Law dean named to CCNY presidency

Ohio State's law dean has accepted the presidency of the City College of New York (CCNY), the oldest of the City University of New York's 20 institutions of higher learning. The appointment is effective Aug. 1.

Gregory H. Williams, dean of the College of Law since 1993, will become CCNY's 11th president. "I have enjoyed my time at Ohio State," Williams said. "But the opportunities at City College are very exciting."

Founded in 1847 as The Free Academy, the City College today enrolls more than 10,400 students in graduate and undergraduate programs.

President Brit Kirwan praised Williams' leadership of the law school. "During Greg Williams' tenure as dean, our law school has advanced steadily in national rankings and has completed a highly successful capital campaign. We are grateful for his outstanding stewardship, and for leaving the law school poised to enter America's top ranks," Kirwan said. "We will miss him greatly, but we wish him well in this challenging new position."

Executive Vice President and Provost Edward J. Ray agreed. "It has been a great pleasure to work closely with Greg during the last eight years," Ray said. "He assumed the leadership position at a time when the college was faced with a substantial deficit and the need to develop a strategic plan for the future. With the help of his colleagues, he made exceptional new hires, managed the debt, crafted a strategic plan, and successfully launched an effort to move the college to the front ranks of colleges of law in America. CCNY is fortunate to have recruited him to its presidency."

Williams joined the College of Law in 1993 as dean. He was named the Carter C. Kissell Professor of Law and Political Science in 1999. Before coming to Ohio State, he served as associate vice president of academic affairs at the University of Iowa.

Widely regarded in the area of criminal law and race relations, Williams also wrote an autobiography, Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He was Black.

Williams served as president of the Association of American Law Schools in 1999. The same year, the National Association for Public Interest Law named him Law Dean of the Year.

Ohio State will conduct a national search to replace Williams.

School adds athletic training program

To meet a growing demand for certified athletic trainers in all levels of competition and in business, Ohio State has developed a bachelor's degree program in athletic training.

"Currently there are 27,000 athletic trainers in the country, and the need for more qualified personnel is increasing by 10 percent every year," according to Mark Merrick, director of the athletic training program, offered through the School of Allied Medical Professions. "Through our association with Ohio State University Medical Center and the University's Big Ten athletics program, our students receive extensive clinical experience."

Certified athletic trainers are employed in secondary schools, colleges and universities, sports medicine clinics, professionals sports programs, and in business and industrial settings, Merrick said. Trainers assess a person's risks to prevent injury, and provide immediate treatment when an injury occurs and rehabilitation after the injury to get the person back to a daily routine.

Merrick said the demand for formal training programs has risen because the National Athletic Trainers' Association Board of Certification will no longer accept apprenticeship training as qualification for national certification as an athletic trainer.

Up to 25 students will be accepted into Ohio State's program each year, with more students being added as the program grows. So far, 80 people have applied for the first class.

Many athletic trainers go on to receive master's degrees. Currently, planning is under way for a master's program at Ohio State that will meet the National Athletic Trainers' Association standards for advanced graduate programs.

Students travel across the globe in search of greater knowledge and understanding

Four or five times a year, Andrew Stephens packs up and goes stargazing. His research as an astronomy and astrophysics graduate student at Ohio State takes him across the globe to locations that include the European Southern Observatory's headquarters in Garching, Germany, and the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon in Paris.

"Doing field work, whether in Tucson or Tasmania, is extremely important in astronomy," Stephens said. "Going to telescopes is how I collect most of the data for my research and learn the skills I will need throughout my career. It is impossible to recreate these experiences in a classroom.

"It also gives students a chance to build working relationships outside of the University," he continued. "These relationships are not only vital to doing successful research, but may also be the deciding factor in getting a job after graduate school."

Stephens is currently working with Jay Frogel, professor of astronomy, studying clusters of stars in the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies.

Sometimes it's necessary to take students out of the classroom for them to get the best possible education, said Pat Osmer, chair of Ohio State's Astronomy Department.

"Taking part in field research is absolutely essential for students pursuing a career in astronomy or astrophysics," he said. "You can't learn the piano by reading a book, and you can't learn astronomy without going to an observatory and looking at the stars. It's pretty obvious that central Ohio is not the best location for students to study observational astronomy. They must travel elsewhere to observatories that have better weather conditions, and often that means traveling outside the United States."

The best sites in the continental United States are in the Southwest. Mauna Kea in Hawaii is an outstanding site for astronomy because of its high elevation and stable atmosphere, but it's more remote, Osmer said. Ohio State sends students to the MDM Observatory in Kitt Peak, Ariz., and will send them to the Large Binocular Telescope at Mount Graham Observatory, also in Arizona, once it's completed. Students also go to observatories in South Africa, Chile, Tasmania and Western Australia.

Osmer said both graduate and undergraduate students in his department are encouraged to take part in field research. "It's a fundamental part of their education," he said.

Shauna Price, a senior zoology major from Cincinnati, said more students should consider studying abroad as part of their educational experience at Ohio State. Price traveled to Costa Rica as part of Professor Peter Curtis' tropical field ecology class.

"I could go on for days about my experience in Costa Rica," Price said. "I obviously learned about tropical ecology, but it was also a unique cultural experience. That's the reason why I would suggest going abroad to anyone. While we were in Costa Rica, we had to complete group field projects, and having to cooperate in that kind of environment was beneficial. Overall, I had a really good and very unique experience that I will always remember.

"Living for two weeks with 14 people you don't know very well also was a learning experience," she added.

"Generally, any experience a student has outside a classroom of an educational nature, I think, is a positive," said Frank Poirier, chair of Ohio State's Anthropology Department. "If such an experience is international, all the better."

Undergraduate and graduate students in the University's anthropology program travel to such locales as Ecuador, China, India, Egypt and East Africa, Poirier said.

Ohio State also offers its students the opportunity to travel overseas as part of one of the University's more than 106 academic study abroad programs, said John Greisberger, director of the Office of International Education and assistant vice president for student affairs. Last year, 1,083 students participated in one of the University's study abroad programs.

"Educators, government officials and business leaders all worry that the United States lags behind the rest of the world in preparing its graduates for the increasingly globalized world," Greisberger said. "But Ohio State's record in this area is impressive, and we're expanding programs all the time."

"A major challenge in education is to build as much experience as possible into the degree programs that we offer," said William Ausich, professor of geological sciences. "Students with technical skills learned in the classroom, but who have no field experience, are not scientists. They're just technicians. A further challenge of today is that scientific problems are more global in nature. Thus, if Ohio State wants to offer competitive research degree programs that prepare students for the needs of the future of the nation and even the world, the University must engage students in a variety of domestic and international field experiences."

Jerry Ladman, associate provost for international affairs, said Ohio State will continue to offer its students the opportunity to study and travel abroad as part of their educational experience at the University.

"Understanding global issues and markets is fundamental to today's educated graduate," Ladman said. "For this reason, universities like Ohio State must provide varied and multiple opportunities to give their students an international perspective no matter what their field of study. Times are definitely changing, and we're committed to preparing our graduates for the global economy in which they will work, and for the multicultural society in which they will live. Study abroad and student exchange programs are one of the best ways to accomplish that objective."

OARnet and Ohio State explore Internet video technologies

Ohio State and OARnet have been discussing and exploring new solutions to the technological challenges of distance education and video conferencing with the World Bank. Earlier this month, the University and its Internet service provider hosted technology specialists from that organization at OARnet headquarters and the Columbus campus.

"There are great possibilities for future collaborations between Ohio State, OARnet and the World Bank in areas related to the various technological underpinnings of distance education," said Bob Dixon, senior research engineer for OSU's Office of the Chief Information Officer and senior systems developer/engineer at OARnet. He noted that the World Bank's expertise lies in satellite communications and Third World distance education, while OARnet's and Ohio State's strength is in Internet video, network security and "Quality of Service" (QoS).

QoS is the new buzzword among this community of researchers. It refers to the prioritized routing of information sent over the Internet, which is needed to deliver high-quality video and audio.

Currently, QoS is in the experimental stage, but Ohio State and OARnet have plans under way to deploy it in a large-scale environment for Megaconference III, which will be held during the Internet2 Conference in Austin in October.

The group met in an all-day session to view demonstrations that included global video conferencing provided by Dixon, streaming video provided by OARnet's Bill Miller, and MPEG4 via an Internet connection with the University of Tennessee. Attendees also heard presentations on distance education in Ohio from Kate Carey of the Ohio Learning Network, network security from OARnet's Clifford Collins, and measurement and QoS from OARnet's Paul Schopis.

From its Washington headquarters, the World Bank conducts interactive courses worldwide in seven languages via satellite links in its mission to improve the livelihood of 4.8 billion people throughout the world.

OARnet is the Internet service provider for Ohio's colleges and universities, plus government agencies, libraries, corporations and nonprofit institutions.

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