MUNCIE, Ind. – Members of the Indiana Technology Partnership came to Ball State University Tuesday to build relationships that will help expand the state's high-tech economy.

Scott Jones, ITP chair, left thoroughly impressed after talking with university leaders and participating in a virtual reality demonstration by a 17-year-old high school student.

"There are so many resources at Ball State that are well-kept secrets on a statewide basis," said Jones, who is on a 14-city fact-finding tour of the state. "Ball State is providing wonderful opportunities for high school students, college students and those people in their 30s, 40s and 50s."

ITP is an organization recently formed by the state's technology leaders and entrepreneurs to help boost technology in Indiana, which has been labeled the Silicon Prairie or Silicon Cornbelt by the media.

"There can be a Silicon Cornfield right here just as there is a Silicon Valley in California," Jones said. "This is a logical place for e-commerce companies to locate because we are in the middle of the country."

"We all have to work together to make this work," he said. "It must be a statewide effort with partners from the business community joining with universities and colleges and state government."

Besides chairing the partnership, Jones is chairman and chief operation officer of Escient Technologies of Carmel. His goal is to help the state develop the Midwest's top high technology economy by 2005 and to reduce the loss of highly talented college graduates to other states.

During several meetings on campus, Jones and ITP officials took pages of notes on various technology-based academic programs offered by the university.

Ray Steele, director of Ball State's Center for Information and Communication Sciences, explained that his program was attracting corporate recruiters nationally, but few from inside the state.

The master's program recruits two-thirds to three-fourths of its students from Indiana, and about the same number are hired by out-of-state companies upon graduation, he said.

"They know our reputation here but are always asking me why the center is in the middle of a cornfield," Steele said. "We don't want to be second to anyone, and we shouldn't have our graduates leaving the state to find jobs."

While Jones was impressed with a number of Ball State's programs, it was a virtual reality demonstration by Charles Lehman, a high school student attending a technology education program on campus, that left him enamored.

During a 20-minute program, Jones donned 3-D glasses to watch Lehman's computer program that created a holographic image.

"This says to me that Ball State is taking the step in the right direction when a high school student can come here and develop this," Jones said. "This is the type of student who in a couple of years will go to Hollywood and make the monsters pop right off the screen."

Lehman is a senior at the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities, located on the Ball State campus. It is a two-year residential school that enrolls the top high school juniors and seniors from around the state for highly challenging academic programs.

By Marc Ransford, Communications Manager