Ball State’s Emerging Media Initiative (EMI) is a planned investment of $17.7 million focused on our historic strengths. The initiative, funded through institutional and new private resources, has four components: leadership and sustainability, faculty and research, student opportunities, and engagement and economic development.
Leadership and Sustainability
The initiative is led by Dave Ferguson, associate vice president for emerging media. Ferguson is also the director of the Center for Media Design (CMD), funded by two $20 million grants from Lilly Endowment Inc. CMD is widely recognized for leadership in applied research, interdisciplinary projects in digital media design, digital content development, and media use research.
Faculty and Research EMI emphasizes emerging media in attracting and retaining faculty across the university. The effort has established the Emerging Media Faculty Fellows program, through which the university provides incentives and start-up funding for the hiring of new faculty—across the curriculum—with expertise in the study and use of emerging media.
The initiative is also adding a research faculty member and laboratory—Ball State’s first—that focuses on the relationship between emerging media and learning. An additional hire and laboratory is anticipated each year through 2012.
Student Opportunities EMI encourages and enables more student involvement in emerging media, starting with establishment of a new scholarship: the Randy Pond Emerging Media Scholars program to recruit talented students.
Pond, a 1977 graduate of Ball State, is executive vice president of operations for Cisco Systems in San Jose, California. His recent $1 million gift to
Ball State Bold, the university's latest and largest capital campaign, will underwrite the new scholarships.
At the same time, additional funds are being dedicated to help strengthen the university's award-winning student
Digital Corps—Indiana’s only Apple-certified training team. EMI encourages student and faculty innovation by funding interdisciplinary and entrepreneurial projects with potential for commercialization opportunities.
Engagement and Economic Development EMI is guided by a national advisory board. The board gathers top names in the emerging media sector to analyze trends and developments, consult on curriculum, and advise on commercialization opportunities. The board is comprised of
Randy Pond;
Michael Adamson, vice president of sports new products and services at Turner Sports;
Dale Herigstad, chief creative officer of Schematic;
Eric Jones, senior vice president and founder of Channel One 2.0;
Kurt Kratchman, former chief strategy officer of Schematic and now an emerging media entrepreneur;
Glenn Platt, director of the interactive media studies program at Miami University (Ohio);
Jay Williams, senior vice president of Craig Murray Productions and a 1991 alumnus; and
Jeff Yapp, executive vice president of MTV.
The initiative will flex the muscles of two new Ball State entities whose purpose is to facilitate commercialization: the
Technology Transfer Office and
Ball State Innovation Corporation.
Ball State's
Center for Business and Economic Research, formerly the Bureau of Business Research, has partnered with TechPoint to execute a series of
studies on the growing emerging media sector of Indiana.
"We asked ourselves, ‘What strengths can we leverage to do our part to advance Indiana’s economy?’ Our answer is emerging media," says President Jo Ann M. Gora. "The Emerging Media Initiative is an obvious next step for the entrepreneurial university. Hoosiers can expect the same accountability and results from EMI that have been come to be synonymous with Ball State through successes like the Inaugural Scholars, immersive learning, and Building Better Communities."