Building community

Construction begins in November on a Buckeye Village family center

A new community center to be built at Ohio State's Buckeye Village will be a welcome sight for those juggling child rearing responsibilities with work and/or student duties.

The Student Family Community Center at Buckeye Village will serve three groups: families living in Buckeye Village; the Ohio State Child Care Center; and Minority Affairs' ACCESS program, a composite of programs that work together to provide support services for single parents attending Ohio State.

Construction will begin in November, with opening of the $5 million facility scheduled for December 2003.

"It's going to be a real centerpiece to the Buckeye Village community and is located centrally to all the current housing," said Steve Kremer, assistant vice president for residence life in the Office of Student Affairs.

Located off Ackerman Road, Buckeye Village consists of 31 buildings offering one- and two-bedroom apartments for students and their families, currently totaling 1,300 residents. Kremer said the project was designed to replace the current facility, a worn-out 1940s wood structure that has served students with families since the post-World War II era. The new facility will house a community center and housing administration offices, and add two new components -- ACCESS services and an extension of the OSU Child Care Center.

Considering the family nature of Buckeye Village, the new community center has been designed to offer a multitude of convenient ports for public transportation: Campus Area Bus Service and Columbus City Schools buses, Kremer said.

The 29,000-square-foot brick structure will feature lots of glass and skylights throughout for natural lighting, with multiple openings onto the sweeping green spaces outdoors that make Buckeye Village so attractive for students with families.

"One of the goals of the architecture clearly is to fit in with the current village, but then also to bring a renewed energy to the area," Kremer said.

The first floor will house five age-group pods plus amenities such as an art studio for child care; housing administration offices; a large activity center or commons room; and a fitness room, laundry facilities and study room. Second- floor features include a lounge space with recreation facilities; an academic/computer room; and a small class meeting space.

Becky Wilkins, director of the Ohio State Child Care Center, said the center extension will provide care for 100 children, in addition to the 320 cared for at the current child care center. The service is open to anyone affiliated with the University. The University maintains a waiting list of 624 children whose families are seeking acceptance into the OSU program, Wilkins said.

A unique twist to the new facility will be the inclusion of the ACCESS program, an initiative that provides resources and services to single-parent students who have custodial care of a child or children, said Tamra Minor, director of Minority Affairs Retention Services.

Once the center is built, a group of about 14 ACCESS clients who live in Buckeye Village will work together in a communal living situation, with multiple services such as tutoring, child care, financial aid, group counseling, and parenting and money management workshops available to them on site at Buckeye Village. Minor said the idea is to facilitate daily living for them so they can focus on learning.

"OSU is on the leading edge of finding ways to facilitate daily living for a group of people who, without such support, might not otherwise have the opportunity to attend college," Minor said.

Creating a facility that meets the needs of multiple users was a design challenge, but Kremer said the design of the new community center was definitely in the right hands.

Part of the design phase included a field trip with the architects -- Columbus-based Acock Associates -- to the University of Michigan, which Kremer said sets high standards in student housing. In fact, Michigan's family housing community center resembles a vacation chalet.

"I told them, ÔNo matter what we come up with, I want it to be better than theirs,'" Kremer said.

The point was not lost on owner and architect George Acock, an OSU alum who lived in Buckeye Village while attending Ohio State.

Hoover delight

By Kevin Fitzsimons David Hoover, senior director of marketing communications, reacts to the surprise April 15 announcement that he is a recipient of a 2002 Distinguished Staff Award. Congratulating Hoover are his colleague Lynn Nickell, left, director of University publications, and Christopher Griffin, one of last year's award recipients. Hoover is one of 13 staff to be honored this year for service to the University.

ACCAD presents advance film screening

The Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) will welcome two alumni, Moon Seun and Kevin Geiger, to campus on May 9. The two will present an advance screening of their computer-animated short film, Henry's Garden, at 2 p.m. in the Wexner Center's Film/Video Theater. After the film, they will present a "how we did it" session, followed by questions and answers.

Seun and Geiger were the first students accepted to ACCAD through Ohio State's Department of Art. After receiving their MFA degrees in media arts (now art & technology), they moved to Los Angeles in 1994. Seun worked at Boss Film Studios, Digital Domain and DreamWorks before beginning her independent work on Henry's Garden. Geiger is currently a computer graphics supervisor at Walt Disney Feature Animation and a member of the Experimental Animation faculty in the Cal Arts School of Film/Video. Their combined screen credits include such films as Species, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Terminator 2 3D, Fantasia 2000, Dinosaur, Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado and Reign of Fire.

The screening is free, and all are welcome to attend. For more information, visit www.simplistic-pictures.com.

Horse sense

Anesthesiologist John Hubbell is frequently called upon to help treat the world's top racehorses.   By Dan Steinberg

OSU's Hubbell helped prolong life of legendary Seattle Slew

Ohio State's John Hubbell, one of the world's most famous equine anesthesiologists, remembers the time two years ago he was prepping 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew for surgery. At 26 years old, Seattle Slew was losing flexibility in his vertebral column, a natural occurrence in older horses that is not only painful, but also detrimental to their ability to breed. One of the finest teams of equine specialists was assembled to use a controversial technique to alleviate Seattle Slew's pain. Hubbell was part of the team.

He also was consulted during Seattle Slew's final days. The legendary racehorse died May 7 -- on the 25th anniversary of his Kentucky Derby win.

"The horse fought the good fight, but the advancing infirmities of old age finally took their toll this week," Hubbell said the morning of May 7. "I've spent a large part of the last two days on the phone consulting with the owners and veterinarians taking care of the horse. It was a very difficult time for them."

Hubbell, who last treated Seattle Slew in March, recently recalled his first encounter with the racehorse.

"The first time I met the horse, I was standing in a special induction stall at 7 in the morning and I hear this boom box playing loud, triumphant marching music," Hubbell said. "I checked to see what it was and soon realized that they're leading Seattle Slew into the stall with this loud music playing. This horse is so famous it has an entourage -- at least eight people with a boom box blaring music as the champion was marched to surgery."

Hubbell, a professor of veterinary clinical sciences and associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Veterinary Medicine, routinely travels across the country to anesthetize some of the world's best racehorses. He spends a week each spring training interns at Rood and Riddle, a top veterinary hospital in Lexington, Ky. When Seattle Slew needed the best care in the world, Hubbell was summoned.

"If you were to pick a horse that's the most recognizable now and has a name for people, it would be Seattle Slew," Hubbell said. Seattle Slew was the only colt to have gone into the Triple Crown series never having lost a race and emerging with the Triple Crown title. Until this month, he was the only living Triple Crown winner and oldest living Kentucky Derby winner. The purebred sired seven champions and 29 top stakes winners. His offspring have earned more than $75 million.

At age 26, Seattle Slew normally would be an unlikely candidate for any type of costly and strenuous procedure. But because of the champion's successful history and valuable genes, he was worth the operation conducted two years ago.

"There are two difficult parts in equine anesthesia," Hubbell said. "The first is reading the horse and anticipating how he will react. The second is the recovery period. Horses do not lie down very much, so as they're coming out of anesthesia, their natural instinct is to immediately rise. The management of the time from when the horse is anesthetized until it can stand and walk to its stall is difficult."

Reading horses and managing that critical recovery period is what sets Hubbell apart.

Since the time Hubbell first helped Seattle Slew, the thoroughbred sired 40-60 more foals at approximately $350,000 per foal in breeding fees.

Hubbell earned his DVM and MS at Ohio State, completed an internship at the University of California, Davis, and began practicing at Ohio State as an equine anesthesiologist in 1982. Raised in a family of medical practitioners, Hubbell knew from a young age that he wanted to follow a similar path. Growing up with standard-bred horses and a father who was an anesthesiologist, Hubbell naturally developed a passion for horses and a strong knowledge of anesthesia.

Hubbell's involvement with Seattle Slew's surgery was recently featured in an article in Sports Illustrated, and the surgery is the subject of a new book, Stud: Adventures in Breeding, by Kevin Conley.

Courtney Nein is a senior from Middletown, Ohio, majoring in journalism and communication.

OSU faculty receive Incentive Fund grants from Regents

The Ohio Board of Regents recently announced the recipients of $3.5 million in Incentive Fund grants to state-assisted universities. Proposals were evaluated on the basis of academic quality and the ability of each project to effectively address critical state needs, specifically in improving the state's economic development, strengthening Ohio's system of elementary and secondary education, and improving public health and safety.

Ohio State received nearly half -- 10 of 21 -- of the awards. Sixty proposals were submitted for the competition.

Most of the awards are for $175,000 each, and went to the faculty and projects listed below:

• Ken Lee, professor and chair of food science and technology, "Solving Critical State Needs in Food Safety."

• Richard E. Petty (department chair) and Barbara Andersen, professors of psychology, "Doctoral Incentive Program in Health Psychology."

• Wayne Carlson, Advanced Computing Center for Art and Design, "Human Figure Motion Synthesis, Analysis, and Animation."

• L.-S. Fan, chair and Distinguished University Professor of chemical engineering, "Nanotechnology."

• Michael Grever, chair of internal medicine, and John Lannutti, associate professor of materials science and engineering, "Oncological Biomaterials: Tissue Engineering."

• James Phelan (department chair) and H. Lewis Ulman, Department of English Rhetoric and Composition Program, "Literacy throughout the Curriculum: OSU Writing Programs and K-12 Language Arts Instruction."

• Richard E. Petty and Martin Sarter, professors of psychology, "Doctoral Incentive Program in the Science of Learning and Memory."

• Mark Morrison, associate professor of animal sciences, "Doctoral Program for Study of the Ecology of Microbial Antibiotic Resistance."

• John N. Reeve, professor and chair of microbiology, "Molecular Microbiology."

• Robert G. Parker, associate professor of mechanical engineering, "Advanced Vibration Analysis and Smart Materials for Future Vehicles."

Ohio State gears up for African American Heritage Festival

From a town hall meeting on issues affecting African Americans to a guided tour of Underground Railroad landmarks, the African American Heritage Festival returns to Ohio State this month, bringing new events to campus along with some traditional activities.

The 24th annual Heritage Festival, themed "It Takes An Entire Village: Fahari (Pride)," runs from May 13-19. Fahari means pride in Swahili.

"The theme sends many messages about the importance of the Heritage Festival," said Clarice Ford, chair of the Heritage Festival program committee. "The University, the city of Columbus and the corporate community have built a partnership that clearly exhibits Ôpride' in making this festival a safe and enjoyable event."

This year's Heritage Festival features many new events, such as a town square meeting, facilitated by noted psychologist and Florida State faculty member Na'im Akbar, to discuss issues facing African Americans today; an Underground Railroad Tour, which is a guided tour of some of central Ohio's important landmarks; and the Jesse Owens Anniversary Celebration, marking 25 years since the Jesse Owens recreation centers opened at OSU.

Ford said the weeklong festival offers something for everyone.

"The Heritage Festival is the premier event for African American college students across the Midwest," Ford said. "It draws visitors from across the United States to The Ohio State University and the city of Columbus. The celebration of African Americans during the Heritage Festival is a great opportunity for people of all walks of life to learn more about the culture."

This year marks the first time the Komen Columbus Race for the Cure, a fund-raiser for breast cancer prevention and research, is being held on Ohio State's campus as a part of the festival.

According to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, breast cancer is the most common cancer for African American women and the second-leading cause of death among African American women.

Sarah Irvin, media director for the Columbus race, said it is important for the University to host this event during the festival.

"We are so happy Ohio State is involved with this event," Irvin said. "The University has helped us make the race, which is in its 10th year, even bigger than before. More than 75 percent of the money raised stays in central Ohio and helps the underserved members of the community."

The Heritage Festival also will offer many traditional events. Among the events returning this year are: the Poetry Slam; the 15th annual Pan-Hellenic Black Greek Step Show, which has been moved to the Value City Arena at the Jerome Schottenstein Center; the "Rock the Mike" dance parties; and On the Town Square, which is a Saturday event for families that features food and merchandise vendors and cultural entertainment.

A list of Heritage Festival events follows. More information is online at www.osuheritagefestival.com/.

May 13

• Jesse Owens Anniversary Celebration, 4-6 p.m., Jesse Owens Recreation Center North. Free and open to the public.

• Town Square Meeting, 7-9 p.m., Fawcett Center auditorium. Free and open to the public.

May 14

• Poetry Slam, 7-9 p.m., Independence Hall. Students and members of the community are invited to read original poetry. Free and open to the public.

May 15

• Underground Railroad Tour, 2-5 p.m., leaves from and returns to the Ohio Union. Admission is $1 and open to the public. Call 688-8449 to reserve seating on the buses.

• Soul Time at the Hitchcock, 8:30 p.m., Hitchcock Hall. The union of soul music and karaoke will be introduced to the Ohio State campus. Free and open to the public.

May 17

• The 15th annual Pan-Hellenic Black Greek Step Show, 7 p.m., Jerome Schottenstein Center. Admission is $12. Tickets may be purchased at any Ticketmaster outlet, including ticketmaster.com, or by calling 431-3600 or (800) GO-BUCKS.

• Rock the Mike (Part I), 10 p.m.-2 a.m., French Fieldhouse. Admission to the dance is free but restricted to guests 18 and older.

May 18

• Komen Columbus Race for the Cure, 8 a.m.-noon, Fawcett Center. For registration information, call 297-8155 or see www.columbus-raceforthecure.org.

• On The Town Square, 9 a.m.-7 p.m., the Oval.

• Rock the Mike (Part II), 10 p.m.-2 a.m., French Fieldhouse. Admission is free but restricted to guests 18 and older.

May 19

• Community Cleanup, noon-3 p.m., throughout the campus area.

• Campus Cookout, noon-4 p.m., the Oval. Free and open to the public.

BOLD collaboration builds leadership skills

Members of the corporate community are teaming up with student organizers of the African American Heritage Festival as part of a mentoring and leadership development program sponsored by Bank One Corp.

The Bank One: Leading Development in our Community (BOLD) program, which began this year, helps students improve individual and collaborative leadership skills and teaches them how to use those skills to effect organizational and social change.

Nine professionals from Bank One, seven Ohio State staff, a member of the broadcasting community and 15 Ohio State students are taking part in the first mentoring program.

The undergraduate students at Ohio State were selected for the program after an application and interview process. The students are required to attend classes on leadership and professional skills and work one-on-one with their mentors.

The BOLD program stems from a collaborative relationship between Bank One and Ohio State that began during the 2001 Heritage Festival, said Rebecca Parker, project manager for Bank One.

Parker designed the BOLD program for Bank One while she was employed as assistant vice president for student affairs at Ohio State. Parker, who served as the chair of last year's Program Core Committee for the festival, said the intent of the program is to teach students skills important for their futures.

For details, visit www.osu.edu/units/stuaff.

next page...