Seth Slabaugh

The Star Press

MUNCIE — Garfield cartoonist Jim Davis, who graduated from Ball State University in the 1960s, will return to his alma mater as an adjunct faculty member in the School of Art, the university's board of trustees was told on Friday.

Davis will start teaching in the fall of 2016.

"We are very excited about the opportunities that this relationship with Jim Davis is going to afford for us" as "we attempt to move from a top 25 (animation program) to a top 10 program," Arne Flaten, director of the school and professor of art history told trustees.

Ball State currently offers a bachelor of fine arts degree in art studio, within which students can concentrate on animation, drawing, painting, print making, ceramics, metals, sculpture, photography or glass. Other degrees include a bachelor's degree in art history or art studio, a bachelor's in art education including licensure for teaching, as well as the master of fine arts degree in animation or glass.

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Davis will be most helpful to Ball State in areas directly related to illustration and animation, "but he will be invaluable for countless reasons," including entrepreneurship, a major focus of a Ball State education in every discipline, Flaten told The Star Press.

"(Ball State alumnus) Papa John (Schnatter) is a great example of an entrepreneur, but so is Jim Davis, who single-handedly created an entire empire," Flaten said. "If that's not entrepreneurship I don't know what is." Davis can share with students "what the real world is like."

At Ball State, illustration is a subset the university hopes to implement into the drawing program.

As BSU representatives travel around the country recruiting students from St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago and other cities, "we have a lot of them come up and ask us if we have an illustration major," Flaten said. "As soon as we say 'no,' they are gone. They walk away, because at the age of 17 or 18 they think that's what they want to do. We are sensitive to that but are not ready for a full-fledged major in illustration." That could change in five or 10 years, however.

"Cartooning obviously is the side of the game Jim Davis came from initially," but he also has been highly successful in animated cartoons and films, Flaten noted.

The university's relationship with Davis will "allow us to do internships (at Paws Inc.) and feed in quite nicely with a sub-discipline that we are going to be adding in illustration," the professor told trustees.

Ball State currently employs three full-time faculty dedicated solely to animation, enrollment in which stands around 60. Graduate students enrolled in the animation program total 16.

Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834.

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