Ball State University.

• Position: Comprehensive university

Powerful resources and personal learning are the dual themes that frame the Ball State University experience, resulting in a comprehensive university that offers students everything they need to succeed.

From its origins as a regional normal institute to its evolution into a teachers college and a doctoral university, Ball State University in Muncie has been an institution dedicated to providing the finest classroom teaching.

Eighteen thousand graduate and undergraduate students are enrolled in 140 undergraduate majors and 96 graduate programs. The university awards more than 4,000 degrees every year and boasts of 130,000 alumni, including renowned entertainers, business and corporate leaders, and educators.

After more than 80 years as a state institution of higher education, the university's legacy is one in which the relationship between teacher and student is paramount. Powerful resources and personal learning are the dual themes that frame the Ball State experience. The result is a comprehensive university that offers the tools a student needs to succeed.

Today Ball State enjoys an international reputation for its use of computer and telecommunications technology to enhance teaching and learning.

Among the results of Ball State's commitment to high quality undergraduate and graduate education is one of the most sophisticated fiber-optic communication systems on any college campus in the nation. The system links more than 300 classrooms and laboratories with the campus main library, plus every residence-hall room and faculty office. The university provides a computer terminal for every 11 students, while the national average for college campuses is one for every 28 students. And all Ball State students, regardless of major, are computer competent, and each demonstrates writing competency on an essay examination before receiving a degree.

A wellness program for employees and students has also become a national model. Ball State is committed to supporting international programs and...