{"id":152,"date":"2007-06-18T07:29:52","date_gmt":"2007-06-18T07:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2007\/06\/18\/experiencing-indiana%e2%80%a6-for-the-first-time\/"},"modified":"2007-06-18T07:29:52","modified_gmt":"2007-06-18T07:29:52","slug":"experiencing-indiana-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2007\/06\/18\/experiencing-indiana-for-the-first-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Experiencing Indiana\u2026 For the First Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Amidon<\/i> \u2014 I wasn\u2019t born in Indiana, but I\u2019ve spent most of my life as a Hoosier. And through my various travels with Wabash College, I always felt like I knew plenty about our home state. In fact, as the College\u2019s PR guy, I\u2019ve often \u201csold\u201d prospective students and employees on the state of Indiana.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to a handful of students and a truly innovative program at Wabash, I\u2019ve discovered how little I really do know about our state.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several years ago, the college received a Lilly Endowment Inc. grant that would provide a range of opportunities for Wabash people to get to know Indiana. The idea behind the grant was that if more Wabash students (and later alumni) learned of the rich culture and history of Indiana, perhaps they\u2019d stay in Indiana after graduation.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Endowment has funded lots of initiatives to plug what it calls the \u201cbrain drain\u201d \u2014 the loss of Indiana college graduates to other states. But the Wabash grant is very different from other similarly funded initiatives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Broken into three parts \u2014 Experience Indiana, Know Indiana, and Present Indiana \u2014 the Wabash grant provides students and faculty the resources to develop programs, courses, and presentations that show off the Hoosier state.<\/span><\/p>\n

A group of Wabash men have spent the summer on campus, but taking excursions across the state as they conduct research and interviews for the Present Indiana portion. Each man has earned a stipend to develop presentations they\u2019ll make on- and off-campus in the coming year.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, Journal Review<\/i><\/span> intern (and Wabash student) Rob Fenoglio tagged along when the group \u2014 through Experience Indiana funding \u2014 traveled to West Baden and French Lick to see the transformation of that historic Indiana community.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the students in the Present Indiana program, Matt Goodrich<\/b><\/a>, has since returned to French Lick to further develop his project. The result will be a multi-media presentation on both the history and restoration of Orange County as one of the state\u2019s top tourist destinations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another student, Steve Egan, has spent much of his summer in my Parke County stomping grounds. He\u2019s researching the expansive Amish community that has immigrated to West Central Indiana from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Steve has talked with Amish community leaders, been to their homes and barns, and has built relationships that will become the backbone of his research project.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other Present Indiana research agendas include Indiana\u2019s growing wine and cheese making industries; the architecture of Columbus and Madison; backpacking and primitive camping sites; the Brown County artists\u2019 community; the Battle of Tippecanoe; and the German churches of Southern Indiana.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two students are also involved locally in the Know Indiana Cultural Internship Program. Gary James has been interning at the now-open Carnegie Museum and Tyler Williams is doing an internship as Project Coordinator at the Lew Wallace Study and Museum.<\/span><\/p>\n

The grant\u2019s scope is unique, to be sure. Discovering Indiana\u2019s hidden treasures and best-kept secrets with a goal of opening the eyes and minds of people who might eventually call Indiana \u201chome\u201d is a wonderful idea.<\/span><\/p>\n

Better, though, in my mind, is the impact these projects are having on the students who are researching them.<\/span><\/p>\n

I try to carve out a few minutes every day to read the Present Indiana blog on the Wabash web site. The students doing the research are required to write about their progress from time to time over the summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

What you\u2019ll discover if you drop in for a quick read is how students\u2019 own minds are changing; how their eyes are opening to arts, culture, people, and history they never knew existed \u2014 and in some cases in their own backyards.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a short example cut from Crown Point native Steve Egan\u2019s blog<\/b><\/a> entry after spending an afternoon with an Amish family in Parke County:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSamuel, like all of the Amish I\u2019ve run into, was happy to talk with me and made me feel rightfully awkward by not doing any work while I was there. He knew I was there just to observe, but to him I was a guest and therefore deserved all of his attention while in his barn. I wished it hadn\u2019t been so; it only made my presence there just that more awkward.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While Steve gives us a lot of information on the lives of the families he\u2019s met, it\u2019s the impact on him that is most interesting to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, if you\u2019re like me and you think you know a lot about Indiana, check out the blog<\/b><\/a> on the Wabash web site. You\u2019ll learn a lot from these talented and curious Wabash men. But you\u2019ll also, I think, appreciate the impact our state is having on them.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Amidon \u2014 I wasn\u2019t born in Indiana, but I\u2019ve spent most of my life as a Hoosier. And through my various travels with Wabash College, I always felt like I knew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}