Category: Faculty Highlights


  • The Patient Economist: Maoyong Fan and the economics of asking better questions

    Scarcity. Division of labor. Profit and loss. These, among others, are fundamental concepts taught in any foundational economics class. These classes explain the market economy, where prices of goods and services are largely determined by supply and demand. But this doesn’t always occur naturally. Sometimes buyers are motivated to carry out certain transactions like buying […]

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  • TWO WORLDS COLLIDE

    How science created a theatrical genius Energy. That’s the mot juste that describes Jennifer Blackmer, the 2018 recipient of the Outstanding Creative Endeavor Award. This yearly award is given to a current faculty member who is nominated by colleagues. A selection committee evaluates each application and announces the recipient at the annual Fall Opening Convocation. […]

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  • Turning Sulfur into a Functional Material

    To be a woman in a STEM field was the norm for Dr. Courtney “Cori” Jenkins, whose mom and sister are both engineers. “I came from a family where it wasn’t a question of whether or not you could do it.” Jenkins discovered that while engineering may not have been her career track, chemistry was, […]

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  • Literary Failures and the Men Behind Them

    Ben Bascom may hold a doctorate in English, but he’s also a quasi-historian who’s working on a book about the failed literary endeavors of five tragic figures from the early United States. “In many ways, the figures I work on thought they were as unique or culturally significant as someone like Benjamin  Franklin, but in […]

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  • Investigating Nucleic Acid Nanoparticles

    Imagine the height of a dime sliced 1 million times—that’s a nanometer. Dr. Emil Khisamutdinov is investigating the nucleic acid nano-world as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at Ball State. “In our lab, we create different sizes and shapes of nanoparticles made of nucleic acid  biopolymer.” Known to store genetic information, DNA […]

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  • COPPER COMMUNICATION

    Social networking in today’s world means Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. But hundreds of years ago, the indigenous tribes of North America had a different kind of social networking, and one Ball State archaeologist and his students are on the hunt for how copper played a role. Yes, copper. Anthropology professor Dr. Mark Hill used […]

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  • Dr. Joseph Marchal brings his research to the classroom, connecting first century texts with 21st century issues.

    Thinking About the Past

    The infectious worldview of this year’s outstanding research award recipient, Dr. Joseph Marchal With an almost old-fashioned finesse— wave-like hand gestures and an uneven baritone voice—Dr. Joseph Marchal, associate professor of religious studies,  introduces his academic scholarship with a simple description: “I live half my life in the first century and the other, in the […]

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  • Where are they now?

    Dr. Stefania Aegisdottir appeared in our 2002 edition of Bene Facta magazine. She was profiled for her Distinguished Dissertation award for Icelanders’ and Americans’ Expectations about Counseling: Do Expectations Vary by Nationality, Sex, and Holland’s Typology? Aegisdottir worked at a local juvenile detention center for two years after earning her doctorate and then returned to […]

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