Press
MUNCIE — Ball State University's new president Geoffrey S. Mearns asked to hear Muncie's concerns about local schools and neighborhoods and the university's role in addressing them. So Wednesday evening, Muncie answered.
Boy, did Muncie answer — often with questions of its own.
In the first of a series of public forums led by Mearns, the questions and answers flowed in both directions between a panel including Mearns, local leaders and experts, and a crowd of a couple hundred local residents, BSU faculty and students.
Mearns began the evening's discussion of local education and Ball State's role with an announcement about the BSU scholarship newly endowed by Mearns and his wife, Jennifer, specifically for Muncie Central High School students. Started with $100,000 from the Mearns family's own pockets, and then expanded with another $150,000 from the Ball State Trustees, the scholarship fund will get an additional boost of $150,000 from the George and Frances Ball Foundation, Mearns announced on Wednesday.
Getting Muncie students to attend Ball State — and getting Ball State students to connect with and perhaps remain in Muncie — was a recurring theme during the hour-plus discussion.
Panelist Eva Zygmunt, Helen Gant Elmore Distinguished Professor of Elementary Education at Ball State, addressed one of the earliest questions about the established partnership between BSU and Longfellow Elementary School. Through the Schools within the Context of Community program, teacher candidates spend a semester off campus, attending class at the Buley Center, teaching at Longfellow and neighboring Huffer Memorial Children's Center and attending church and other activities with mentor families in the neighborhood, Zygmunt said.
Ball State is working on replicating that immersive learning program, she said, noting it now has liaisons at other Muncie elementary schools.
Both Zygmunt and fellow panelist Wilisha Scaife, Muncie P3 director at BSU, emphasized that the key to success with that or any other partnership between the city and the university was, as Scaife put it, "authentic connections and relationships."
Scaife said she believed the community needed to see the university not "dropping a project and moving on after a semester," adding that she had seen student teachers becoming vested in the community even after graduation — and in turn helping community members feel more connected to and welcomed by Ball State.
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