MUNCIE, Ind. - The city known as Middletown U.S.A. will be the site of the Small Cities Conference, which aims to explore the distinctive challenges that have confronted, and still confront, municipalities with populations between 40,000 and 100,000 people.

The Center for Middletown Studies at Ball State University and the Minnetrista Cultural Center are sponsors of "Small Cities: Past, Present, and Future" taking place Sept. 14-15 at the Minnetrista Cultural Center and the Edmund B. and Bertha C. Ball Center.

Conference participants will consider the economic, historical, social, political and cultural aspects of the small city experience. Participants include social scientists, humanists, urban planners and public officials.

Kenneth T. Jackson, the Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University, will be the keynote speaker. He will speak about "The Changing Shape of Small Town America" at 1 p.m. Sept. 15 at Minnetrista.

One of America's leading urban historians, Jackson is the author of "Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States," among other studies. He was also a visiting scholar at the Center for Middletown Studies in 1987.

Other conference participants include Theodore Caplow, Commonwealth Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia; Timothy R. Mahoney, professor of history at the University of Nebraska; and Kirsten A. Gronbjerg, Efroymson Chair in Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Several members of the Ball State faculty will also be presenting at the conference, including German T. Cruz, landscape architecture; Joseph Tamney, sociology; and Kathy Segrist, Institute for Wellness and Gerontology.

The conference is being co-sponsored by the Center for Urban Policy and the Environment at Indiana University, Purdue University-Indianapolis, the Ball State University Foundation, the Indiana Humanities Council and the Muncie Indiana Transit System (MITS).

MITS will be offering a free shuttle service from the Ball State campus to Minnetrista during the conference.

The advance registration fee for the conference is $45. On-site registrations are $55. One-day registrations are $30. Ball State students may attend any of the conference sessions for free by showing their student identification cards.

For more information about the Small Cities Conference, contact Bruce Geelhoed, Center for Middletown Studies, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306, (765) 285-8037 or e-mail, bgeelhoe@bsu.edu.