By Katherine Hill for the Ball State Daily News .
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Ball State Daily News-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.

The walls of Maplewood Guest House are etched with history. Photos of Ball State’s original first family hang on the walls — carefully dusted and fawned over by inquisitive visitors — serve as a reminder to residents who reap the benefit of the family’s generosity to do good by the community.

The house, with its still fully-functioning original fireplace, now serves as a residential hub for third and fourth-year students — a collaboration between Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine and Ball State for students earning a medical degree or working on a clerkship in East Central Indiana, according to the Guest House’s information page.

Guest House manager David Martin was at the forefront of the collaboration project when he took on the residential community’s first-ever management role. 

Although Martin stepped into the position in August 2017, there were discussions between Ball Brothers Foundation, Ball State University, Indiana University and IU School of Medicine about the collaborative housing effort in the year prior.

“The discussions were to find out whether they could use the space, which had been vacated by Ardahl Corporation,” Martin said. “They wanted to find use for this building that would help the community.”

The solution was to make the housing complex a so-called “epicenter” for medical students and provide immersive learning opportunities.

Martin came to Maplewood Guest House having worked as an adjunct professor and in Ball State’s Housing and Dining departments for 15 years prior.

When it came time to manage the Maplewood property, he applied policies and procedures from the university’s housing models because he didn’t “need to reinvent the wheel.”

He also worked with Ball State property management and hospitality students to figure out how to best maintain the building's antiquarian structure and honor the Ball Brothers' legacy.

Beyond the general upkeep of the Guest House, such as through inventory monitoring and spreadsheet bookkeeping, there is a responsibility to make sure students know about the opportunities the property offers. Martin and his team of Ball State immersive learning students knew this.

“We created basically everything here in 2017, everything you can think of to successfully run a business, including social media. I found it really exciting to start the building from the ground up, so to speak,” Martin said, noting that the house itself was built in 1898.

Martin remembered a February 2020 phone call, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, from the IU School of Medicine, urging all students to go home. Despite the closure of surrounding universities, the housing complex remained open and maintained “almost the majority of the time that COVID was here,” he said. 

Even so, the building was vacant for several months before students returned to their medical practice rotations — a discouraging and stark reminder of how young and exciting the collaboration project had been at that time.

Muncie was the ideal localized space for the undertaking that was Maplewood Guest House. 

According to Optimus Primary, which partners with the Ball Brothers Foundation, “Muncie has something no other city in Indiana has: an array of healthcare anchor institutions located in close proximity to one another, making it one of the leading physician training centers in the state.” 

This is a pipeline program for medical professionals, in partnership with the Ball Brothers Foundation.

The city has a reputation of consistently being within the top five best destinations to study medicine in the state, largely because of IU Ball Memorial Hospital, which is three minutes from Ball State and IU School of Medicine.

“Muncie was number nine in a location, as in terms of locations that students wanted to come to to serve their rotation at the hospital. [By 2017], the city became number two in the state outside of Indianapolis. We are number two in the location of destination students want to come to [when they] do their clerkship,” Martin said.

To help drive those numbers, Martin enforced the residential community to foster a welcoming environment for all students who pass through its doors, which is especially important because students are only actively living in the community for only three to four weeks at a time while in rotation.

“One of the things that we've developed is programming and events for medical students. Every week, on a Wednesday or Thursday, we have a welcome event or some type of event that brings them all together,” he said.

These events feature popcorn, pizza and “provide a chance for students to connect,” something particularly important to Martin. For Martin, his favorite part of the job is connecting with students and talking with them about their future goals.

The bonding opportunities between IU and Ball State students simultaneously debunk a common misconception, the rivalry between Ball State and Indiana University.

“IU School of Medicine isn't a competitor of Ball State. Indiana University may be, but IU School of Medicine isn't,” Martin said. “The partnership has provided several opportunities for research between me and other faculty members. We were given the Housing Impact Award from the Housing Education and Research Association. That was for some of our work with immersive learning with Ball State students.”


Katherine Hill wrote this article for the Ball State Daily News.


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After 17 years, the state of New York is re-evaluating its school funding formula. The state budget agreement calls for the Rockefeller Institute to study it.

Education advocates have noted that learning loss from the pandemic and the youth mental-health crisis have made this change more necessary. Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates for Children of New York, said the new formula must allocate funds for homeless students and students in the foster-care system.

"Currently," she said, "the formula does not provide any additional funding for those populations of students who have distinct educational needs and often face barriers to success in school."

A 2023 report noted that more than 119,000 New York City students are homeless. Other recommendations to improve the funding formula include providing resources for New York City to implement its new class-size requirements, improvements to special-education distribution funding, and cost-effective strategies to aid multilingual learners.

The final report from the Rockefeller Institute will be presented in early December.

Political will from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state Legislature remain a challenge to implementing some formula changes. Levine noted that pandemic funding was used to create a host of beneficial programs for students in New York City. Without that continuous federal funding, she said, New York State has to pick up the slack.

"These are programs that were needed before the pandemic and are still needed today," she said. "But, the federal funding has now expired, and so there's a need for the state to contribute more resources."

Some of those programs included doubling 3-K program participation, bolstering preschool special education, hiring 500 school social workers and psychologists, and creating a program to have coordinators help students living in shelters get to school.

A Detroit educator recently told a congressional committee he is "terrified" at what a second Trump term as president could bring for America's public schools.

Rodney Fresh, a high school social studies teacher in Detroit, said parts of the Republican agenda appear to call for dismantling the public education system. He added the transition plan known as Project 2025 would "kick the ladder out from under" students who need it the most and eliminate the federal Department of Education.

"Why do they want to weaken public schools? If you ask me, it's because they fear what public schools do - we teach critical thinking, honest history and tolerance - and because diverse, educated citizens threaten their power," he asked.

Project 2025 is a 900-page blueprint by the conservative Heritage Foundation for reorganizing the federal government under a Republican administration. It calls for privatizing the public school system and cutting funding for more than 180,000 teaching positions.

Former President Donald Trump has denied any connection to the plan.

Fresh, who is a second-generation instructor, teaches ninth-grade U.S. history, 11th-grade world history and Advanced Placement African American studies. He warned that under Project 2025, classes on African American history would be censored, help for students with disabilities would be eliminated, and programs like Head Start, one of the most successful preschool programs of its kind, would be cut.

"This would shut off access to high-quality early childhood education for students in Detroit. It would also take away a lifeline many parents count on to give their kids a real opportunity and fair shot at overcoming poverty," Fresh added.

Fresh told members of the U.S. House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee that under the plan's guidelines, millions of public school students whose families can't afford to send them to private schools would be deprived of the benefits of a quality public education.

"We can and must do better for the sake of our students. We cannot - and I repeat - we cannot allow Project 2025 to dismantle public education and destroy such an essential pillar of our democracy," he said.


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Metro Nashville Public Schools and Nashville State Community College are working together to help some high school students launch health care careers.

They can take college courses and earn a technical certificate in the field of Central Sterile Processing. The "Better Together" partnership helps graduates prepare for and complete college.

Shanna L. Jackson, president of Nashville State Community College, said the state-funded $2 million grant brings her school's surgical technical program to Pearl-Cohn and Maplewood High Schools. The funds will be used to set up a sterile processing lab in a classroom and hire two new faculty members, one at each school.

"As juniors, they'll take dual enrollment courses. As seniors, they'll take dual enrollment courses. In the summer, they're actually going to have clinical experiences with area health care providers," Jackson outlined. "And they will actually be able to sit for that exam and be well on their way to a career or come to Nashville State and finish their Associate Degree in Surgical Technology."

Jackson explained central sterile technicians store, clean, sterilize, assemble and prepare medical equipment used during procedures. She added Gov. Bill Lee and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission recently announced funding for this initiative and 22 others through the Governor's Investment in Vocational Education program.

Jackson stressed the Better Together initiative was designed to bridge the gap between high school and college, aiming to increase both enrollment and graduation rates at Nashville State. She noted they have been working to build pathways for students to get jobs in some high-demand, high-wage fields.

"We have now an early college that's in its fourth year at Whites Creek High School, and we're starting early colleges at Glencliff and Cambridge," Jackson pointed out. "This gives students that are in high school the opportunity to not take Senior English, but to take English Composition with Nashville State."

The students earn dual credit for high school and college. The "early college high school" program recently received a National Blue Ribbon Award from the U.S. Department of Education.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.