Faculty participating as fellows include Michael O'Hara, theatre and dance; Barb Stedman, English; Thalia Mulvihill, education; and Eric Lassiter, anthropology.

Fellows receive a summer stipend to prepare the seminar and recruit students. Each seminar is assigned a budget of $25,000 to create a product to engage the community in extensive dialogue.

The semester-long seminars explore the connections among the arts, humanities, sciences and technology; create a product to illustrate their collaborative research and interdisciplinary study; and present the product to the community in a public forum. Existing independent study, seminar and regular courses are used.

O'Hara and his interdisciplinary team of students will design, develop and create a theater e-book for high school and college undergraduates. Several commercial publishing companies have already expressed interest in this project that will use cutting-edge new media to teach the tools, vocabulary, craft and production of live theater. The seminar's community sponsor is the Muncie Civic Theatre.

Stedman and her students will investigate Indiana's rich heritage of environmental literature and create an electronic anthology. Students will also work on an environmental restoration project in the Limberlost wetlands, providing experiences from which the students will write their own environmental literature for the anthology. Community sponsors include the Minnetrista Cultural Center and Oakhurst Gardens, the Red-tail Conservancy and regional chapters of the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club.

Mulvihill and her students will investigate the meaning of education in a democracy by researching the lives of prominent educational leaders. Their investigations will include archival research at libraries in Chicago, New York and Boston. The creation of these biographies will lead to a theatrical performance in which the "characters" will debate controversial and enduring issues in education. Muncie Civic Theatre serves as the seminar's community sponsor.

Lassiter and his students will conduct ethnographic research on "the other Middletown"-Muncie's African American community. Students will work in teams to research and write chapters for a book to be published by a university press. Community sponsors include the Muncie Commission on the Social Status of Black Males, the Muncie Community Foundation, the Center for Middletown Studies and former Indiana State Representative and Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middletown Studies Hurley Goodall.

(NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, contact Joe Trimmer, director of the Center for Creative Inquiry, by e-mail at jtrimmer@bsu.edu or by phone at (765) 285-0117.)