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Inside This Issueanalyzing voting systems

Tracking a declining bird species

Making art accessible to the world

Landmark study tracks daily video exposure

Focus on Emerging MediaIn December 2008, Ball State announced a $17.7 million Emerging Media Initiative, which focuses the university’s historic strengths in this area, accelerating benefits to the state of Indiana by developing media-savvy human capital. The initiative, funded through combined institutional and new private resources, gives our students access to innovative and entrepreneurial opportunities in emerging media across the curriculum and provides the support faculty members need to bring their ideas to market. Learn more at www.bsu.edu/emergingmedia.

Equal Opportunity to SucceedA three-year, $427,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education will enable Ball State to enhance the programs available to students with disabilities by increasing the number of faculty mentoring and tutoring programs, bringing guest lecturers to campus, and creating an outreach program for high school students. “The creation and expansion of these programs and services will allow every student equal opportunity to succeed at Ball State,” says Larry Markle, director of Disabled Student Development.

NENa Relationship Furthers crisis communications ProjectBall State has formed a working relationship with the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), one of the nation’s leading emergency service associations, to improve 911 communications. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) awarded Ball State a $2.5 million grant to create innovative on-site and online training courses for supervisors in 911 call centers nationwide. The relationship with NENA will assist in the research phase of the project.

Second Life course honoredThe Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts and Animation (IDIAA) earned the 2009 Institutional Excellence in Information Communications Technology Award from ACUTA, the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education. The award recognized IDIAA, which was created as part of the $20 million Digital Exchange initiative funded by Lilly Endowment Inc., for its Aesthetic Camera filmmaking course offered through the online world of Second Life and integrated Blackboard course management custom software.

RESEaRchREVIEW

IN ThE NEWS

spring 2009 issue of Ball State University Research Notes, our new midterm update on research and creativity at Ball State University. I am pleased to introduce this companion to the larger fall publication, Ball State University Research: Innovation+Creativity.

As you can see by the projects displayed in Research Notes, scholarly inquiry and creative endeavor know no season! Nor is innovative activity bound by the borders of campus or classroom: From a geological study of volcanic activity in New Caledonia, to the Bowen Center examination of the impact of voting centers on the polling process, to a student project considering red dwarf stars, exemplary work is on the move at Ball State. We extend warm congratulations to all project directors of sponsored programs, and we trust that the readers of Research Notes will catch the excitement as we glimpse into the creative work of our Ball State researchers.

Robert J. MorrisAssociate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School

Welcome to the

hPL Releases Results of NaSa ResearchThe latest NASA-sponsored research from Ball State’s Human Performance Lab was featured in the April 2009 issue of The Journal of Applied Physiology. The research suggests that changes are needed to optimize the inflight exercise regimen for astronauts to improve their muscle performance while in space for extended stays.

Student Research Focus at SymposiumThe scholarly and creative endeavors of our graduate and undergraduate students were the focus of the 14th annual Student Symposium on March 24. From the more than 110 project displays representing diverse disciplines, six students were recognized for their outstanding presentations. Winning projects included a study of red dwarf stars, research on the effect of treadmill training on stroke patients, and an analysis of the water quality of two river basins.

Ball State University Research Notes is published by the Sponsored Programs Office and University Marketing and Communications. Information presented here, correct at the time of publication, is subject to change. Ball State University practices equal opportunity in education and employment and is actively committed to diversity within its community. 5247-09 umc

With a grant from the Ball Brothers Foundation, graduate students in the Fisher Institute for Wellness and Gerontology are working with Delaware County, Indiana, schools to help improve the health and wellness of students and staff. In addition to helping the schools implement wellness-related activities, the students in the institute help schools develop Health Advisory Councils, present health fairs and family night programs, and assist with writing grants.

Local Schoolchildren Learning Well

Researcher of the YearOutstanding Creative Endeavor

FALL 2014

Taking the classroom to new spaces

Welcome!This year, we’re trying something new with our Annual Report. After years of producing a stand-along annual report of facts and figures alongside an annual publication highlighting research activities and cre-ative endeavors across campus, this year we’ve decided to essentially combine the two under the Ball State Research umbrella. So this year, alongside insightful stories on a number of interesting topics, you’ll also get a full picture of internally and externally sponsored programs at Ball State University.

This magazine includes the FY 2013-14 records pertaining to the Sponsored Programs Office (SPO). Figures include grant awards, contracts awarded University Centers and Institutes, and funding to the Ball State University Foundation that resulted in sponsored programs. For those looking for “line-item” details of sponsored programs by college, please visit our website (www.bsu.edu/spo).

As an executive summary of sorts: FY 13-14 brought $18,231,549 in external dollars to Ball State Univer-sity. 485 proposals were submitted during the fiscal year. 329 funded awards were recorded.

We extend our appreciation to all who carried out the challenging work of preparing grant proposals—in-ternal or external—awarded or not—and recognize the productivity and commitment represented by all who are actively engaged in the pursuit of extramural funding.

On behalf of the first-rate and hard-working SPO staff, we offer our warm regards and best wishes for con-tinued success.

Robert J. Morris Justin Miller, EdDAssociate Provost for Research Directorand Dean of the Graduate School Sponsored Programs OfficeProfessor of Chemistry

2 | Ball State Research

Fall 2014 | 3

Ball State ResearchFall 2014

Editor/WriterBrenda Mackey

PhotographsSam ClemmonsBrent ColeChris FlookPam HarwoodBrenda MackeyVJ RubensteinBall State Photo Services

Ball State University

PresidentPaul Ferguson

Provost Terry King

Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate SchoolRobert J. Morris

Sponsored Programs OfficeJustin Miller | Brenda Ayers | Maria Bumba-lough | Keith Chandler | Jacqueline Davis Wil Davis | Stanley Geidel | Sarah LeeJessie Roark | Stephanie Sisco | Linda Swartz | Augusta Wray | Valerie DarroughBrenda Mackey | Matt Sell | Jade Proctor

www.bsu.edu/spo

Cover Photo: An outdoor classroom in the Habitat Hub, part of the Nature Play project led by Pam Harwood

Contents

2 Welcome

4 Seeing the World Through Glass

8 Build. Learn. Play.

12 The Narrative of Dance

14 The Awesome Power of Yeast Genetics

16 Our Impact on Rivers and Lakes

20 Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders Seeks Practical Solutions

FY 2014 Annual Report

22 External Funding Overview

24 Initiatives & Accomplishments

26 ASPiRE Internal Grant Programs

27 Intellectual Property

4 8 12 16

Brent Cole’s“Red Right Returning”


Seeing the World Through Glass

W hite-capped blue waves rushing to golden sand. Red buoys guiding

boats along. Seagulls calling overhead and the sound of the waves washing along the shore.

These sights and sounds remind us of the beach. Evoking a sense of place, of being there, is what artist Brent Cole seeks.

“It has been said that with art usually we tell a lie to get at the truth,” says Associate Professor of Glass Cole, who directs The Marilyn K. Glick Center for Glass. “I was interested in the idea of perception and how many different ways I could talk about a particular space, even to try to invoke it, without actually being in that space. I created this large installation that was different reitera-tions of trying to capture the essence of that place.”

Cole’s installation included video, drawings, and glass elements that represent being in the bay. He also includ-ed the sound of water lapping. “The idea is that the work unfolds as the viewer walks through it, and thus the viewer becomes a really integrated part of the piece,” he says.

In contrast to the open-concept, room-filling glass buoys, a tiny poolside setting resides in a suitcase.

The idea for the suitcase came to Cole from a flea market find – a swimming pool salesperson’s case. “I remember growing up in the Midwest. Everybody wanted a pool, but they were such a pain to maintain and you had only two months to enjoy them,” Cole says. “I was inter-ested in the irony of the suitcase being really heavy because of these solid glass pools. The pools were simulating this

idealistic experience that everybody wanted, but the reality was that it wasn’t worth it.”

His current body of work, with themes of water and buoys, was strongly influenced by his six years in Florida. Now that he is back in the Midwest, he plans to move on to a new body of work that fits better with the area’s agricultural and industrial background.

To help him make the transition, Cole was awarded an ASPiRE Creative Arts grant. With this, he plans to research the glass communities in Sunderland, England, and Edinburgh, Scotland, and attend a conference and workshop at North Lands Creative Glass in Lybster, Scotland.

Sunderland and Lybster, like Muncie, were indus-trial cities that have seen a sharp decline in production. Indiana is known for its history in the glass industry, from the company in Kokomo that produced material for Tiffany’s creations to the Ball Corporation’s canning jars. In the two European cities, an interest in exploring the possibilities for creating glass beyond a factory setting has helped arts communities start and flourish.

“My hopes are to look at some of the situations, think about my work in context to that type of situation and then think about any opportunities or possibilities in northeast Indiana where the arts can potentially change some of the cultural landscape. It is a matter of identify-ing what will align with a specific place,” Cole says.

Another benefit of Cole’s overseas travel is the connections he will make, which will in turn help his students and the community around Ball State. “The Glick Center for Glass has invited the community to demonstrations by national and international artists and scholars. By getting out to North Lands and using the grant, the hope is that I can meet other people we can engage with and bring to Muncie.”

The glass community is highly collaborative and supportive, and Cole wants his students to experience and appreciate all the facets of working with glass.

In particular, he notes that his students often prefer hot glass working, thus viewing other methods with disdain or as chores needed to make their work from the hot shop presentable. Cole says he thinks his students could particularly benefit from a program in Poland. That program has a long tradition of solid working and cold working and has a studio manager dedicated to each subdiscipline.

“It will be great to send students over to that program for a semester. They have a completely different perspective on those types of processes, and the students can bring those cultural experiences and ideas back to the students here,” Cole said. “We try to actively send our students out to summer programs so that they get a different perspective, a new way of working and the abili-ty to bring that back to the larger dynamic. So we see the international exchange as an extension, a way to really have a different influx of ideas and allow the students to have different experiences.”


Fall 2014 | 7

Brent Cole’s “In Your Own Backyard”

Build

PlayLearn

Kids these days. Always with their heads down, playing with an elec-

tronic device, or begging their parents to turn the TV to the newest cartoon. What happened to playing outside, making forts from branches, and finding shapes in clouds?

Associate Professor of Architecture Pam Harwood wants to bring these outdoor joys to the next generation. She and her students are transforming a 1.5 acre field into a “nature play” learning environment for the 300 children at Head Start of Muncie.

Harwood’s goal goes beyond simply getting chil-dren to play outside. “We’re trying to take play, which is culturally thought of as recess time for teachers, into a learning environment,” she says.

The central area of the space is a large outdoor classroom called the Habitat Hub. It has room for two classes and acts as the starting point for the children’s

outdoor adventures. The Hub leads to other less-struc-tured play areas with names like Fort Fun and Timber Time that represent four Indiana habitats: prairie, meadow, wetlands, and woodlands. The children learn through play with natural elements in an unstructured, creative, and innovative way as their gross physical motor skills and fine motor skills are developed.

“They’re not swinging or sliding, but they are still balancing on logs and using pieces of timber as ramps to roll things down and they are climbing and crawl-ing on structures that are made out of natural elements and traditional materials,” Harwood says. “We worked hand-in-hand with educators throughout the project to help facilitate this learning in nature as a valuable activity and to demonstrate what learning is actually occurring in each of the different play areas. We received a Provost Immersive Learning Grant because of its connection to early childhood education.”

‘Instant Reinforcement’Kaity Smith, a graduate student in education,


Fall 2014 | 9

had the task of matching activities with preschool education standards. “I think we assumed they were going to be learning about their physical bodies and the world around them, but I was so surprised at how much they learned about colors, animals, and sounds,” she says. “You don’t expect there to be such a connection between all the standards, like learning about books, learning about reading just because you connect a storybook with a grasshopper they see. It’s instant reinforcement – you read a story about a grasshopper, and here is a grasshopper.”

Smith says she enjoyed the children’s enthu-siasm for their new space – and the learning that occurred naturally as they spent time in it. “The coolest part for me was to see the kids really want to learn and really want to go on these nature walks and observe and then talk about it, discuss, and synthesize,” she says. “They don’t know they’re synthesizing, that they’re analyzing what they saw, but they’re taking charge of their learning, which is really important.”

To see what the children enjoy and how they interact with natural elements and props, the stu-dents conducted simulations. They dubbed one Mud Mash.

“We brought in mud and water and put it on a canvas with some baking utensils to see what they’d do. We made easels out of Plexiglas, and they painted with mud,” Harwood explains. “We also did a music

and movement kind of simulation, trying to see what elements they played with, what they picked up, what they shook, what they did with them, how they made music collabora-tively and independent-ly, and what enticed them to begin to inter-act with movement and sound. We ended up initially making a kind of a stage that would be impromptu for them, which then developed into a real stage with

beautiful flagstone and uprights in the final project.”Harwood says she wants to provide the chil-

dren with some basic elements and then let their imaginations take over. “One of the most important things that we’ve learned from the design perspective is to not design, so you leave it free and unstructured, allow-ing them to decide what to do,” she explains. “That’s very important. It al-lows them to make choices and initiate their own responses to the materials at hand, and it stimulates cognitive development.”

State Director of Head Start Kay Gordon agrees. “It creates the oppor-tunity for them to use their imagina-tions more and to stretch their minds and bodies more out there than on a traditional playground. Every time they go out, it gives them the opportunity to do new and different things.”

Sparking Interest in NatureOne opportunity is for the children to learn

about environmental responsibility. An ash borer infestation led to the removal of some trees from the Ball State campus, and the wood was used at the Na-ture Play site. “The idea was that the children would learn that ash borers destroyed this tree, you can see the markings in these logs, and now we’re reusing them and they are part of your play environment,” Harwood says. “That continuity of the life, and the life after the life, was really important for us to work with.”

They hope this introduction to nature inspires the children and their families to use other local outdoor areas such as the Cardinal Greenway, the Craddock Wetlands, and the White River, and that the children become lifelong visitors.

“We’re hoping that this makes them want to come outside and explore the site, explore what we’ve built, see what’s out there and not be afraid of nature or grossed out by nature,” says Spencer Blaney, a graduate student in architecture. “It had an impact on pretty much everyone who was involved with it,” he adds. “I even started riding my bike to the site.”


Community Build Days have helped bring aware-ness of the project to people beyond Head Start and Ball State. Family members of the Head Start children and staff, local Girl Scouts, and Muncie Mayor Dennis Tyler all had a hand in the project.

“Building is empowering. There’s no question about it,” Harwood says. “With the consultants that we have on board, anyone can learn the skills to make the pieces and parts in nature – and it’s not that complicated. I think people at first are a little bit daunted by it, but in the end, they realize they don’t need to be at all.”

Not Just a ModelFor Ball State’s College of Architecture and Plan-

ning students, the Nature Play project has been an opportunity to see more of how a project comes together than they get through their usual method, which in-volves building small models.

“When you’re making the model, it’s a lot of laser-cut pieces, so things don’t actually go together the way they do in real life. It’s just a representation of it,” explains architecture major Corey Clark. “But actually being able to build it in real life puts a whole new spin on it. It was definitely challenging but great.”

Each student chose an area in which to be the class expert. Blaney’s main duties involved designing the digital files that showed how parts were to be made and joined and communicating with the fabricator who would cut the metal to his specifications.

“It was cool – knowing that I was working with those files, and then one day I came to the Head Start site and the whole ground was lined with these metal fabricated base plates that I had designed,” he says. “It was simple, but it’s neat seeing this stuff actually being built because nor-mally it’s inches big in the models.”

For the architec-ture students, working on the project gave them a better idea of what their professional lives will be like.

“Looking at this project, it really is small-scale of what goes on in an architectural firm. I can almost relate each step that we went through to a process that I’m now going through in my intern-ship,” Blaney says.

Lasting ImpactThe initial idea for

the project was sparked during a class at Ball State. Two Head Start employees, Tyanne Vazquez and Debbie Arrington, were taking a grant writing class and had an assignment to write a fictional grant proposal. However, once they had the idea for the Nature Play project they decided it was worth pursuing for real. Vazquez learned of Harwood’s previous service learning projects and e-mailed her to see if she was inter-ested.

Harwood agreed that the project was valuable, both for her students and for the children at Head Start. She decided to do the project through Ball State’s Office of Building Better Communities because it works well with BBC’s goals of advancing Indiana and providing dynamic, real-world learning experiences for its students.

“It’s something that’s going to be here long after you’ve left Ball State,” Harwood tells her students.

The students experienced the effect they wished to have on the children: they found themselves appreciating nature more as they saw the contrast between the Nature Play site and Head Start’s existing playground.

“They had one of those prefabricated, buy it in a

“It’s something that’s going to be here long after

you’ve left Ball State.”

Fall 2014 | 11

box and put it together types of things, so the transi-tion from that to something that was built out of nat-ural and reused materials was definitely a very drastic change. It was great,” Clark says. “If you drive to the site now, you see this very colorful metal structure, and you see our site all made out of natural materials. They have a big, open field and we’re slowly bringing nature back to it.”

Although Head Start employees Vazquez and Arrington did not receive that first grant, they and Harwood have since been successful. The project has been funded through grants from the Ball Brothers Foundation, the Community Foundation of Delaware County, a Ball State Provost Immersive Learning Grant, a Lilly Community Service Mini Grant for Earth Day activities, and a College of Architecture and Planning Immersive Learning Mini Grant.

“When you think of all the possibilities that this Nature Play is going to bring there’s just no compari-son,” Vazquez says. “We’ve been very, very grateful for Ball State and Pam.”

Research Recognition: Student Symposium

The 2014 Symposium continues to serve as an important public forum for students to display and present their research and creative projects. This year included a new feature with panel presentations scheduled in addition to posters. 210 individual student participants presented 158 projects, which drew an estimated 422 total attendees.

4 awards for Content:Kayla Kmiecik Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science Biomechanical Analysis of a Backward Somersault Landing and Drop Landing in Female Gymnasts Faculty Mentor: Henry Wang, Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science

Nolan Pachciarz Biology The Effects of Dilantin on Male Fertility and Sperm Indices in Mice Faculty Mentor: Clare Chatot, Biology

Emily Johann Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science Influence of Drop Height and Fatigue on Landing Mechanics in Recreationally Active Females Faculty Mentor: Clark Dickin, Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science

Jamie Lau Biology Comparing Five Macroinvertebrate Indices of Integrity: Are We Meeting National Water Quality Monitoring Intent? Faculty Mentor: Thomas Lauer, Biology

2 awards for Design:Heather Daly Psychological Science Psychophysiological Responses to Isolated Musical Chord Progressions Faculty Mentor: Don Ester, Music Education

Yi-Hsin Liu Natural Resources and Environmental Management Nitroglycerin Decomposition in Soil as Affected by Presence of Co-Contaminants Faculty Mentor: John Pichtel, Natural Resources and Environmental Management

D ance, for choreographer Christie Zimmerman, is about sharing stories.

“Dance is this universal language—the idea of using bodies in motion to communicate things is some-thing everyone can understand and grasp,” says Zim-merman, an assistant professor of dance and this year’s Outstanding Creative Endeavor awardee.

Dance has been part of Zimmerman’s life since she was 3 years old and a friend of her mother’s started a dance studio.

“I’m a person who values discipline and structure, and dance at that young age instilled it in me, but I also think it’s one of the reasons I responded so well to it. There are very clear rules about what you should be doing and how you should be doing it,” Zimmerman ex-plains. “As I got older and time became a more precious resource, every time I had to make a decision about how to use my time it was always ‘I’d rather focus on dance and continue doing that.’”

By the time she was a teenager, Zimmerman was dancing six days a week as part of a youth ballet compa-ny and a competition group. It was then that Zimmer-man began choreographing, starting with short routines for herself and her peers.

“For so many dancers, you’ll find performance is the emphasis or the focus, which is obviously import-ant—you need people who want to do that. But I have always been more comfortable in the choreographer role,” Zimmerman says. “I admire those who perform, but it’s just not what interests me. For me it’s about solv-ing the challenges from the choreographic perspective rather than being in it.”

“High Challenge, Low Threat”Zimmerman’s goal is to help her students be all

they can be. She pushes them to do more within the safe environment of the classroom, a philosophy she calls “high challenge, low threat.”

“It’s this idea of trying to push the boundaries of what you’re comfortable with and what you know you can achieve physically, artistically, and intellectually. It’s discovery, too—learning new things your body can do. It’s about new ways your brain can interpret information. That’s something dancers do inherently,” she says. “You gather information—you hear things, you see things, you hear music, and then you take all of that and pour it into your brain and process it, and then it comes out of your body in these really cool ways.”

Zimmerman expects the same from herself. “I constantly want to try to be doing the same thing I ask of my students—expanding what I think is possible physically, creatively, and artistically. If I wrote an autobi-ography, I’d call it Work in Progress,” she jokes.

‘Valley of Four Dolls, Parts 43 A, B, and C’Zimmerman has always had a strong attachment to

music, and as she listened to one of her favorite artists, Mika, an idea for a project began to form.

“His music is infectious, and it has a very narrative sense to it. My project started as listening to and really enjoying his music but also recognizing characters and stories in his music. And I started thinking, ‘How could I take these characters that he’s sort of introducing and create a through-line or a storyline that goes with it?’”

To explore this, Zimmerman was awarded an

The Narrative

of

Dance


Outstanding Creative Endeavor

ASPiRE Junior Faculty Creative Arts Grant to research and create an evening-length piece, Valley of Four Dolls, Parts 43 A, B, and C.

For the first phase, Zimmerman spent three weeks in New York seeing shows and conducting research at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She ex-plored three choreographers known for elements that she wanted to incorporate in her project: Matthew Bourne’s retelling of classic narrative, Susan Stroman’s dance pieces that can be viewed in sections or as a whole, and Twyla Tharp’s use of the songbook of one artist to create a story.

Armed with this background information, Zim-merman and her students started the creative phase by examining Mika’s songs.

“The story starts by introducing this family, but the songs have such a whimsical, fun nature to them that my idea was that it was actually a family of dolls,” Zim-merman says. “I worked with a group of dancers that summer, and we spent a lot of time talking about who each of these characters is, what their relationship is to each other, and exploring what all the possibilities were in terms of storyline. We set up this device that it’s a girl who has this family of dolls, so we create this idea of fantasy, kind of eliminating the rules of reality a little bit.”

The piece debuted at Muncie Civic Theatre that November. “That was the first time we put it in front of an audience, and that’s always terrifying,” Zimmerman says. “I had never done anything quite this large that I had total creative control over. I mean, I’ve worked on musicals and such, and those are big, but you have a team of collaborators. This was just the dancers and me.”

After that first performance, Zimmer-man and her students collected feedback and refined the piece.

“That’s one of the reasons I think Valley of the Four Dolls was so pivotal for me—because I had that luxury of time and spreading it out and al-lowing it to become these different things,” Zimmerman says. “Nobody does their best work right out of the gate.”

The next spring, they started showing sections of the work at various festivals under the name z3move-ment project, an entity Zimmerman created to promote and explain her work.

The Need for MarketingZimmerman says that dancers often resist talking

about their work as a marketable product. However, she found that treating it in such a way brought recognition to the most notable dance companies.

“In a lot of my research I found that the people who were most successful in having their work shown were people who had very clear identities, very clear thoughts about what they were trying to say artistically, and very clear visual branding strategies,” Zimmerman says. “The people who are showing their work, and show-ing it regularly, are people who are really good at that aspect of it—making it visible, making it sexy, making it interesting.”

Zimmerman had a hard time distilling the physi-cal movement form of her work into writing. “How do you capture the essence of what it is you do in words on a piece of paper and a few pictures?” she asks. But she found that once she had done it, more opportunities opened for her and her students.

“Having that structure, that model, made sending applications out to different things much more efficient,” she says. “Part of forming that entity was about how I can start to think about my work as something that I can—and I hate saying this but—market it in this way. Kind of a box to give to people to say, ‘This is what I’m all about, these are the people that I’m working with. Want to play with us?’”

Fall 2014 | 13

Since project-based entities are becoming popular in the dance world, Zimmerman wants to give her stu-dents a chance to experience them.

“So much of the work that our students will be doing, particularly immediately after they graduate, I

almost call guerilla style. You have to go out and find the opportunities, and once you get the opportunity, figure out what you’re going to do. So I think it’s good for them to see that and experience that but at the same time know they have a little bit of time before they have to step out and do it on their own. High challenge, low threat,” she says with a smile.

Resources at Ball State Coming to Ball State has given Zimmerman a

chance to experience more. “I’ve shown and produced more work since I’ve been at the university than I did in all of my time in New York,” she says. “Part of that is that the struggle for resources is so real. It’s so consuming that it gets in the way of being able to really focus on the

creative part of it.”“From a choreographer’s perspective, the two

most important resources that you need are space and bodies—and the university has both of those,” Zim-merman says. “Being able to use the bodies and work in the space to create these things has allowed me to take these students to places like Becket, Massachusetts, New York, New Orleans, Chicago, Michigan—all these opportunities for them to get their foot out of Muncie.”

Her success at Ball State and with her students has led to Zimmerman’s appointment as coordinator of the dance program.

Zimmerman and other choreographers in the Department of Theatre and Dance are now working on Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker—but not as most people have seen it before.

“Each choreographer is responsible for certain sections. Some pieces will be modern, some will be clas-

sical, some will be humorous,” Zimmerman says. “My contribution is the party scene and we’re doing it in the Fosse style, so it’s very musical theatre as well. It’s pretty fun. It’s a little PG-13. But that’s Fosse.”

Zimmerman says that working at Ball State has been very rewarding.

“I’ve had a lot of input and investment into how the program is growing and changing. That’s really ex-citing. And I like to think I bring a certain something to Muncie that maybe it didn’t have before I got here.”


The Awesome Power of Yeast GeneticsCells divide and organisms grow. We learn this early

in science classes. But what happens when an or-ganism is done growing? How do the cells know when to stop dividing? What do cells do if they make a mistake?

“In our cells, we have proteins that are made all the time, and sometimes those proteins need to be destroyed,” explains Assistant Professor of Biology VJ Rubenstein. “Some proteins you want to have around

only for a little period of time – for instance, proteins that tell your cells to divide. You want those cells when you’re developing or healing, but you don’t want those around all the time or you get cancer. The cell has in place a way to say, ‘That protein’s job is done. We’re going to destroy it.’”

Deliberately triggering that reaction in cholester-ol is Rubenstein’s goal. He has been investigating what

Fall 2014 | 15

specifically activates it through a study called Seek and Destroy: Reducing Cholesterol by Enhancing Protein Destruction.

“We say cholesterol as though it’s one simple thing, but cholesterol is actually several molecules together,” Rubenstein explains. “Cholesterol itself is a lipid, but the cholesterol that’s moving in our blood is little particles of a protein bound up with all these little lipids. If we can find a way to tell our cells to recognize and destroy this protein, then we can reduce the levels of cholesterol in our blood.”

To find a way to tell cells to destroy that protein, Rubenstein is tapping the power of a resource common in genetic research: yeast.

“Most of the systems func-tioning in your cells right now are functioning in almost every other cell that lives,” Rubenstein says. “We all do the same thing – we all have DNA, we all have protein, we all make RNA from DNA molecules and use the RNA as a template to make new protein molecules, and we have ways to detect and destroy proteins when we don’t need them anymore.”

Because of this, yeast can act as a model organ-ism – results found through yeast research can usually be applied to larger, more complex organisms, such as humans.

“Yeast cells don’t necessarily have cholesterol, but they have proteins that are recognized and destroyed in

the same way. In my lab, we are trying to understand how yeast cells destroy proteins and using that as a model for the major protein component of cholesterol,” Rubenstein says. “If we

can piece together how this works in yeast, we might be able to provide some insight to people who are studying this field in a mammalian system – people working with

mice, ultimately working up to humans.”Yeast cells appeal to researchers because they yield

results quickly. “If I have a hypothesis that Gene

X is required to destroy this protein, I can very, very easily go into the yeast’s DNA and erase that sequence. So I can get rid of that gene and then we have a yeast cell that lacks Gene X. I can ask, ‘Can this cell that lacks Gene X destroy this protein?’ and very easily I can say yes or no, Gene X is or is not required to destroy this protein,” Rubenstein

explains. “That’s a lot harder to do in animals. I can make a yeast strain that lacks Gene X in a matter of two weeks or a month. To make

a mouse that lacks Gene X could take a year.

“There’s this idea in the yeast community: the APOYG – the Awesome Power of Yeast Genetics – be-cause we can very readily do what I’ve described. There are all kinds of fun things that we can do in yeast cells – we can look at individual genes or start looking at the entire genome, the entire collection of genes, and knock out one at a time and ask ‘what is the effect?’”

Rubenstein has been working with yeast since 2003. He says his interest in the unicellular organisms came about because they are great for studying basic processes and for conducting research with undergradu-ate students.

“In almost every basic area of biology, the initial studies were done on yeast,” Rubenstein says. “My lab works on yeast, some other labs work on animals, some other labs work on human cells, and we all kind of work together to build this body of knowledge.”

The National Institutes of Health recognize Rubenstein’s contribution to this body of knowledge and recently awarded him a three-year, $310,688 grant to study the process by which cholesterol proteins are destroyed. His goal is to provide understanding that will lead to improved treatments for cholesterol-related diseases.

“We can look at individual genes or start looking at the entire genome,

the entire collection of genes, and knock out one at a time and ask

‘what is the effect?’”

Rubenstein (left) with Oliver Kerscher of William and Mary College.

MS Student Justin Crowder is loading protein samples onto a polyacrylamide gel to study how living cells recognize

and degrade specific proteins.

Melody Bernot started studying pharmaceutical and personal care product contaminants in aquatic

ecosystems when a graduate student of hers expressed an interest in the subject. The two worked together to craft rational hypotheses—all of which were subsequently proven wrong.

This intrigued Bernot, associate professor of biology and Ball State’s Researcher of the Year, enough that she kept examining the topic after that student graduated.

“The questions about how humans influence eco-systems have driven my work from the very beginning. I always say that I moved into emerging contaminants because all my hypotheses were wrong,” she says with a smile.

These days, Bernot and her students examine a suite of pharma-ceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) that come from humans and end up in local water systems—and their hypotheses are usually correct.

“Anything we put into our bodies, we metabolize only a fraction of and then we excrete the rest,” Bernot explains. “We are continually putting things into the waste stream, which is processed and then goes into the White River.”

Other researchers have looked at doses of PPCPs that are lethal to aquatic organisms, but few have exam-

ined the effect of lower concentrations. “We know a lot about Tylenol, its therapeutic

effects, and lethal doses in humans, but we don’t really understand those kinds of things on algae and snails and fish. What we find in the White River is nanograms per liter, which is nine zeros—really small concentrations that are well below therapeutic doses and well below lethal concentrations. But time after time we see changes in reproduction, growth, and behavior with aquatic organ-isms, so we’re really trying to wrap our head around it.”

On top of that, learning how one compound affects ecosystems is helpful, but it doesn’t provide the full picture.

Ecosystems are bombarded with hun-dreds of compounds, some of which create new effects when combined.

“We’re moving toward under-standing multiple stressors at the same time—the number of PPCP com-

pounds versus an effect, rather than how acetaminophen alone affects a fish,” Bernot says. “Acetaminophen is interesting because it’s like grapefruit—it can potenti-ate drug effects. So if an aquatic organism is exposed to acetaminophen, even if it’s well below therapeutic doses, it may potentiate, or enhance, the effects of another drug in the environment. So there are a lot of interesting interactions.”

The effects on drinking water are important, but


Our Impact on Rivers and LakesBALL STATE’S RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR COLLABORATES TO FIND ANSWERS

“The best scientists… are the ones who came up with another way to look at it or the ones who came up with a new question.”

Bernot has more reasons to study aquatic ecosystems. “Strictly from a basic need for life, water is funda-

mental. That is certainly one of the core reasons—trying to understand both water quantity and water quality,” she says. “But there is a whole host of other things. I’m a natural history lover, and there are the aesthetic things. There’s preservation for biodiversity and myriad argu-ments for biodiversity in maintaining ecosystems as well as things like finding medicines or understanding disease with genetic diversity.”

Collaboration with Fellow BiologistsBernot doesn’t have to look far to find others who

share her interest. Ball State has nine aquatic ecology faculty members who work on different areas of aquatic research and team up as their work overlaps.

“I collaborate quite extensively on the PPCP work with my husband and Tom Lauer. I am not organismal —I’m chemical,” Bernot explains. “So all the organismal work has been in collaboration with them. It’s really been a joint effort, driven by students and guided by multiple faculty.”

Bernot enjoys working with all of her colleagues, but her favorite collaborator is her husband, Randy, an assistant professor of biology.

“We have fun!” she says. “He’s the best collaborator in the world. We collaborate on so many things and have exper-tise in different areas, so it just works really well. We met in grad school, so we’ve been work-ing together as long as we’ve known each other. We’ve never known anything different.

“We write lots of grants together. We’ve published lots of papers together. He does parasites, and I don’t get in-volved in parasite work because I don’t understand it. And he doesn’t get involved in the basic elemental cycling. But we’ve collaborated on almost all of the PPCP work. We have our own little worlds, and then we collaborate in terms of the scien-tific questions that we ask.”

What answers would Bernot like to find?“I would like the body of work to highlight which

compounds may cause adverse effects,” she says. “I think that it’s probably true that some of these compounds are getting degraded quickly or really aren’t necessarily causing huge issues, but I would like for us to figure out which ones we need to focus on and potentially find alternatives for and regulate.”

Modifying MicroelectrodesWhat happens when the available tools are not ide-

al? If you’re Melody Bernot, you find a way to improve them. She learned how to make and use microelectrodes in graduate school and found them useful but fragile.

“The microelectrodes are a lot of fun to work with. We put a bunch of electronics into syringes so that we can measure things at the micron scale. I’m a microbial ecologist, which is synonymous with ecosystem ecologist because microbes do everything,” she says. “In the sedi-ment or in algae biofilms we can get really fine resolution of nitrogen and oxygen and pH and temperature, so we can understand basic physiochemical dynamics. A whole host of things like egg success and chemical breakdown are dictated by the physical and chemical environment.”

However, traditional microelectrodes are too delicate for field work. Using grant funds from the National Sci-ence Foundation, she worked with John Decker, a machinist technician in the Department of Physics and Astronomy to create a field-ready microelec-trode sampling kit.

“He’s a genius,” she says. “I’ll say something obscure, like ‘We’re kind of thinking we want to…’ and he comes back with all this color-coded stuff that makes sense. He always has his own flair for making it better, like he intuitively understands what we want and then thinks of things we didn’t to improve it.”

Bernot has provided the improved microelectrodes free

Fall 2014 | 17

of charge to 25 institutions around the country as well as using them with her own students.

“It was a natural transition from much of what I’ve done in my graduate work but made better—we can now log continuously, we can throw them around in the field. They’re glass, encased in syringe, so they’re a little bit more protected, but you can still get micron resolution.”

Mentoring StudentsBernot enjoys working with fellow faculty mem-

bers, but she particularly enjoys working with students and encouraging their interest in the field.

“I love working with students. I basically take any-body who seems interested,” she says. “Really, at the end of the day, the students are the heart of it.”

Bernot puts more weight on her students’ interest in the subject than on their previous knowledge.

“You can look up what we know. That’s not the point of science. The point of science is to advance what we know and find the things that we don’t know,” Bernot says. “So you’re coming in on an even playing field, whether you’re an undergraduate or a faculty member. My students teach me things every day because they’re doing stuff we haven’t done before.”

Bernot fondly recalls her own time as a student, keeping fishing rods in her car and collecting samples

from interesting places. “We would camp in the back of Walmart, which

was interesting, for its ditch. That was our urban fresh-water system,” she says. “I don’t think the students believe me, but I used to do a lot of field work. I found a discipline where I can spend 50 percent of my time in waders and 50 percent of my time with beakers. That’s a perfect mix for me.”

Her interests have adjusted as her career required. Even though Bernot now spends most of her time run-ning data on a computer, she enjoys that too—especially when the meaning of the data clicks for a student.

“I always like the data stage because you can see the excitement that they found something. A lot of times what we’re doing is invisible, and you don’t really see the fruits of your labor. You’re just working and hoping something works out. There have been a number of students who,

when we sit and look at the data, are as excited as I am, and they’re just like ‘wow!’” Bernot says. “Just to see data manifest into an effect is always the most fun.”

Support at Ball StateBernot attributes a big part of her success with her stu-

dents and research to the people and resources at Ball State. “There’s no way I could have advanced a pharma-

ceutical initiative without internal support beyond my


start-up. Well beyond my start-up,” she says. “That’s been as student grants and faculty grants that we’ve gotten consistently that just give that little extra push we need to see stuff through.”

Bernot’s relationships with her colleagues have also made her time here enjoyable.

“The department, the collegiality across disciplines, is just superb. I know if I needed freezer space I could find it. I know if I needed an extra centrifuge I could find it, whether from an aquatic ecologist or not.”

“There are these weird things that happen in the background here that just make your life easier,” she says. “I honestly think that there’s nothing comparable to the support provided. I can just focus on the questions and analyzing the data. I don’t have to worry about a lot of the administrative stuff.”

For Bernot, the joy of the science is in the discovery.

“I get really excited about the PPCP work because I feel like we don’t know where we’re going and we’re finding all kinds of new stuff,” she says. “At the end of the day, the best scientists are not the ones that can spew out numbers and dates and things like that. They’re the ones who came up with another way to look at it or the ones who came up with a new question.”

And that is exactly what Bernot continues to do at Ball State.

Fall 2014 | 19

SPO’s Continued Program Offerings

Grants Essentials Workshop SeriesThis semesterly workshop, containing 4 session cover-ing the proposal development process, was presented through both open enrollment (via University Learning & Development) and in a targeted series for faculty specifically within the Teachers College. Approximately 96 faculty members participated in the workshops.

Grantmanship Information Session (G.I.S.)The third iteration of this collaborative outreach event designed to provide grant writers with the tools needed to chart a course to grant success was held on February 3, 2014 in the Student Center. In addition to a meet-and-greet with various University Knowledge Units, par-ticipants heard a keynote lecture from Dr. David Stone, associate vice president for research at Northern Illinois University, entitled “Research at Ball State Redefined: Empowering Faculty.” Following the keynote a number of concurrent information sessions were offered, includ-ing Positioning New Faculty for Success in Research (Dr. Stone), Fulbright Scholar Information Session (Dr. Justin Miller, SPO Director), Professionalize your Approach to Grantsmanship (Dr. Stan Geidel, SPO Program Manag-er), and New Ways to Approach Private and Foundation Funding (a webinar hosted by the Grants Resource Center). There were 66 participants at this event.

SPO Fellows ProgramDuring Academic Year 2013-14, the SPO Fellows Program migrated to a year-long program from Sep-tember through April with two sets of cohorts meeting on a monthly basis. These cohorts consisted of 13 total faculty members hand-selected by the Associate Provost of Research, Chairs, and Deans, or nominated by SPO staff. Fellows develop the knowledge base and grant writing skills necessary to obtain external grants in sup-port of their fundable endeavors more successfully.

Focus on the SearchThis 1-hour intensive session allows 6-8 participants to get hands-on, one-on-one time with the SPO Research Information Coordinator to first sign up for COS Pivot and then learn how to utilize this powerful tool to devel-op a search – all with the help of a Pivot expert. During 2013-14, 35 individuals participated in the course.

A utism? That’s so rare that you’ll probably never see a case of it in your career,” Susan

Wilczynski was told in graduate school. And yet Ball State’s Plassman Family Distinguished Professor of Spe-cial Education and Applied Behavior Analysis diagnosed her first case before she earned her doctorate in 1998.

The lack of information about autism at the time made Wilczynski feel helpless in dealing with the boy’s parents. “I did everything I could to try to be there for them,” she recalls, “but I was petrified at the fact that they could ask about the best course of treatment and I didn’t really have a great answer for them.”

The parents saw Wilczynski’s desire to help and invited her to learn as they brought in experts from Cali-fornia to teach them how to deal with their son’s autism.

“That’s how I got involved in autism. Not because I understood the population or loved the population but because I thought I can never let a family down again to the same extent,” she explains. “And as I got to know more about people on the spectrum and their families and their teachers I was amazed – I was amazed at their resilience, I was amazed at the challenges they faced but also the courage they often brought to it. And so I decid-ed this was a population I wanted to work with.”

Wilczynski’s drive to assist people with autism and their families led to her to direct the National Autism Center. “My primary focus was on identifying treatments

that work. Once I had done that, I looked around and realized, ‘So what? Who cares if we’ve identified these treatments if we don’t have enough people in the field to deliver the treat-ments?’ So I wanted to shift my career back to academia so

that I could focus on training future behavior analysts and other professionals who know how to treat autism effectively.”

Wilczynski’s goal is progressing nicely. Ball State’s master’s program in applied behavior analysis with an

emphasis in autism has more than 950 students. The program is helping to meet a growing need. The condi-tion once considered rare is now being seen much more often – one in 68 people is now diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

“We now have many people on the spectrum, and it is a huge financial drain on the families. It is an incredible challenge for school systems,” Wilczynski says. “But as they get older and the competitive employment rate is only 5-7 percent, it will have a huge economic impact. If you take that one in 68 and multiply it by the number of people in this country and then calculate that 93 to 95 percent of them won’t have jobs, what do you think that’s going to do to communities? So we have to get better answers.”

Wilczynski makes sure that the resources she pro-duces are practical, both in scheduling and in content. “We have to have answers for families, for teachers, and for others that make getting access to resources easier – that work better for their schedules, that focus on the skills the kids need to be able to demon-strate in real-world settings. And that’s where we like to focus our energies,” she says.

To help find those answers, Ball State created the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders. Supported by donations from Leland Boren and the Plassman family, the center uses research to design and administer pro-grams for people with autism, their parents, and their teachers.

Parent and Teacher Training Wilczynski saw that traditional training programs

wouldn’t fit into families’ hectic schedules. “These parents’ lives – they’re running their kids from speech language pathology to the doctor and trying to get them some social interaction with other kids and sometimes dealing with severe behavior problems. Where do you fit in the training? Having a professional that’s available only from 9 to 5 often doesn’t work. And yet they are sometimes the most desperate for the services.”


Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders Seeks Practical Solutions

“

“We now have many peo-ple on the [autism] spectrum,

and it is a huge financial drain on the families and an incredible

challenge for school systems.”

With this in mind, she designed web-based train-ing programs for parents and teachers. The participants watch videos, receive handouts and other information, and take quizzes and pre- and post-tests, all online at their convenience. Currently, to test its usefulness, half of the group also receives coaching and feedback. This is done by having the participants take videos of themselves interacting with the person with autism and uploading the video. The trainers watch the videos and provide feedback. After the parent or teacher has reviewed the feedback, he or she meets with a trainer online through GoToMeeting for coaching on specific areas of difficulty.

“They have access to somebody, even if it’s not somebody local,” Wilczynski says. “My goal from the beginning was to make sure treatment was equally acces-sible for people in rural communities as it was for people in major cities.”

That’s why Wilczynski decided to use this format. Participants can complete the web-based training as their schedules permit and the only events that need to be scheduled are the GoToMeeting sessions, which are offered both during the day and in the evening.

“It maximizes our flexibility for families,” Wil-czynski says. “And if we can show that this is a cost-ef-fective method that is increasing knowledge and skill acquisition, we think this is the way to go.”

Summer CampSummer break presents a special challenge to chil-

dren with autism, which is why Ball State’s Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders started the Autism Summer Camp under the leadership of David McIntosh, David and Joanna Meeks Distinguished Professor of Special Education.

“Kids acquire skills over the course of the school year, and then they have summer break. Your average kids lose some skills, but within two weeks they’re back to where they were,” Wilczynski says. “But for kids with autism, it often takes months and months before they’re back to where they ended the previous school year. This camp allows the kids to at least maintain the skills that they had.”

Workforce DevelopmentEach person with ASD is different, and “one size

fits all” approaches to treatment often fail. “Based on the

information we have right now, I think the most im-portant service is applied behavior analysis,” Wilczynski says. This systematic approach known as ABA involves studying an individual’s behaviors (such as those used in talking, playing, or studying) and then structuring the person’s environment so that he or she is more likely to be successful.

Examples range from teaching a child how to ask for a favorite soda or to approach other children on the playground to teaching someone getting a first job how to use a copier or file documents. Even preschool lessons have far-reaching impact.

“The earlier you can diagnose kids, the earlier you can intervene and the better their outcomes are,” Wil-czynski says. “When you’re 4 years old and you learn how to play with other kids, you’re developing the social skills, the give and take that is necessary to be successful in almost every workforce. So it might involve honing the skill as they get older, but they’re getting that foun-dational skill as early as possible and then they’re much more likely to be successful down the road.”

The workforce programs are led by Wilczynski and Assistant Professor of Applied Behavior Analysis Jen Cul-len. They use ABA as a foundation for teaching skills but also use a self-determined model. In this way, individuals with ASD can learn to find the right jobs that match their skills and preferences. Wilczynski and Cullen work closely with McIntosh and Assistant Professor of Educa-tional Psychology Maria Hernandez Finch, who conduct research on employment assessment.

All of the programs offered by the Center for Au-tism Spectrum Disorders – parent and teacher training, summer camp, job coaching – have the same goal: to help people with autism express themselves, relate to others, and function more effectively in society.

Wilczynski will never again be in the position of not knowing what to tell a family whose child has been diagnosed with ASD. She says, “As I acquired skills so that I knew what to do to make a difference, it was the great joy of my life: learning how to teach kids to talk, to play, to hug their parents before they go to bed at night, to go trick-or-treating, and every other little thing that kids do.”

Fall 2014 | 21

“The earlier you can diagnose kids, the earlier you can intervene and the better their outcomes are.”


External Funding Overview

The Sponsored Programs Office external funding totals include Ball State University Foundation funds that play out as externally sponsored projects, as well as funding self-administered by University Service Centers. The chart below, “External Dollars Received FY 2009-2014,” reflects totals for all sources of external funding for Ball State projects, including Foundation support and Centers.

FY 2014ANNUAL REPORT

Fall 2014 | 23

Awards by College or Unit College/Unit Amount Awards

Academic Affairs $ 5,400,064 45 Applied Sciences and Technology $ 3,019,114 34 Student Affairs

$ 3,010,150 5 Sciences and Humanities $ 2,675,684 125 Teachers College $ 1,993,576 35 Information Technology $ 1,330,791 46 Miller College of Business $ 373,311 5 Architecture and Planning $ 276,530 19 Fine Arts $ 97,700 9 Communication, Information, and Media $ 53,230 5 Enrollment, Marketing, and Communication $ 1,400 1 TOTAL $ 18,231,550 329

External Dollars Received by Type of Award 2013-‐14 Source Number Amount Percentage

Academic Support 34 $ 4,976,300 27% Service 147 $ 4,429,151 24% Basic Research 69 $ 3,435,315 19% Institutional Support 30 $ 2,640,608 14% Instruction 19 $ 2,245,180 12% Applied Research 30 $ 504,996 3% TOTAL 329 $ 18,231,550 100%

External Dollars Received by Funding Source 2013-‐14 Source Number Amount Percentage

Foundation 59 $ 7,032,598 39% Federal 102 $ 5,326,523 29% Industry 48 $ 2,390,881 13% State 22 $ 1,879,187 10% Non-‐Profit 84 $ 1,513,699 8% Local 5 $ 58,630 Less than 1% International 6 $ 20,657 Less than 1% University 3 $ 9,375 Less than 1% TOTAL 329 $ 18,231,550 100%


Initiatives & Accomplishments

Progress on the Ball State Strategic Plan (2012-17)

Baseline FY12

FY13 Actual(benchmark)

FY14 Actual(benchmark)

Increase by 125% external funding for scholarly work $14M $20.2M

($17.6M)$18.2M($21.2M)

Increase by 40% the number of con-tract and grant proposal submissions. 505 532

(545)485(586)

Increase number of contract and grant proposal submissions total-ing more than $25,000 by 25%

183 205(192)

210(201)


Notable Funded Proposals

International Projects• Ken Holland, Center for International Develop-

ment: “Baghdad English Language Center,” U.S. Department of State, $600,000

• Richard Edwards, iLearn: “The Arrive Project: Mo-bile Adventure Game and Online Learning Modules for Youth Life Skills,” Creative Associates Interna-tional, $278,989

• Lindsey Blom, School of Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science: “Sport for Social Change: Tajikistan,” U.S. Department of State, $222,637

• Ken Holland, Center for International Develop-ment: “Pan-African Youth Leadership Program (Francophone & Anglophone Participants),” Meridi-an International Center, $190,791

Sciences• Bart Pederson, Center for Medical Education: “Neu-

roprotective Effects of Brain Glycogen in Hypogly-cemia,” National Institutes of Health, $420,000

• Mark Hill, Anthropology: “Archaeometric and Stylistic Analysis of Hopewellian Interaction Net-works”, National Science Foundation, $262,658

• Thomas Lauer, Biology: “Dynamics and Models of the Yellow Perch in Indiana Waters of Lake

Michigan 2014-2016,” Indiana Department of Natural Resources, $148,043

• Scott Trappe, Human Performance Lab: “Integrated Resistance and Aerobic Training During Long Du-ration Space Flight and Bedrest: Impact on Skeletal Muscle Health,” National Aeronautics and Space Administration. $143,208

Public Service• Dick Heupel, Building Better Communities: “Com-

munity Readiness Index,” Indiana Office of Com-munity and Rural Affairs, $340,000

• John Fallon, Building Better Communities: “Cre-ation of the Northeast Indiana AHEC at Ball State University,” State of Indiana, $208,550

• Michael Hicks, Center for Business and Economic Research: “Key Economic Sectors in Indiana Study,” Indiana Economic Development Corporation, $203,761

• Kelli Huth, Building Better Communities: “Building Better Neighborhoods,” Ball Brothers Foundation, $200,000

• Pat Clark, Elementary Education: “MuncieP3: Maximizing Promise and Potential in Preschool-Pri-mary Grades through Collaboration with Commu-nity-Based Organizations,” Indiana Department of

Fall 2014 | 25

Education, $200,000Institutional Support• Kay Bales, Office of the Vice President for Student

Affairs: “Cardinal Connect,” Lilly Endowment, Inc., $3,000,000

Research Recognition

BeneFacta DayThe 23rd annual BeneFacta Day was celebrated October 14, 2013 in the Student Center Cardinal Hall. This annual event for recognizing faculty and profession personnel active in submitting proposals and carrying out sponsored projects brought together more than 100 attendees who enjoyed wine, cheese, and hors d’oeuvres, as well as remarks from the Provost, Associate Provost for Research, and SPO Director.

Research & Outstanding Creative Endeavor of the YearThe annual lecture and reception featuring the Research-er of the Year and Outstanding Creative Awardee took place on April 14, 2014 in the Arts & Journalism Build-ing. The 2013 Research recipient, as nominated by his peers and chosen by the University Research Commit-tee, Tom Holtgraves, professor of psychology, spoke on “Understanding Ambiguity.” The Outstanding Creative Endeavor award, also nominated by his peers and chosen by the Creative Arts Committee, was Matt Mullins, assis-tant professor of English, who presented a number of his works in his presentation, “A Mixed Media Reading.”

Staff Updates

• Proposal Manager Heather Miller left SPO in September 2013 to return to the library world. She was replaced by Keith Chandler, who joined us in January 2014 from the Indiana Department of Education.

• Maria Bumbalough initially joined SPO as a tem-porary employee but was brought on in a full-time capacity in April 2014 as Proposal Coordinator & Financial Assistant

Faculty and Professional Personnel Support Programs

Indirect Cost Recovery DistributionPer University policy, of the indirect costs recovered by the University: 5% go to Principal Investigator(s), 10%

to Departments/Units, and 3% to the College (when their four-year average is met, with 20% on amounts over that average). During the past year, the following amounts were transferred: $51,972 to PIs, $183,599 to departments/centers, and $61,240 to colleges – which makes a total distribution of $296,811, a 13% increase over the previous year.

SUBMIT ProgramThis incentive program places funds into an account for PI and Co-PI extramural-related expenses according to a graduated scale based on the level of a sponsor request. In FY 2013-14, 227 proposals were eligible for these funds, resulting in $109,151 being distributed among 220 PI and Co-PIs.

Communication & Information

SPO continues to share information through a num-ber of social media outlets including the SPO Research Newsletter Blog, Facebook page, and Twitter account. In addition to funding opportunities, SPO events, and news related to external funding, these mechanisms have also allowed for the ability to share funding successes quickly with the campus community (called SPOtlights).

SPO Professional Development

SPO Staff attended and/or presented at the following conferences and professional meetings:• Association of University Technology Managers

(AUTM) Regional Meeting – Justin Miller and Stephanie Sisco

• Grantsmanship Information Sessions (GIS) – Stan Geidel and Justin Miller presented

• Indiana Forum for Research Administration (IFRA) – Jessie Roark and Augusta Wray

• Midwest Research and Graduate Administrators Forum (MRGAF)– Justin Miller and Robert Morris

• National Council of University Research Admin-istrators (NCURA) Fundamentals II Class – Sarah Lee and Augusta Wray

• Butler Undergraduate Research Conference: Jessie Roark

• Nation Council of University Research Administra-tors, Region IV: Keith Chandler, Jackie Davis, Stan Geidel (presented), Sarah Lee (presented), Justin Mill-er (presented), Jessie Roark (presented), Augusta Wray



ASPiRE Internal Grant Programs

Ball State University’s Internal Grants Program was created in 1965 to provide funding to faculty and students and to support and develop projects in the areas of research and creative endeavors. ASPiRE Internal grants are intended to supplement and strengthen the support for research and creative endeavors that comes both from depart-mental and college resources along with other university programs.

Ball State Internal Grants program offerings consisted of the following com-petitions this fiscal year: Junior Faculty Research, Junior Faculty Creative Arts, ADVANCE, New Faculty Start-Up, Reprint/Publication Support, Travel Support for External Funding for facul-ty, International Travel Support, Grad-uate Creative Arts, Graduate Research, Undergraduate Creative Arts, Under-graduate Research, and Travel Support for Professional Meetings for students.

2013-14 Program ParticipationThe ASPiRE Internal Grants

program processed 159 student pro-posals and awarded $24,593 to support 124 projects and 116 faculty proposals and awarded $275,182 to support 101 projects. Details of the 2013-14 ASPiRE Internal Grants program are summarized in the table “Internal Grants Program 2013-14” (right). Two of the Junior Faculty awardees are featured in the 2014 issue of Ball State Research, Brent Cole from the School of Art (p. 4) and VJ Rubenstein from Biology (p. 14). In ad-dition, descriptions of individual internal awards can be found under their respec-tive College and Department headings.

Internal Grants Program 2013-14

Requests Submitted

Proposals Awarded

Award Amount

Faculty Programs - ResearchADVANCE Research 14 10 $104,555 Junior Faculty Research 12 10 $88,800 Total Research 26 20 $193,355

Faculty Programs - Creative ArtsADVANCE Creative Arts 2 1 $5,000 Junior Faculty Creative Arts 3 3 $28,550 Total Creative Arts 5 4 $33,550

International Travel 30 30 $12,000 New Faculty Start-Up 29 21 $30,650 Reprint/Publication Support 26 26 $5,627 Travel Support - External Funding - - - Total Faculty Programs 116 101 $275,182

Graduate Student ProgramsCreative Arts 4 2 $1,000 Research 33 17 $8,355 Hollis 15 13 $5,303 Travel Support - Prof. Meetings 74 73 $6,215 Total 126 105 $20,873

Undergraduate Student ProgramsCreative Arts 13 8 $2,345 Research 10 2 $550 Travel Support - Prof. Meetings 10 9 $825 Total 33 19 $3,720

Total Student Programs 159 124 $24,593

Total Internal Grants 275 225 $299,775

Fall 2014 | 27

Intellectual Property

Intellectual property development is an integral component to the research enterprise at the University. SPO is responsible for both receiving initial disclosures of potential intellectual property and in serving as the University liaison with the Ball State Innovation Corpo-ration, or BSIC. The BSIC, under the continued lead-ership of Interim President Wil Davis, directs commer-cialization and licensing activities related to BSU’s works of intellectual property: everything from mobile apps to curriculum to musical theatre.

Three of the performance indicators of the BSU Strategic Plan directly relate to SPO’s IP efforts, under Goal 4, Objective 5: “Enhance commercialization with

new opportunities and strategies.” Those indicators are to increase royalty by 50% (to $405,606), create a total of five start-up companies that generate significant net rev-enue, and increase the annual number of IP disclosures to 20. During Fiscal Year 2014, 14 disclosures of intellec-tual property were made, maintaining a positive trajec-tory towards our 2017 goal. In addition, FY14 royalties totaled $462,085.33, which surpassed our Strategic Plan goal! Itemized listing of those IP products are below. For additional questions on the IP process at Ball State, con-tact Stephanie Sisco; for questions on the specific products available, contact Linda Swartz.

Intellectual Property Income FY2014Author(s) Project Title Income

DVD Michael O’Hara Explore Theatre: A Backstage Pass - DVD $26,296.48 Hans Sturm The Art of the Bow $2,300.00 Hans Sturm The Art of the Left Hand $2,000.00 Arlene Ignico Assessment of Fundamental Motor Skills $719.82 Catherine Primmer, L. T. Faison Weight Training for the Physical Body $363.80 Linda Siktberg, Ann Bilodeau Safe Swallowing $359.63 Teresa Matlock Child Care Collection, LLC $320.93 Rob Bell Mental Toughness Training for Golf $127.29 Rich Swingley, Tim Pollard Ellie & Marianne $74.85 Nancy Carlson Movers & Stakers: Stories Along the Indiana National Road $60.00 Chin-Sook Pak Sobrevivir $31.90 Rodger Smith, Jim Connolly Changing Gears: End of an Era $29.95CD Eric Lassiter Kiowa Hymns $550.41Software

Sherry Woosley, Donald Whitaker MAP: On-line (Making Achievement Possible: On-line) $419,439.26Matthew Stuve, Mark Lora rGrade $5,885.27

Jason Doll, Thomas Lauer Back-Calc (FishBC) $54.99Miscellaneous Beth Turcotte The Circus in Winter $3,000.00 Rodger Smith My Name is Jerry $470.75Total $462,085.33

From Chris Flook’s “The Soul of Indiana” Series

Documents

Ball State Research