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Hitting the “Highlights”

January 4, 2012

A trove of treasure from the iconic children’s magazine adds wonder to Libraries’ special collections

By Julia Harris

After three years of sorting through more than a thousand filing boxes full of papers, letters, drawings and magazines, it’s probably safe to say that José Diaz is an expert on all things having to do with Highlights magazine.

It’s also safe to say that the work is only just begun when it comes to organizing the enormous collection of materials, which came to the Ohio State University Libraries on more than 30 pallets and included 10 copies of every issue of the Highlights for Children magazine.

“Highlights is an important piece of the fabric of our community,” said Carol Pitts Diedrichs, director of the OSU Libraries. “This gift enables us to make the collection available to researchers who will benefit from Highlights’ rich history, insights and philosophy.”

The publication has been delighting generations of children — and their parents — since the first issue rolled off the presses in 1946, teaching the values of positive self-worth, creativity, curiosity and problem-solving. Regular features in the magazine, such as the “Hidden Pictures” page and the morally instructive cartoon panels starring Goofus and Gallant, have helped entertain, educate and challenge thousands of youngsters across the country — many of whom discover the magazine while sitting in doctors’ or dentists’ offices.

Diaz, an associate professor of history and the curator of the new Highlights collection, says he was mostly unfamiliar with the publication before being presented with the daunting task of culling the materials down to a manageable size.

“I know nothing about children’s literature. I have two kids and that’s the extent of it,” he said with a laugh. “I mean, I go to the dentist and there’s the magazine, so I’ve read through it. But when I got this collection, I remember just staring up at it in awe the way you do when you visit cathedrals in Europe: It’s just so massive.”

Fortunately for Diaz, he had a group of students to help him make the initial pass through the boxes of materials and begin making sense of the collection, which includes the personal papers and writings of magazine founder Garry Myers. Perhaps the most valuable component of the collection, however, is the wealth of children’s contributions over the years, which range from jokes and cartoons to achingly personal letters to the editor that seek advice on a host of troubles both large and small.

“Editors respond to every letter, even when it doesn’t make it into the magazine,” Diaz said.

Considering that they get more than 50,000 letters each year — a number that’s been changing as e-mail has made communication even easier — the volume of correspondence is nothing short of overwhelming. And the collection will continue to grow as more issues of the magazine are published and the accompanying correspondence from young readers swells the ranks.

To cope with the avalanche of paper, Diaz and his team first decided to keep only two copies of each issue of the magazine, sending the surplus back to Highlights for their own safekeeping. For the collection of children’s letters, drawings and other contributions, they employed the archivist technique called “sampling” — in which every 10th item they touched was set aside for inclusion in the final collection. Letters that did not get selected were bundled and sent to the University of Southern Mississippi, which has a strong collection of children’s literature. All other materials were recycled.

“It was an agonizing decision, because we knew we might be discarding individual items that could be significant, like (potentially) a drawing of a horse by a young Barack Obama or a joke by a young George Carlin,” Diaz said. “But our choices were quite limited by the size of the collection. Nobody could have kept it all. We’re down to 276 boxes now and that’s still not a small collection.”

Diaz anticipates that the Highlights collection will appeal to a wide range of scholars in fields spanning child psychology and children’s literature to business, history and education. “I’ve got people asking me things like, what did the magazine say when Kennedy was shot? Or when the towers came down?”

He leaned back in his chair. “The impact of this magazine on children in America hasn’t been measured, at least to my knowledge. It’s interesting to see how the world has changed from the 1940s to the present.”

Greenland rising

January 4, 2012

By Pam Frost Gorder, Research Communications

An unusually hot melting season in 2010 accelerated ice loss in southern Greenland by 100 billion tons — and large portions of the island’s bedrock rose an additional quarter of an inch in response.

Continue reading ‘Greenland rising’

Gathering of Men

January 4, 2012

Program gives African American males ‘social capital’ on a sometimes challenging campus

By Adam King

They come together once a year to reinforce a community — giving young African American men inspiration and an opportunity to connect with each other and their more accomplished peers.

It’s called The Gathering of Men, and while the target audience is gender-specific, anyone can attend.

Continue reading ‘Gathering of Men’

This could be the start of a beautiful (and healthy!) relationship

January 4, 2012

Ohio State initiative pairs Columbus teachers with community service

By Julia Harris

On a gray December morning a few days before Christmas, Shawna Streeter’s little army of preschoolers made a loud and colorful entrance into the communal dining area of St. Stephens Community House, a sprawling center of social services devoted to the residents of Columbus’ Greater Linden Area.

Arrayed around big round tables was an assortment of 15 to 20 older adults who smiled as they watched the children parade in and settle into a corner, cross-legged, barely able to remain still as Streeter issued last-minute directions.

Continue reading ‘This could be the start of a beautiful (and healthy!) relationship’

When the quarter ends, the cooking begins

December 7, 2011

Students who stay at OSU bond through food

By Adam King

Graduate student Huyen Nguyen gets homesick at this time of year, thinking about how she should be with all her family in Vietnam instead of immersed in her biophysics studies. This is her third consecutive December spent at Ohio State, but this year is harder since she had her newborn son in August, and he’s too young to travel on such a long flight to the other side of the hemisphere.

Her parents are in Columbus to help care for her son while she studies, but her younger sister and other relatives are still in Vietnam.

“We are very, very close,” Nguyen said. “That makes it so tough to live away from home during the holidays.”

But Nguyen refuses to let herself get all “bah humbug.” She enrolled in a cooking class — Party Appetizers on Dec. 8 — that the Ohio Union Activities Board established especially for graduate and professional students. A second class, Holiday Baking, is Dec. 15, and both are expected to be full.

OUAB Graduate/Professional advisor Kerry Hodak said it’s a new idea to offer programming after the quarter is over.

“I hope that these classes brighten the students’ day and they feel as though the university community values them,” Hodak said. “While they may not be able to participate in their regular holiday traditions, maybe these classes will provide them something fun and unique that makes them feel a little more at home.”

Nguyen said the classes are an opportunity to sample American holiday culture. She knows how to cook, but she’s never experienced baking. And it will be the first time she spent a holiday on campus doing an activity with students she doesn’t know.

“It gives the students a chance to get together and share joy, emotions and experiences during the holidays when they can’t do so with their family,” she said.

It’s a slightly different situation for Lindsey Higgins and Travis Walker, who both live stateside and are planning to head home the week of Christmas. But the instructional classes give them an excuse to connect to the broader OSU community since they usually have their blinders on during their studies.

Walker, who is taking the baking class, works with smart materials in mechanical engineering, so he already enjoys making things. He’s attempted some recipes on his own with good success (though he admits his first cake fell apart).

“I’ve discovered that building something out of wood or putting together the ingredients to make a delicious dish are very similar,” he said. “It’s often easier to go with baking and cooking since I lack many of the tools needed for construction projects. I also enjoy learning new things, so anytime I get a chance to learn a new skill or something, I like to take that opportunity.

“This is a good event for OSU to provide. It gives students something to do with their time since there are no classes and they are still here in town. It is another chance to get out of the house or lab and stay involved in the learning process outside of school.”

Higgins, who will be continuing her research in geography and climatology, is enrolled in both classes and has taken previous cooking demos.

“I like to think that I am a good cook, but I definitely have my moments where experimentation does not pay off,” she said.  “The chefs teach basic ideas that make cooking at home a lot easier and more enjoyable. It also is a great venue to try different types of food. When I was younger, my family would get together to bake and decorate holiday cookies. Taking this baking class brings me back to that feeling.”

For graduate and professional students, OUAB focuses on three areas of programming. The cooking classes fall under Social (fitness classes, happy hours, quiz nights), and there also are activities for Professional Development (interviewing, job search, resume writing) and Family (films, pumpkin painting).

Chef Roger Garland will lead the baking class, with such mouth-watering lessons in how to prepare chocolate ganache-dipped strawberries, baked apple filled with rice custard, pumpkin and hazelnut bread pudding, chocolate peppermint bark, gingerbread cookies and homemade eggnog.

“The December classes are designed to help students as they host each other for holiday or end-of-term parties,” Hodak said. “And with the popularity of cooking shows on television, the interest in local and sustainable food and the economy of cooking at home, cooking classes are a great fit. Students learn new cooking and baking techniques and leave each class with the recipes for all of the items on the menu.”

Walker said having classes like this bring the large scale of OSU down to an individual level.

“I came from a small school in high school, so I was a little unsure of what to expect from such a large school,” he said. “I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to find a place to fit in and get involved in something that meant something to me.”

Mission: American culture

December 7, 2011

OSU’s center at Wuhan University builds understanding of US

By Adam King

It was a sight to see, once-demure Chinese women screaming at the top of their lungs as they thrust the heel of their hand toward a mythical assailant’s nose, with the hope of breaking it.

Instructor Brieanne Billman smiled, recalling just how much work it took to get her students from Wuhan University, Ohio State’s sister institution, to yell during the self-defense exercises. Raising one’s voice is supremely out of character for the Chinese, but once she convinced them it was absolutely necessary, they responded with gusto.

“They were really loud,” said Billman, the coordinator for Sexual Violence and Education Support at OSU’s Student Wellness Center. It was one of the more memorable moments during her month-long teaching excursion in China.

Billman’s summer visit to Wuhan, her second, was the latest exchange between the universities, which became sister schools in 1981. Since 2004, the universities have been sending delegations back and forth to reinforce their memorandum of understanding, which outlines the relationship.

But that relationship got a boost this year when the US State Department, seeing the success of Ohio State’s management of the Wuhan University Summer Intensive English Program (WUSIEP), awarded OSU $100,000 to establish a Center for American Culture.

“The Center for American Culture is another step in the right direction for Ohio State in terms of our engagement in global initiatives,” said Vice Provost for Global Strategies and International Affairs William Brustein. “The value of teaching global perspectives to the next generation is an invaluable asset and better prepares students for a myriad of opportunities that may arise.”

At the CAC, students, faculty, staff and members of the WHU community will learn what it means to be American from Americans with a wide range of ages, backgrounds and experiences. Overall, the State Department awarded $1 million to 10 US institutions to establish CACs or programs in China. Ohio State’s CAC will open next September.

“The reason the State Department places such value on this exchange is they see the fate and destiny of our two nations wrapped up together, and they want us to understand each other,” said Bob Eckhart, who directs the OSU-Wuhan University Center for American Culture.

Mostly it has been Hollywood’s version of America that has influenced Chinese students’ interpretation of US culture. Many Chinese use American media as a way to supplement their English lessons. For example, some Wuhan students have watched episodes of the sitcom “Friends” over and over, and they asked Eckhart to explain lines they had memorized from the show and didn’t understand.

“It’s minute, analytical and a mystery to them, and they’re trying to decode it,” Eckhart said. “American culture can be a mystery to Americans too, so we’re just trying to give them tools to understand and a critical thinking framework. They have even less of a reflective framework in China, so they learn about their culture too. They’re fascinated about the littlest details of how we dress, and how we think.”

The CAC, however, also is excellent for teaching OSU how Chinese students learn. With 130,000 Chinese attending US universities, including more than 2,800 at Ohio State (a number that has grown significantly in just the last five years), understanding their classroom behavior is becoming a requirement.

Allen Coleman, the digital media and instructional technology coordinator for the College of the Arts and Sciences, has taught twice at Wuhan. Unlike their American counterparts who are eager for class participation, Chinese students, he said, don’t speak out when a question is asked.

“What’s interesting is the Chinese already have that critical thinking and independent thought, but the academic environment there doesn’t encourage that,” Coleman said. “That’s what we changed and we gave them the opportunity to practice sharing that.”

In the WUSIEP,  students rotated during the day between instructors, who were recruited from all over the US. They touched on 10 cultural themes (music, sports, food, business, family, etc.), and each classroom was decorated to match the theme.

In the media and technology classroom, one of the lessons was about Facebook. Because that site is blocked in China, the instructors put up paper “walls” for each student to demonstrate how it worked. Students wrote out their profiles, could go to other students’ walls to make friend requests and write status updates.

“Some students who would friend each other had never met in person,” Coleman said. “And they couldn’t post until that person accepted their request. It was a lot of fun and a way to bring that to life.”

Eckhart said he wants faculty and staff to send him new ideas on what to teach, and it could mean a trip to China for those who submit them. The grant money already is going to fund instructors from English, Education, Law and Comparative Studies in 2012, to host seven study abroad graduate students from the Higher Education/Student Affairs program and possibly promote a partnership with OSU’s Historic Costume and Textiles Collection.

“So many faculty and staff have an interest in China, and our sister school is a great place for them to make inroads,” Eckhart said.

Did you know…?

Wuhan University has become one of China’s top 10 higher-learning institutions, with a student population nearly as big as Ohio State’s.

“The only thing they don’t have that we do is a football team,” said Bob Eckhart, the director of the Ohio State-Wuhan Center for American Culture.

Wuhan also has the political sway to make connections for OSU as Ohio State builds its China Gateway.

“Not only have our faculty and students benefited from the relationship with Wuhan University, our ability to secure meetings with top Chinese officials owes much to the intervention of our friends at Wuhan,” said Vice Provost William Brustein.

Yung-Chen Lu, an OSU emeritus professor of Mathematics who was born in Wuhan, was one of those who helped initiate the sister-school relationship in 1981.

Shirts for scholarships

December 7, 2011

Revenue from the sale of OSU-licensed gear goes to enrich the lives of students, from research aids to programming and tuition help

By Jeff McCallister

That Ohio State football jersey your daughter’s wearing to school today means another scholarship for a deserving Buckeye scholar or athlete tomorrow.

Or a new collection for the library.

Or programming in the Office of Student Life.

Continue reading ‘Shirts for scholarships’

Pulling all the right strings

December 7, 2011

Wenda Williamson makes celestial music in her free time

By Julia Harris

Wenda Williamson, a two-year employee with the Office of Development, may not be an angel, but she sure can play the harp like one. Her particular instrument, however, isn’t quite like the sweet little winged harps you see in most holiday cards.

No, Williamson’s harp is cherry red, tall as a 10-year-old child and electrified like a hard-rock guitar. It bristles with pick-ups and power; plugged in, it produces sounds that are simultaneously sublime and jagged and complex. Sounds that make hairs rise on the back of your arms and neck in an aesthetic shiver.

“Playing the harp is very ethereal and freeing,” says Williamson in her Clintonville home, her bare feet tucked beneath her on the couch. “It’s very fluid.”

It’s also a mystical gift, she says, telling a story about a great-grandfather in England who was self-taught on the harp and played it devotedly until his spiteful wife took an axe to it and splintered it to bits. “It’s like his soul has been floating around waiting to gift this ability to someone,” she says, smiling.

Whatever the origin of her musical ability, Williamson’s love of the harp traces back to high school, when she encountered an acoustic harp in an unlocked closet in her high school band room.  She “noodled around with it” a few times after school and discovered she had some talent with improvisation. But it wasn’t until her freshman year in college, when she went to a concert and witnessed a performance by a professional harpist, that she knew she’d found her calling.

“The orchestra had started playing, everything was going along and all of a sudden a harpist dashed in, wheeled his harp in and plunked it down, got a bench and plunked that down, then flipped his coattails out, sat down and played — right on cue,” she recalls.

“That got my attention. Plus he played so beautifully, I came out of that concert knowing I had to learn to play the harp.”

So, with a surety that surprises her today, she dropped out of Earlham College — a small and expensive liberal arts school in Indiana — and enrolled in Ohio University as a harp major.

At that time, there was no such thing as electric harps, so Williamson went through school playing her acoustic harp in the orchestra, writing and performing her own songs.

It wasn’t until she went to a performance by Austrian harpist Andreas Vollenweider, who was playing his own version of an electro-acoustic harp, that she decided to experiment on her own.

“The first thing I wanted to do was make a midi harp, which basically is a harp with a digital interface that would make it sound like a cello or an electric guitar or even a brass instrument,” she says.

She moved from that to a fully electric harp that she built herself, on which she made a recording of Tom Petty’s “Face in the Crowd.” In her house she has a tiny recording studio, where she can play at the window and film the movement of her fingers across the harp strings.

Williamson estimates that she has written anywhere from 500 to 600 of her own pieces, including what she terms a “comic book music video” based on a cartoon series of her own creation. A Nasvhille trip is in the works, where she has plans to record a few of those songs; the dream, she says, is to get some of them published.

“In my wildest dreams, this Nashville trip will net me a publishing contract, but I’m not naive,” she says. “I don’t think I can have a music career for myself at this point in my life, but I do think it’s possible that I could sell a song, have another artist record it and then make royalties from it.”

Right now, her dreams are fairly modest. “I like doing weddings,” she says. “I’d like to play with a drummer and a bass player, maybe play some hotel bars and lobbies… And I kind of want to focus on recording.”

For more info…

CASE places onCampus among best internal pubs in midwest region

December 7, 2011

onCampus, Ohio State’s faculty/staff newspaper, has won a bronze award in the Best Tabloid/Newsletter for Internal Audience category in the Council for Advancement and Support of Education Region V awards program.

Purdue Today won the silver award, and no gold, first-place award was presented in the category.

“It’s always nice to earn the recognition of your peers, to get that affirmation that you’re doing something right,” said Jeff McCallister, onCampus editor. “Obviously, we’re even more proud of the fact that Ohio State’s faculty and staff continue to turn to us either in print or online as the go-to source for the information they need.”

CASE V represents universities and colleges in a six-state area that includes Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

In its 41st year of publication, onCampus publishes 26,350 issues 21 times a year. The paper is delivered through the campus-mail system to 16,915 faculty/staff and 4,475 graduate students who work for the university, and also is distributed at 81 building locations on and off campus.

The Ohio State Alumni Association won a gold award in the Best Student Alumni Programming category in the CASE V awards for its student outreach efforts through the new Ohio Union.

The awards will be presented at the CASE V District conference Dec. 11-13 in Chicago.

Top 3 on 2, 12/8/11

December 7, 2011

Why did you choose to work at Ohio State? In addition to being a graphic designer, I’m also certified in Earth and Space Science Education. The unique opportunity to blend my two passions — art and science — at such a respected institution seemed like a no-brainer.

What do you like about your job? I love being part of the Buckeye Nation. Recently I was a chaperone on a high school trip to New York City, and during our tour of Rockefeller Center, the guide asked where our group was from. When he heard Ohio, his immediate response was, “O-H!” How cool is that?

What is the greatest life challenge you’ve overcome? I’m a recovering under-achiever. I spent years not doing what I said I was going to do because I saw myself failing before I even started. Now I keep a small sticky note taped to my computer monitor that reads, “The only way to find the right idea is to try the wrong one and see what happens.” It’s not a cure, but it does inspire me to take chances I might not otherwise.

How do you apply the ‘One University’ concept?
I spend a lot of time researching university related websites and publications to see if there are elements I can incorporate into projects I’m working on. For example, our college is in the process of redesigning all of its websites, and we’ll be employing the same main navigation method that’s used on osu.edu so that visitors have a consistent online experience. It’s a balancing act because each group, unit or organization wants its own identity, but there’s strength in unified messaging and appearance.

If you weren’t working at Ohio State, what would you rather be doing? I eat, sleep and breathe music, so I’d be employed in the music industry in some way. Maybe I’d have a job at the Paradise Rock Club in my favorite city, Boston. Just about any band that matters has performed there at one time or another.

Who is your hero? This will sound like a joke, but I’m being completely serious — Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She’s the first female protagonist who taught me that a woman doesn’t have to act like a man to be a hero.

What is your favorite activity outside of work? As a recent first-time homeowner, I’ve been spending a lot of time shopping for art to hang on the walls. I’d be happy to fill them from ceiling to floor, so I have to exercise some restraint.

What are you going to do when you retire? Some days I think I’d like to move to Panama or Costa Rica and grow my own coffee. Other days, a lakeside cabin on Lake  Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire sounds good.

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

Ohio State alumnus and Foundation director Keith Monda and his wife, Linda, have committed $5 million to The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences to create the Keith and Linda Monda International Experience Scholarships. Within five years, their new endowment will be providing 50 Arts and Sciences students every year with funds for an international experience as part of their degree program. The gift is in support of Ohio State’s comprehensive Fundraising campaign which is expected to launch publicly in the next year.

Monda, who retired in 2008 as president of Coach Inc., earned his bachelor’s and master’s in economics at Ohio State and attributes his success in business to his strong Arts and Sciences education. “Ohio State gave me the disciplined, analytical thinking skills to solve complex business problems,” he said. “If you learn how to think about things in the proper manner, you will use those skills throughout your career.”

Providing the opportunity to travel and experience first-hand the variety of viewpoints, cultures and languages outside of the United States is an important goal for the College of Arts and Sciences, according to Joe Steinmetz, executive dean and vice provost of the college. To that end, the college will contribute $75,000 annually to the Mondas’ scholarships.

“Keith and Linda have dedicated their lives to finding ways to make education and educational experiences accessible and affordable to all persons,” said Steinmetz. “Their extraordinary generosity will ensure that a vital part of a student’s education, the experience of studying abroad, will become a reality for many of our students who do not have the means to experience education and life in another country.”

Ohio State has focused on globalizing its curriculum to better prepare students and is in the top 20 nationally for the number of students studying abroad, according to the national Institute of International Education. In all, 1,945 Ohio State students participated in a study abroad experience during the 2009-10 school year. The average international experience costs $5,000-$7,000 — a cost that for many poses a hurdle. The Monda Scholarships are expected to average $6,000 for students who demonstrate need.

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