Peer Power connects with Ohio's youth

Women's Studies teaches students to present gender-related workshops

A group of Ohio State students learning about gender-related issues for the first time -- and realizing they could have benefited from that information in their adolescence -- led to the development of a women's studies peer outreach program that has reached more than 4,000 middle and high school students.

Peer Power was initiated in 1998 by students taking an introductory Women's Studies course and is affiliated with the Department of Women's Studies at Ohio State. Undergraduate students become facilitators and designers of presentations and workshops that introduce women's studies topics to students in area schools.

Peer Power presenters first complete a 300-level course through women's studies that includes specialized training before they can serve as peer educators. Peer Power currently offers seven topic areas that can be delivered as a single presentation or a more in-depth series, depending on a class or organization's needs. Presentations currently offered are Learning Gender, Body Image, Difference, Gender Equity and Work, Homophobia, Media Images and Relationship Violence.

"The goal is to empower youth audiences to make healthier decisions and develop leadership skills based on a foundation of understanding how differences in stereotypes can affect us," said Peer Power Director Lin Distel.

Young people are encouraged to see the falseness of stereotypes and to think critically about how their lives are shaped by gender, race, socioeconomic status, sexuality and other aspects of our identity, she said.

"We tell them that Ôthe power I feel when I use a stereotype has the potential to harm me more than the person I put that stereotype on,'" Distel said.

The growth of the program has been phenomenal. During spring quarter 1998, OSU students made four presentations. Just three years later, during spring quarter 2001, 59 presentations were made at local middle and high schools, with additional presentations made to nine classes taught through the former University College and in several OSU residence halls. Since Peer Power's inception, more than 400 presentations have been delivered.

Distel said that while the middle and high school presentations remain the heart of the program, the campus presentations are a good recruiting tool and help generate interest in Peer Power, through which approximately 50 students are trained each year to give presentations.

Patricia Cunningham, a sociology and women's studies major, was among the handful of students that helped create the program in 1997 after taking an introductory women's studies course.

"A lot of us were frustrated that it took until our freshman year in college to get into discussions about gender issues, inequity among races and male/female stereotypes," Cunningham said. She and several other students met with the teaching assistant after class and eventually developed the concept for a women's studies peer outreach program.

Cunningham, who has since facilitated approximately 60 presentations, said Peer Power was the first stepping stone on a path that led to an active role in student government. Among the titles she has held are the undergraduate representative for the Council on Diversity, president of Experience Diversity, co-president of Hotep Shalom: a Partnership of Blacks and Jews, vice president of the Ohio Union Activities Board, and co-chair of the Underrepresented Constituency Committee for the Undergraduate Student Government.

"Peer Power made me a more effective leader," Cunningham said. "It helped me to develop not only the academic side but the confidence and public speaking skills to be able to walk into a class full of people and deliver a presentation."

Peer Power is popular among Ohio State students because it gives them the opportunity to apply what they are learning, said Lucy Bailey, community outreach coordinator for Peer Power.

"Students hear a lot of theory and ideas in OSU's women's studies program. It's really positive for them to have a way to channel that into some type of positive action," Bailey said. "It's also a concrete skill that they can take into the labor force as well."

She said Peer Power is student-driven and administratively managed. Students fuel the program with their energy and ideas, while faculty have donated time and expertise to develop curriculum, conduct initial training and locate sources of funding.

Peer Power is generating overwhelmingly positive reactions: The program has received a College of Humanities Diversity Enhancement Award, and numerous favorable evaluations have been completed by middle and high school students after the presentations, Bailey said.

"Students said that, first of all, it sparked an interest in a topic they never thought about, and secondly, the kids liked having college students teaching them," Bailey said.

Peer Power recently received a $20,000 grant from the Battelle Endowment for Technology and Human Affairs that will help fund a research-based presentation for middle and high school students on Gender and Technology and a related Gender and Technology Web site.

For further details about Peer Power, contact Distel at 688-4713 or distel.2@osu.edu, or visit the Peer Power Web site at http://womens-studies.ohio-state.edu/peerpower/.

An Antarctic ice stream has been named in honor of the late OSU researcher Ian Whillans.     Courtesy of the Byrd Polar Research Center

Antarctic ice stream named for late OSU glaciologist

In a very rare re-naming of a glacial feature, the Advisory Committee for Antarctic Names has designated Ice Stream B in the western portion of Antarctica as the Whillans Ice Stream, in honor of late Ohio State glaciologist Ian Whillans.

Whillans died May 9 after 32 years of service to the University and 38 years of service to polar science. A native of Toronto, Ontario, Whillans was born Feb. 25, 1944, and earned his doctorate in geology and mineralogy from Ohio State in 1975.

Julie Palais, glaciology program manager at the National Science Foundation and member of the committee, said in her official announcement that the choice of Ice Stream B was especially appropriate. "Whillans was a major figure in the study of West Antarctic ice streams, particularly this one," she wrote, "and he had a central role in recognizing from the earliest years that these ice streams hold the key to determining the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet."

W. Berry Lyons, professor of geological sciences and director of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State, confirmed that Whillans was "one of the world's leaders" in trying to unravel the dynamics of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Understanding the environmental factors that cause the WAIS to expand -- or melt away -- is a matter of "great societal importance," he said.

Unlike the ice in East Antarctica, the WAIS is considered unstable because a large portion of it floats on water above the sea floor. For this reason, scientists suspect that the WAIS is particularly sensitive to global climate change, and they have long debated whether global warming would cause the WAIS to collapse. The break-off from the ice sheet of huge, tabular icebergs in recent years has increased those suspicions.

If so much ice melted into the oceans at once, sea levels could rise as high as 20 feet all over the world, within a single century. The results would be catastrophic to life on Earth, and change the faces of the continents as we know them.

This radar image shows the confluence of two tributaries of the Whillans Ice Stream   Courtesy of the Byrd Polar Research Center

Though he did much of his work in Antarctica, Whillans studied ice flows in the Arctic as well, reveling in the adventure kindled in his mind as a child, when he read books about the great polar explorers.

In a brief autobiographical sketch for an educational Web site at Rice University (http://glacier.rice.edu), Whillans wrote that his boyhood fascination with the poles grew into an adult profession when he "became challenged by puzzling things out." He set about finding ways to study whether polar ice was growing or shrinking, including drilling long ice cores from the frozen polar surface to measure annual growth layers.

He wrote with a great deal of humor about his exploits on the ice, including in the late 1960s, when he won an MD -- Macho Driller -- degree. The all-male drilling expeditions of the time were very macho, he explained, and the men awarded an MD to the team who could drill the longest ice core in the shortest time.

"A team mate and I held the record for drilling 18 meters of ice in five hours," he wrote. "That's really something isn't it? And then that record was taken over, and as far as I know, is still held, by two women who drilled 18 meters of ice in three hours! Well, they did have good weather ... but more important is that they thought of a way to do it much faster! The days of pure brawn are over, it is more important to think things out!"

Over his career, Whillans employed some innovative scientific strategies. He pioneered the "coffee can method" for measuring whether the ice was thickening or thinning. He and his colleagues planted empty coffee cans in the ice, and tracked their movements over many years as the ice flowed out to sea. Today, scientists use special wires to take this measurement, but the technique is still referred to as the coffee can method.

With his special understanding of glacial dynamics, Whillans helped the United States Antarctic Program find a safe route for heavy tractor trains to travel between its main base at McMurdo Station and the South Pole. And when a band of ice opened near the McMurdo airstrip, causing fears that a dangerous ice crevasse was forming, Whillans led the expeditions that determined the new feature was a benign one -- probably caused by sea water percolating up from deep within the ice.

The effort to re-name an Antarctic feature after Whillans began days after his death, when Ken Jezek, professor of geological sciences and former director of the Byrd Polar Research Center, started an e-mail campaign that he says "quickly took on a life of its own, thanks to the good wishes of the glaciological community."

Normally, the Advisory Committee for Antarctic Names assigns designations to only unnamed features. According to the committee guidelines, features are to be named after "the representatives of many nations, who, by their heroic efforts to broaden man's knowledge of this land of ice and snow, have fully demonstrated the international nature of the world of science."

Though Whillans fit that description, the committee's Palais commented that it is highly unusual for a feature to be re-named once it already has an established name which is in common use, as was the case with Ice Stream B.

On Oct. 28, 2000, during the third Byrd Polar Colloquy, Whillans received the Goldthwait Polar Medal, the Byrd Polar Research Center's most prestigious award, which is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to polar research and national and international collaborations.

Business Plan Competition enters year two

About 250 students, faculty and business leaders helped launch this year's Fisher/Andersen Business Plan Competition at a Nov. 30 kickoff event that also featured details about a proposed Center for Entrepreneurship under way in the Fisher College of Business.

Rich Langdale, founder of NCT Ventures and a keynote speaker at last year's competition launch, began discussions then with Sharon Alvarez, assistant professor of entrepreneurship, about the potential value of a center for entrepreneurship at Ohio State. Langdale now serves as executive director of the proposed center, and Alvarez as faculty director.

"What's the No. 1 export from Ohio?" Langdale asked the audience this year, then answered: "Entrepreneurship. I have students contacting me all the time from the University with a great idea, asking me how they can get introduced to someone on the West Coast or the East Coast to help make it a reality. Well, we have done that here in Ohio, with eight different businesses," he said of his own ventures, including Submitorder.com.

With the proposed center, which is currently going through University approval channels, "We are not only trying to create great businesses but to make sure that the students are able to thrive in an entrepreneurial society," he said.

The business plan competition is one way to enable individuals to try their hand at an entrepreneurial venture. That's one of the benefits cited by Seth Cramer of last year's first-place team, Armada Group Inc. Winning the competition "meant a great deal to our organization," including allowing the team to "validate our concept in the secure confines of academia." It also provided valuable start-up support and professional contacts.

The business plan competition is open to teams with at least one member who is a current student of Ohio State or an OSU alumnus/a. Teams must register via the Web. Preliminary deadlines call for conceptual business cases to be submitted by Feb. 1; those teams advancing will be notified by Feb. 22. Rules for the competition, including online registration, are available at http://fisher.osu.edu/bplan/.

Once again, Andersen is primary sponsor, with additional financial support from Ashland Chemical, Battelle, Science and Technology Campus Corp., and NCT Ventures. Together, they have created a prize pool of $100,000 in cash and services.

The competition is managed through the proposed center, for which Langdale and Alvarez have three basic goals:

• to facilitate research, attracting and retaining the best minds in entrepreneurship;

• to educate students, who have already shown a tremendous amount of enthusiasm; and

• to involve the community, both through financial support and shared expertise.

Recent gifts received from companies with history of support for OSU

Ohio State has announced two gifts recently in support of the Department of Athletics and Ohio Stadium.

In recognition of a gift from The Huntington National Bank, one of the stadium's signature features -- the 21,000-square-foot area serving as the social focal point for suite holders, club seat holders and their guests -- has been named The Huntington Club.

And in recognition of a gift of $2.5 million from the M/I Schottenstein Homes Foundation -- made in honor of company co-founder Irving E. Schottenstein -- the Varsity "O" Club in the newly renovated Ohio Stadium will now be known as the Varsity "O" Football Club, sponsored by the M/I Schottenstein Homes Foundation. In addition, the Buckeye Grove, an area honoring Ohio State football All-Americans, will be designated as the Buckeye All-American Grove, sponsored by the M/I Schottenstein Homes Foundation.

The Huntington gift is the latest in the 33-year partnership between Ohio State and Huntington. Other gifts include support for scholarships, endowed faculty positions and a May 1997 gift to name The Huntington Club in the Jerome Schottenstein Center and Value City Arena.

"The Huntington National Bank has had a long, successful partnership with The Ohio State University. We share a common commitment to excellence for the people we serve and to the communities in which we reside," said Thomas E. Hoaglin, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Huntington Bancshares Inc. "We are thrilled to support the renovation of Ohio Stadium and of The Huntington Club, a permanent symbol of the important alliance between our two organizations."

Located on B-deck on Ohio Stadium's west side, The Huntington Club is an upscale atmosphere for socializing before, during and after the games. In addition to hosting suite holders, club seat holders and their guests, the facility is also available for use by other University and community groups.

"We are delighted by this gift," said Andy Geiger, director of athletics. "It embodies the great partnership between Huntington and Ohio State -- a partnership that has accomplished so much and for which we're immensely grateful."

"We are very thankful to the people at The Huntington National Bank," added President Brit Kirwan. "They have generously supported academic and athletic excellence at Ohio State for 30 years, with gifts to create scholarships and endowed faculty positions and to build new facilities. This gift has helped us to make our historic Ohio Stadium the finest college football venue in the country."

This gift was part of Ohio State's five-year $1.23 billion Affirm Thy Friendship fund-raising campaign, which concluded on June 30, 2000.

The Huntington National Bank began its partnership with Ohio State with a gift supporting scholarships in 1968. Since then, this alliance has developed into a rich exchange between the business and academic communities in Columbus. Among other units receiving Huntington support are the WOSU Stations, the colleges of Engineering, Humanities, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, the Office of Minority Affairs, the Fisher College of Business and the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute.

The Huntington National Bank is the principal subsidiary of Huntington Bancshares Inc., a regional bank holding company headquartered in Columbus.

Geiger said his department is "very grateful to the M/I Schottenstein Homes Foundation for their generous donation and longtime partnership with the Ohio State athletic department. Through their generous efforts, we were able to add these wonderful amenities to our stadium renovation project."

Located on the west side of the newly renovated Ohio Stadium, overlooking the Olentangy River, the Varsity "O" Football club serves as a gathering place before, during and after games for Varsity "O" Club members and their guests, and is available on nongame days for private banquets and meetings.

The Buckeye All-American Grove is an area near the south end of Ohio Stadium, where a buckeye tree has been planted as a tribute to each Ohio State football All-American since 1914. The grove currently has more than 75 trees.

"We are very honored to continue our bond with The Ohio State University by supporting these two magnificent amenities, both of which are tributes to our strong athletic traditions," said Gary L. Schottenstein (B.S., business administration/accounting, 1974), president of M/I Schottenstein Homes. "We hope that the loyalty, service and commitment of the M/I Schottenstein Homes company and our family will greatly benefit The Ohio State University and honor our father and grandfather."

Along with his son, Gary, Irving Schottenstein has served on the Board of Directors of the Buckeye Boosters for more than 20 years.

M/I Schottenstein Homes is the largest builder of single-family homes in Ohio and one of the largest in the United States.

The M/I Schottenstein Homes Foundation has a long history of giving to Ohio State. Its past support of the University includes gifts to the Max M. Fisher College of Business; the Melvin L. Schottenstein Cancer Research Endowment Fund; the Wexner Center for the Arts; the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, a joint venture of University Libraries and the Department of Theatre; and the Department of Athletics.

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