That was true when Ball State University's College of Architecture and Planning (CAP) took stock of its 35-year-old Community-Based Projects program. While the college knew its faculty and students had worked in communities across Indiana, the analysis showed they had performed 250 projects in 75 communities in 64 counties that  resulted in an astounding $120 million in capital improvements.

Serving communities across Indiana is not an exercise confined to CAP. In fact, faculty in each of our seven academic colleges and professional staff in other university units have lent their expertise, energy, and effort to help communities, organizations, and businesses solve problems. These endeavors served as the inspiration for our Building Better Communities (BBC) initiative, which is designed to spur economic development and quality of life advancement in Indiana by applying Ball State's strengths in hands-on, immersive learning to projects across the state.

The BBC initiative gained momentum with $2.5 million in funding from the Indiana legislature and a $1.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. that created Business Fellows, an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving.

This report provides a sense of the geographic scope and disciplinary breadth of BBC-our faculty, staff, and students are working on projects in every corner of the state and in critical areas such as education, entrepreneurship, economic development, and community development. And we have made it easy for potential partners to approach the university to talk about possible projects. The Building Better Communities office offers one-stop shopping, so to speak, working with communities to define their needs and linking them with faculty and staff with the expertise to provide solutions.

In assessing the various facets of Building Better Communities, it becomes quite clear that the initiative is worth our continued investment not only because of the dividends it provides to our community partners, but also because of  the benefits derived by our faculty through rich research opportunities and by our students through valuable learning experiences.

After reading this report, I think you'll agree that Ball State is taking interesting and innovative approaches to Building Better Communities...one community at a time.