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Writing center puts age-old craft of literature on high-tech stage

November 4, 2009

By Julia Harris

Doug Dangler may well be Ohio State’s most well-kept secret. Not only is he the associate director of the university’s Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing, but he also has his own radio and television show about writing — complete with a Facebook page and more than 210 fans.

He’s also very funny and more than a little irreverent. “Those 200 fans are mostly paid, and let me tell you I lost a lot of money on that deal,” he said, looking furtively at the big blue microphone pointed at him across his desk.

His tongue-in-cheek comments belie a genuine passion for the craft and pursuit of writing. For more than a year now, he has been the creative force behind Writers Talk, broadcast on WCBE 90.5 FM and on the Ohio Channel.

The show features a different writer every week and examines issues related to writing, publishing and surviving in a literary world. Past guests have included Don Pollock, a recent creative writing graduate with a highly successful book, and award-winning novelist Julia Glass.

“OSU is such a magnet for talent, but it seemed to me that these people were simply passing through and no one was archiving these visits in ways that would allow us to gain knowledge from them,” Dangler said.

“I’d always wanted to bring these folks into the classroom, but that isn’t always possible. So instead, we take them into the studio and create a high-quality educational artifact that we can then spin off into any number of places.”

So far, Dangler estimates he’s done more than 70 interviews, 30 of them on video. He has produced over 50 five-minute radio segments for WCBE and is pleased to note that Writers Talk has never missed a week of airtime, even though the production end of the broadcast is pretty much a one-man show.

“We’ve had technical issues with mikes and sound, but we’ve gotten some better equipment as we’ve moved forward — by hook or by crook, or by me holding bake sales,” he said with a grin.

Even on his shoestring budget, Dangler takes pride in creating high-quality broadcasts that don’t adhere to the grainy, do-it-yourself aesthetic popular on video-sharing sites like YouTube. Drawing on the expertise and knowledge of faculty across the university, from English to creative writing to theatre, Dangler wants to create valuable resources that can be used by a wide range of people.

“I want to build this partnership and leverage it so that the highly talented faculty we have here on campus can be displayed to the world, to show that Ohio State is moving from excellence to eminence,” he said.

He has specific visions of enlisting faculty experts to do some of the on-camera interviews of visiting writers, since he’s the first to admit he doesn’t quite know everything about everything.

He’s also quick to admit that going in front of the camera is not a job for everyone. “It basically takes someone with no self-esteem, who’s willing to be degraded on camera,” he said.

Someone Dangler would like to see conduct an interview — and be interviewed herself — is Kathy Fagan, poet and professor of creative writing. He might have his work cut out for him, though, when it comes to convincing Fagan to appear on camera.

“Radio is bad enough,” she said with a laugh. “Middle-aged people, we’re a bit shy of the camera. The idea of being videotaped is just horrifying, but I suppose we’ll have to get used to it.”

Part of the reason she’s so game about change is her realization that Dangler’s doing the university — and literature — a major service in his attempt to capture some of the stories that have thus far been allowed to trickle into silence.

“We’ve had poet laureates, we’ve had Nobel laureates, and it’s just unbelievable to me that we have no archive of those readings,” Fagan said.

“It’s such important but quiet front-line work for the arts and the literary world at the university. I wish we could make him and people who do this kind of work as popular as the football team.”

For more info …

Writers Talk, giving the inside scoop on writers and artists at Ohio State, is broadcast Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on WCBE (90.5 FM), with podcasts at cstw.osu.edu/podcasts, on Facebook.com/writerstalk and on YouTube.

A clearer picture of war

November 4, 2009

Veterans Learning Community aims to provide military students a better way to share their experiences

By Adam King

Anna Rice found her time spent behind a .50-caliber truck-mounted machine gun protecting convoys in Iraq to be an incredible bonding experience with the 32 other soldiers in her platoon.

“It’s a great feeling of people who have your back and can relate to you and really know you,” said Rice, who as a member of the US Army Reserves was pulled just three quarters into her college studies for deployment in 2005.

After her 15-month tour of duty, Rice returned to Ohio State to continue pursuing her undergraduate degree in exercise science/pre-medicine. She’s now a 25-year-old undergraduate and has seen and experienced things no straight-from-high-school student would ever be privy to.

But that’s exactly why there was an interdisciplinary effort by the Department of Comparative Studies and Academic Program Coordinator Susan Hanson, the Center for Folklore Studies and Director Dorothy Noyes and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies to create the Veterans Learning Community (cfs.osu.edu/veteranslc), to give Rice and students like her a way to turn their unique experiences into academic learning, bond with one another and share what they know with the entire university.

Part of the VLC’s mission will be to oversee two military student-only classes, the first of which begins in winter quarter.

“The Experience of War,” limited to 45 veteran, active-duty, Coast Guard or National Guard students as well as international students who are or were members of their country of origin’s military, is an undergraduate comparative studies reading course that looks at representations of the war experience in art, literature and film. Hanson will teach the course and said it should foster greater discussions than the duplicate course she taught this past spring that was open to all students.

“It was a good class, but the vets and active-duty students were uncomfortable engaging with the material in front of other students,” Hanson said. “For many of them, their experiences are so extraordinary that they’re reluctant to describe the relationship of their experiences to the material in the course to students who have little to no knowledge either of current conflicts, military culture or life on the ground during a war. To some extent we tried to pull them out, but you needed to respect their reluctance.”

The students’ reticence was the driver for Hanson and Noyes to work with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies to develop the general education course and a follow-up spring quarter writing course, “Translating Military Experience,” which will be limited to 20 veterans and focus on student-developed projects based on their experience and interest.

“They might learn more than they might have because we’ll create a platform for them to communicate, and we expect a really effective forum,” Hanson said.

While there has been some criticism that the courses, which don’t cover the current conflicts, exclude the general student population from perhaps understanding war through their classmates’ first-hand experiences, Hanson points out that the courses are optional, and veterans can elect to take similar courses open to all. A vets-only course is no different than an honors course that has prerequisites, Hanson said, but in this case, the students also are partners in the learning process.

“With these students, you can take for granted their knowledge in that area of military experience and get to a higher level of discussion,” Noyes said. “But I would also emphasize that the point of a learning community is to encourage research and communication beyond the classroom. We’ll be creating opportunities for dialogue as the project develops.”

To that end, some students who are taking the courses will be asked to participate in a spring conference April 9-10 at the Mershon Center titled “Making Sense in Afghanistan: Interaction and Uncertainty in International Interventions” that will be open to the campus community.

With more than 1,200 veteran or active military students attending Ohio State, there is a large pool to choose from. This fall 127 new or transferred military students began at OSU, and those numbers are expected to grow over the next few years as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down.

Rice has had almost three years to make sense of her time in Iraq, but she’s looking forward to exploring why war happens with her fellow vets, especially those who are fresh from the battlefield.

“Everyone had questions when we deployed,” she said. “We didn’t know what we were going to do and how would our job directly affect the conflict and how would it help the citizens of Iraq. I had tons of questions, but you don’t always get them answered. You’re in the dark in some ways.

“I’ve been in the reserves for six years, and it’s not something you want to tuck in the corner, but it also doesn’t consume you as a person. You have to find the balance, and a lot of times the balance is you have to engage in it when you’re not performing military duty.”

For more information about the VLC or the new military-only courses, contact veteranslc@osu.edu or Susan Hanson at 247-6539.

Keeping their eyes open

October 7, 2009

College of Optometry staffs a visionary clinic at downtown Faith Mission

By Julia Harris

She might not call it a mid-life crisis, but the fact remains: Eight years ago, Joan Nerderman decided she needed a different job.

“I was getting kind of stale, a bit too comfortable with what I was doing,” she said.

What she was doing was working as an optometrist in a private practice in Worthington. Today, she’s still doing eye exams and dispensing glasses; she’s just doing it in an entirely different place, with an entirely different patient population.

As the attending optometrist and faculty director of the Faith Mission eye clinic, an outreach program run by Ohio State’s College of Optometry, Nerderman works with homeless people.

“The first time I saw evidence of drug abuse in the eyes, I had no idea what I was seeing,” she said. “Same thing with domestic abuse. I think I sort of had blinders on before, but I’m much less naïve now. I’m definitely more street smart.”

It’s an intelligence she’s learned the hard way, by looking into and through the eyes of people who, for a variety of reasons, are struggling through impossibly difficult situations. She sees diabetics with such poor blood sugar control that they are nearly blind from retinal hemorrhaging; she has seen people with old gunshot wounds that continue to affect their vision. And she sees people with malignant, life-threatening tumors in their eyes.

“One woman had been hit so badly that the lens inside her eye had been knocked loose and was floating around in the fluid inside her eye,” Nerderman recalled in a quiet voice.
“The force involved with that kind of injury is just unimaginable.”

In the face of such hardship, Nerderman chooses to focus on what she can do for her patients. She and a rotating crew of third- and fourth-year optometry students staff the clinic three days per week, providing more than 1,000 free eye exams annually and dispensing on average 2,000 pairs of glasses. Every patient gets a complete eye workup, from glaucoma screenings to pupil dilations that check for conditions like diabetic retinopathy or high blood pressure.

Many patients are surprised at what an in-depth exam can reveal about their overall health, says Stephen Denny, an optometry student who just completed an externship at the clinic. “They come in because they say they can’t see very well and want us to give them glasses, but a lot of systemic problems are manifested through the eyes,” he said.

He cites one example where an elderly Somali woman came in with severe cataracts, and when he did an exam he noted severe inflammation and scarring at the back of her eye. “When I mentioned it to her, she said quickly, ‘Oh I don’t have tuberculosis,’” he said. “Well, that kind of scared us a bit, but mostly it made us sad because she had no access to health care. We were able, though, to get her to a primary care physician.”

For Denny, working at Faith Mission was — in his own words — “An eye-opening experience. You get great exposure to a very diverse population and see a lot of eye diseases you wouldn’t ordinarily see.”

Through long-term partnerships with groups like Fight Blindness Ohio and Select Optical in Worthington — a family-owned company that donates eyeglass frames and puts lenses in them for Faith Mission patients — the clinic is able to provide both fashionable and functional eyewear.

“I’d be very happy to wear some of these styles,” Nerderman said, cheerfully modeling a golden-rimmed pair.

“I mean, you can’t be taken seriously at a job interview if you’re wearing big red frames like Sally Jesse Rafael from 15 years ago!”

As she spoke, a dark-haired woman roamed the selection of frames, trying on various pairs and peering at herself in the oval mirrors. Her name was Tracy, she said, and she was a recovering alcoholic with scar tissue in her right eye from having been abused.

But today, her eyes were filled with hope rather than pain. “In three months, I graduate from paralegal school,” she said, her chin lifted. “And I’ve got stacks of business cards from attorneys who want to hire me.”

Nerderman watched her slide a slate-gray pair of glasses onto her face. “You’re going to make it, aren’t you?” she said.

Tracy peered down her nose, smiling behind her new glasses. “Hell yeah,” she said.

Stories like these keep Nerderman going. “At the end of the day I feel I’ve accomplished a lot in helping people who couldn’t get help otherwise, and if I can get some students to think that way too — so that when they graduate they do the same — well, that’s what it’s all about.”

Top 3 on 2, 10/08/09

October 7, 2009

Why did you choose to work at Ohio State?
It seemed like a natural transition; from student, to student employee to full-time employee. Ohio State has so much to offer for someone who wants to make a difference every day.

What do you like about your job?
My job is primarily to help people do their jobs better. In Extension we help Ohioans live, work and play as healthier, happier individuals. It’s extremely rewarding.

What would you improve at Ohio State?
I believe protecting the environment should be one of our highest priorities. From rain gardens and green roofs to solar panels and wind turbines, I think OSU could make a big impact on the community and be a leader in green living.

If you weren’t working at Ohio State, what would you be doing?
Selling plants. I love gardening and although the weeds in my garden might argue with that statement, being in nature makes me very happy.

What is your favorite activity outside of work?
Video games! My husband and I can’t get enough of them, and if you tell me that is a boring hobby then I will know that you have never been to my house for game night.

What advice would you give a new employee?
My advice would include encouraging new employees to be patient. We are a large university with so much to offer. Giving up too soon is a mistake; finding your place takes time.

Of what honor or recognition are you most proud?
That is a tough question. I think that any honor or recognition that I receive is due in large part to my co-workers and family who provide amazing strength and support.

Who is your hero?
I would have to say my mom. Every time I start to get discouraged I think about all that she and my dad have gone through to raise four lucky kids and I realize just how fortunate I am.

What are you going to do when you retire?
First, I intend to sleep in. Then I would eat breakfast on a balcony overlooking the ocean before taking my dog Sophie for a walk on the beach. Finally, I’d relax in a hammock for some light reading and a nap. Repeat.

If you were the university president for a day, what would you do?
I would take my dad to a football game. Box seats on the 50-yard line anyone?

To nominate a staff member for an upcoming issue, e-mail oncampus@osu.edu.

Researchers at the Ohio State University Medical Center are partnering with one of the world’s most prestigious and leading biomedical research institutions to provide personal genetic information to more than 100,000 people.

The Medical Center and the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, home of the world’s foremost biobank resource for human cells and DNA, announced their partnership in the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative (CPMC). The personalized genetics study will involve an integrated approach to recruiting and enrolling 2,000 study participants at Ohio State, free of charge.

The CPMC brings together doctors, patients, geneticists, counselors and information technology experts to create a protected environment for participants to see and understand their personal genomic information and allow them to make individualized decisions about their health care. This platform also will enable health care providers to utilize the genetic-based information of participants to develop tailored medical and therapeutic treatments. OSU Medical Center is one of only five centers in the country participating in the project with Coriell.

OSU team breaks its own hydrogen landspeed record

October 7, 2009

For the second time on Sept. 26, Ohio State’s Venturi Buckeye Bullet 2 team exceeded the international speed record it set in 2007.

The Bullet’s average speed was 302.877 mph, which is pending certification by the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile before it can be called an official record.

The hydrogen fuel cell-powered landspeed streamliner racer and its engineering student team made the record attempts in the Salt Flats in Utah the week of Sept. 20. On that Wednesday, the Bullet reached an average 299.91 mph, far surpassing the certified record of 132.129 mph the vehicle set in 2007.

The Bullet was required to make two speed runs, one each in opposite directions and within 60 minutes, in order to be considered for the record, which is officially determined by averaging the speed of the two runs.

The students overcame several obstacles on the way to their highest speedometer reading, said Giorgio Rizzoni, director of Ohio State’s Center for Automotive Research and adviser to the team.

“The skill level, ingenuity and resilience of this student group is unparalleled,” he said. “Just last night they had a broken gearshift. They worked overnight to take the whole thing apart, and here they are now surpassing the 300 mph mark. It’s just phenomenal.

“This record will hold for a long time,” Rizzoni said. “I can’t see who is going to take this away from us.”

The vehicle, engineered by Ohio State students, is driven by professional racing driver Roger Schroer.

Video of the historic run can be viewed at youtube.com/buckeyebullet2.

After Fred

October 7, 2009

Ann Fisher has her own course to chart on  WOSU 820 AM

By Adam King

Ann Fisher is not Fred Andrle, and she has no aspirations to be. Though Fisher was hired to follow in the well-regarded footsteps of Andrle and his 20-year career on WOSU 820 AM, she isn’t willing to bequeath who she is to try and mimic a local legend. Continue reading ‘After Fred’

She’s got the touch

October 7, 2009

Mobile therapist takes massage and message to Ohio State departments

By Julia Harris

When Stephanie Schleappi tells you she feels your pain, she’s not just trying to be nice. More likely, she’s got her fingers right where it hurts and is working hard to loosen things up.

As a licensed massage therapist, Schleappi knows pain. And since a good part of her job with the University Health Connection, Ohio State’s onsite health care clinic for faculty and staff, entails giving chair massages to employees all over campus, she knows better than anyone the pain that plagues this university. Continue reading ‘She’s got the touch’

OUAB gives Colette Masterson access to stars, student ingenuity

October 7, 2009

Colette Masterson knew she picked the right career because all she has to do is describe what she does to elicit a smile.

“My job is to give Jimmy Fallon his paycheck,” said Masterson, who is assistant director of the Ohio Union and Student Activities and acts as staff advisor for the student-run Ohio Union Activities Board.

OUAB brings speakers, programs and entertainers to campus using students’ $25 quarterly Student Activity Fee (up from $15 last academic year), which amounts to $1.2 million annually. Students get in free to all OUAB events, which run the gamut from thought-provoking social issue panels to well-known speakers, comedians, bands and unusual acts.

The perk for Masterson is she gets to meet all the people OUAB brings in — whether it’s Saturday Night Live’s Fallon; producer, director and actor Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma) or the band Third Eye Blind — while helping its student members create a well-rounded campus experience.

“It’s always awesome when talent is as nice as you expect them to be,” Masterson said. “When they’re the most normal, down-to-earth people and are sincerely interested in engaging the students and excited to be on campus, that’s the fun part.”

It’s also fun for Masterson to watch students brainstorm ideas on filling out the calendar. There are 160 OUAB volunteer student members and 12 student executive board members who head the various committees (lectures, concerts, visual and fine arts, special events, etc.). Their job is to contact the talent or their agents, negotiate a fee and do the entire event planning and hosting.

Masterson is kind of the sounding board for the group. Since it’s a student-run organization, she’s loath to say no to any idea OUAB comes up with and she doesn’t inject act ideas that might appeal to her. But Masterson does provide suggestions on what kinds of programs or acts might work when an idea doesn’t make sense for mass appeal, such as one where a student suggested having a Fight Night.

“Advisers like Colette Masterson give us the tools to be successful programmers, but they allow OUAB to be a student-run organization,” said Kayln Eyer, OUAB president. “We learn and grow the most when we are allowed room for error. The OUAB advisors empower us to be better in all facets of our lives through challenge and encouragement.”

But even some of the best ideas are just out of OUAB’s financial realm, such as comedian Dane Cook and The Dave Matthews Band.

“It depends on the talent and how much they want to come to a college show,” Masterson said. “It’s interesting that talent is typically more expensive to bring to a university than say Promo West Pavilion. Our events are free, so artists aren’t making a certain amount plus ticket sales. So we’re competing with those agencies. Plus, groups like The Dave Matthews Band can sell out a stadium.

“There comes a point where we know what our threshold is and sometimes it means standing firm and letting a talent pass and sometimes it means we get a deal and it works out great for everyone.”

One big-name comedian’s agency flat-out told OUAB it couldn’t afford to bring him in.

“The buying power of the money we have is just not to the level of the entertainment industry, and their inflation is at a much greater rate,” Masterson said. “But hopefully with this new fee increase, we can do more of these kinds of shows.”

The Schottenstein Center staff also help OUAB negotiate fees because the center tends to be in tune with what actual going rates are for talent.

During the 2008-09 academic year, OUAB put on 116 events that drew 71,000 people, and planning for current events is completed halfway through the prior quarter.

“Really the exciting thing about this job is seeing an oddball idea actually come to fruition,” Masterson said. “But it’s also seeing how students affect the campus community. They get a lot of excitement out of people reacting to the events they helped dream up.”

Eyer said the students take their roles very seriously.

“OUAB is a large organization designed to represent the opinions and ideas of the largest and most diverse campus in the nation, and that is not easy,” she said. “OUAB means connecting students on campus and providing them with new experiences, and occasionally that means pushing the envelope. OUAB is about making Ohio State the best campus in the nation and it’s about developing the best leaders in the world.”

Ohio Union opening has OUAB planning ahead
Certain areas of the Ohio Union, which will be completed in spring 2010, were created with the Ohio Union Activities Board in mind. So OUAB member students are already deliberating on what type of events can best be paired with the new facility.

Woody’s Pub, for instance, will have an area for a DJ, singers and dance parties. The west side of the union has the electrical infrastructure to project a concert onto the South Oval.

“We’re in the process of brainstorming how to use the unique and interesting spaces,” said Colette Masterson, advisor to OUAB and assistant director of the Ohio Union and Student Activities. “What are the opening events, in the first 30 days, that will pack a punch and say OUAB is home in this building and the Ohio Union is all about the students? Some of the early thoughts are bringing in Ohio celebrities or Ohio State alum celebrities. Perhaps a performance we’ve never brought before to use the amazing performance hall we’ll have. Maybe we can use the instructional kitchen or the cartoon room for an event.”

Students are given access to any event first, but if tickets remain (a rare occurrence, usually two events per year) they are released to faculty and staff on a first-come, first-serve basis.

These tickets have been free to employees with a Buck ID, but Masterson said leftover tickets to events in the new union might have a fee charged with them.

For complete details, visit ouab.osu.edu.

Lights! Camera! Knowledge!

September 23, 2009

Faculty have to go only as far as Bricker Hall to find an international pulpit

By Adam King

The room in the nondescript underbelly of Bricker Hall is akin to C.S. Lewis’ wardrobe link to Narnia. Once faculty enter, they — or at least their likenesses — are instantly transported to other places throughout Ohio, across the nation and around the world.

The Bricker basement has been rewired to create a state-of-the-art television broadcast studio and soundproof radio booth in the center of campus. It was part of an effort to give Ohio

State a level of exposure befitting the largest public university in America and make it easier for faculty to share their expertise with national network and cable news outlets.

“Often the barrier most faculty face in doing a TV interview is it takes time,” said Paul Beck, a political science professor who did more than 200 interviews during the 2008presidential election campaign. “They don’t like to give up those blocks of time for what ends up being a minute or two on the air. And if you have to go off campus to do it, which often was the case, it takes more time.”

With the Ohio State Broadcast Studio up and running, faculty can zip in and out for a live interview, either on television or radio. It’s certainly convenient for Beck, whose office is next door. And the new studio has come in handy for him even with the election cycle over; Beck has had 40 interviews this year discussing partisan politics and campaigning, some of them at Bricker.

“Our faculty have a lot of work they’re doing that speaks to people beyond academia, and I think it’s very important to get the word out about it,” Beck said. “Faculty don’t think of themselves as producers of sound bites and may not present it in a way the media can easily handle. But we teach what we know in the classroom and teach it effectively, and there are plenty of people out there interested in what we do and in learning more about the unique insights it gives us.”

Faculty who might be uncomfortable in front of a camera have an invaluable resource that goes hand in hand with the studio: Ohio State National Broadcast Director Joe Camoriano.

A long-time national anchor, video producer (Missouri and Kansas State) and former national broadcast director at the University of California-Irvine, Camoriano understands how to put faculty at ease and prepare them for live interviews. It also is Camoriano’s responsibility to keep an eye on stories in the news — or that might shortly enter the news cycle — where OSU faculty would be a good fit as experts and “pitch” them to the networks.

“We have 40 experts on our OSU YouTube channel who we brought in and interviewed for 15-20 minutes, and those interviews were edited down to 2-3 minutes. I use those clips to promote OSU faculty, linking the networks to them along with each faculty’s bio,” Camoriano said. “That’s been pretty effective. And the networks were surprised we could do everything in our studio, so now they’ve been asking us for a list of our experts.”

Since February when Camoriano arrived, about 25 national and international interviews have taken place in the Bricker studio and appeared on outlets such as CNN, CNN International, FOX News, FOX Business, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera (Middle East) and Al-Hurra (India) as well as NPR and BBC radio.

The studio also is being made available for internal audiences. The Department of Theatre and Buckeye TV will be producing weekly half-hour shows beginning this fall.

Camoriano said he is looking for faculty with something to say about their research. But he also wants faculty who might be unsure if their research is nationally newsworthy to contact him.

“You never know when there is an angle we can tie in,” Camoriano said. “And if they’re unsure about going national, we can promote them regionally so they can get their feet wet and see how easy it is. We’re here to serve the university and our faculty.”

There’s no bismuth like show bismuth

September 23, 2009

Geoffrey Taber uses unique metal to earn onCampus recognition for his art

By Adam King

It was in a scrapyard where Geoffrey Taber became intrigued with bismuth, a metalloid that forms intriguing crystal formations as it cools. He found a hunk of it in the fall of 2003 while digging through the Research Alloys yard on Goodale Boulevard for metal he uses to make equipment for materials science researchers.

“It had some really cool little crystals and colors,” said Taber, a laboratory technician in OSU’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “Over the next several months I studied and experimented, trying to optimize the interesting features.”

In the view of the editorial staff at onCampus, Taber excelled in his artistic vision, honoring him with the first ever onCampus Editors’ Choice Ribbon for his entry “Hemisphere” in the Staff Arts and Crafts Exhibit at Bricker Hall.

The entire exhibit is on display through Oct. 2, but Taber’s piece, as well as the others in the exhibit honored by President Gordon Gee, the university’s vice presidents and the People’s Choice Award, will be moved to the Schottenstein Center for view by fans attending the Wisconsin home football game Oct. 10.

Taber was a medical imaging systems engineer until he walked into the Hoyt Sherman studio in Columbus in 1987 and fell in love with glassblowing, which he did for the next 10 years.

Taber was the first American student to attend the State School for Glass in Zelezny Brod, Czechoslovakia, in 1990, and he sold his creations locally at the Riley Hawk Gallery, the Columbus Museum of Art gift shop and the Ohio Designer Craftsmen “Show of Hands” retail stores.

Taber relishes developing his skills in both glass and metal casting techniques, and he said it’s the marketing and selling of his artwork that is the most “painful” part of his endeavor.

But he strongly believes in the science of art. After figuring out how to manipulate bismuth, Taber is trying to figure out how to turn practical applications into art aesthetics.

“I have been researching something called ‘monodispersed nanospheres,’ which all that really means is tiny balls, smaller than 1 micrometer, all within a narrow range of diameter,” he said. “After synthesizing such spheres, it is possible for them to stay suspended indefinitely in an ordered or structured solution, know as a colloid. This area is widely studied in search of functional optical devices, such as photonic crystals, but my intent is merely to exploit some of my favorite visually appealing features: Opalescence and iridescence.

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