• The Bowen Center for Public Affairs received significant grants in 2008 to advance political participation and civic engagement. Read about grants of $1 million from Lilly Endowment Inc. to expand and strengthen programs, $202,600 from the Pew Foundation to evaluate vote centers, and $162,000 from the Indiana Secretary of State's office to examine voting machines and training of poll workers.
• Students in the public administration program  have been selected as Presidential Management Interns. These interns choose their placement among government agencies in Washington, D.C.
• At the 2008 Midwest Model European Union, political science students won the best delegation award for the fourth time—more than any other university. Four Ball State students also were voted best in their individual roles in the EU decision-making simulation, which involved 14 universities.
  
  

Science

• The Department of Chemistry's longtime summer research program is a model for other universities and a major partner in the interuniversity Center for Authentic Science Practice in Education (CASPiE), a National Science Foundation funded program to advance undergraduate research in chemistry.
• Ball State's Society of Physics Students (SPS) received two national awards from the national parent organization of SPS and Sigma Pi Sigma, the national physics honor society: the 2005-06 Marsh W. White Award (one of 11 in the nation) and the 2005-06 Blake Lilly Prize (one of seven in the nation).
• Ball State formed Indiana's first student chapter of the American Society for Microbiology (BSUASM).
• The Digital Imaging Center in the Department of Physiology and Health Science contains a confocal microscope–the only one of its kind in the region–and transmission electron microscopes, providing students and researchers with the capability to understand mechanisms of cell function not previously understood.
• The Center for Computational Nanoscience works with universities in Indiana and Ohio on research projects in the emerging areas of nanoscience, the study of objects at the molecular level, and nanotechnology, the building of mechanical devices and other objects thousands of times smaller than those that currently exist.
• Through its ongoing statewide surveillance program, the Public Health Entomology Lab in the Department of Physiology and Health Science reported Indiana's first ticks, which are able to transmit Lyme disease and human monocytic ehrlichiosis.
• The Department of Biology operates a Field Station and Environmental Education Center.
• Each summer, Ball State geography students travel to America's Tornado Alley in search of severe storms to hone their weather forecasting skills and learn how tornadoes are formed.

Mathematics

• Ball State's actuarial science program is nationally recognized for preparing graduates to analyze and solve problems related to insurance and pension plans.