As president of Ball State University, I believe we are at an exciting crossroads in higher education and its role in renewing Indiana's economy.

In state government, Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Indiana State Legislature are considering bold funding proposals to bolster and improve higher education in Indiana. These investments would help attract and retain the best students and world-class scholars to Indiana's institutions of higher education.

In higher education, leaders at many of Indiana's college and universities have realized that we must step up and play an integral role in ensuring our state's economic success. Gone are the days of simply standing on the sidelines and lecturing in our classrooms.

At Ball State, we have made a bold commitment to redefine education, leave our traditional classrooms and develop partnerships with Indiana companies and communities to help our state's economy move forward. Our goal is to offer high-achieving students a distinctive learning experience at an institution that is moving forward and responding nimbly to the ever-changing educational needs of students and employers. Our ability to deliver a high-quality, relevant educational experience is essential to student success and the economic health of Indiana.

Our "Education Redefined" initiative is a platform for offering high-caliber students meaningful opportunities to collaborate with energized faculty who are outstanding in their fields. It highlights the way we are making relevant, immersive learning experiences the hallmark of a Ball State education. And it aligns with our dedication to providing students and faculty with bleeding-edge technology and state-of-the-art facilities.

Our faculty members have a proud historical commitment to mentoring students and nurturing creative, rigorous applied learning. Now, we are looking for new ways to offer these opportunities to even more students.

These immersive experiences allow students to engage with learning in an intense, creative, collaborative and personal way, at times, mirroring the risk and reward of real-life ventures. A case in point is our "spine sweat" course in entrepreneurship, in which seniors put their graduation on the line based on whether their business plans pass a panel of business leaders. This high-risk approach has launched more than 100 businesses, the majority of which are in Indiana.

We believe our approach will fight Indiana's "brain drain," which our state's political leaders are also addressing. On the front end, immersive learning can retain Indiana's best and brightest by giving them a dynamic, innovative university to attend. During their time here, students will build relationships with Indiana businesses, which upon graduation will grow into Indiana job opportunities. 

One way we are accomplishing that is by using a portion of a $20 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to establish immersive learning institutes based on a novel "triad" approach—bringing industry professionals into our already proven model of students working on projects under faculty guidance. So far, we've opened immersive learning institutes that address digital fabrication, intermedia and animation, digital entertainment and education, and news research.

At these campus institutes, students and faculty members have launched SmartScrap, which creates a digital catalog of recycled scraps from Indiana Limestone Fabricators into usable combinations that can be sold for profit.

Other immersive learning projects have partnered with our Building Better Communities initiative, which is renewing Indiana one community at a time. In this realm, our students are helping Brown County strive to become a national arts destination and are working with Reynolds, Ind.—Biotown, USA—address land-use issues related to its goal of relying entirely on locally generated biorenewable energy sources.

Ball State is committed to offering such outstanding opportunities to all of our students. Indiana's politicians are working to make higher education more accessible. This combination of bold investment and redefining education is critical to Indiana's economic future.