Roads Scholars tour highlights Ohio's diversity

What do a berry farm, a chemical plant and an air force base have in common? Ohio State.

In mid-September, about 70 new and newly tenured faculty, staff and students learned that lesson as participants in the Roads Scholars tour, a two-day bus tour sponsored by the University's Outreach and Engagement council.

In its fourth year, the Roads Scholars tour gives participants an opportunity to see the diversity and variety of the state and how OSU is engaged in serving Ohioans.

This year's tour made stops in Urbana, Lima, Dayton, Wilberforce and Springfield. Ohio State enrolls students from all 88 Ohio counties and is involved in teaching, research and service activities in each county.

One objective of the tour is fostering a better understanding of issues affecting Ohioans and their communities. In doing so, faculty can develop research initiatives important to their disciplines and responsive to the needs of the state.

Karen Bruns, leader of OSU CARES and Outreach/Engagement, shared such a story about a past Roads Scholars participant.

"He was a professor from the Lima campus who was preparing to do a research project. After talking with people during his tour, he decided to redirect his research to make it more applicable to Ohioans,"Bruns said. "It's a perfect example of what this tour is about -- causing faculty (and others) to think of new research questions that could benefit the state of Ohio."

Firdaus Dhabhar, assistant professor of oral biology, felt the tour was a wonderful experience for a lot of different reasons, but especially appreciated the opportunity to meet colleagues he may have never come in contact with otherwise.

"I've already started thinking about collaborative efforts with those I met on the trip,"Dhabhar said. "It's nice to know that I have an opportunity to possibly work in multiple disciplines."

The first stop was Rothschild's Berry Farm in Urbana, where Bob Rothschild explained how Ohio State helped him launch his high-end specialty food business, a $7 million enterprise with 4,500 client distributors and 58 employees. He continues to work with the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences in developing products, and with Ohio State Extension to find employees.

At Ohio State's Lima campus, participants viewed a videotape, "Lost in Middle America,"which gave the history of Lima, the impact of economic changes in the 1970s-80s and Lima's attempts to rebuild. Violet Meek, dean and director of Ohio State Lima, organized sessions at which community leaders shared information on such topics as regional development priorities, the downtown business plan and the need for curricular renewal facilities.

Representatives from the Lima plant of BP Chemicals Inc. gave an overview of how the company is a major producer of industrial chemical products. The plant's primary product, acrylonitrile, manufactured by combining ammonia, propylene and air, is a key ingredient in synthetic fibers, plastics and rubber. BP Chemicals Inc. also is involved in the Dayton school system with its Science Enhancement for Science Advancement program, as well as with area colleges and universities through its Women in Science program.

In Dayton, Young Scholars from area high schools participated in a panel discussion about their experience with the program.

Cynthia Green, assistant clinical professor of optometry, said the College of Optometry has been working with Young Scholars since 1989 through its Career Exploration program. "It was really nice to find out more about the program and to see firsthand how the College of Optometry is involved and impacting our youth,"Green said.

Other tour stops in Dayton included the Adventure Central Metro Park, where Five Rivers MetroParks and Ohio State Extension's 4-H Youth Development have collaborated to develop a new urban program. At area high schools, panel discussions were conducted with students about the issues they face in today's society and factors they take into consideration when choosing a college. Tours of the research areas on the Wright Patterson Air Force Base highlighted many of the research projects being conducted in partnership with Ohio State.

"The tour of the Wright Patterson Air Force Base is a prime example of how the University's outreach and engagement is looking at research and teaching to see how it can be applied to not only Ohioans, but the world,"Bruns said.

Participants were welcomed at the National Afro-American and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, where the center's education director, Frank Eguroje, an Ohio State graduate, gave background about the museum and its prominence in Ohio. The president of Central State University and a representative from Wilberforce University also offered remarks to the group. The tour ended with a visit to the Clark County Extension master gardener program.

Dhabhar praised organizers for planning a tour that was well-rounded in scope. "I had not realized the depth and breadth of involvement the University has with communities across the state. Being new to the University and the state of Ohio, it was really a great experience to be able to see that,"he said. "It was well worth the time invested."

Department turns to Web to make learning history fun

In an effort to get a visually oriented generation that has grown up with television and the Internet excited about the past, the Department of History at Ohio State is helping high school teachers capitalize on the present.

Traditional books and lectures will be enhanced by multimedia outlets such as Web sites where students can listen to, read and explore a variety of primary sources that were unavailable even a few years ago, such as historic speeches, presidential news conferences, and songs from the period they are studying.

Funded by a $50,000 grant from the Battelle Endowment for Technology and Human Affairs (BETHA) and a variety of matching funds, the department has created the Ohio History Teaching Institute (OHTI). The inaugural program is titled "The History of Technology Through the Millennium: Using Technology to Teach Technology."Greg Wilson is directing the institute, with assistance from John Tully, director of the Harvey Goldberg Program for Excellence in Teaching, and faculty advising from Saul Cornell, associate professor of history.

Tully said the overall goal is to stimulate a love of history.

"Our goal is not to have students simply or only remember dates and times -- that's why so many students don't like history,"he said. "We're trying to have them learn history by using the critical thinking skills in the broader sense of teaching the humanities."

Wilson will work with three graduate students enlisted as Teaching Technology Fellows to develop ways to improve student learning by incorporating technology in the classroom. Those fellows will team up with 15 advanced-placement history teachers selected from high schools across Ohio, including Walnut Ridge and Independence in the Columbus Public Schools system. OHTI will help teachers create Web pages for teaching; learn and use software for the Web; create and share lesson plans; and find and sort through an enormous amount of information on the Web.

"There's just so much information,"Wilson said. "Part of our job is to wade through that and pull out the nuggets that are useful."

Tully said that over the past 10 to 15 years, a national transformation has been taking place in the history profession from the traditional books and lectures to a more visually oriented approach. And AP teachers are no exception.

"Every teacher we have talked to is dying to get involved in multimedia, but many don't have the time, experience or the resources, so they just throw up their arms in frustration,"Tully said.

OHTI is minimizing that frustration. It will provide the selected teachers with the opportunity to network and share ideas with each other, both electronically and through workshops; provide an Internet-based software platform to create a Web site for their class; offer reviews of historical Web sites, such as "CNN: The Cold War,"along with instructions on using the site to teach; and provide assistance in technology and lesson plans.

Throughout the spring and summer, the Teaching Technology Fellows have been reviewing Web sites and preparing lesson plans for the AP teachers. For instance, an instructor can use OHTI's Web site (http://ohioteach.history.ohio-state.edu/) and click on the OHTI lesson plan "Uncle Tom's Cabin & The Ideology of Slavery."The site uses blackface minstrel songs as an historical source to explore some of the images of slaves that were commonplace in Antebellum America. Students can not only read about minstrel shows, but also can see and hear lyrics, as well as view images of minstrel shows.

"As a teacher, if you wanted to form a lesson plan on your own, you could search on Yahoo and get 17,500 hits for Uncle Tom's Cabin,"Tully said.

Various other search engines, such as Google, came up with a similar number of hits. The average teacher does not have time to sift through all that, Tully said.

OHTI not only simplifies multimedia for high school teachers, but also makes the presentation of historic speeches, such as Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream"speech, "highly customizable,"said Cornell.

"You not only have a window in which you see and hear King, but also you have the text on the screen, plus your own annotations of the text and analysis of what metaphors he used,"he said. "You can also provide links to other famous speeches and draw comparisons."

OHTI furthers the mission of the History Department, the College of Humanities and the University. Having received the University Departmental Teaching Award in 1997 and a Selective Investment Award in 1999, the institute is evidence of the History Department's commitment to leadership in teaching and research.

While the focus of OHTI is on this school year, Wilson said the goal is to expand in the future, possibly to include European or world history, depending on funding available.

In the meantime, the mission is to show that history doesn't have to be boring.

"If we can establish a lifelong interest in our past, we have been a success,"Tully said.

next page...