Ball State's Board of Trustees Thursday approved the sale of bonds to finance construction of the Communication and Media Building, providing much-needed space for the university's emerging digital media content production facilities, which show promise in creating spin-off business.

In 2003, the Indiana General Assembly and the state budget committee approved bonding authority for the $21 million project. It will be located between the Ball Communication Building and the Robert Bell Building, bringing all four departments of the College of Communication, Information, and Media into a four-building conjoined complex with the Art and Journalism Building.

"This facility will give Ball State an outstanding environment in which to continue our leading-edge efforts in creating content for digital media," said Ball State President Jo Ann M. Gora. "Industry leaders are partnering with our Center for Media Design on projects that will shape the future in terms of what kind of information people receive and share and how they access it.

"Because our students, faculty and staff are involved in those projects and have access to the tools they need to create video or animated content, they are beginning to foster business plans that will result in the type of jobs needed to transform Indiana's economy."

Part of the new building will be used to expand the Center for Media Design, the centerpiece of Ball State's iCommunication Initiative, funded through a $20 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.

The building is being designed by MSKTD and Associates, Inc. of Fort Wayne. With construction slated to begin early next year, the building would open at the beginning of the 2006-07 academic year.

The trustees also approved the university's legislative request for the 2005-07 biennium, which seeks state funding to support faculty and staff salaries, supplies and expenses, and repair and rehabilitation of university buildings. The university is requesting:

• An increase of 3 percent for salaries and supplies and expenses.
• Operational funding for the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities, a public school for academically gifted high school juniors and seniors, which is located on the Ball State campus.
• $2.5 million to fund the Center for Innovation as part of Ball State's Building Better Communities Initiative. The center would offer a semester-long intensive experience in which faculty and students would engage in a project that would result in a direct benefit to the economy or quality-of-life within Indiana.

"The Center for Innovation builds on Ball State's outreach experience, but provides an added incentive for faculty and students to pursue their creative, interdisciplinary and entrepreneurial ventures through a semester focused solely on one project," Gora said. "In addition, it will provide even more opportunities for students to have a special, intensive educational experience at Ball State that allows them to apply classroom learning in practical ways."

In other news, the trustees:

• approved the auxiliary and general budgets for 2004-05.
• renewed the university's property and casualty insurance coverage with B.M.N. Brokerage using United Educators to provide general liability, excess, student malpractice and educators liability coverage, with the excess coverage increasing from $15 to $20 million. Auto liability coverage will be handled by Miles and Finch Inc. using Selective Insurance Group.