Major news stories on the national scene are finding their way across college campuses today, including Ball State.  Topics such as:

• The announcement of the updated COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer and Moderna being given emergency authority by the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday. What are Ball State’s plans to distribute the vaccine?
• The state’s new abortion law is set to go into effect soon unless a proposed lawsuit slows down its implementation or stops it. What if anything does Ball State do for its students who want an abortion, and how will the new law affect the university?
• The recent announcement by the Biden administration regarding the cancellation of some student loan debt has been good news to many, especially to those who have Pell grants. How does this impact Ball State?

On this edition of the Ball State Update, we’ll see what the school’s president Geoff Mearns says about those issues and how they could be affecting the Muncie campus.

And, President Mearns celebrates the awarding of the Ball State President’s Medal of Distinction to Annie Burns-Hicks – a graduate of Ball State Teachers College who took a stand against racism in her first job as a teacher in Hammond – and how that stand for equal rights changed the northwestern Indiana city.

You can hear the entire interview as broadcast on Morning Edition, Friday, on the audio app, below: