"Rather than simply being a drop-off center, our goal is to have an impact and reverse the role of poverty in the community we serve," she says. "By staying with us for one year, the children enrolled in our center are reaching and exceeding their development milestones, which greatly increase their future academic success."

The center's lofty mission seems to be working. The building, a converted school (formerly IPS 76), houses a bustling day-long daycare and early childhood development center and is being prepped in anticipation of landing a new charter school as a tenant.

Since St. Christopher opened in 2002, Ball State has assisted the center nearly every step of the way. Faculty and students from Teachers College have organized professional development sessions for the center's teachers, helped create the center's curriculum, and currently manages each semester's new crop of student teachers, who bring enthusiasm and energy to the center on a daily basis.

Ball State's Business Fellows program has also enhanced the center's efforts. The program gave five students a chance to spend a semester in an intense applied work experience that had a direct benefit to the center. The initiative, coordinated by Ball State's Career Center and funded by a $1.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., works in collaboration with Building Better Communities.

The students, led by Michelle Glowacki-Dudka, assistant professor of educational studies, worked to enhance the center's funding efforts on two fronts: grant procurement and fund-raising. The students conducted several board retreats covering market resource development and assisted the staff in creating fund-raising materials. "Having an institutional partnership with Ball State — standing there side by side with us — has been a breath of new life in many areas," Feeley says.

Not only has Ball State offered a breath of fresh air, but it has also helped the center's officials to see their center in a new light. The university's Center for Energy Research/Education/Service (CERES) has been a valuable resource for examining many "daylighting" issues.

Studies have shown that properly lit rooms can boost students' classroom performance in math and reading by 20 to 26 percent, says Robert Koester, director of CERES. "With our sun-simulating heliodon, we want to maximize the architect's design to help students stay alert and more focused, which in turn, will help the charter school and the child development center be more successful," he says. The heliodon, which can be adjusted to mimic the angle of the sun at any time of the day during any given month, will test various window configurations and aid the architect in selecting the best one for a forthcoming renovation.

Improving fund-raising, raising educational standards, and enhancing design proposals — by continuing to shine its light on the St. Christopher Center, both literally and figuratively, Ball State is helping the center build a better community for the children it serves.

See the light

Don't let the prehistoric-sounding name fool you — Ball State's heliodon is one futuristic diagnostic tool that's in high demand by many Indiana architects.

The heliodon, which can simulate the annual and daily patterns of the sun, is housed in Ball State's Center for Energy Research/Education/Service (CERES) located in the College of Architecure and Planning Building and was used to test several window configurations for a forthcoming renovation of the St. Christopher's Center in Indianapolis.

To conduct the "daylighting" tests, a group of Ball State architecture students built a scale model of the center. The structure was then placed on the heliodon's platform and lit up by the sun-emulating light source. Inside the model, a small, pen-sized camera was used to capture and transmit the resulting digital images, which were recorded on a laptop computer.

"The heliodon was adjusted to mimic the angle of the sun at a variety of daily times for each of the months in the year," Koester says. "From the tests, we were able to preview four different window configurations and provide information that will help the architect decide what design and type of glass will work the best."

St. Christopher's isn't the first client to use the services of the heliodon. CERES focuses on issues related to energy and resource use, alternatives, and conservation. Since its mission is to serve the campus, local, state, and regional communities, the center continues to develop partnerships and test buildings and designs. For more information on CERES, visit www.bsu.edu/ceres.