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Virginia Richardson, College of Social Work

November 18, 2009

How does caregiving affect a person’s health?
Caregiving is an increasingly important issue as people live longer and die from chronic illnesses more often than in the past. Although there are many gifts that come from caring for a loved one who is ill, spousal caregivers also confront many challenges. Caregiving is especially stressful when loved ones suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or some other protracted illness. Some caregivers develop adverse psychological and physiological effects especially if their caregiving is protracted, they become socially isolated, they have limited family supports or they care for spouses who suffer before dying. Some spousal caregivers develop complicated grief reactions that affect their well-being and immune systems and increase their likelihood of illness, depression and hospitalization.

I am currently working with several other researchers to test a new model of bereavement, the Dual Process Model of Bereavement, that Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands proposed 10 years ago. The first empirical findings will be reported in a special issue of Omega: Journal of Death and Dying in 2010.

And during the November 2009 meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, a group of us will present our findings about the physiological stress effects of caregiving during bereavement. We use longitudinal data from the Changing Lives of Older Couples (CLOC) study that was collected by the University of Michigan. These data include interviews with more than 1,000 older couples, which were conducted once before bereavement and six months, 18 months and 48 months after bereavement, and urine and blood samples taken before and after bereavement. We found that spouses who were involved in long-term caregiving had higher levels of cortisol and other stress hormones 18 months after bereavement than spouses who were not caregivers. We found that levels of stress hormones were significantly higher among bereaved spouses than among a control of similarly matched older married persons. Although others have found that caregiving can cause adverse stress reactions, these data show that the stress reactions are strongest for those whose spouses died long, protracted deaths and presumably required extensive caregiving.

What’s being done to help these caregivers?
In future research by an inter-university partnership between researchers from OSU’s College of Social Work, including assistant professors Holly Dabelko-Schoeny and Keith Anderson, and Miami University’s Scripps Gerontology Center, we plan to identify and evaluate the community services and other supports that most effectively reduce caregivers’ stress and prevent complicated grief reactions during bereavement. If we can strengthen the effective supports and determine evidenced-based interventions, we may be able to reduce complicated grief reactions among those at greatest risk. Early intervention during the most stressful times of caregiving should enhance bereaved spousal caregivers’ well-being, strengthen their immune systems and prevent them from becoming ill, ultimately reducing their need for medical care and health care costs. However, this requires a longitudinal research design that allows us to monitor participants for many years.

Faculty & Staff, 11/19/09

November 18, 2009

Books
Rudolph Alexander Jr., Social Work, Human Behavior in the Social Environment: A Macro, National and International Perspective, December 2009 (Newbury Park, Calif.: SAGE Publications Inc.).

Jesus Lara, Landscape Architecture, wrote a chapter, “Sustainable Phoenix: Lessons from the Dutch Model,” in Visualizing Sustainable Planning, by Gerhard Steinebach, Subhrajit Guhathakurta and Hans Hagen, August 2009 (Springer Berlin Heidelberg – Publishing Co. Inc.).

Grants
Stan Ernst, Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics, received a $2,252,008 USDA CSREES Organic Research Extension Initiative grant for “Mental Models and Participatory Research to Redesign Extension Programming for Organic Weed Management,” along with

Doug Doohan, Robyn Wilson, Deb Stinner, M. Tucker, K. Gibson, E. Gallandt, R. Smith.

Sandy Velleman, Animal Sciences, received a $25,000 grant from the Midwest Poultry Research Program for her research project “Regulation of the Growth of Poultry Skeletal Muscle.”

Presentations
Toni Ansley, Psychiatry, presented “How Do You Stack-Up? Benchmarking Administrative Salaries in Academic Medical Centers” and “Preparing a Comprehensive Survey to Benchmark a Psychiatric Hospital/Department,” at the Administrators in Academic Psychiatry fall meeting, New Orleans, La., Nov. 5-6.

John Brooke, History, presented “Patriarchal Magistrates, Energetic Improvers and Jealous Monitors: Visions of Self-Government in the Early American Republic, 1760-1840,” at the Conference on State and Citizen in British America and the Early United States, 1763-1865, Oxford University, Oxford, Great Britain, April 17-18; and “Malthus Refuted, or Qualified? World History and the New Science of Abrupt Climate Change,” at the Department of History Lecture Series, State University of New York, Binghamton, N.Y., May 7.

Jill Clark and Elena Irwin, Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics, presented “Exurban Farming in the Current Market: Past Effects, Future Possibilities,” at the Baldwin Center Inaugural Symposium, Charlottesville, Va., Oct. 16.

Steven Fink, English, presented “The Wide World of Jewish Graphic Novels: A Conversation with Steve Sheinkin,” at the Columbus Jewish Community Center, Columbus, Nov. 10; and “Changing Perceptions about Jewish American Holocaust Literature,” at Congregation Beth Tikvah as part of a two-part mini-course, Columbus, Nov. 8 and 22.

Claudio Gonzalez, Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics, gave the keynote lecture on “Financing Rural Development and Food Security,” at the Latin American Seminar on Food Security, Rural Finance and Development, Cuetzalan, Mexico, Aug. 26; and presented “Opportunities and Risks for Development Banks in Promoting Greater Financial Inclusion,” at FIRA, Mexico City, Mexico, Aug. 27.

Leila Heil, Music, presented “Strategies for Developing Tone in the Vocal Jazz Rehearsal,” at the 2009 American Choral Directors Association national conference, Oklahoma City, Okla., March 3-6.

Daniel Herms, Entomology, presented “Ohio’s Forests Under Siege: The Clear and Present Danger Posed by Invasive Insects,” at the Fireside Garden Club, Wooster, March 2; “Management Options for Emerald Ash Borer: Green Industry Professional Perspective,” at the OSU Extension Greene County Update, Xenia, March 4; “Confronting a Hidden Enemy. Managing Wood Borers in the Urban Forest,” at the Minnesota Shade Tree Short Course, Minneapolis, Minn., March 18; and “The Emerald Ash Borer Invasion: How Can a Secondary Pest Threaten the Existence of an Entire Genus?” at the 60th Western Forest Insect Work Conference, Spokane, Wash., March 25.

David Huron, Music, gave a keynote address, “Why is Rubato So Important? Empathy, Embodied Cognition and the Role of Animacy Cues in Music Performance,” at the Symposium on Performance and Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind., Feb. 20; and gave the keynote address “The Art of Listening: Music Scholarship in an Age of Fragmentation,” at the joint regional meetings of Music Theory Mid-West and the Midwest chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Minneapolis, Minn., May 16.

Jesus Lara, Landscape Architecture, presented “Sustainable Urban Design Approaches for Phoenix through the Transfer of Knowledge of Best Practices” at the American Collegiate School of Planning annual conference, Reinvesting in America: The New Metropolitan Planning Agenda, Crystal City, Va., Oct. 1-4; and presented “Global Perspectives for Urban Sustainability: Toward Responsive and Adaptive Environments that Focus on People and Place,” at the School of Architecture/Landscape Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington, Te Aro Wellington, New Zealand, Aug. 13.

Klaus Lorenz, Environment and Natural Resources, presented “Carbon Sequestration in Forest Soils Disturbed by Coal Mining and Urban Land Use in Ohio,” (co-author Rattan Lal, Environment and Natual Resources) at the 5th International Conference of Soils in Urban, Industrial, Traffic, Mining and Military Areas, New York, N.Y., Sept. 21-25.

Kevin Tavin, Art Education, gave a keynote address at a Creativity, Innovation, Culture and Youth Conference in Brussels, Belgium, sponsored by the Flemish and Dutch Ministries of Culture and Education. Twenty-five countries were represented in this gathering of EU policymakers, March 12-13.

Roger Williams, Environment and Natural Resources, presented a series of lectures on forest management and forest products trade with China at Guangxi University and Guangxi Forest Research Institute, Nanning, China, June 23-July 1.

Publications
Vesta Daniel, Art Education, “Self-Definition: Is It Still a Racial Matter in Art Education?” NAEA News, April 2009.

Jane Hathaway, History, “Representations of an Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch: El-Hajj Beshir Agha (term 1717-46),” Abdeljelil Temimi, ed., Melanges en l’honneur du Prof. Dr. Suraiya Faroqhi, Tunis, Publications de la Fondation Temimi pour la Recherche Scientifique et l’Information, 2009, pp. 169-87.

Lee Martin, English, “Drunk Man,” Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture, Vol. 22 (2009), pp. 72-81.

Danielle Pyun, East Asian Languages and Literatures, “Curricular Models for Heritage Korean Learners in US Colleges,” Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Korean Language Education, Seoul, Korea, pp. 343-59; and reviewed “Teaching Chinese, Japanese and Korean Heritage Language Students: Curriculum Needs, Materials and Assessment,” The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 93, No. 2, pp. 319-21.

Amanda Rodewald, Environment and Natural Resources, “Urban-associated Habitat Alteration Promotes Brood Parasitism of Acadian Flycatcher,” Journal of Field Ornithology, 2009, Vol. 80, pp. 234-41.

Douglas Southgate, Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics, “Population Growth, Increases in Agricultural Production and Trends in Food Prices,” Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Summer 2009), pp. 41-48.

Elizabeth Weiser, English, ”Who Are We? Museums Telling the Nation’s Story,”  International Journal of the Inclusive Museum, Vol. 2.2 (2009), pp. 29-38.

Recognition
Steve Boyles, Animal Sciences, received the Plimpton Outstanding Young Teacher Award which recognizes and encourages faculty who exemplify excellence in and commitment to teaching.

Robert Ladislas Derr, Art, had his work exhibited in “Playing the City,” curated by Matthias Ulrich at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfort, Germany, April 20-May 6.

Maurice Eastridge, Animal Sciences, received the Outstanding Service to Students award at the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences annual recognition banquet. This award is given by the CFAES Student Council to recognize a faculty or staff member who shows outstanding support to students and their activities.

Bill Meezan, Social Work, was named chairman of the Publications Committee of the National Association of Social Workers. During his four-year term, Meezan will lead the committee in making recommendations on all programs related to the NASW Press, publishing and general communications.

Marilyn Page, Allied Medical Professions, received the 2009 Retired Educator’s Commendation from the American Occupational Therapy Association.

Service

Katherine Borst Jones, Music, was guest artist for the Luther College Dorian Festival, in Decorah, Iowa. She presented a master class for Luther College flute students, conducted the Dorian Festival Flute Choir in performances, performed “Silhouettes” by OSU graduate Roger Cichy with the Luther College Concert Band and gave clinics for band directors. More than 600 students from four states participated in the festival, Feb.28-March 2.

Kathy Fagan, English, judged the 2008 Georgia Author of the Year Awards (poetry), Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Ga., 2009.
Sydney Walker, Art Education, served on an external program review team for the art department at Northern Iowa University in Cedar Falls. She also is a curriculum consultant for the Bradley Bourbannais School District in Bradley, Ill., in 2009.

Mo Yee Lee, College of Social Work

November 18, 2009

Mo Yee Lee is a professor in the College of Social Work and recently co-authored the book Integrative Body-Mind-Spirit Social Work: An Empirically Based Approach to Assessment and Treatment.

What are your five favorite books and why?

On Creativity by David Bohm
David Bohm describes creativity as a state of the mind rather than talents or special talents or abilities belonging to a few. We usually think of the creative process as complex and extraordinary. Instead, Bohm suggests a person creates by the everyday, fundamental, simple and ordinary process of “trying something out and seeing what happens, then modifying what one does (or thinks) in accordance with what has actually happened.” What distinguishes a creative person from others is the ability to maintain an extremely perceptive state of intense passion and high energy that dissolves the take-it-for-granted assumptions of commonly accepted knowledge and enables him or her to see something in a new or unfamiliar way that extends the frontiers of knowledge. I appreciate such a perception of creativity, as it is inclusive and also insightful.

No Boundary by Kenneth Wilber
Ken Wilber convincingly speaks about the problem of creating an imaginary boundary between the “self” and the “not-self.” I guess this is a by-product of a linear and reductionistic thinking style that permeates our culture. While this boundary creates a sense of self-identity for individuals and also advances knowledge in useful ways, it also leads to polarities, oppositions and conflicts. He speaks insightfully about the idea of “shadows” that exists in every phenomenon when we try to create a boundary, to define what is right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, etc. To me, the idea of “shadows” reminds me to be more humble, embrace differences, and be appreciative of the dynamic balance of diverse forces in life that help us to change and grow.

The Seven Life Lessons of Chaos by John Briggs and David Peat
John Briggs and David Peat are both interested in chaos theory. The Seven Life Lessons of Chaos is a thoughtful translation of the principles and ideas of chaos theory into everyday life. The courage to embrace and appreciate uncertainty and even crisis as a window for change is uplifting.

The Song of the Bird by Anthony de Mello
This is a book that I read when I was younger. However, the simple but thought-provoking stories still challenge me to revisit assumptions about life, religion, knowledge, etc.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
This is the inspiring story of Greg Mortenson, a mountaineer, who, after getting lost in a failed K2 expedition, was saved by locals of a small Pakistani village, and then promised to build them schools. He kept his promise to build schools, especially for girls, in the remote region of Pakistan’s Karakoram Himalaya. It is the courageous story of how an ordinary person can change the world, and how one can change the world in a different way. To me, it is also a story of a man who carefully makes a promise and actually keeps his promise despite difficulties. I think that this is an inspiring reminder for us in our hyper-speed world where we hastily make all kinds of promises and are not always able to live by them.

To nominate an Ohio State faculty or staff person for a future Booktalk column, e-mail harris.587@osu.edu.

Tim Haab, Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics

November 4, 2009

What are the basics of the recent energy policy proposals in Congress?
There are two energy bills moving through Congress right now: The American Clean Energy and Security Act in the House of Representatives (cosponsored by Waxman-Markey) and the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act in the Senate (sponsored by Boxer-Kerry). The meat of both energy policy proposals is a Cap and Trade program for carbon dioxide emissions — a principal greenhouse gas to which climate change is attributed — in the US. Cap and Trade is a program for capping total carbon dioxide emission and creating a market for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions among potential polluters. Regulators decide the total amount of CO2 society desires (the Cap) and then allocates permits or allowances to emitters totaling that amount. These allowances are fully marketable commodities (the Trade).

What are the potential economic impacts of a national CO2 Cap and Trade system?
There is no way around the reality that a Cap and Trade system (or any CO2 reduction regulation for that matter) will raise carbon-intensive energy prices and this rise in energy prices will trickle through in some way to most end products. As with the production of any final product, raising the price of an essential input — which in this case, CO2 can be thought of as an essential input into the production of energy and most other final products — will raise the price of the final products. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the new prices will, if designed correctly, reflect the full social cost of energy production, including the costs of climate change.
Preliminary results from National Science Foundation-funded research that I have been involved in with Professors Bhavik Bakshi and Prem Goel indicates that a carbon allowance price of $.05 per kilogram of carbon — a carbon price consistent with the price increase expected under either the House or Senate version of the Cap and Trade program — will result in a 15 percent increase in the price of coal-fired electricity and a 10 percent increase in the price of petroleum-fired electricity.

Why should Ohio care?
The three sectors most impacted by a carbon pricing scheme, manufacturing, transportation and coal fired electricity, constitute 24 percent of Ohio’s GDP. Comparing that to the national average for these three of 17 percent, it is clear that Ohio is heavily invested in impacted sectors relative to other states. Ohio is currently among the nation’s least invested states in renewable energy production. A strong case can be made for carbon allowances to be allocated in such a way that the resulting redistribution of revenues from energy production results in increased investment in renewable energy production in Ohio, thereby reducing the economic burden.

Faculty & Staff, 11/05/09

November 4, 2009

Books
Andrea Goldblum, Student Judicial Affairs, was invited to write a chapter on “Restorative Justice Theory to Practice” in Reframing Campus Conflict: Student Conduct Practice Through a Social Justice Lens, Jennifer Schrage and Nancy Geist Giacomini, eds. (Sterling, Va.: Stylus, 2009).

Graham Walden, University Libraries, Focus Groups, Volume II. A Selective Annotated Bibliography: Medical and Health Sciences (Scarecrow Press, 2009).

Elizabeth Weiser, English, edited Engaging Audience: Writing in an Age of New Literacies (Chicago: NCTE Press, 2009).

Grants
Kevin Evans, Allied Medicine, and Carolyn Sommerich, Integrated Systems Engineering and Allied Medicine, received a $2,500 GE Healthcare Excellence in Sonography Award for their proposal, “Utilizing a HCU System to Investigate Ergonomic Injury among Autoworkers.”

Winston Ho, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, received a $205,558 National Science Foundation Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems grant for “Liquid Membranes in Nanopores with Strip Dispersion for Antibiotic Recovery.”

Ethan Kubatko, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science, received a $223,849 National Science Foundation Division of Mathematical Sciences grant for “Collaborative Research: Computational Methods for Coupled Wave, Current, Sediment Transport and Morphological Evolution.”

Giorgio Rizzoni, Mechanical Engineering and Center for Automotive Research, and Ümit Özgüner, Electrical and Computer Engineering, received a $49,965 National Science Foundation grant funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for a workshop, “The Future of Intelligent Transportation Systems and its Implication with Regard to Mobility and Sustainability.”

Keith Warren, Social Work, and more than 20 faculty including David Woods, Engineering, Virginia Folcik, Internal Medicine, Ian Hamilton, Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology and Mathematics, and Mark Moritz, Anthropology, form the newly created Innovation Group, “Complexity in Human, Natural and Engineered Systems,” and will receive $20,000 per year for a three-year period and is part of what will be a multi-year, $16.7 million investment by the university in research that tackles global issues.

David Woods, Integrated Systems Engineering; Industrial, Interior and Visual Communication Design; Anesthesiology; and Speech and Hearing, along with Sharon Schweikhart, Health Services Management and Policy, and Michael Smith, Cognitive Systems Engineering Lab, received a $75,000 Google Research Award to study “Public Health Records and Coordination of Distributed Care in Emergency Medical Systems” to discover ways to get added value from public health records so they are more beneficial at point-of-care.

Presentations
Gary Allread, Integrated Systems Engineering, spoke on “Proving the Case: Cost-Justifying an Ergonomics Intervention” at the 2009 Ohio Safety Congress, Columbus, March 31-April 2.

Morris Beja, English, “Iconic and Filmic Joyce,” plenary address at the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature-Japan conference at Shiga University, Hikone, Japan, Oct. 11.

Steven Glaser, Music, composed and recorded the music for “A Bridge Life,” a documentary about Hurricane Katrina shown at the Newport Film Festival, California, April 23-30.

Claudio Gonzalez-Vega, Economics, was the keynote speaker and lectured on “The Impact of the Crisis on Financial Inclusion,” at the Congress of the Latin American Bankers Association, Mexico City, Mexico, April 23.

Margarita Mazo, Music, presented a paper, “Igor Stravinsky Performing the Self and Les Noces’ Shifting and Conceptualization,” at the symposium “Between Neoclassisim and Surrealism: Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in the Context of the Russian-French Connections, 1900s-1920s,” at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York, N.Y., April 25.

Koritha Mitchell, English, was an invited panelist for “Quest for Diversity: What Awaits Faculty of Color at Predominantly White Universities,” at A Callaloo Symposium, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, Oct. 5.

Robert Rapp, Materials Science and Engineering, gave invited lectures “Hot Corrosion of Materials,” “Thermodynamics of Complex Fused Salt Solutions,” and “Interfacial Dynamics in Scaling Reactions,” at Isfahan University of Technology, Iran, May.

Publications
Franco Barchiesi, African American & African Studies, “Hybrid Social Citizenship and the Normative Centrality of Wage Labor in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Mediations, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 53-67.

Terry Barrett, Art Education, “Interactive Touring in Art Museums: Constructing Meanings and Creating Communities of Understanding,” Visual Arts Research, Vol. 34, No. 2.

Bharat Bhushan, Mechanical Engineering, “Role of Lubricants, Scanning Velocity, and Environment on Adhesion, Friction and Wear of Pt-Ir coated Probes for Atomic Force Microscopy Probe-based Ferroelectric Recording Technology,” Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 20, No. 32, p. 13 with K. Kwak; “Effect of Ethnicity and Treatments on In Situ Tensile Response and Morphological Changes of Human Hair Characterized by Atomic Force Microscopy,” Acta Materialia, Vol. 56, No. 14, pp. 3585-97, with I. Seshadri; and “Effect of Rubbing Load on Nanoscale Charging Characteristics of Human Hair Characterized by AFM Based Kelvin Probe,” Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, Vol. 325, No. 2, pp. 580-87, with I. Seshadri.

Frank Donoghue, English, “Why Academic Freedom Doesn’t Matter,” Special Issue of The South Atlantic Quarterly: Academic Freedom, Vol. 108, No. 4, pp. 601-21.

Michelle Herman, English, “Foreign Excellent,” New Ohio Review, Vol. 6, pp. 114-29.

Amanda Nahlik and William Mitsch, Environment and Natural Resources, “The Effect of River Pulsing on Sedimentation and Nutrients in Created Riparian Wetlands,” Journal of Environmental Quality, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 634-43.

Danielle Pyun, East Asian Languages and Literatures, reviewed Teaching Chinese, Japanese and Korean Heritage Language Students: Curriculum Needs, Materials and Assessment, in The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 93, No. 2, pp. 319-21.

Doug Sutton-Ramspeck, English, “The End of Self,” Freefall: Canada’s Magazine of Exquisite Writing, Vol. 19, No. 2, p. 57; “Field Guide in Winter,” San Pedro River Review, Vol. 1, No. 2; “Louisiana Wife,” The Midwest Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 63-4; “Mudbank” and “The River,” Manorborn, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 123-4; and “Napoleon Writes Again to Josephine,” The South Carolina Review, Vol. 42, No. 1, p. 144.

Kevin Tavin, Art Education, “The Chiasma of Art Education: Finnish and US Approaches to Teaching Visual Culture,” published in the Finnish art education journal Stylus: Taidekasvatuslehti Perustettu Vionna, Vol. 1.

Robyn Warhol-Down, English, “Academics Anonymous: A Meditation on Anonymity, Power and Powerlessness,” Symploke, Vol. 16, Nos. 1-2.

Recognition
Maurice Eastridge, Animal Sciences, received the Outstanding Service to Students award at the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences annual recognition banquet, given by the CFAES Student Council to recognize a faculty or staff member who shows outstanding support to students and their activities.

Ryan Irwin, History, won the 2009-10 SHAFR Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

Soonok Kim, Plant Pathology, was awarded a “Eukaryotic Cell Outstanding Young Investigator Award” sponsored by the American Society of Microbiology for her research poster presentation with Thomas Mitchell, Plant Pathology, and collaborators from Seoul National University and North Carolina State University, “Using ChIP-chip to Characterize Ca++/calcineurin Transcription Factor Binding Sites in Magnaporthe oryzae,” at the 25th Fungal Genetics Conference, Asilomar, Calif., March 17-22.

Dorothy Noyes, English, has been awarded the 2009 Siddens Award for Distinguished Faculty Advising by the Council of Graduate Students.

Mohammad Samimy, Mechanical Engineering, was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for his outstanding contributions to the physical understanding and control of high-speed and high Reynolds number free shear flows through his development and use of novel control techniques and advanced laser-based flow diagnostics.

Service
Simone Drake, African American & African Studies, was an invited participant at the National Women’s Studies Association’s Ford Foundation-funded “Women of Color: Theory, Scholarship and Activism” institute held at Spelman College, Atlanta, Ga., June 14-17.

Robert Gillespie, Music, was clinician and adjudicator for Disney in Tampa, Fla., and for the American String Teachers Association at its national conference in March.

Patrick Osmer, Astronomy, participated in the assessment review process for the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope project, Pasadena, Calif., April 27-May 2, organized by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory on behalf of the National Science Foundation.

Doug Dangler, Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing

November 4, 2009

Doug Dangler administers the OSU CSTW Writing Center and Digital Media and Writing programs, as well as hosting and producing Writers Talk, a tv, radio and Internet show about writing.

What are your five favorite books and why?
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Hypnotic and seductive. You accept without question that good people float off into the wind.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Crazed, unreliable narrator with a lifetime’s worth of puzzles and false clues.

Beloved by Toni Morrison
Stunning and moving.

Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
I have not laughed harder at anything else.

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Tragic, funny, unforgettable. Plus, another opportunity to read a book and use an accent.

Who is your favorite character (villain or hero) in literature?
Villain: Humbert Humbert.
Hero: Oddly, this one is much harder. Maybe the Stainless Steel Rat?

What is the last book you’ve bought?
Something for my kids or for Writers Talk. I plan to buy Andrew Hudgins’ Shut Up, You’re Fine for my more easily offended relatives this year.

What “important book” have you not read?
Moby Dick. Sorry, my wife waded through it and her description turned me off. I feel special guilt because a former adviser of mine specialized in Melville. Shh, don’t tell Dr. R.

What book would you most want your kids to read? What would you want them NOT to read?
When they are older, I want them to read Kurt Vonnegut novels. His humanistic take on the madness and beauty of life is priceless. I would not want them to read most of the political trash on bestseller lists.

What classic novel was a disappointment?
I’ll probably have my doctorate revoked for this but I was bored silly by George Eliot’s Middlemarch.

What genre of literature do you prefer to read?
I usually read fiction, but I’ll read almost anything, and with the guests on Writers Talk, I do read anything now. The story and the writing are what pulls me in.

What magazines do you subscribe to?
New Yorker for the cartoons (oh, and the writing) and Newsweek so I know just how bad the world is getting.

To nominate an Ohio State faculty or staff person for a future Booktalk column, e-mail harris.587@osu.edu.

Staff opportunities ‘limitless,’ says Gee

November 4, 2009

By Adam King

Though changes to the Ohio State culture are in their infancy stage and might not be tangible, President Gordon Gee reiterated that staff would only see their opportunities blossom once the changes are fully implemented.

Gee made the statement during the Staff Conversation with President Gee, which the University Staff Advisory Committee hosted on Nov. 2. Staff could ask any question of the president from the Fawcett Center auditorium floor or via e-mail, and one person asked how Gee’s “One University” concept embraces staff.

Gee said Ohio State currently is a confederation of colleges that look out for their own success and compete with one another in how to shift money around. Eventually, however, those walls will disappear.

“The impact on our staff will be enormous,” Gee said, “because instead of your job being just one part of this confederation, all of a sudden you have limitless opportunities to make a difference at the institution in terms of creative energy and being members of task forces outside your normal learning circle. I think that’s what’s important. It’s a powerful idea, but it’s going to take a lot for us to get there because it’s so embedded in academic concrete.”

University leaders, managers and staff continue to alter their approach, Gee said, to be more accountable to each other. Ohio State, he said, has to toss out old habits of organizing itself horizontally and rewarding employees vertically.

“It’s about developing a much different reward and recognition structure,” Gee said.

To that end, as an example, senior human resources officers now have a dotted line to the vice president of human resources; senior fiscal officers now have a dotted line to the senior vice president for business and finance.

“We’re now going to have some commonality in our resources, values and direction,” Gee said.

Gee also touched on change athe university when one woman noted it was frustrating to see how her unit in charge of health services to students wasn’t as well funded as it should be. Gee said the university’s master planning process is looking at how to improve the quality of life in all areas of campus life as well as how best to organize OSU to be most efficient.

“We’re finding out with student health, as we discovered with the H1N1 virus and its impact in an enormously important area of this institution, sometimes we don’t realize some of the real treasures because we just take them for granted, and we’ll try not to take anyone for granted like we should.”

For an archived streaming video of the event, visit streaming.osu.edu/mediawww2/presentations/townmeeting/110209.

Reviews: TWP serves ‘vital, unique’ purpose

October 21, 2009

By Jeff McCallister

Clearly Deb Ballam is pleased about — and a little bit proud of — the institutional advances women have earned at Ohio State during her time as director of The Women’s Place.

But at the same time, she knows there’s still much to be done, and as she leaves her position there to return to full-time faculty in the Fisher College of Business, she knows TWP is in a strong position to affect even more positive change. Continue reading ‘Reviews: TWP serves ‘vital, unique’ purpose’

Silver nanoparticles give polymer solar cells a boost

October 21, 2009

By Pam Frost Gorder

Small bits of metal may play a new role in solar power.

Researchers at Ohio State are experimenting with polymer semiconductors that absorb the sun’s energy and generate electricity. The goal: Lighter, cheaper and more-flexible solar cells. Continue reading ‘Silver nanoparticles give polymer solar cells a boost’

Student evaluations of instruction all move online

October 21, 2009

By Jeff McCallister

In about a month, students here can begin filling out forms to evaluate their fall-quarter instructors. For the first time, all of those forms now will be completed online.

Dick Gunther, a political science professor who has been working on the online Student Evaluation of Instruction issue for several years, made a presentation to University Senate about the system at the Oct. 15 meeting to quell any lingering concerns among faculty.

The SEI results are used for several purposes. The qualititive results — in which students rate several areas on a 1-5 scale — are factored into tenure evaluations. Those cumulative results also are available to students for use in deciding which instructor to take for a given course. Individual faculty use the qualitative results — the answers to the open-ended questions — as a means of self-evaluation to improve their teaching.

Gunther said the online version has several advantages over the paper forms formerly available (data quality, data integrity and security, lower cost, quicker availability and improved sortability of results) and have negligible difference in overall ratings students offer.

“There are a few down sides, such as a short-term decline in the response rate when other universities have moved to all-online forms, and there is a real risk of some skewed data for low-enrollment courses, but the benefits greatly outweigh the risks, especially because they are only in the short term and can be managed.”

Gunther said students’ familiarity with Carmen and the Student Information Service, which will be used to link to the SEI, make it desireable to make the switch now as opposed to a few years ago.

“There are all kinds of instruments already out there that students use to compare their professors, but none of them have the statistically reliable amount of data available with the SEI,” he said.

He pointed specifically to ratemyprofessors.com, which student members of the senate said many students use to learn about professors in advance of taking a course.

“I looked at my own ratings there, and saw that even though I have taught thousands of students, only 24 have rated my work,” he said. “And I must say that I was a little disappointed that my name did not have a little red-hot chili pepper beside it. It’s just a bunch of frivolous nonsense.”

More information is available at sei.osu.edu.

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