Ball State Day at the Indiana State Fair includes fun, education
Topics: Administrative, Building Better Communities, Immersive Learning, College of Communication Information and Media, College of Architecture and Planning
August 3, 2009
If you come to Ball State Day at the 153rd Indiana State Fair, you'll have plenty to do—and plenty to learn. Every Ball State University college—as well as the new Project 18 initiative—will be represented down State Fair Boulevard on Saturday, Aug. 8.
A focus of Ball State Day will be the Project 18 mobile van. Ball State's Building Better Communities has partnered with Peyton Manning, Peyton Manning Children's Hospital at St. Vincent, Marsh Supermarkets and Strategic Marketing & Research Inc. (SMARI) for Project 18, a statewide program to improve Hoosier children's health. Among other features, Project 18 provides Indiana elementary schools with an 18-week curriculum focusing on health education, physical activity and holistic health. The van will offer fair attendees an opportunity to learn more about healthy eating habits. For more on Project 18, visit http://www.bsu.edu/web/news/project18photos/.
Ball State's telecommunications department and WIPB-TV also will partner this year to host So You Wanna Be on TV? as part of Ball State Day. Visitors can become weather, news or sportscasters and will receive a DVD of their performance.
At Sports Zone, hosted by Intercollegiate Athletics, guests can participate in activities such as kicking field goals, spiking volleyballs and shooting hoops.
Alumni are welcome to stop by the Alumni Association booth, which is open until 8 p.m. Fairgoers who don't already have a Ball State affinity license plate may pick up a free authorization form (a $25 value, one per household).
This year, the Ball State Backyard will have a new, fresh design. Located in the Ball State Ag/Hort Building and hosted by 16 student ambassadors, the Backyard will feature the Digital Dome and a garden railroad. A 50-inch plasma screen will show five video stories that visitors can view, in addition to plasma screens in columns running slideshows of pictures of campus.
Landscape architecture students and faculty have designed and set up the garden railroad, a large scale model train. In addition, at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. every day during the fair, the Ball State Jazz Ensembles will play a 20-minute performance.
The Backyard was designed by landscape architecture faculty and students, when it debuted at the fair in 2004. Landscape architecture professors Malcolm Cairns, German Cruz, Cynthia McHone and Les Smith designed this year's presentation of the Backyard.
Les Smith instructs and oversees the interdisciplinary Summer Semester Design/Build class and student set-up team, providing guidance in the design, construction and layout of the structures that compose the Backyard exhibit.
"The Department of Landscape Architecture is committed to conceiving, developing and promoting the practice of sustainable design principles by providing distinctive professional learning experiences to its undergraduate and graduate students," Smith said.
"The Ball State Backyard demonstrates a number of sustainable-design techniques, such as use of recycled materials, use of renewable materials, simulation of pervious paving surfaces and enrichment of the environment and habitat through dense vegetation."
By Alyssa Brumback