Nancy Rogers nominated as College of Law dean

Executive Vice President and Provost Edward J. Ray has recommended the appointment of Nancy Hardin Rogers as dean of the College of Law to President Brit Kirwan. The president will recommend her appointment to the University's Board of Trustees at its June 29 meeting, and, subject to the board's approval, the appointment will be effective on Aug. 1.

Since June 1999, Rogers has served as vice provost for academic administration. Her responsibilities have included oversight for the University's international programs, ADA program, University Libraries, and the Battelle Endowment for Technology and Human Affairs. In addition, she has had policy and coordinative responsibilities for Universitywide academic initiatives, such as the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy and the P-12 Project, and is the provost's chief liaison for a number of other offices in the University.

Nancy Rogers has been nominated as dean of the College of Law

"Today, Ohio State's College of Law is ranked among the top 20 of the nation's public law schools, with one of the most racially diverse student bodies in the country," Kirwan said. "Nancy Rogers has the vision, expertise and management skills to lead our program to an even higher level of excellence.

"Professor Rogers is a highly regarded legal scholar, an outstanding educator and a loyal Buckeye, and she is very focused on providing Ohio State's law students with the finest education experience available."

Rogers holds the Joseph S. Platt-Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur Professorship in Law and is a nationally respected scholar who was instrumental in shaping the College of Law's renowned alternative dispute resolution program. She also served for five years as associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Law prior to being named vice provost. While serving as vice provost, she continued teaching in the college and spent one semester as a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School.

"Professor Rogers has received overwhelming support from the college's faculty, staff, students and alumni, as well as from other University and external constituencies," Ray said. "While we will miss her greatly in the Office of Academic Affairs, I am confident that she is the right person at the right time to continue moving the college toward ever-increasing excellence. Wherever she is, Nancy does a superb job, and the University benefits greatly. I look forward to working with her in her new role."

A former clerk for Judge Thomas D. Lambros of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Rogers was also a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society in Cleveland. She has continued her work on behalf of legal services for all persons through eight years of service on the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corp., which distributes federal funding for civil legal services for low-income persons. This is a presidential appointment requiring U.S. Senate confirmation.

Rogers is the co-author of Dispute Resolution: Negotiation, Mediation, and Other Processes. She also co-authored two award-winning books on mediation and the law.

Rogers received the prestigious Ritter Award from the Ohio State Bar Foundation for Outstanding Contributions to the Administration of Justice, and she is the president of the Board of Trustees of the Columbus Bar Foundation.

Rogers is also a commissioner of the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws, appointed by Ohio Gov. George Voinovich in 1998 and reappointed by Gov. Taft in 2000.

"Ohio State is one of the nation's leading law schools. The faculty and staff are committed to moving the law school to an even higher level of distinction, and the alumni are loyal and supportive of these plans. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to serve as dean, especially at this exciting time," Rogers said.

Molly Davis works in the Office of Academic Affairs.

Lupus research garners $4.6 million in NIH funding

A multidisciplinary team of researchers at the Ohio State College of Medicine and Public Health has received a $4.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the causes and progression of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), better known as lupus.

Lupus is an autoimmune disease, where the body's own immune system attacks multiple organs, including the skin, joints, kidneys, lungs, heart and brain. Both men and women may get lupus, but it is most commonly found in young women under the age of 45, and more frequently among African Americans, Asians and Hispanics than Caucasians.

Lee Hebert, director of the division of nephrology and principal investigator of the grant, said the goals of the study include the identification of the genetic factors that affect whether a patient's lupus will be mild or severe, the clinical and environmental factors that trigger lupus relapse, and the best means to predict when a relapse will occur.

"There is so much about lupus that is poorly understood," Hebert said. "For example, it is widely believed that certain things like stress, infections, hormones or exposure to sunlight or other sources of ultraviolet radiation can trigger a relapse, but the evidence is largely anecdotal."

In addition, he said, most theories about the cause of lupus center on excessive autoantibody production. "We believe a more fundamental role may be played by something called immune complex clearance, where the body is unable to rid itself of destructive residues which build up in tissues and create inflammation."

The Ohio State team will be working closely with community-based physicians and hospitals across the state to recruit at least 500 patients and their families to the study. "Lupus is a difficult disease to diagnose and treat, and the course of the disease can vary widely, depending upon a number of genetic and environmental factors," Hebert said. "Our job is to identify specific genetic and environmental changes that affect how the disease is going to act. In order to do this, we need to test whole families."

Patients recruited to the study will receive the highest level of care, and will remain under the direct care of their family physician, but will make periodic visits to Ohio State for genetic testing and laboratory work.

Hebert said almost all of the nephrologists and rheumatologists in central Ohio have agreed to participate in the study.

"We are extremely proud of Dr. Hebert's work," said Fred Sanfilippo, senior vice president for health sciences and dean of the College of Medicine and Public Health at OSU. "Competition for NIH program project grants is extraordinarily intense. Successful applicants must demonstrate multidisciplinary strength in basic science and clinical application. This is clear recognition of our record of academic excellence."

The grant, to be administered over a five-year period, includes support for four major projects focused on understanding one of the most dangerous complications of lupus, SLE nephritis. The individual projects within the grant are:

• Project 1, under the direction of Daniel Birmingham, associate professor of internal medicine and pathology, will assess the various factors that lead to SLE nephritis;

• Project 2, under the guidance of Chack Yung Yu, associate professor of molecular immunology, will specifically analyze the role of various genes in SLE nephritis;

• Project 3, under the leadership of Brad Rovin, associate professor of medicine and pathology, will examine chemokine regulation in nephritis; and

• Project 4, in which Hebert will take the lead in determining the broad predictors of lupus relapse.

Michelle Gailiun writes for OSU Medical Center Communications.

University meets short-term goals, ends hiring freeze

The temporary hiring freeze that went into effect in mid-April ends June 30, and administrators say the slow-down in hires for the last three months helped the University navigate a difficult fiscal period.

"This was just one short-term tool to help us deal with an uncertain environment, and to conserve cash that will be needed to replenish the University rainy day fund, which we used to manage the budget cut we absorbed in March," said Edward J. Ray, executive vice president and provost. "Now that we have a clearer sense of the budget challenge that we face for the next several years, we need to implement a longer-term strategy."

President Brit Kirwan has charged Ray and William J. Shkurti, senior vice president for business and finance, with preparing a strategy for faculty and staff compensation that will raise salary levels to the mean of benchmark institutions. An advisory group of faculty, staff and students will assist them in developing recommendations, with a goal of implementation no later than July 1, 2002.

The selective freeze, which did not include instructional and health and safety positions, was in response to reductions in the state budget for higher education. The state reduced its support to Ohio State by 1 percent during fiscal year 2001, forcing the University to make more than $5 million in expenditure reductions in the last quarter of the year.

The hiring freeze was accompanied by a number of other cost-saving strategies that remain in effect, including postponement of new Academic Enrichment funding, delayed implementation of a competitive admissions policy, flat FY 2002 operating budgets for supplies and equipment, and limits on strategic hires of national academy-caliber faculty.