‘We Fly,’ in Indiana
It's time to judge colleges by their contributions to the economic and civic life of their communities. Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, passes the test brilliantly.
Town: Indiana
18 posts
A Student Newspaper Takes on Community Responsibilities
The Ball State Daily News has filled a local journalism gap.
‘When Gown Embraces Town’: Two Stories from Indiana
What is happening in the 'Middletown' of Muncie, and why it matters.
The University of Dayton Is Reinventing Town-Gown Relations
It’s time for another report on Dayton, Ohio, subject of this introduction last month. A century ago, Dayton was known mainly for the things it created, from the Wright Brothers’ airplanes…
Rebuilding After Incarceration
More than 2 million Americans are in the country’s prisons and jails now, giving the United States both the largest number of prisoners and the highest per-capita incarceration rate in…
How Art Can Renew a Community
This is No. 2 in a series of three videos from our friends at New America about the realities of community revitalization and economic recovery in the much-discussed Industrial Heartland of…
Building Your Future in Indiana
This spring, Deb Fallows and I made a trip through Indiana for a series of events and meetings co-organized by New America Indianapolis and Indiana Humanities. We were in Muncie, Fort Wayne,…
The Power of a Community College
Last week I reported on a conference of community-college leaders that Deb Fallows and I attended in Michigan, and about some of the reasons we’ve come to believe that community colleges are…
An Engineering School Pulls Off an ‘Epic Trick Play’
Daring and Guts Pay off for Trine University
Dead Malls, Everywhere
Readers weigh in on malls past their prime
Dead Malls, Reborn Cities
Ideas from the readers
What Happens to Abandoned Malls?
Opinions differ
‘Unknown Outside Indiana’
The previous four “Our Towns” posts have been about Indiana: One about Angola and the importance of its relationship with Trine University; one about Fort Wayne and its ambitious reconstruction of a cavernous abandoned GE works;…
An Unusual Way to Bridge the Town-Gown Divide
This post is about a development that few people outside the state of Indiana have ever heard or read about, but that has implications for the country as a whole.…
What We Saw in Muncie
How a university is helping a town move forward
Fort Wayne Makes Its Own Luck
Breadth, density, and boldness of experimentation