Partnership seeks to plant college thoughts in junior high minds

Getting students excited about their academic future is Janice Hoffman's mission as manager of the Linmoor Middle School Ethnic Student Services Partnership.

"I'm committed to making some of those students think about college before they get to high school," said Hoffman, director of Ethnic Student Services (ESS) at Ohio State.

The partnership entails taking University students into the school as volunteer tutors and mentors for Linmoor students in grades six through eight, sponsoring workshops and inviting Linmoor students onto the Ohio State campus. For example, Hoffman said that last school year, two students from Linmoor were selected to attend the African American Heritage Arts Festival, while 20 were invited to the Asian Cultural Food Festival. Linmoor students even drew a round of applause at the latter festival after accepting an invitation onto the stage for dancing.

"The conversation on the way back from the festival was,'I have to find a way to get to college,' " Hoffman said.

But considering their backgrounds, college can be a very lofty goal.

"For you to appreciate this program you have to have visited Linmoor," Hoffman said."The students don't have a lot of positive role models, so to tap into the sixth grade level is crucial."

She said the Ohio State student volunteers who serve as tutors and mentors through ESS can show that because of the positive decisions they made as early as the sixth grade, they were able to come to college. One of those tutors, Comecko Webber, a sophomore majoring in fashion merchandise, tutors Linmoor students in science, math and English three times a week.

"It can be tedious, but once you establish a relationship with them they begin to grow on you, so it can be fun, too," Webber said.

And the most rewarding aspect of tutoring/mentoring?

"To get them to be positive, to get them excited about not doing the negative things they used to do," she said.

Hoffman said she is already noticing the impact the project is having at Linmoor. One such student, a seventh-grader who enjoys chess more than athletics, is heavily involved in church activities and is determined to become a lawyer someday.

"I nominated him for the YMCA Future of America Awards program because he is already showing signs of academic commitment," Hoffman said."It was because we were at Linmoor that this boy was identified and became a part of the YMCA program."

The Linmoor student was nominated and accepted into the Future of America program for his spirituality, one of seven areas in which the organization recognizes a student leader in Franklin County. Participants meet every month for leadership development classes led by community business leaders, attend YMCA camp each summer, and are teamed up with mentors from area businesses and Ohio State.

To help the youngster take his academic commitment a step further, the staff in ESS is now working with the administration at St. Charles Preparatory School, on East Broad Street, to obtain a scholarship for him.

Funding for the current ESS partnership with Linmoor comes from a seed grant through the President's Council on Outreach and Engagement.

Hoffman said Barbara Newman, professor of human development and family science, started a related, but more extensive program titled"Grade 9: Strengthening Bridges that Link Schools, Families and Communities" at Indianola Middle School in 1998-99 that has been"a remarkable success."

In order to obtain funding through the council again for 1999-2000, Newman had to expand the program -- as a result of that need, Hoffman proposed including Linmoor.

Newman wrote the grant and initiated contact with the principal at Linmoor, but Hoffman has managed the Linmoor project.

ESS had already established a relationship with Linmoor through the Adopt-A-School Program with Columbus Public Schools. ESS also took two dance troops to Linmoor during United Black World Month, and Linmoor opened its doors to 20 students, faculty and staff from Ohio State during the Community Commitment segment of Welcome Week last September.

Hoffman said the culminating event of the Linmoor/ESS Adopt-a-School partnership last year was"The Pride's Inside Eighth-Grade Conference." The Student Wellness Center's PATH Players performed skits on hair care, etiquette and personal hygiene, while 15-minute workshops reinforced the messages from the skits.

"There are a lot of students at Linmoor who don't understand about hygiene, who never sat down with their family at a table for a meal," Hoffman said.

But the big hit of the event was keynote speaker, Scoonie Penn, who led the Ohio State basketball team to a Big Ten co-championship this season and to the Final Four in the NCAA tournament last year. Penn passed out autographed T-shirts, programs and played basketball with some of the kids.

"That just made the kids' day," Hoffman said.

She said the program has slowed down a bit during a transition period at Linmoor due to a new principal taking over. However, Webber is excited about her expanding role, which will include teaching lessons in interpretive dance, through which dancers tell a story through movement.

"One issue is racism," Webber said."I want to show them how they can talk about racism through dance."

Philip F. Binkley

Ohio state cardiologist is awarded prestigious NIH research grant

A $500,000 grant designated for researchers involved in studies that show particular promise for advancing successful treatments or cures has been awarded to Philip F. Binkley, a cardiologist and researcher at the Ohio State Heart and Lung Institute.

Binkley is one of 15 researchers in the country to receive the Mid-Career Scientist Award from the National Institutes of Health. The five-year grant will help fund Binkley's research at the Heart and Lung Institute, scheduled to open this summer adjacent to University Medical Center.

Much of Binkley's research focuses on the diagnosis and management of patients with heart failure using experimental imaging techniques and therapies, including gene therapy.

A particular development is to use gene therapy to foster growth of new blood vessels around the heart, thus increasing the blood supply to the heart and improving its function.

The Mid-Career Scientist Award provides established researchers with funding to enable them to continue research and other endeavors that lead to the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of a particular disease or disorder. Awarded researchers have a demonstrated interest in research and serving as mentors to other clinicians and scientists.

Pascal Goldschmidt, director of the Heart and Lung Institute and director of the division of cardiology at University Medical Center, said Binkley has made several key contributions to heart research and is deserving of the distinguished and highly competitive NIH award.

"Phil is internationally known for his research, which has enabled us to apply novel techniques to promote blood vessel growth around the heart," Goldschmidt said.

"These findings and his eagerness to share his knowledge with younger clinicians has earned him a place among an esteemed group of cardiovascular researchers."

With the expanded and ultra-modern facilities at the Heart and Lung Institute, Binkley and colleagues will become increasingly involved in research that will have a direct benefit to patients, according to Goldschmidt.

Binkley will be joined on the faculty of the Heart and Lung Institute by other world-class researchers studying the mechanism of diseases affecting the heart, lung and blood vessels.

Binkley is director of cardiac research at Ohio State, and section head of heart failure and transplantation. He has been on the staff at University Medical Center since 1985 and is a 1979 graduate of Ohio State's College of Medicine.

Binkley also holds the James Hay and Ruth Jansson Wilson professorship in cardiology and is president-elect of the Ohio Valley Affiliate of the American Heart Association, which encompasses Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Sculpture students display work in Hopkins

Two thousand small objects created by a team of third and fourth year sculpture majors will be on exhibit through April 7 in Hopkins Hall Gallery.

PROJECT 2000 is a "Millennial" project conceived by Malcolm Cochran, professor of art. Cochran, well known for his installations and public art works, also currently has a sculpture and video work on display at the Columbus Museum of Art in the exhibition,"Illusions of Eden: Visions of the American Heartland."

For PROJECT 2000, each of the 20 OSU students was instructed to produce a series of 100 small objects, which would eventually be exhibited together as a group of 2,000. Choice of materials was wide open, and resulted in melted red-sugar candy (which was cast into tiny baby bottle nipples), along with thin sheets of metal, wax, cloth, sandpaper, molded gelatin, ice and other natural and found objects.

"It was a way for them to work quickly on multiple objects on a small scale -- that's a different kind of challenge, and I think it was refreshing for them to work small," Chochran said.

For example, Randi Channel, a senior sculpture student used 100 small, found objects -- from a tiny pill to an eyedropper. She then covered each item with fabric, a reference to the"cozies" made for appliances like toasters and teapots.

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