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Amy Shuman

January 22, 2009

Amy Shuman is a professor in the Department of Englsh and the Department of Anthropology. She is author of many articles and recipient of a Guggehneim Fellowship. Continue reading ‘Amy Shuman’

Taking care of our own

January 22, 2009

Blueprint: College brings college planning to Ohio State employees

by Julia Harris

If Amy Wade had her way, there would be no such thing as college dreams. Instead, there would only be college plans — concrete, clear, realistic plans for getting into college. And paying for it.

She’s doing her part to make college access a reality for central Ohio students and parents, spearheading last year’s Blueprint: College planning program aimed mostly at lower-income families with kids in fourth and fifth grades. And starting Feb. 24, she’ll be offering a version of that program on Ohio State’s campus, tailored for employees of Facilities Operations and Development.

Wade works with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and First-Year Experience, where she has partnered with Tally Hart, senior adviser for the university’s Economic Access Initiative, to provide curriculum and training opportunities around college access. The success of the Blueprint: College program, which graduated almost 50 families, led both Wade and Hart to dream their own college dreams.

“We thought it was really important, as we do things within the community, to remember and do things within our own internal community,” Hart said. “We recognize that just because we sit within an educational institution, we can’t assume that everyone who’s here has equal knowledge.”

It was while Wade was out recruiting families for the second, expanded iteration of Blueprint — due to launch this spring with almost 300 participants — that she realized there was a huge interest in college planning information among Ohio State’s own employees.

“Being out in the community and representing this program for Ohio State made me understand that we need to bring this to our own constituencies first,” Wade said.

Finding a campus group for the pilot Blueprint project wasn’t hard; as it turns out, Hart said, there are parties waiting in the wings for their chance to go through the curriculum.

They ultimately decided on FOD because of the unit’s size and diversity. Working with Peggy Barylak, HR consultant with FOD, they began to sort through the needs and unique work constraints of the employees.

“FOD’s been very supportive in helping us structure the program in such a way that would be compatible with employees’ work schedules, finding facilities for us and providing release time so employees can come to the program,” Hart said.

The curriculum is being restructured to fit into three three-hour blocks of time, offered once a week to employees who have children in grades 4-9.

While the repackaging process is a bit of a challenge right now, Wade admits with a grin, she’s also looking forward to being able to use the new version with community groups in places like libraries or rec centers.

“This will be our ‘parents-only’ version, as opposed to the parent version that goes along with the College Camp for kids,” Wade said, referring to the supervised childcare offered to participants in the first Blueprint: College program.

With the version being offered to FOD employees, Wade says, there also will be information about how to get their kids into college and how to take advantage of OSU’s tuition discount benefit.

“We don’t know yet how many people we’re going to have since applications aren’t due until Feb. 13,” Wade said.

Barylak says interest level among FOD employees is high. “We’re a large and diverse organization, and our employees who have not continued their education after high school will find this information invaluable for making decisions about their children’s future.”

For Hart, it’s about more than the children’s future. Another benefit of the Blueprint pilots is the interest she sees kindled in the parents themselves. “Once you start helping parents understand education for their children, one of the natural outgrowths is people start wanting to know more about their own education.”

New cash system makes life easier on the road

January 22, 2009

by Jeff McCallister

Kelly George had a small dilemma: She was a resident director for the Department of Animal Science’s Study Abroad trip to Ireland over the holiday break, and between visits to the Dublin Zoo, local veterinary offices, Blarney Castle, a dog track and numerous other stops, the group had fallen a bit behind schedule.

Again, it was only a small problem and easily solved. George and the other two resident directors decided to use part of the $3,000 cash advance issued by the Office of International Affairs to buy lunch for the group to eat on the bus traveling between stops.

“We had a lot we wanted to do and see and learn on the trip, so we planned a fast-paced tour,” George said.

George, an accountant in the department, was in charge of the money. She simply pulled out her GET card and paid for the meals and the group moved on.

“No big deal,” she said. “Very simple, very straightforward.”

Anyone who traveled with a group using university money before last autumn quarter may recognize a subtle but important change in that procedure: George didn’t have to use her own debit card.

The GET, or Group Extended Travel, cards are the latest part of the university’s Streamlining and Simplification Initiative. They were used on about half of the Study Abroad trips during winter break and will be used on all spring break Study Abroad group trips. Along with International Affairs, the Office of Student Life has begun using a similar system for its travel programs.

“The cash advances are to be used for in-country expenses, things that can’t be paid for in advance — some meals, gratuities, admission into some events or attractions, emergencies,” said Grace Johnson, Study Abroad director in the OIA.

“In the past, we’d just direct-deposit the funds into the resident director’s personal account and wait for them to bring back all their receipts,” she said. “No one liked that system, having to mingle personal money with travel funds and having to keep a strict accounting. It was a very cumbersome, sometimes confusing process.”

The GET cards, however, provide a separate, unique account to hold those funds. The cards work like a pre-loaded debit card — used like a credit card for purchases or to withdraw funds in local currency from almost any ATM.

“I thought it worked wonderfully,” George said. “It was really convenient, and it was nice being able to keep track of the exact balance without having to always mentally separate my personal funds from the Study Abroad funds.”

“The directors still have to keep all their receipts, but each individual card will have its own statement so all the purchases hit the books back here automatically. We’ll have a good idea where the money is being spent before the groups even get back to this country,” Johnson said.

“It’s just a much cleaner, more efficient way for resident directors to manage the group’s cash while in-country and we’re happy with how it worked.”

The use of GET cards come on the heels of a streamlined reimbursement procedure that was the first measure of the initiative to be put into action.

Leslie Flesch, associate vice president for Resource Management Systems, who chaired the Streamlining and Simplification force, said more measures are on the way.

Each answers concerns raised by an external review of the university’s operational structures and helps advance President Gordon Gee’s strategic goal to simplify systems and structures.

One-stop shopping for university policies

January 22, 2009

by Adam King

Rob Coleman, vice chair of graduate studies in the Department of Chemistry and chair of the University Research Committee, was one of the architects of the university’s updated Research Misconduct Policy. But once the Faculty Council approved it last year, even he didn’t know where he could find a public version of it.

“I had a copy of it, but that doesn’t mean one of my colleagues could easily get a copy of it,” Coleman said.

That will likely never be a problem again with the Jan. 22 launch of Ohio State’s University Policy Web site at osu.edu/policies.

The site has links to every policy governing the university, and they are organized in user-friendly fashion — sortable by overarching content (such as business practices, governance, academics, athletics, etc.), alphabetically or by audience (faculty, staff, student, visitor/vendor).

“We tried to set this up so people who find things differently can find their own way,” said Eunice Hornsby, a program director in the Office of Human Resources’ Organization and Human Resource Consulting who was tasked with implementing the Web site. “Before policies were buried and hard to find. Now everything is in one place and policies will be kept updated through a single database.”

The Web site simply provides links directly to the policies, and a keyword search is available to keep from having to scroll through extensive lists.

“This project is about using 21st century thinking and technology to ensure that university-wide policies are consistently developed, make sense and are easy to find,” said Lynn Readey, deputy general counsel in the Office of Legal Affairs, who worked with Hornsby in developing the site.

Along with easy access, the site accomplishes some other important functions, not the least of which is quickly dispelling misinterpretation of policy, Coleman said.

“Policies that are developed centrally, when they’re distributed to the units or departments, they’re subject to reinterpretation,” he said. “You’ll see travel policies being implemented in different ways from department to department, usually more stringently, and that can be a hassle. If someone in my college says, ‘No the policy says this,’ well I can now go find out for myself if it does say that. It can be proved or disproved very quickly. So it will help a lot of people do their jobs better.”

Hornsby agreed, saying many units and departments have documented their own standard operating procedures for years and cast that as official university policy.

“That might be a policy of that office, but it’s not a policy of The Ohio State University,” she said. “That doesn’t make it invalid. There are some things the university chooses to affirmatively adopt as policies, and standard operating procedures of subunits don’t fall into those categories. As a general proposition, university-wide policy prevails if there is any conflict with unit policies. This site will help people understand what is or isn’t a university policy.”

The Web site also can be considered a launching pad for new policies. Information on the site under the “About Policies” tab explains how the policy process works from start to finish, bringing transparency to something that wasn’t always clear. Up to 20 different focus groups were consulted on the policy process over the past two quarters to determine what information should be included.

The Office of Human Resources and Legal Affairs manage the process and will give policy creators advice and help along the way. There also are tools under the site tab, such as templates to create a policy, that make jumpstarting the task easier.

“That’s just as important if not more so than the policy site itself,” Hornsby said. “We’re a community, and policies are like our form of legislation. They represent how we run ourselves or the university and we shouldn’t be forming policies in a vacuum. Transparency is a value of this institution.”

Multiples’ choice

January 22, 2009

Identical twin scientists find faculty careers at Ohio State

by Emily Caldwell

So how does a young faculty member play a safe practical joke on his department chair? In the case of Steven Lower, he sends his identical twin brother in to the boss’ office to ask for a raise.

It was a safe prank a few years ago, with a chair who turned out to be a good sport when Lower convinced his visiting twin Brian to play the trick. But now, the two would be less likely to pull such a stunt because they are both faculty members at Ohio State.

Brian joined the School of Environment and Natural Resources in July as an assistant professor, five years after his identical twin Steven, now an associate professor, arrived at Ohio State with a primary appointment in the School of Earth Sciences and a secondary appointment in the same school as Brian.

Though they don’t know for sure, the two suspect the presence of identical twin faculty members at the same institution is rare. The Office of Human Resources confirmed the Lowers are the only faculty twins here.

The shared faculty status makes their scientific collaborations less complicated, but also brings Brian back into the Ohio fold of the extensive Lower family. He spent the previous four years as a senior research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state.

The two didn’t plan career paths that would land them both at Ohio State, but they’re happy with the result.

Steven knew he wanted to teach and do research at a large, comprehensive university. He spent two years on the University of Maryland faculty before moving to Columbus.

“If you want to be a professor, you can’t really plan to work at a specific school,” Brian said. “But when this opportunity came along, I was really excited.”

The opportunity came along without any help from Steven — in a good way. Even with an appointment in environment and natural resources, Steven declined to vote on the creation of the position or on any of the candidates, all in the name of avoiding any appearance of conflict.

“I thought I might find out about the job offer before Brian, but the chair called him directly instead,” Steven said.

Before Brian’s Washington stint, Steven and Brian spent much of their academic lives together. They attended Kent State University as undergraduates and pursued graduate degrees together at Virginia Tech, both earning their PhDs in 2001.

Defining their areas of research concentration is tricky. Though Brian leans more heavily toward the life sciences, both Lowers have a tendency to blend areas of specialization as varied as mineralogy, biochemistry, microbiology and zoology in their pursuit of new discoveries.

Steven and Brian are both involved in an investigation of how staph bacteria cause infection by bonding to synthetic heart valves and forming what are called biofilms, which resist antibiotic treatment. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, the researchers hope to find a way to prevent those bonds from forming in the first place. The only current solution in the case of these infections is surgery to replace the affected valve.

This project is characteristic of other projects led by Steven, who emphasizes understanding relationships — at the molecular level — between inanimate surfaces and living microorganisms. Meanwhile, Brian is developing expertise on bacteria that generate a substance called nanomagnetite, which enables the organisms to become tiny compasses that use magnetic fields to orient themselves in their environment.

Their personal lives have some interesting parallels, too. Both married young and began families during graduate school. Each has three children, and Brian is dad to identical twin girls.

Neither identifies a specific person or event that drew him to science. Brian and Steven are the oldest of five Lower boys raised outside Canton. The third and fourth Lower brothers are school teachers, in science and social sciences, and the fifth is more in tune with the arts.

But the twins think being boys had something to do with spending a lot of time outdoors, where they enjoyed hiking, exploring nature and bird-watching.

“With five boys, my mother told us to go outside a lot,” Brian said.

Though the Lowers say they could write a book about the twin-oriented ruses of their childhood, the jokes in the professional environment are over, they say. Both see Ohio State as an ideal career destination, so they won’t be punking their colleagues anytime soon.

Restoring trust harder when broken early in relationship

January 22, 2009

by Jeff Grabmeier

In relationships built on trust, a bad first impression can be harder to overcome than a betrayal that occurs after ties are established, a new study suggests.

While betraying trust is never good for a relationship, the results show that early violations can be particularly devastating, planting seeds of doubt that may never go away, said Robert Lount, co-author of the study and assistant professor of management and human resources at Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business.

“First impressions matter when you want to build a lasting trust,” Lount said. “If you get off on the wrong foot, the relationship may never be completely right again. It’s easier to rebuild trust after a breach if you already have a strong relationship.”

While the importance of first impressions may seem obvious, Lount said there is still a common theme in popular culture that suggests many great relationships start off badly.

“Our results fly in the face of this Hollywood notion of hating someone at first sight but then developing a wonderful, passionate relationship,” he said. “The likelihood of that happening in real life is pretty low.”

The study appears in a recent issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Lount and his colleagues had college students participate in a game in which their partners violated their trust either right at the beginning of the game or somewhere in the middle.

The goal was to see how much the students were willing to cooperate with the partner after trust was breached.

The researchers used a famous game in psychology called the prisoner’s dilemma. In this version, the two players had to decide separately and privately whether they were going to cooperate with each other or defect against their partner in exchange for a monetary reward.

If they both separately decided to cooperate, they would earn $24 each. If one player decided to defect and the other decided to cooperate, the defector would earn $30, while the person who decided to cooperate would earn only $6. If they both decided to defect, they would both earn $12.

To encourage the participants to take the task seriously, the experimenter announced that several participants would be randomly chosen to receive some of the actual money they won in the game. They also took a tutorial that explained the benefits of cooperation.
In the experiment, 138 students played the game on a computer they were told was networked to a student in another room.

But they were actually playing with a computer programmed to defect at specific points during the more than 30 rounds of the game.

Some participants were paired with a computer that defected against them in the first two rounds of the game, while others defected in rounds 6 and 7 or rounds 11 and 12. In all cases, the computer was programmed to cooperate for 30 rounds following the defection, regardless of what the participant did.

Another group was paired with computers that were programmed to cooperate with the participants throughout the experiment.

Participants were notified on their computer when there were only 10 rounds left in the game.

“The end game is a very critical time, because if you defect, your partner doesn’t have much of an opportunity to get back at you,” Lount said. “If you don’t trust your partner, the last rounds of the game will be when you’re most likely to defect.”

In this experiment, participants who experienced a breach of trust during the first two rounds of the game also were the least likely to cooperate at the end of the game. They cooperated less than 70 percent of the final 10 rounds, suggesting they had the least trust in their partners.

Participants who experienced a trust breach latest in the game — after 10 rounds of cooperation — showed the most cooperation at the end of the game, cooperating more than 90 percent of the time. That was actually higher than participants whose computer partner never defected during the game.

Lount noted that in all cases, the computer defected against the participants the same number of times — just twice during the more than 30 rounds. But the timing of the breaches was key.

Participants who experienced the immediate breach rated their partners as less trustworthy on a questionnaire than did those whose partner defected later in the game.

“Our results suggest that immediate breaches are especially costly because they seriously damage the impressions people have about their partner, and that’s hard to repair,” he said.

Veteran administrator named dean of dentistry

January 22, 2009

by Jeff McCallister

Carole Anderson has spent her 23 years at Ohio State building a reputation as a strong administrator.

She was well-regarded as dean of the College of Nursing for 15 years, during which time she also was assistant vice president for and executive dean of the health sciences.

She’s been a vice provost in the Office of Academic Affairs since 2001. During that time she has also served first as interim dean of the Graduate School, then, beginning in 2006, as interim dean of the College of Dentistry.

Now Anderson has agreed to remove the “interim” from her title and concentrate full-time on duties as dean of the College of Dentistry. She’s also stepping down as vice provost so she can give her complete attention to the college.

“I’ve learned a great deal in my two years as interim dean of this college, and I know what we need to move forward in making this one of the top professional schools in the nation,” Anderson said.

“We have many strengths to work with — our faculty members are outstanding in every respect, our students are among the best in the nation and we have an ambitious strategic plan that’s designed to move this college into world-class status.”

Two of Anderson’s main accomplishments as interim dean were the development of a strategic plan for the college and the initiation of an external review that suggested some areas of improvement for the college, as well as emphasizing its strengths.

So the removal of the “interim” tag was about more than semantics, said Executive Vice President and Provost Joe Alutto, who announced the appointment to faculty, staff and students of the college earlier this month.

“Interim deans serve in a transitional role,” Alutto said. “As permanent, full-time dean, Dr. Anderson’s functions will be broader and deeper with full authority to lead and make changes in all administrative and budgetary matters, including implementation of the strategic plan.”

Anderson’s first objectives, in addition to moving forward with the implementation of the new strategic plan, are to increase diversity by focusing on the recruitment and retention of outstanding minority students and faculty members and to facilitate collaboration between the college and the Medical Center’s health sciences units.

“This is already a strong, well-respected organization, and we’re going to focus now on moving to an even higher level of achievement and success,” she said.

Alutto voiced his confidence in Anderson’s ability to tackle the job as he made the initial announcement. “Carole is one of the most outstanding administrators I have ever worked with, and I am confident she will intelligently, honestly and openly continue to provide the leadership necessary to optimize the college’s opportunities and address its challenges,” he said.

Anderson has held academic appointments at Ohio State as a professor of psychiatry in the College of Medicine and as a professor of nursing administration in the College of Nursing.

She received her BS in nursing, a master’s degree in psychiatric nursing and a PhD in sociology from the University of Colorado. Before coming to Ohio State, she served as associate dean in the School of Nursing at the University of Rochester and was a faculty member and division chair at the University of Colorado’s School of Nursing.

Anderson currently serves on the National Advisory Council of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research.

She also is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the past editor of the academy’s official journal, Nursing Outlook. She was a charter member and two-term chair of the Scientific Review Group of the National Institute of Nursing Research, and she has worked with several national policy-making organizations, including the National Advisory Committee on Nurse Education and Practice.

Throughout her distinguished career as a professor and administrator in the health sciences at Ohio State, Anderson has managed the restructuring of multi-million dollar budgets, and she has affected university-wide policies in myriad ways, including her service as the co-chair of the University’s Council on Diversity.

“Carole Anderson has been successful in an array of executive-level leadership positions at this university, and she is one of the premier administrators at Ohio State,” President Gordon Gee said. “The college is in very capable hands with her as dean.”

The southern tip of the world has a scarlet and gray tint

January 8, 2009

by Jeff McCallister

As Kathy Welch was planning this, her 16th season of field study in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, she learned something that made her consider trying to add an extra side-trip to her four-month South Pole stay.

Welch, a geochemist working with the United States Long-Term Ecological Research Network and research associate in the Environmental Geochemistry group at the Byrd Polar Research Center, joined a distinguished and ever-growing list of people from Ohio State to have geological features of the icy continent named for them. 

The United States Geological Survey notified Welch over the summer that a “steep rugged peak” located in a mountain range near her work base had been named the “Welch Crag” in her honor.

“I felt truly honored to have an Antarctic feature of any size or type named after me,” she said by e-mail from McMurdo Station. “I didn’t choose it, although it is a pretty cool looking wind-sculptured feature. I have not seen it in person yet, but I hope to get there some day.”

There are now at least 90 features named for people with Ohio State ties, according to Lynn Lay, research librarian at the Byrd Center. Another half-dozen or so, such as the Buckeye Ridge, are named more generally for the university or the State. There’s even a glacier named for the Olentangy River.

Antarctica’s unique situation on the planet as a continent with no permanent settlements complicates the naming process for features, so the USGS has in place a set of naming conventions specific to Antarctica. 

Features are categorized into three levels, with first-order features such as coasts, extensive mountain ranges, large glaciers and the like reserved to be named after leaders of important expeditions to Antarctica or others who have made outstanding contributions to the scientific knowledge or exploration (many larger features, for example, are named for Adm. Richard Byrd, who led five expeditions there in the middle part of the last century).

The Welch Crag is a third-order feature, for which the naming criteria includes “persons whose contributions to knowledge in their respective fields have facilitated the discovery, recognition, identification, or recording of Antarctic phenomena,” according to the USGS. 

The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names of the US Board on Geographic Names must approve all nominations before they’re assigned.

“It’s a nice honor in the sense that someone, one of your peers, has thought that you contributed enough to the science in Antarctica to have something there named after you,” said Berry Lyons, director of the Byrd Polar Research Center. “It’s one of those things that not a lot of people might ever know about, but that acknowledgement of your contribution to the science can be very gratifying.”

Lyons himself has two Antarctic features named for him—a mile-long creek and a summit similar to the Welch Crag that’s called the Lyons Cone.

Lyons said the sheer volume of features already named for Ohio State scientists is a good measure of the work being done there. 

“The Byrd Polar Research Center has been a major player there since 1960,” he said. “We have a long history of doing research there and we have a very distinguished record.”

In fact, the earliest recorded Ohio State feature there is Mount Goldthwait, a prominent mountain named for the first director of the Institute of Polar Studies (which became the Byrd Center in 1987). 

The most recent is the Willis Ridge, named for geologist Mike Willis, entered into the record in August 2007. The Welch Crag was named in 2005, but the USGS only notified her of the decision this past summer.

“I do think the OSU legacy of scientific research and discovery in Antarctica is impressive and I’m proud to be part of this tradition,” Welch said. “Now that I have a feature named after me, I am part of that group of researchers too, which is very exciting.”

The Antarctic Appeal

For most people, Antarctica might not seem like a dream destination. But for Ohio State geochemist Kathy Welch, it’s been an annual trek for 16 years. 

What’s the appeal? 

“Working in Antarctica has been such a significant part of my life,” she said. “I’ve spent the equivalent of more than five years here, more than 60 months.

“I keep coming back because I enjoy this research and I find Antarctica to be a beautiful place,” she said. “The lifestyle is addictive. There is a wonderful community of people here.”

And believe it or not, the weather is a factor as well. 

“I haven’t really experienced winter since 1992,” she said. “It can be cold here, but we have 24 hours of daylight in the summer. I leave Columbus in the fall and head to Antarctica for the southern hemisphere summer and then return to Columbus again in March.”

Barbara Ryden

January 8, 2009

Barbara Ryden is an associate professor of astronomy. Her newest textbook, Foundations of Astrophysics, will be published in March. Continue reading ‘Barbara Ryden’

Circular Reasoning

January 8, 2009

Girls Circle curriculum model provides opportunity for service and learning

By Julia Harris

No one knows more about the challenges of raising girls than Vicki Pitstick, program manager for Ohio State’s Honors and Scholars Center. After all, she’s got three of them.

“One thing I have become really passionate about is making sure my children are well prepared to deal with all the … ‘stuff’ … they’re going to face,” Pitstick said, sitting in her small attic office of the gabled Kuhn Honors and Scholars House.

“You know, things like peer pressure, girl aggression, body image issues, alcohol and drugs, and sexual pressure.”
Her search for guidance led her to the Girls Circle, a research-based program that is essentially a structured support group for girls aged 9-18. Participants in the program meet weekly for eight or 12 weeks, depending on the length of the curriculum module, for guided discussion, creative activities and personal reflection.

The idea, Pitstick says, is to create an informal and nurturing environment where girls, led by a facilitator, address risky behaviors, build on protective factors and improve interpersonal relationships.

Not only does she see the program as something that could benefit her own daughters, but she’s fired up about using it with Ohio State students in her new, year-long immersion project in women’s issues.

“Every quarter we offer a not-for-credit immersion project on a specific social issue,” she said. “We’ve done lots of different issues, like HIV and AIDS, mental health, prisoner reentry. But I thought there were certain issues that merited more than just a quarter and that there were students who would enjoy a more in-depth project. The Girls Circle program gave us the idea to do a year-long focus on women’s issues.”

Pitstick put her head together with Laura Kraus, associate director of the university’s Economic Access Initiative, to come up with an outline for the year’s content.

With funding from a Critical Difference for Women grant, they launched fall quarter with 20 students and started with an exploration of women in leadership and politics. Winter quarter will look at body image issues women face, and spring quarter will tackle the topic of work-life balance, career and family.

Each quarter, students read books related to the topic, attend regular presentations and engage in community service work at places such as women’s shelters or other sites that deal with women’s issues
.
That’s where the Girls Circle program comes in.

“For their service project, 11 of our students chose to go through training to become Girls Circle facilitators and lead circles in local schools,” Pitstick said.

This training involved a two-day seminar, which addressed practical considerations such as how to be an effective facilitator and how to deal with problematic situations that can arise in group settings. Also required is participation in Girls Circles led by Pitstick and Kraus.

Although the curriculum as it stands is intended for a younger demographic, Kraus said it worked just fine with the undergraduates.

“We did the unit called ‘Who I Am’ with our students and they liked it because it harkened back to their adolescence and engaged them in creative things they might not have done since they were kids,” she said.

Sample sessions dealt with topics such as the difference between assertive, aggressive and passive behavior, and the importance of setting goals for the future.

Kraus, for one, has great plans for the Girls Circle curriculum model. “How cool would it be for us to have the first economic access program in the nation that uses this model to deliver a college planning and career development curriculum to high school juniors and sophomores?” she said.

“It could be a fun way to deliver college access information, which can be a little dry, and to let kids talk about it with their peers, brainstorm, make it their own and start to solve their own problems.”

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