By Jo McCulty

Joseph Bull, director of planned giving in the Office of University Development, slides into the dunk tank during a June 13 staff appreciation picnic at Fred Beekman Park. Staff could pay 25 cents per ball to try to dunk their co-workers, with the exception of Vice President Jerry May: Staff seeking to dunk May paid $1 per ball or, for $5, could push the button to dunk him. All proceeds were to support Operation Feed.

From Lima to London, OSU sponsors study tour

Faculty will offer insights on culture, history and theater

Exploring the backstages of London's greatest theaters and strolling through York's narrow medieval-era streets will be on the agenda this July for 23 faculty, students and community members on a study tour of England sponsored by The Ohio State University at Lima.

The tour's leaders, Joseph Brandesky, associate professor of theatre, and Deborah Burks, assistant professor of English, will have the job of providing the scholarly scoop on England's culture and history.

"There are always two faculty members who serve as docents,"said Brandesky, who was a leader on Lima's two past study tours. In 1994, he helped lead a group to Russia and Finland, and in 1997, to Prague, Vienna and Budapest.

The aim is to lead a tour that couldn't be offered by a typical travel agency. "It is an opportunity to understand in a more full and in-depth sense the culture of the countries we visit,"he said.

Part of the experience means hitting some out-of-the-way spots. "We're not just going to London. We deliberately tried to pick some destinations off the beaten path,"Brandesky said.

While in York, the travelers will have several "off the beaten path" experiences. They will visit the Jorvic Viking Centre, attend the York cycle plays and attend a lecture by a colleague of Burks' who teaches at the College of Ripon and York St. John.

"The York cycle plays are medieval plays performed celebrating the Old and New Testament,"Brandesky said. "In the year 2000, there is a special significance to the performance. The plays were originally performed in churches in the middle ages, then moved outside into secular spaces. This year, it's in a church again, performed in the York Minster."

In London, the group will have the chance to see "Hamlet"at the National Theatre and take a backstage tour of the facility, and see Vanessa Redgrave play Prospero in "The Tempest"at the Globe Theatre.

Other stopping points for the 11-day trip include dinner at the St. James Club in London and tours of Oxford University, Fountains Abbey, the Tower of London and St. Martin in the Fields in London for a concert.

Burks' area of expertise is medieval and Elizabethan drama. Brandesky's area of expertise is Russian and East European theater.

The first study tour came about in part because Brandesky was co-curating a retrospective exhibit of theater design by Boris Anisfeld at St. Petersburg's Theater and Music Museum. Violet Meek, dean of Ohio State at Lima, knew of the exhibit, and suggested a study tour. Maria Ignatieva, assistant professor of theatre and a native of Russia, was an important contributor to the Anisfeld exhibit. She co-led the tour with Brandesky, translating when necessary and giving the group a daily one-hour lecture to fill the travelers in on Russian culture.

"Dean Violet Meek decided we should be there for the opening of the exhibit and then spend 10 days in St. Petersburg and Helsinki, Finland," Brandesky said. "Dr. Ignatieva and I were involved behind the scenes at several museums. We were being treated as colleagues. Since we were, our guests were treated as colleagues, as well."That first tour had 11 participants, one of whom was a student.

The 1997 trip to Prague, Vienna and Budapest was loosely organized as a tour of the three former capitals of Austro-Hungary, and had 17 participants, again with one student. Beverly Bletstein, assistant professor of music, was the co-leader with Brandesky.

That trip included a visit with Czech designer Jaroslav Malina, then-rector of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, and attending concerts, opera and live theater in Prague, Vienna and Budapest. A highlight of the trip was visiting a small medieval village, Cesky Krumlov, in South Bohemia to attend a performance in one of the best-preserved Baroque-era theaters in the world. Brandesky had been there before and was able to arrange a backstage tour.

No formal lectures took place on that trip, but Brandesky said there were plenty of opportunities for discussion and learning. "On an ad hoc basis, as we were walking, we were talking,"he said. "I think that's the best system. We were doing a lot of teaching, but rather informally."

Brandesky and a handful of Lima students going on the London tour will fly to Prague for a few days before joining the rest of the group in England. "I'm curating a theater design exhibition at the Riffe Gallery which opens July 27 and I need to go to Prague to pick up some items,"Brandesky said.

Thanks to a partnership program that has developed between Ohio State's Department of Theatre and Prague's Academy of Performing Arts, Brandesky and the students will be able to stay in the Academy's dormitories during their visit.

Eight Ohio State students will be joining the tour this year, thanks to a concerted effort to recruit students, Brandesky said.

Students attending this year will be earning independent study credits, working with either Burks or Brandesky as their advisers. "We think it's a great opportunity for students,"Dean Meek said. "In the years since we started these tours, we now have a four-year degree in English and a minor in theatre. We now have students in a position to really benefit."

The tours have provided a chance for networking that led, in part, to arts activities at Ohio State. The Boris Anisfeld exhibit on theater design that Brandesky curated later came to the Lima campus and to the Columbus College of Art and Design, and Jaroslav Malina from Prague will be in residency in Columbus designing a production and teaching a theatre class for the fall of 2000.

The impact the tours can have on the community is important, Meek said. "It is very important for people in this region to realize Ohio State is here, and that we are an international university. Because we started out small and as an outpost, it's sometimes easy for people to forget our faculty are international scholars."

School of Journalism and Communication pursues specialized curriculum

Knight Foundation grant will enhance public affairs program

As it nears completion of a redesign of its undergraduate curriculum and plans to increase faculty expertise in public opinion and political communication, the School of Journalism and Communication at Ohio State is straying from some of the traditional models of journalism education.

The change in direction has led the school to opt out of its next reaccreditation application. After two years of re-examining program priorities and several months of deliberations, journalism and communication faculty voted unanimously in May not to apply to the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC) for another six-year period of accreditation. The current accreditation expires in 2002.

Though it sounds like a drastic step to some, school Director Carroll J. Glynn said that by making this decision now, faculty will be able to focus their attention where it counts the most: on creating a specialized curriculum that will best serve the school's students.

"We're forward-thinking about this,"Glynn said.

The redesigned curriculum will feature three concentrations: public affairs journalism and mass communication; communication in social issues; and interactive communication processes. The new approach is expected to reflect the way work and media in journalism and communication are converging in the information age, Glynn said.

"Exciting innovations in our understanding of the relationships between journalism, media and their audiences suggest that how journalism should be taught ought to be subject to the same ongoing re-evaluation that every other aspect of society is experiencing,"Glynn said.

Ohio State is not alone in recognizing that the direction of its programs is likely to be inconsistent with values emphasized in the accreditation process. Journalism and communication programs at Boston University and the universities of Massachusetts, Notre Dame, Michigan and Wisconsin also have chosen not to be accredited by ACEJMC, Glynn noted.

The school has notified students and alumni that the decision "is not an indication that the school is giving up a commitment to high-quality journalism and communication education,"Glynn said. In fact, the Lantern is slated to become even more central to the journalism curriculum, and additional resources will be invested in providing students with laboratories and instruction that emphasize training and critical thinking about the processes of reporting, writing and editing the news. Additionally, a recent Knight Foundation grant will partner the school and the Washington Post in a public affairs program for the 2000-01 academic year.

"We're already strong in public affairs journalism as home to the highly regarded Kiplinger program. This grant will enhance our concentration in that area at the graduate and undergraduate levels by creating excellent opportunities for collaboration with public affairs journalists from the Washington Post,"Glynn said.

"The school will continue its long commitments to providing an outstanding education for undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of journalism and communication, producing important scholarship that helps shape our understanding of journalism and communication in society, and serving the University and local and national constituencies in our fields."

Glynn also said the school has received support from many prominent alumni and from Randall Ripley, dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

"This move fits in perfectly with Ohio State's commitment to evaluating programs and redirecting resources in ways that create the optimum teaching and learning environment,"Ripley said. "The School of Journalism and Communication is forging ahead with bold plans to enhance the 21st century student experience, and I back that effort 100 percent."