Connecting Communities

• IUPUI
• WFYI

The city of Indianapolis is at the center of an area of Indiana that includes Bloomington to the south and Muncie to the north. It calls itself “ the crossroads of America,” and it is rich in universities and public broadcasters, all of them linked in formal or informal partnerships. WIPB-TV in Muncie is licensed to Ball State University. WTIU-TV in Bloomington is licensed to Indiana University. In Indianapolis itself, WTBU-TV is licensed to Butler University, while WFYI-TV is a community station with close links to IUPUI (Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis). Both the Bloomington and Muncie campuses boast public radio stations as well – as does WFYI in Indianapolis.

By any reckoning, this is an agglomeration of powerful resources, all of them dedicated to education. Separately, they can (and do) fulfill important missions. But what could they do, together, if they were all members of a community alliance for central Indiana? They may have the chance to find out, because IUPUI has announced that it is to build a Communications Technology Complex on its campus in Indianapolis, and has invited WFYI to relocate to it. This could be an ideal basis for a powerful community alliance, with education as its central mission.

It is much needed. Indiana stands 48th in the Union in the percentage of resident adults with college degrees. It is 45th in the most recent SAT rankings. And it is 50th (and last) in the percentage of its workforce in professional or specialty careers.

IUPUI and WFYI are long-time collaborators. IUPUI’s Community Learning Network offers WFYI viewers an opportunity to earn an associate degree in General Studies entirely through telecourses. The two institutions co-produce the Indiana State Geography Bee; they work together on archaeology and geology projects; they run an annual essay and oratory competition for local high school pupils. All this is what might be expected of collegial institutions. But now, as WFYI acquires its new digital capacity, and as IUPUI develops a new generation of technology (it will provide the backbone for Internet2, which is the next, and very advanced, generation of Internet service), and as the two of them, hopefully, become neighbors in the Technology Complex, it is possible that Indianapolis could become a model for partnerships between academia and media. As the basis for a community telecommunications alliance, no model is likely to have more potential.

Universities and public broadcasters have their own agendas. IUPUI’s Communications Technology Complex is conceived, first and foremost, as a place to bring together the university’s many academic programs related to information technologies – Informatics (New Media), Music, Journalism, Library and Information Science and so on. It is also to be the headquarters some of the most advanced technological projects in the country – the Abilene Network and TransPac, the Asia-Pacific Network, a number of activities related to the development of Internet2 and the Indiana Pervasive Computing Research (IPCRES) labs, which will be doing both theoretical and applied research on telecommunications developments of the near and distant future.

So where does the community fit in? The Indiana Learning Collaborative is a good example of IUPUI’s involvement with local institutions. Based on the premise that teachers need a powerful “one-stop-shopping” source for enrichment courses, the Collaborative was designed by IUPUI and the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis as a way for cultural institutions to support the work of classroom teachers. Here we have all these wonderful public institutions, they reasoned; surely we must find a way for teachers and students to make use of them as a regular part of their classes. With IUPUI designing the technology, and with teachers, educators, and leaders of the cultural institutions working together on content issues, the Collaborative has set out to create curriculum-based electronic learning modules that can be delivered via the Internet directly into classrooms. With the support of the Indiana Department of Education, the Collaborative is expected to reach all teachers and classrooms in Indiana within six years. Already, with Marion County in Indianapolis as the test-bed, it involves institutions as varied as the Museum of Art,the Zoo,Traditional Arts Indiana, the state’s Historical Society and Young Audiences of Indiana – all of them working closely with the public school system and its teachers. It is a model that every community in the country would do well to study.

The other principal element in the Communications Technology Complex will be the WFYI Teleplex, which includes WFYI’s radio and television stations, as well as FYI Productions (a full service subsidiary that specializes in video production, teleconferencing, and signal distribution). WFYI has a 30-year history as a community broadcaster. Its Ready to Learn services rank with the best, and most extensive, in the country. Last year, in partnership with Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, it distributed 4,200 books to central Indiana daycare centers whose enrollees attained modest reading goals. At any one time, it has more than 1,000 people participating in its GED on TV courses. With the Ameritech Advanced Video Network, it connects more than 130 central Indiana schools to at least ten electronic field trips each semester (Cruising the Planets, Native American Heritage, Live from Antarctica, etc.). It provides help to job seekers, reading services to the blind, town hall meetings,statewide “mock elections” for schoolchildren and their parents,a teen book commercial project (again,in partnership with the Public Library), and telecourses (with IUPUI) for more than 1,200 students. WFYI has a very impressive resumé.

More than most public broadcasters, WFYI also has a record of collaboration. It has outstandingly good relations with commercial broadcasters in Indianapolis (some of them are represented on its board). It has formed a genuine partnership with Indianapolis’s other public television station,WTBU, which is licensed to Butler University – they now have a joint programming and joint scheduling operation in place, and they transmit from the same master control. Even more significant for the future, perhaps,WFYI has joined with stations in Muncie and Bloomington to form the Central Indiana Public Broadcasting Collaborative. Together, t hey are developing a "virtual operations center,” and they have plans to create a Life Long Learning Channel that will provide for-credit courses and training programs to homes throughout central Indiana.

So here is the basis for a powerful community alliance in central Indiana – a group of major high-tech universities allied to efficient, community-conscious public broadcasters. The Communications Technology Complex at IUPUI will form the hub. Its success will be measured by the extent to which it is able to mobilize and include all parts of the community.

. "IUPUI Chancellor Gerald Bepko says: “WFYI’s plans for using advanced technologies to enhance public broadcasting services and educational programming will be complementary and will fit extremely well in the Communications Technology Complex. Public broadcasting for this region should be headquartered in what should become the center for the state’s advanced telecommunications activities.”

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Last updated: 14 July 2000 rta
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