We are community-engaged. We conduct high quality research. We ! ! The Applied Anthropology Laboratories (AAL) continues its long history providing experiential learning opportunities for students in Anthropology and related disciplines. Founded in 1978 as Archaeological Resources Management Service (ARMS) to provide students with direct experience in the growing field of c
ultural resource management (CRM), the AAL continues to prepare Ball State students for a variety of jobs in CRM, and anthropology more broadly, through paid opportunities to work with community partners to meet regulatory requirements or address specific community questions and goals. AAL's mission is to provide students experience in their chosen field, aiding them in translating classroom ideas into action, building transferable skills, and paving the way to fulfilling careers. To accomplish this, AAL staff maintain a diverse array of contracts and grants, creating various applied performance opportunities for students. Our motto is “Learn. Work. Discover.” This really captures the opportunities we provide to our students.
*Learning* is at the center of everything we do as a unit and individually for staff and students. Our projects are driven by learning goals, be that to learn how a particular construction project will impact cultural resources and how to help our partners avoid those impacts, or students learning how to organize material recovered from a field investigation into a finished product for our partners, or learning how historic narratives impact the modern descendants of the American Indian tribes that were forcibly removed from Indiana. Our projects also provide opportunities for the general public to learn. Many of our products are publicly available, from a library of hundreds of 3D artifact models, to the full texts of our major technical reports.
*Work* ties together our operations with coursework and future careers of our students. Nearly all of AAL’s ~10,000 student-experience hours annually are paid student work. Our students are not just learning about careers, they are building those careers through our projects. AAL mixes learning and working, helping students develop transferable skills in a professional setting. This balance provides a supportive environment for students taking on responsibilities and making products for outside partners. Our students go out to make their careers bringing not just a degree, but a directly applicable work history.
*Discovery* is what we do. While our projects encompass various aspects of anthropology and related disciplines, the majority make archaeological discoveries. Students discover artifacts not held by human hands for decades to millennia. When asked to evaluate the impacts of a construction project, we discover new places humans lived on the. Through our research we also tackle discovery in larger (spatially and intellectually) contexts. We discover details about: social networks from thousands of years ago; how American Indians sustainably managed landscapes; the ingenuity, intelligence, and resilience of American Indian communities past and present; and much more. AAL exists to work with BSU students to while building novel scholarship in service to a multitude of community partners. We build experiential settings for students to learn and do their chosen careers while contributing discoveries to a cumulative body of knowledge. For more information, see our webpage at www.bsu.edu/aal. Director and Senior Archaeologist: Kevin Nolan ([email protected])
Assistant Director and Archaeologist: Christine Thompson ([email protected])
Education and Outreach Coordinator: Caroline Heston ([email protected])
