Barbara Bogue
Creative Writing in the Community

English 409: Creative Writing in the Community is a required course for Creative Writing majors.  It is also an opportunity for Creative Writing students to make personal connections with members of the community and to experiment with new content and techniques in writing.  Professor Bogue, who first taught the course in 2001, remembers her initial conception for the course: “I designed and developed the project so that creative writing majors would have the opportunity to go out into the community and meet individuals who have stories to tell but are not often heard, and/or whose voices are ignored or misunderstood.”

Throughout this immersive learning experience, students partner with individuals from four participating social service agencies in Muncie: Big Brothers Big Sisters, CrownPointe Communities (a retirement community), Motivate Our Minds (an after-school tutoring program for elementary and middle school students), and Hillcroft Services, Inc. (an organization that provides services for persons with mental and physical disabilities).  Students are required to spend several hours with their partners and complete a variety of writing assignments with and about these individuals from the community. Professor Bogue notes, “Many students express (at the end of the semester) that the course has taken them ‘out of their comfort zones’ as writers and as citizens of the community and they have improved in their performances and skills in both.”

The course has personal significance for Professor Bogue.  She says that her work as a case manager for the severely mentally ill, her experiences with her niece, who is mentally retarded, and her “respect for the elderly and for children who need role models inspired [her] to design and implement the project.”  Professor Bogue also enjoys witnessing her students as they develop as citizens and writers:  “Seeing the personal connections that result for students and their partners and the students' newfound considerations of future civic engagement projects and participation in social activism are two of the most rewarding aspects of the project for me.”

Frank Felsenstein
“What Middletown Read”

Muncie, Indiana has a long history as the quintessential mid-sized American city.  In 1929, Robert Lynd and Helen Merrell-Lynd published a study of the cultural trends and social changes in Muncie called Middletown: A Study in American Culture.  Since then, as Dr. Felsenstein says, “a steady stream of researchers has come to this modest community in east central Indiana to explore the processes of change and modernization in the United States” (1).  Because of the historical significance of Muncie as a site of much research on American life, Dr. Felsenstein’s work to recover information about the reading habits of Muncie citizens throughout the 1800s is particularly significant in terms of understanding the reading habits of Americans in general during this time period.

Dr. Felsenstein has obtained permission from the Muncie Public Library to transfer the written records of the library from the late 1800s and early 1900s to an electronic format, searchable for those interested in learning more about what people in Muncie read.  Thanks to city directories and census reports from the turn-of-the-century, Dr. Felsenstein has been able to learn additional information about library patrons listed on written records.  When the database containing all of this information is fully functional, researchers worldwide will be able to obtain statistical information in order to answer questions such as, “What percentage of the borrowers were women readers?” “What were the most popular turn-of-the-century children’s books?  “Was Mark Twain or Charles Dickens widely read in the Midwest?”  “What local authors were represented in the library?”  “Were there minority readers with access to the library?” “What was the social status of Muncie’s readers?" (2).

Kecia McBride
“Expectation of Excellence,” Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry

During the Fall of 2007, Dr. McBride conducted a seminar at the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry (VBC) entitled “Expectation of Excellence.”  The 17 Ball State students in the VBC course, in collaboration with their community partners, the Burris lab school and the Indiana High School Athletic Association, developed a documentary film that explored “the cultural impact and social history of Title IX legislation”  by focusing in on the nationally prominent local girls’ volleyball team, the Burris Lady Owls.  Dr. McBride says that she is “so incredibly proud of the final version of the film.”  She continues, “I should clarify, however, that this has nothing at all to do with my work; the students did everything, shot every frame, wrote every word, played every note. I was the person who held things together and kept an eye on the big picture. But they did an absolutely amazing job, especially considering the fact that they only had 15 weeks to finish.”

Dr. McBride feels that her experiences at the VBC have contributed to her development as a teacher and a scholar.  She claims that “Expectation of Excellence” helped her “to rethink the ways in which it is possible to interact with undergraduate students.”  She says, “It is exciting also to see how hard students can push themselves, given the right environment; I think in the future my expectations of what students can achieve will be even higher, because I know what can happen. I think I will work harder in the future to connect projects and assignments to real concerns the students have, to give them a framework that has meaning and can motivate their best efforts.”  The project at the VBC also gave Dr. McBride an opportunity to explore her longtime interests in gender theory and film theory in new ways.  Additionally, she hopes to continue to produce scholarship on pedagogy and active learning.

“Expectation of Excellence” has benefited both the university and the community.  Dr. McBride comments, “I'm happy with the small ways in which my project bridged the town/gown divide. My students were able to go into parts of Muncie they never would have seen otherwise, and we had great attendance at the gala and the other public screening from both community members and Ball State folks.”  Additionally, Dr. McBride sees the project as contributing to the ways in which scholars and students of the Humanities are writing themselves “into the tech narrative of the 21st century.”  She says that it’s beneficial “to have a project from the Humanities that has a basis in technology.”   Her VBC seminar had a strong foundation in new technologies: the documentary film itself was shot entirely in HD, and her students compiled class materials in a wiki and a blog.

Deborah Mix
A Vocabulary of Thinking: Gertrude Stein and Contemporary North American Women’s Innovative Writing, U of Iowa P, 2007

Dr. Mix cites the genesis of her project on female experimental writers as a seminar that she took in graduate school: “We read a bit of Stein (just a few short pieces) in the class, but I was struck by the fact that the avant-garde was always talked about in masculine terms and with respect to masculine (and white!) forbearers.  As a result, our sense of the contemporary avant-garde was also largely white and male.  I wanted to find out what would happen if we thought about experimental writing through a lens that privileged female, and feminist, concerns.”  Dr. Mix sees A Vocabulary of Thinking as contributing, then, to the growing body of scholarship invested in “highlight[ing] the significance of women writers” and “broaden[ing] our sense of what constitutes innovative American poetry.”  

Dr. Mix is proud, she says, to have participated in that which she sees as a movement toward “broadening the canon.”  She believes that this type of work is important to students, stating “the more diversity students see in their literature classes, the more they're encouraged to recognize and value diverse experiences, the better.”

Although she admits that writing the book was a long and involved process, Dr. Mix feels that the project has benefitted both her teaching and her sense of herself as a scholar.  She says that she enjoys teaching “writing that is perceived as difficult” and that she believes that her role as a teacher is to encourage students “to be willing to depart from what we know how to do already as readers, to experiment with reading.”  She continues, “One of the things I want to do as a teacher, one of the things I feel like I learned from this project, is to encourage that kind of risk-taking.”  Dr. Mix also claims that completing this project has helped her to believe that she “can and should participate in larger conversations in the discipline.”

Bob Nowatzki and Pat Collier
“Word Nerds,” Indiana Public Radio Show

It all began in 2002, when Dr. Nowatzki set out to read the entire dictionary.  Dr. Collier knew of this ambitious endeavor and often joked with Dr. Nowatzki about the interesting words that he was learning.  Dr. Collier remembers, “When we would see each other socially I would often break the ice with ‘Any cool words lately?’  We had many conversations, and these tended to be funny.”  These conversations led Dr. Nowatzki to come up with the idea for a radio show in which the two professors would discuss words and word histories.  He spoke to Marcus Jackson, the General Manager at Indiana Public Radio, about his idea, and Jackson was enthusiastic about the prospect of the show.  Thus, “Word Nerds,” a weekly five-minute radio show, was born.

Both Dr. Nowatzki and Dr. Collier greatly enjoy the work that they do to keep “Word Nerds” on the air every week.  Dr. Nowatzki says of their time in the studio with Jackson:  “It's always fun to work with Marcus and Pat in the studio because we're all passionate about words and have the same sense of humor.  Pat and I think of Marcus is the "Third Nerd" because he also knows a lot about words and is as enthusiastic about them as we are.”  Dr. Collier agrees: “We yuck it up a good deal in the studio.”  Besides the fun that they have together, both professors just seem to love words.  Dr. Collier says that he’s “always gravitated towards writers who play with words, like Joyce (‘conmagnifacanjewbangtantiality’) and T. S. Eliot (‘polyphiloprogenerative’).”  And as for Dr. Nowatzki, well, he wanted to read the dictionary; do we really need to say more?

Dr. Nowatzki hopes that the show “benefits the community by satisfying their curiosity about words and word histories.”  He goes on to say, “I think Word Nerds has helped the department and the university connect with the community of IPR listeners in ways that don't happen with other aspects of my job, in which I interact only with students and other faculty.” 

Rai Peterson
“The Making of Americans,” Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry

Dr. Peterson’s seminar was one of the first to run at the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry (VBC) in 2000.  In fact, she recalls talking frequently with Dr. Joe Trimmer “as he shaped the goals for the Center along with Dr. John Worthen, Dr. Warren VanderHill, and Mrs. Virginia Ball.”  Along the way, she decided to try her hand at teaching a course at the Center: “Their goals were in concert with the sort of learning I remembered from ‘interim semesters’ at my undergraduate school, Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Iowa, and I was excited to try to bring that sort of cross-disciplinary, immersive learning to a university like BSU.”

Certainly, Dr. Peterson’s seminar, “The Making of Americans,” helped to successfully initiate immersive learning at Ball State.  Dr. Peterson and her twelve students investigated Modernist figures such as Gertrude Stein, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein and the role that these figures played in the Modernist movement in Paris during the 1920s.  Each student, as well as Dr. Peterson herself, selected one of these figures and became “responsible for reading the seminal biographies of their person, all of the primary material available, as well as criticism.”  Additionally, each of the students made a creative project inspired by his or her subject.  The group traveled to Paris in order to, as Dr. Peterson says, “delve into archives and walk in the footsteps of our subjects.”  Finally, Dr. Peterson and her students, with the help of the Ball State Museum of Art, purchased an art piece from the 1920s period for the Museum’s permanent collection and hosted a 1920s-style salon at which they “impersonated our subjects in the company of 300 visitors.”

Lauren Onkey
“Consuming a Nation,” Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry

Dr. Onkey always wanted to teach a seminar at the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry (VBC), but, as she says, “It was a matter of finding the right kind of course.”  As it turns out, Dr. Onkey’s “Consuming a Nation” was precisely the “right” kind of course for the VBC.  In fact, “Consuming a Nation” became an immersive learning experience that Dr. Onkey believes successfully “engaged students in a profound way and helped them to grow and challenge themselves.” 

In accordance with the VBC guidelines, “Consuming a Nation” contained several innovative components: interdisciplinary work, an atmosphere of collaboration, an end product, and community involvement.  The seminar allowed students from departments across campus opportunities to engage in intensive research on tourism in Ireland.  As part of their research process, students took a two-week trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland where they interviewed tourists, tourist workers, academics and Irish citizens.  In partnership with Indiana Public Radio, Dr. Onkey and her students produced a series of nine five-minute radio stories exploring the impact of tourism on Irish culture.

The idea for the seminar came from Dr. Onkey’s interest in tourism, a topic that she covers in her postcolonial classes and with which she engages in scholarship.  Dr Onkey points out, “Tourism is now the largest industry in the world; it’s the most popular way that we step out of our routines and experience something out of the norm . . . . While tourism is indeed “universal”—expanded air travel and the ease of international communication means that those with resources can travel almost anywhere—that universal experience depends on people who cannot tour and travel, those who stay put and change beds, work as tour guides, assemble cheap souvenirs, and cook food.”  Of course, Dr. Onkey’s interest in “the serious politics of a leisure activity,” tourism, motivated her initial conception of “Consuming a Nation,” the seminar and the radio series.

Her experiences at the VBC helped Dr. Onkey to grow as a teacher.  She says, “I think that because the VBC dispenses with many of the traditional rules of a class, it forces the teacher to question all her assumptions, the things that have become second nature or common sense. Why am I assigning this exam or this reading, anyway? Is it linked to a goal? It was tough to ask myself all those questions, but I feel that I've woven together my goals and my day-to-day plans for my courses in a much better way since then. ”

Mary Theresa Seig
Connor Prairie

Dr. Seig’s work with Connor Prairie began during the summer of 2002 when she did an initial research study in which she recorded the conversations of families as they experienced the outdoor living history museum.  After that summer, Dr. Seig analyzed her data and “helped Conner Prairie to restructure their interpreter training program and change the ways that interpreters interacted with visitors.”  In 2004, Conner Prairie received a grant that allowed them to begin the development of a training DVD for docents in museums around the world.  Dr. Seig worked with Conner Prairie to write and produce Opening Doors (2006), a DVD that went on to win numerous awards as a training program.

Since the production of Opening Doors, Dr. Seig has continued to be involved with Conner Prairie in various ways.  In the Spring of 2008, she and Dr. Kecia McBride, another English faculty member, co-taught an immersive learning course in which undergraduate students developed a series of museum theater pieces and playbooks for interpreter training.  Dr. Seig says that her “relationship with CP has been evolving and growing since 2001.”  She continues, “ I am interested in studying learning and communication in free-choice environments (outside the classroom)—so much of what CP asks me to do I am very interested in doing.”

The work that Dr. Seig does with Conner Prairie directly relates to her teaching, especially her courses on Discourse Analysis.  Furthermore, the Conner Prairie projects have helped Dr. Seig to develop as a scholar.  She says, “These various projects provide me the opportunity to apply linguistic knowledge in real-world settings as well as offer service from the university to the greater Indiana community.  In each situation, I provide pedagogically and theoretically sound input, which enables the decision-makers in each setting to make better decisions.  In addition, I enhance the reputation of the university by helping the greater Indiana community to understand that there can and should be partnerships between higher education and other aspects of society.”