Immersive learning classes are high-impact experiences that involve collaborative student-driven teams guided by faculty mentors. Students earn course credit while working with community partners such as neighborhoods, businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies to address community challenges.
When you support Immersive Learning through your One Ball State Day gift, you help fund opportunities such as our CHIRP Scholar awards—small need-based scholarships that help students thrive in immersive learning and other high-impact classes. Each semester, thousands of students take immersive learning and other high-impact classes. The CHIRP Scholar awards ensure that all students can participate fully in these experiences by providing up to $500 to offset costs related to travel, professional attire, equipment, and lab supplies.
Hear from students how the CHIRP Scholar Award has helped them!

"From my immersive learning high-impact class, I realized that I can do much more than I thought I was capable of. My class was set to conduct a training with a non-profit somewhere out in the Muncie community, and my group and I trained a team at the Muncie Public Library on the four different learning styles. This class helped me realize that I can do so much, even create a training from scratch and conduct it! This experience really helps me moving forward in my professional career, post-graduation."
- Natalie Novak (Immersive Learning)
"This class had an incredible impact on me, both in my personal and professional life. I was able to become close with the other students in the scuba program, and the people that I traveled with are people who I will stay in contact with for the rest of my life. On top of that, I got tons of valuable experience in the field and was able to build my portfolio. The professional divers that I met gave me valuable advice, and I am so happy I got to meet them and make connections in my career field."
- Mar Nester (Study Away)
"This trip to Washington D.C. was very informative to my concept and knowledge of landscape architecture and being able to explore renowned examples of the practice in real life is incomparable. I learned many things to inform my designs such as spaces, plantings, core design principles and characteristics, meaning, and more. It helped me hone and grow more confident in a variety of skills and concepts used by landscape architects, such as field sketching, as well as inventory and analysis."
- Ayslin Bowmen (Study Away)
"This is a wonderful class because it teaches us resiliency and adaptability in our field. However, it is also a class in which you take away as much as you put into it. This learning environment is conducive to community building, creative pursuits, and learning professional practices."
- Andie Arana Gomez (Undergraduate Research)
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