Diversity Lecture Series

By Nathan Robinson Randall Robinson, executive director and president of TransAfrica and TransAfrica Forum, signs books after delivering "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks" Jan. 22 in the Ohio Union Ballrooms as part of the President and Provost's Diversity Lecture Series. The lecture title was reflective of his book, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, which has become a much-discussed social and political text on reparations.

Engineering Explorers

High school students get to test drive a profession

An Explorer post recently established with the College of Engineering is expanding the college's efforts to present engineering as a viable career option for young people -- particularly for minorities and women.

Exploring is a co-ed, worksite-based program that gives youth between the ages of 14 and 20 an opportunity to visit community organizations and explore the dynamics of various careers while participating in training, skill development, service projects and field trips, said Brian Asbury, senior Learning for Life executive. Exploring is part of the national Learning for Life career education program, and a subsidiary of Boy Scouts of America.

Engineering Explorers is the fourth post offered at Ohio State (see sidebar). Explorer posts have already been established by the College of Veterinary Medicine and the School of Natural Resources as hosts of career-specific posts at the University. Engineering has also started an Aviation Explorers post co-sponsored by the OSU Airport and the local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association for high school students interested in the field of aviation.

"Ohio State is an excellent host for Exploring because the University has the resources and facilities, plus the potential for student-to-student mentoring," Asbury said, referring to the pairing of graduate students and high school students.

The Engineering post is a collaboration between the college, Battelle Memorial Institute and Learning for Life, with sessions meeting in newly renovated sections of Hitchcock Hall and drawing on OSU for professional speakers.

The Explorers post was a natural, considering how involved Engineering has been in outreach, said John Merrill, program manager for the College of Engineering. Existing outreach efforts include Women in Engineering and Minority Engineering programs within the college, and a partnership with General Electric that allows Ohio State to offer an introductory engineering course to 60 students at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati.

Merrill said the desire to educate the public about engineering is a big motivator behind hosting the new Explorer post.

"An elementary school student can sit down and write a few sentences about what a pilot does, or a lawyer or a doctor, but there's a real lack of knowledge about who an engineer is or what an engineer does," Merrill said.

So far, 17 boys and girls from central Ohio have signed up for the Engineering Explorers post. Group activities will include monthly meetings with guest speakers, field trips such as one scheduled for the Marysville Honda plant and a behind-the-scenes viewing of actual crash tests, and hands-on engineering activities. Those joining the Engineering Explorers have expressed a keen interest in mechanical design and automotive engineering, and a desire to form a robotics club.

Engineering Explorers is a continuation of a firm outreach commitment by Engineering.

"There's a vested interest by the College of Engineering to get young women and minorities involved in engineering because they are underrepresented," Merrill said. "The number of women and minority students enrolled in engineering is not reflective of the overall population."

He said statistics show that girls tend to lose interest in math and science by the time they get to high school. The practice of selecting high school math courses based on aptitude further complicates matters, leaving students short on math skills and facing difficulties when applying for college, Merrill said.

The Women in Engineering and Minority Engineering programs at Ohio State are working to attract, support and retain women and minority engineering candidates. The Women in Engineering Program is designed to encourage young women to consider engineering as a career choice and to support their efforts as they pursue their engineering education. The program plans activities for both high school students and those enrolled in Engineering.

The Minority Engineering Program was created as part of a national effort to increase the representation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in the professional engineering population. Currently, MEP offers a wide range of programs and services to assist in the recruitment, retention, motivation and graduation of minority students.

Merrill said Engineering Explorers has the potential to attract prospective students to Ohio State, but is not intended as a recruitment tool.

"I hope that by being here the students gain a positive impression of Ohio State. But the primary benefit is not so much to Ohio State as it is to the profession of engineering," Merrill said.

Veterinary Medicine sets stage for OSU Explorers

The lure of exploring career options and the ease of starting a post has resulted in 40 Explorer posts operating in Columbus, giving high school-age students the opportunity to investigate careers ranging from aviation to veterinary medicine. Exploring is part of the national Learning for Life career education program, and a subsidiary of Boy Scouts of America.

At Ohio State, colleges and departments are discovering that hosting an Explorers post is an effective method of promoting their profession, evidenced by the four Explorers posts currently running at Ohio State. Leading the charge is the College of Veterinary Medicine, which established a Veterinary Explorers post approximately 14 years ago.

After starting with 17 members the first year, the program now attracts as many as 50 high school juniors and seniors interested in veterinary medicine as a career.

William Fenner, associate dean of the college, credits OSU students with the success of the program.

"It is the veterinary students who make this work," Fenner said. "They are closer in age to the high school students, so they can relate to them. And they have a very high level of enthusiasm for the profession so they are very good ambassadors for the college."

Fenner got involved in the post two years after it started, and now serves as faculty adviser. Students from the veterinary fraternity Omega Tau Sigma adopted the post as a service project five years ago.

Meetings twice a month focus on different aspects of the profession using a combination of guest speakers, hands-on workshops and field trips. Throughout the year, Explorers have the opportunity to visit a private veterinary practice, pathology and research labs, and a large animal clinic, among other sites. They receive hands-on experience ranging from animal examinations and assisting in EKGs, to observing an animal autopsy and examining the various organs up close.

"So by the time the year is over, they have been exposed to most of the things that a veterinarian does, and also what it takes to be successful in the veterinary profession," Fenner said.

The benefits of the Explorers post are tremendous, he said. OSU students interact with the general public, while reinforcing the importance of service to the profession; Explorers get a chance to see if veterinary medicine is the right career for them; and the college benefits from increased public awareness and goodwill.

Bruce Butts, vice president of Experimental Aircraft Association local chapter 9, is post adviser for an Aviation Explorers post at the OSU Airport, which started in 1999. It partners the College of Engineering, OSU Airport and EAA.

A free ground school, field trips to such sites and events as air shows, the Air Force Museum in Dayton and airfreight companies at Port Columbus Airport, and observing annual airplane inspections are among the activities in which Aviation Explorers participate.

Butts said creating a post is not that difficult. Learning for Life, which surveys 40,000 area high school students each year and identifies careers that individual students are interested in, supplied a list of potential aviation explorers. Invitations were then sent out to each person on the list, inviting them to a kickoff meeting in the fall. More than 10 percent attended the kickoff, with approximately 17 joining the post, Butts said.

Women's Studies at OSU pioneers Ph.D. program

Demand for graduates expected to be high

Just five years after observing its 25th anniversary as one of the country's oldest and most established programs of its kind, the Ohio State Department of Women's Studies is poised to celebrate another pioneering move: creation of a Ph.D. program.

The Board of Trustees on Feb. 1 approved establishment of the Ph.D. program in women's studies, which now is subject to final approval by the Ohio Board of Regents. Ohio State's will be the first women's studies department in Ohio to offer study at the Ph.D. level, and becomes one of only about 10 such programs in North America. Pending regents approval, the first class is scheduled to begin in autumn 2002.

Ohio State also is the first university to build its Ph.D. program upon existing bachelor's and master's degree programs, said Valerie B. Lee, professor and chair of the Department of Women's Studies.

"This says something -- we have a foundation, and we're building upon our strength," Lee said. "If anyone can establish a first-rate Ph.D. program, it's Ohio State."

Ohio State's department enjoys a strong national reputation. Though the field is not yet ranked by such ratings tools as U.S. News & World Report magazine or the National Research Council, Ohio State recently was listed among six featured MA programs in the Lingua Franca Real Guide to Grad School, and was the only U.S. program cited in Women's Studies International: Nairobi and Beyond. OSU faculty were instrumental in organizing the first national conference on the Ph.D. in women's studies in October, and are known widely for their development of an electronic database of more than 400 articles from which texts for undergraduate women's studies and gender-related courses can be custom designed. About 75 institutions have adopted Reading Women's Lives, the database-generated texts.

In addition, because of its comparatively large faculty with diverse and interdisciplinary specialties, Ohio State will offer one of the most comprehensive curriculums of the Ph.D. programs established so far in the United States and Canada. With eight of its faculty on 100 percent appointments, Ohio State has the most full-time faculty lines of any similar program in the United States. Another seven faculty are jointly appointed with such units as history, nursing, English, human and community resource development, and French and Italian.

"Most women's studies departments are heavily dependent on other units to provide joint appointments. Although we could not survive without the strengths that our joint appointments bring, we are fortunate to have been able to hire our own political theorists, art historian, anthropologist, sociologist, and visual culture expert, all of whom do interdisciplinary work and feminist scholarship," Lee said. "Having faculty lines for whom women's studies is the tenuring unit has allowed us to take charge of our direction. We've always had a vision and have been able to shape our program."

Lee said Ohio State emerged early on as a strong program because of its emphasis on an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning. For example, the department's foundational courses for graduate education are structured so that all students study theory over three broad categories: difference/diversity; gender, power and social change; and gender representation. Within those three foundation areas, OSU will offer an opportunity for specialization in four fields: visual and narrative cultures; women of color feminisms; states, economies and social action; and sexuality studies.

"Other programs in our field respect the way we conceptualize and represent categories of knowledge," Lee said, adding that newer programs are following Ohio State's model.

Yet another distinctive feature of Ohio State's graduate education in women's studies is the full funding of all graduate students -- which will include doctoral candidates. In an era of cuts to higher education, being able to provide such a financial package is an attractive feature in recruiting students. It also shows departmental commitment, Lee said.

"We've been able to manage our resources in such a way that we can fully fund those pursuing a doctorate," she said. "We've done that since the day the MA program began, and we plan to continue doing so."

Ohio State's program will prepare future scholars for an increasing number of academic positions in the field and create a larger pool of researchers and practitioners to provide gender-related information, analyses, and services to public and private agencies and institutions.

Initially, there will be between four to six openings in the Ph.D. program. Already, applicants are calling, some from as far away as Puerto Rico, the Ukraine and China. Chances are good that those who complete Ohio State's program will do well in the market. In the last four years, more than 180 scholars have been sought to fill positions in women's studies programs, but fewer than 20 women's studies Ph.D.s have been produced to satisfy that demand.

The program's establishment continues Ohio State's proud participation in development of a discipline that got its start as a field of inquiry just 30 years ago. Ohio State dates the launch of women's studies at the University to 1972; functioning first as an office and then as a center, it received departmental status in 1995. The bachelor's degree program began in 1980, and the first MA class signed on in 1991. The department currently has about 150 majors, 120 minors and 30 MA students.

Initially founded to fill the gaps in knowledge about women, the discipline has broadened to consider gender's interlocking relationship with race, ethnicity, sexuality, geographic location and class.

"We're interested in gender as a starting point," Lee said, "not an ending point."

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