{"id":665,"date":"2025-04-29T18:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T18:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/?page_id=665"},"modified":"2025-05-05T15:13:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T15:13:20","slug":"about_page","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the relationship between cities and universities?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How do university-led economic revitalization plans transform cities? This urban anthropology class project explores this question by investigating The Village Revitalization, an economic development plan led by Ball State University in Muncie, a small post-industrial in East Central Indiana. “The Village” is a mix-use commercial district adjacent to the University, which has existed in different iterations since the 1920s. The Village is a good place to explore Muncie’s transformation from a city built on “cars and jars” (Ball jars) to “meds and eds” (Ball State).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Background to the Project<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The project began during an anthropology class in 2022 when a small group of students expressed interest in conducting research with Professor Jen Erickson. She told them about Ball State\u2019s plan to revitalize The Village and suggested they conduct urban anthropology research on The Village. In spring 2023, Josh Totten, Molly Marcuson, Isaac Porter, and Michaela Hixson became what Erickson affectionately nicknamed \u201cThe Village People.\u201d That first semester, students designed a survey to administer to people at Ball State and in the wider city of Muncie to gauge thoughts about The Village Revitalization Plan. They also conducted participant observation, met weekly to discuss readings and observations, conducted interviews with business owners, and attended meetings between neighborhood associations and the developers of the revitalization project. They presented their preliminary findings at the Anthropology Student Symposium at the end of the semester (see image below).<\/p>\n\n\n

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The survey caught the attention of Chris Palladino, Assistant Director for Capital Planning and Real Estate Management for Ball State, who suggested the students meet with the developers to share their survey results and thoughts about the revitalization plan. In summer 2023, Totten and Marcuson met with Fairmount Properties, the private development partners working with Ball State on the project, to share results of the survey, including what people wanted to see in The Village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In fall 2023, the same four students continued to work on the project with the addition of Teacher-Scholar<\/a> First Year student Sophie Hill, who assisted with participant observation, joined meetings, and learned about the urban ethnographic research process. In spring 2024, Teacher-Scholar First Year student Olivia Jordan joined the group as an archivist. She poured over City Page books in the library to document businesses in The Village over time. Three of the original four Village People graduated in spring 2024 and Josh Totten wrote his Senior Honors Thesis on The Village Revitalization. The group also recommended that the project be transformed into a larger immersive learning course. In fall 2024, Connor Russell, another Teacher Scholar student, and senior anthropology major Claire Matney joined Olivia and Michaela in a new iteration of The Village People. Connor took charge of the analysis of the survey data and Claire made zines about The Village Revitalization project. In the meantime, Erickson began to design the immersive learning course for spring 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the beginning this has been a student-led project and Erickson has guided and followed her students on the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do university-led economic revitalization plans transform cities? This urban anthropology class project explores this question by investigating The Village Revitalization, an economic development plan led by Ball State University in Muncie, a small post-industrial in East Central Indiana. “The Village” is a mix-use commercial district adjacent to the University, which has existed in different … Continue reading What is the relationship between cities and universities?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-665","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":857,"href":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/665\/revisions\/857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalresearch.bsu.edu\/the-village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}