The mission of Ball State University is to connect Ball State with the Muncie community. The phrase “Better Together” is highly utilized in the curriculum by faculty to have Ball State students actively engage in the Muncie community. With this idea in mind, we created two Immersive Learning projects (1. Muncie Community Energy Assessment with ecoREHAB, 2. Interior Materials and Applications: A Hands-on Project with First Presbyterian Church) that have an immediate impact on the Muncie community and Ball State students. We figured out these two projects worked very well, and we are now proposing a newly developed and combined project.
  Interior Design students learn knowledge of sustainable principles in the classroom. This project introduces building energy assessment tools to analyze and evaluate energy consumption and interior materials as they explore materials and finishes available to the interior designers and ways that they can be combined into construction assemblies. By applying this knowledge in the community, students will have better opportunities to measure building energy and to apply better interior materials as future interior designers.
  Many buildings in the Muncie community need proper insulation, sustainable materials, and more sealed windows and doors to reduce energy consumption. Through a relationship with our community partner, Ross Community Center, students will help to solve a community challenge of reducing building energy and applying sustainable materials. In this project, our Interior Design students will apply specific energy assessment knowledge, skills, and tools to benefit the community from the Sustainable Interior course, and learn sustainable materials and how to apply them to the real building, Ross Community Center, from Interior Materials and Application course.