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Medical Center renamed in Wexner’s honor

February 10, 2012

Leslie H. Wexner doesn’t blink when he tells you that Ohio State researchers and scientists will find cures for cancer.

He realizes that sounds like a lofty goal, but the man who turned a small Columbus clothing store in into a multibillion-dollar empire, is known for thinking big.

“Why can’t it happen here?” he asks. “We’ve got a super medical center that’s advancing by leaps and bounds. And the James is doing great research and great work with patients. They’re a model for the entire university.”

Of course, Wexner has played a major role in enhancing Ohio State’s ability to produce breakthrough research and improve patient care. Last year, Wexner, his family and his company gave $100 million to the university-the largest gift in its history-with much of the money expected to go to the medical center, Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute.

But while the gift generated widespread publicity, fewer people seem to know that beyond giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Ohio State, Wexner also donates thousands of hours of his time.

It is that commitment of both time and resources, said OSU President Gordon Gee, which spurred the Board of Trustees to vote unanimously today to rename the Ohio State Medical Center the Wexner Medical Center at The Ohio State University. Continue reading ‘Medical Center renamed in Wexner’s honor’

Back where she belongs

February 1, 2012

Just in time for United Black World Month and 200Columbus, the School of Music and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion present the story and voice of  almost-forgotten alumna Ruby Elzy

The word “diva” in today’s vernacular is firmly attached to larger-than-life stars like Mariah Carey, Beyoncé or, historically, Barbra Streisand. But for David Weaver, development director for the Ohioana Library, there is no diva like Ruby Elzy, a young black opera singer from the 1930s who overcame tremendous challenges to become a successful stage and screen presence and the pioneering voice of Serena in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Continue reading ‘Back where she belongs’

OSU forms ‘official’ partnership with hometown Huntington

February 1, 2012

By Jeff McCallister

Columbus-based Huntington Bank, founded in 1866, has worked with Ohio State at various levels since both institutions were in their infancy.

The partnership today becomes “official.”

Leaders of both institutions are announcing a 15-year agreement they describe as the largest, most comprehensive and most innovative of its kind in the nation.

“This is an exciting, trailblazing new partnership between Ohio State and Huntington Bank, a great Ohio company and a true champion of the university,” said OSU President Gordon Gee.

As the official consumer bank of The Ohio State University, Huntington will provide $25 million up front (and additional revenue annually), the bulk of which will be used to directly enhance the educational experience for students.

Nearly half of that will go into the endowment and be used to update and renovate classroom space across the university.

The Office of Student Life will use another portion to support financial literacy programs, career initiatives that will take students into the community for internships and service learning projects, and seed money for student-developed initiatives to enhance student wellness.

The new funding also will be used to sustain and expand Alumni Association programming, including alumni career services, enhanced regional programming and events and the development of volunteer opportunities for alumni and supporters of Ohio State.

As part of the agreement, Huntington has committed to another $100 million in lending and investment to revitalize the University District and East side neighborhoods, and provide 20 internships per year of the agreement to OSU students. The bank also will open as many as three new branch offices and operate 25 ATMs on campus.

“This collaboration with Huntington wholly supports our core academic purposes — to educate young people and to enrich the lives of 11 million Ohioans,” Gee said. “I have no doubt it will help us advance our efforts to become a better neighbor and to build stronger communities.”

The partnership provides Huntington exclusive access to directly offer tailored products and services to the entire Ohio State community.

“We are delighted to partner with Ohio State,” said Steve Steinour, Huntington’s chairman, president and CEO. “Huntington believes strongly that partnerships like this can help universities grow and prosper while providing their employees, students and alumni access to valuable financial services and benefits.”

Geoff Chatas, senior vice president for Business and Finance at Ohio State, was charged from his first day on the job to find new and creative ways to fund the university’s strategic initiatives. His task is not only to sustain but also to enhance the university’s mission of teaching and learning at a time when the world’s economy is undergoing fundamental changes and governmental support is dwindling.

“The point of making a deal like this is to raise incremental funds to sustain our core, but it’s more than that,” he said. “We’re actually building and building upon a relationship, forming an agreement that not only is beneficial to both partners, but is one that helps the world around us.”

Chatas said the totality of the partnership is what makes it unique — the long-term aspect, the investment not only in the university but also in the surrounding community and the agreement that there will be no marketing of credit or loan offers to students.

He stressed that while anyone can opt out of the marketing, the offers likely will be attractive to those in the market for the services Huntington offers — similar if not exactly equal to the benefits available to Huntington employees.

“It’s a validation of the strength of the institution that we can form a partnership like this,” Chatas said. “What we’ve put together is a model that could have implications nationwide.”

Building a team around team building

February 1, 2012

A cohort of women faculty is developing management skills through Project CEOS

By Julia Harris

Over the long lunch hour of Jan. 13, within the highly decorated walls of 400 Stillman Hall, some of Ohio State’s best and brightest minds gathered to share wisdom and experiences around the issues of building and managing teams.

Roughly 15 female faculty brought their lunches and their questions to the bi-weekly workshop, sponsored by NSF-funded Project CEOS (Comprehensive Equity at Ohio State) as part of an ongoing effort to increase the representation and advancement of women in the STEM disciplines through projects that transform workplace culture.

Among the topics up for discussion were the challenges of communicating within teams, setting and communicating rules of behavior, keeping team members motivated and giving/receiving feedback.

“For most science disciplines, you must have a research team and/or lab in order to be successful,” said Deb Ballam, CEOS program director. “However, science curriculums do not train scientists to become managers — even though that is precisely what they become when they have their own lab or research team.

“This series attempts to provide some of those management skills.”

No two women gathered around the table had exactly the same configuration of lab or research team, but they all had one thing in common: The often thankless job of managing other people’s time and energy.

One of the presenters at the Jan. 13 event was Ohio Eminent Scholar Karin Musier-Forsyth, a biochemist and researcher whose work focuses on replication of the HIV virus in human cells. Musier-Forsyth heads up a research group of almost 30 people, from undergraduates to graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. As the group has grown larger — and, admittedly, more unwieldy — Musier-Forsyth has had to learn and implement new management skills.

“I haven’t done actual lab work in something like 12 years,” said Musier-Forsyth, smiling. “I basically spend as much time as I can talking to my students about how they do their research and helping to direct them and write papers. As your lab grows, you have to change your management style a little bit in how you run your groups, your sub-groups and your interactions.”

Even though she was one of the presenters, Musier-Forsyth says that participating in the CEOS series of workshops and courses — and building collaborative relationships with other women faculty across campus — has taught her more than she has brought to it. “To be successful, you have to be successful at managing people, and I think women do have different management styles than men do.”

Another participant in the team-building workshop was Tracey Papenfuss, an assistant professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine who manages a much smaller lab that studies animal models of human disease, primarily multiple sclerosis. She has been taking part in CEOS workshops since October and says she has already benefitted from what she’s learned, particularly in terms of understanding the “people dynamics” of hiring and managing group dynamics.

“We had a strengths assessment at one point and even though I inherently knew a lot of my strengths and weaknesses, seeing them outlined in such a manner and then seeing how everyone in the class lined up was really interesting,” said Papenfuss. “It was helpful to look at ways I could improve and characteristics I could capitalize on to be more effective in my role as a Principal Investigator.”

Also beneficial, Papenfuss says, are the interactions and connections she has made with other faculty participating in the program, learning about common areas of challenge and discovering creative strategies for addressing some of them. An example she cites is the delicate negotiations between PIs and graduate/lab assistants who may not be pulling their weight in the lab.

“A large proportion of people in the workshop have graduate students working for them and they’re a different entity than a regular staff,” she said. “There are very prescribed ways of handling regular staff, in terms of evaluations and hiring or firing. With a graduate student, it’s more of a mentoring environment than a supervisor situation, and that particular nuance is different from the standard HR questions.”

Papenfuss anticipates that future iterations of the CEOS series will address these and other issues. For now, she looks forward to the rest of this year’s workshops, which will cover topics like project management, technology transfer and commercialization, and budgets and grant writing.

“An investigator in a lab is almost like a small business owner,” Papenfuss mused. “They have to know so much — and this program provides a lot of training, leadership and aspects to be aware of as you’re navigating academia.”

Energy end-around

February 1, 2012

OSU finds efficiency, savings in geothermal wells

Scott Conlon, director of projects for OSU Facilities Design and Construction, smiles as he talks about cheating the system. It sounds a bit dastardly, but circumventing a standard practice will actually save Ohio State hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.

And frankly, cheating a building’s chiller system is nothing to feel guilty about. It’s merely putting more than 50 years of solid engineering principles into practice.

In its current iteration, a chiller system takes heat from the water and makes it colder. The cold water is used to cool the building in the summer months for air conditioning, and the heat extracted by the chiller is typically expelled to the outside air as waste. In the colder months, hot water is produced by typically burning a fossil fuel to heat the buildings.

But Ohio State’s cheat — a heat pump that sends the water through a series of 6-inch-diameter holes bored into the ground — allows Mother Earth to keep the water at a constant temperature of about 54 degrees. Known as geothermal wells, the holes, which hold protective sleeves with water coils, allow buildings to conserve energy and use less capital equipment for heating and cooling, which lowers maintenance costs.

This relatively constant temperature allows the heat pump to add heat to the ground in the summer and then extract the heat in the winter, similar to charging a battery and then using the energy at a later date.

The two current projects that will use these wells, the South High Rises Renovation and Addition (Park/Stradley, Smith/Steeb and Siebert halls), and William Hall Complex (between 10th and 11th avenues), each expect to realize a 32 percent energy savings and a combined minimum cost savings of $415,000 annually.

The 147 wells adjacent to Hale Hall, which will feed the South High Rise project, will be completed in May. The parking lot formerly adjacent to Hale Hall will be turned into a green space called the Hale Green, which will be sodded and ready for use by the autumn semester.

No structures can be built on top of the wells, so it will remain green space. As part of the planning, Hale Hall could eventually come down to create one large green space that stretches out from the South Oval.

The South Oval’s 259 wells won’t be complete until May 2013, and the South Oval is currently scheduled for an October 2013 opening, although Conlon said the project team is working hard to find opportunities to expedite that schedule.

The William Hall Complex wells are being drilled in an inner courtyard and are nearly complete.

“If we weren’t using geothermal for these projects, we would be using steam, and by using geothermal instead we can reserve the steam capacity for future projects,” Conlon said. “But we’ll use virtually no steam for the heating and cooling in these buildings, and that’s not even calculated in the savings.”

The drilling was expected to be finished sooner but hit a snag when it became evident that the drilling method was not compatable with the subsurface conditions at the South Oval.

OSU hired a new drilling firm that is employing a more productive drilling method known as mud rotary. The new firm started on the Hale project and will restart the South Oval drilling this spring.

“While the extended closure of the South Oval is disappointing for everyone, this commitment to geothermal reinforces the university’s leadership position regarding energy savings and sustainability,” Conlon said.  “It will not always be an easy path, but it is worthwhile.”

Geothermal wells have been used on one prior project, the Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H Building, which earned a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Silver designation. But the wells weren’t as numerous there as in the current projects since the 4-H building is smaller.

Conlon said people should expect to see more geothermal wells added as more projects are approved.

The North Residential District, for example, which is currently in a conceptual study phase and is to include 3,200 new student beds, dining options and a small recreation center, has green space being planned which could support geothermal wells. And the planning envisioned in the One Ohio State Framework Plan includes places along the Olentangy River OSU could look to add wells to support potential new academic growth around St. John Arena.

While geothermal wells are fairly new to Ohio State, the federal government and the US Military have been using the technology successfully for more than 50 years. And numerous other colleges and universities are taking advantage of the wells’ benefits.

In Ohio these include Miami University, Ohio Northern, Hocking College and Oberlin. Outside of Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Indiana, Cornell, Missouri and other locations have geothermal projects built or under construction.

“Because we’re adding so much energy consumption via air conditioning to the South Residential halls (which didn’t have A/C before), it would have been very difficult to meet our own Green-build policy if we hadn’t done geothermals,” Conlon said. “It has really had a huge impact.”

OSU cutting its green-power chops

During the 2010-11 academic year, Ohio State drew 9 percent of its power from green sources, equaling 51.4 million kilowatt hours. That helped the Big Ten Conference earn its first title in the EPA’s Green Power Challenge.

The Ivy League won the first four years of the competition. The University of Pennsylvania was the only participant from that league last year, but it was easily the individual champion with 200.2 million green kWh purchased (48 percent of its power needs).

Penn State led the conference with 83.6 million kWh for 20 percent of its power used. Northwestern acquired 74.3 million kWh for 30 percent of its electricity needs. Also participating were Wisconsin (38.9 million kWh, 9 percent) and Iowa (8.7 million kWh, 3 percent).

This year’s Champion Green Power Conference will be announced in the spring.

Entertainment royalty give back to OSU with center

February 1, 2012

$6 million gift creates Center for Integrated Arts and Enterprise and helps with Sullivant renovation

Ohio State alumnus and entertainment industry leader Lawrence Barnett has committed $6 million to the university to enhance arts facilities and education.

The gift to the university’s College of Arts and Sciences will establish the multi-disciplinary Lawrence and Isabel Barnett Center for Integrated Arts and Enterprise, a collaborative effort to engage students in learning not only how to be successful and creative professional artists but also successful and entrepreneurial business people in the arts. It also supports renovations to Sullivant Hall, a focal point for many of the arts at Ohio State, which is set to reopen next year.

Barnett and his late wife Isabel Barnett have supported Ohio State students in the arts for many years, through the Barnett Fellowship for graduate students in Art Education, the biennial Barnett Arts and Public Policy Symposium, and the Barnett Distinguished Visiting Lecturers Series, which has brought both Robert Redford and Sidney Poitier to campus.

The renovated Sullivant Hall, new home for the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, also will house the College of Arts and Sciences’ departments of dance and art education, as well as the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, which will interact with the new Barnett Center.

Sullivant will be a crux of arts activities, with gallery spaces for student exhibitions, a state-of-the-art performance space, collaborative research facilities and quarters for guest artists and scholars, as well as the designated home for Barnett Scholars. The gift also supports the new Barnett Conference Room and the Barnett Theatre in Sullivant.

“The arts and artists have always been so important to my wife, Isabel, and me,” Larry Barnett said.

“Getting my degree from Ohio State was a key to my success, and it is particularly meaningful to help today’s students develop into professional artists as well as businesspeople in the arts. We are so proud of the meaningful careers our graduates have established. It’s an honor to broaden our involvement and we hope that many more people will decide to support the arts.”

A native of Orrville, Barnett attended Ohio State in the 1930s and worked his way through school by booking his Larry Barnett Orchestra in venues around Columbus. One quarter short of graduating, he became ill. While recovering, he was offered a job with the Columbia Broadcasting System Artist Bureau and left for California to become a booking agent.

He handled the careers of big band stars such as Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Guy Lombardo and the careers of motion picture stars including Jack Benny, George Burns, Judy Garland, Marlon Brando and Ronald Reagan.

Barnett later became president of Music Corporation of America (MCA), chairman and president of General Artists Corporation (GAC), executive vice president of Chris-Craft Industries and vice chairman and director of United Television.

He married actress Isabel Bigley, who at the time was performing in the hit London production of Oklahoma. Mrs. Barnett won theatre’s highest honor, a Tony Award, for her role as Sarah Brown in the original Broadway production of Guys and Dolls. She hosted the TV program Café Continental and appeared on the programs of Ed Sullivan and Eddie Fisher and the game show What’s My Line. She donated her extensive collection of theatre memorabilia to Ohio State’s Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute in 1993.

Larry and Isabel raised six children and shared 53 years of marriage until Mrs. Barnett’s death in 2006.

“From his days on campus in the 1930s to his commitment and support of students over the years, Larry Barnett has been a true champion of young people pursuing their arts degrees at Ohio State,” said Joseph Steinmetz, executive dean and vice provost, College of Arts and Sciences. “The Barnetts’ vision and noble generosity will prepare our students for life-long accomplishments in their fields, and the Lawrence and Isabel Barnett Center will be an innovative and highly visible anchor for Ohio State’s revitalized arts district.”

The gift will expand Barnett’s vision of preparing students for their careers in the arts via involvement in new undergraduate degrees and minors in arts management. The center will reach out to the community as well, promoting Mrs. Barnett’s passion for the arts by partnering with local professional arts organizations for performance opportunities and collaborative projects.

“Larry Barnett has been both a treasured friend and a personal inspiration to me since my first tenure at Ohio State,” OSU President Gordon Gee said. “Throughout the years, he and his late wife Isabel demonstrated a unique commitment to the arts, in particular to helping our students develop their talents as young artists.

“I am deeply grateful to Larry and Isabel for their extraordinary commitment. Thanks to the remarkable foresight and generosity of Larry and Isabel, our students, faculty and staff are able to pursue excellence in all manners of the arts and human expression. That is surely a legacy that will only deepen over time.”

After Mr. Barnett retired, he contacted Ohio State about his unfinished degree and ultimately completed his coursework, earning a bachelor of science in 1988 from Fisher College of Business.

In 1996, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Ohio State in recognition of his outstanding work in entertainment and business.

Got old?

February 1, 2012

On OSU’s campus, the Museum of Classical Archaeology has a strong claim for oldest human artifact

Tim Gregory admits the two sherds of pottery in the display case in the basement of Dulles Hall are not much to look at. They sit next to much more interesting pieces in the former storage closet that is now the Museum of Classical Archaeology, such as bronze daggers, a cuneiform tablet and some of the earliest examples of writing on Egyptian papyrus.

Continue reading ‘Got old?’

Find your niche at Ohio State

January 18, 2012

 

 

Service to the Ohio State community can take many forms — and there’s no better time than the present to step up and serve

Here are just two possibilities:

University Senate: Crucial issues underscore importance of elections

With money scarce, USAC focuses on what it can accomplish without it

University Senate: Crucial issues underscore importance of elections

January 18, 2012

By Jeff McCallister

University senators whose terms expire at the end of this academic year have been part of some historymaking times at Ohio State.

“The activity of the senate, including the Faculty Council and the 21 committees, has been more robust than I’ve seen in many years,” said Tim Gerber, secretary of the senate, who is himself a former two-term senator and former chair of the Faculty Council.

Continue reading ‘University Senate: Crucial issues underscore importance of elections’

OSU STAR House is a port in the storm

January 18, 2012

By Julia Harris

From the outside, at least, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about the two-story brick house at 1421 N. 4th Street. Like many of its neighbors, it’s got a big front porch, a chimney snaking up one side and a boxy air conditioning unit hanging out of its attic window.

From the inside, however, the OSU STAR House (Serving and Treating Adolescent Runaways) is not at all ordinary.

Continue reading ‘OSU STAR House is a port in the storm’

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