Photos by Jo McCulty Karen Christopher, Saner, Walkey, Goulish and Mark Jeffery (on floor) in rehearsal for the piece, which will be presented as a work in progress Jan. 22-24 in Bowen Theatre.

Goat Island Performance Group

Seminar partners students with professional performers

By SUSAN WITTSTOCK, onCAMPUS staff

The pile of shoes on the floor near the classroom door spread rapidly, as the students entered the classroom/studio in the Drake Center's basement and complied with their instructors' request to remove footwear. It was Jan. 6, the first day of a three-week seminar, and 24 students were soon seated on plastic chairs in an uneven circle, sending averted glances at the exposed socks and stockings of their classmates.

Revealing hidden material was the theme for the day as the students participated in acting exercises led by members of Chicago's Goat Island Performance Group. For the next three weeks, the troupe would lead the 27-hour, 3-credit seminar with undergraduate and graduate students in the departments of art, dance, English and theatre, guiding the class through a sample of the creative process Goat Island's ensemble follows when creating their own performance works.

Goat Island's residency, sponsored by the Wexner Center and the College of the Arts, will conclude with a presentation of a work in progress, When will the September roses bloom?, in the Drake's Roy Bowen Theatre at 8 p.m Jan. 22-24. Tickets are available by calling 292-2295. While here, the group has rehearsed in the mornings and taught in the afternoons.

"Generally, we take two years or two-and-a-half years to develop a performance piece from a variety of sources," Mark Jeffery, one of Goat Island's performer/collaborators, told the class early in the Jan. 6 session. "We all come from different disciplines and we all have different skills we have acquired through the group. That's important to say in this context, because the people in this room all have different skills."

Goat Island Performance Group members Litó Walkey, Matthew Goulish and Bryan Saner rehearse When will the September roses bloom? in the Drake's Roy Bowen Theatre on Jan. 9.

Soon, the students were put to work, pencils and pens scratching away at paper as they completed writing exercises presented to them by Goat Island co-founder Matthew Goulish. As Goulish timed them, the students followed detailed instructions to create personal journals about rooms in a home they were familiar with. "You don't need to write well. No one needs to read this except you," Goulish assured them. They were asked to include phrases from a list written on the classroom's chalkboard, and to keep in mind the question ‘What is fragile?'

Thirty minutes later, performer/collaborator Karen Christopher stood in the middle of the room, encouraging the surrounding students to shake out their stocking feet and give their shoulders a good roll in preparation for the next exercise. She encouraged them to find their own space of blue linoleum to occupy, so they'd have room to pantomime their way through a re-enactment of their first moments that morning. Just as with the writing exercises, each timed exercise built on the next, and Christopher provided assurance: "There's no model for what we're about to do. However you interpret what I say, that's it -- that's the right way."

As the afternoon progressed, the students moved from working as individuals, to working as individuals within the context of a group, to working as a group. By the end of the three-hour session, six four-person groups had created mini-performances utilizing the written and physical material they had developed singly and together, and, taking it a step further, had presented mini-performances responding to each other's performances. Subsequent class sessions included time to do research, create installation art, and present and respond to more fully-developed performances.

Collaboration is key to the artistic process followed by Goat Island, which was founded in 1987 by Goulish and Lin Hixson. "What prompted us to start the group was an urge to work together and the desire to create our own performances -- not to work from an existing script -- and to work for as long as the piece requires," Goulish said.

The group has completed seven works and has performed and led workshops throughout the United States and Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom. Their performances integrate dance, theater, spoken text, music and visual elements. The ensemble currently includes Hixson as director/collaborator, Goulish, Jeffery, Christopher, Bryan Saner and Litó Walkey as performer/collaborators, CJ Mitchell as company manager and Margaret Nelson as technical director.

Ann Hamilton, professor of art, was familiar with Goat Island's work, and was eager to bring the group to Ohio State, in association with a visiting artists series she coordinates with her husband, Michael Mercil, associate professor of art. "It's unique to have artists here, developing work with a process you can observe and be involved in it. It's very different than bringing someone in to lecture about their work," Hamilton said.

Leaders within the College of the Arts and at the Wexner Center agreed, and after two years of organizing, coordinating schedules and finding funds, Goat Island is here. "I hope this sets a precedent for future interdisciplinary programs. This is one of the first times that I'm aware of that theatre, dance and visual arts have collaborated to sponsor guest artists with the Wexner Center. This has provided us all with a good chance to come together," Hamilton said.

Hamilton is interested in the methodology through which Goat Island creates a piece by looking at the small details and working up from there, rather than starting with a big picture or big idea and then trying to produce a show that conforms to the original concept. "Their generative process of workshopping is structured around a sequence of creative responses that constantly shift in form and duration. The finely tuned permissions and rigor of their structure is important for students to experience first hand," she said. "Their work grows out of paying attention."

To create When will the September roses bloom?, Hixson posed a question to the group: How do you repair? "The last moment of a previous work dealt with a world left in damage. She was thinking about what comes next in that semi-imaginary world we'd developed," Goulish said. "We stitched together each individual response to that question, finding what they have in common. The fragments that the individuals bring in complete each other."

This weekend's work in progress presentation will provide a sneak peek at the final work, which is scheduled to premiere in September in Europe. "Audiences tend to look at it as a finished performance, no matter how many times you tell them it's not. We're presenting it in a coherent form, but we'll have discussions afterward," Goulish said. "Sometimes people prefer the piece before it's finished. For people interested in the creative process, it's a really great time to come and see it and participate in a conversation afterward."

The Ohio State students in the seminar seemed to appreciate their chance at conversation as the last few minutes of their first day of class ticked away. Returning to their original large circle, seated now on the floor instead of on chairs, they each shared candid observations of what they experienced: "I liked the ways ideas sparked one another and blended and transformed" … "Having give and take felt liberating" … "It seems like drama is going beyond some kind of boundary we wouldn't normally do."

Lighter observations were made as well. One student earned laughs from his classmates for announcing: "It's fun to run around in your socks."

Seeing the students learning to work together and appreciating one another's creativity is a real joy for Goulish. "Building community is a big part of these workshops," he said.

OSU helps establish credit union

University District institution encourages responsible money management

By SHANNON WINGARD, Media Relations

The Ohio State University Extension has teamed up with community partners and residents to establish a credit union that will serve people in the University District and its surrounding areas.

The credit union will help low- to moderate-income individuals improve the quality of their lives by becoming educated about the importance of money management and increasing their financial resources.

Formerly known as the Colofab Federal Credit Union, the non-profit institution is located at 1427 N. Grant Ave. It is open to anyone who lives, works, worships or attends school in the area, and will be called, appropriately, Your Neighborhood Federal Credit Union.

For approximately 50 years, the credit union served workers at the Columbus Coated Fabrics plant on East Fifth Avenue, said Wanda Owens, manager of the credit union. After the factory closed in 2001, representatives of the credit union decided that it could still serve a purpose.

"Credit unions try to teach people to save a little each payday for the things they want or to have money in an emergency," Owens said. "We get to know our members and take a personal interest in their welfare."

Sue Helmreich, director of outreach programs for the Ohio Credit Union League, said helping people is the goal of credit unions.

"Credit unions were founded for working class people to help them gain a higher level of independence," Helmreich said. "We have a mission of helping people help themselves."

Benefits for members include direct deposit, checking accounts, savings accounts, Christmas Club accounts, credit cards, loans, check cashing and ATM cards. In addition, the credit union can encourage people to become more financially responsible, said Susan Colbert, University District agent for OSU Extension. The University District Extension office already works with people in the area to offer financial literacy classes that focus on banking basics, savings, checking and using credit cards responsibly.

Membership costs $1, with a minimum of $5 needed to open an account. The hours of operation are 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on the first Saturday of the month.

Although Ohio State Extension was instrumental in getting the credit union to open its membership to others in the area, the university is not involved with any day-to-day operations. Colbert said this is just one of the projects that the University District Extension office is involved in to help improve the quality of life in the area.

"As the neighborhood improves, it will have a positive impact on the neighborhood and surrounding community," Colbert said.

Cathryne Girves, chair of the Ohio State Extension University District Advisory Committee and director of the University Community Enrichment Association, said credit unions help people avoid "check-cashing spirals" by allowing them to cash their checks for a smaller service fee rather than using services that charge excessive fees.

New Bush marriage promotion proposal may fall short of goals, expert says

By JEFF GRABMEIER, Research Communications

President Bush's $1.5 billion proposal to promote marriage, especially among low-income couples, is likely to have mixed results at best, according to a researcher who has studied the issue. The president was expected to discuss the new marriage promotion proposal in his State of the Union address on Jan. 20. The proposal would provide at least $1.5 billion for training to help couples develop skills that sustain marriages.

Government policies that promote marriage as a way to boost disadvantaged women out of poverty and off welfare are likely to have mixed results at best, according to a national study published last year.

The results suggest that preventing unwed childbearing may be more important than promoting marriage in helping women economically, said Daniel Lichter, co-author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State.

"Marriage is no panacea for women who had children before they got married," Lichter said. "Marriage cannot offset the economic disadvantages associated with out-of-wedlock childbearing."

Findings showed that about 30 percent of women who had babies before marriage are poor, compared to only 8 percent of women who had a birth after marriage and 5 percent of married women who were childless.

Many states already have marriage promotion programs. For example, West Virginia gives poor married couples an extra $100 a month in their welfare checks.

But until recently, there had been little research to determine if marriage really is helpful, Lichter said. The results of this study suggest "if marriage is a public policy goal, then government and other groups must first attend to the business of reducing unwed childbearing."

Lichter conducted the study with J. Brian Brown, a graduate student at Ohio State, and Deborah Roempke Graefe of Pennsylvania State University. The study appeared in the journal Social Problems.

The study involved 7,665 women aged 25 to 44 who participated in the National Survey of Family Growth, conducted by the federal National Center for Health Statistics. The survey asked participants about pregnancy, childbearing, and reproductive and child health. The survey was conducted in 1995.

In one sense, the results showed that marriage does seem to be associated with a better standard of living, Lichter said. Overall, married women have a poverty rate that is about two-thirds that of unmarried women. But a closer look showed that the benefits don't often go to women who had children out-of-wedlock.

Women who had children before marriage are less likely to get married in the first place, and when they do, they are less likely to stay married and they are less likely to marry a man with good economic prospects, Lichter said.

About 87 percent of all women today are expected to marry before age 40, but for women with a child born outside of marriage, the figure is only 70 percent, according to the study.

Staying married is also made more difficult by unwed childbearing.

"Hasty marriages motivated by a pregnancy are highly unstable, with divorce rates well above the national average," Lichter said. "Unwed mothers are also more likely than other women to be in unstable or serial relationships."

For example, the study showed that only 30 percent of teen unwed mothers who later married were still in first marriages at the time of the survey.

And marriage can actually be a disadvantage for unwed mothers if they later divorce, the researchers found. These women had higher rates of poverty than did women who were unmarried.

"They may be worse off than if they had never married at all," Lichter said. "Considering that about one-third of all women who had babies before marriage are now currently divorced, this suggests marriage is not a panacea for them."

The other major issue is that unwed mothers are less likely to marry men who can help support them, the findings showed. Only about 37 percent of non-Hispanic white teen mothers marry men with more than a high school diploma, compared to 57 percent of those without an out-of-wedlock birth.

"To be sure, marriage confers clear economic benefits for unwed mothers who marry and stay married," Lichter said. "But the problem is that a large majority of unwed mothers today don't marry, don't stay married, or don't marry good providers."

The findings of this study suggest that government marriage promotion cannot substitute for other policies to help the disadvantaged, such as minimum wage legislation, affirmative action, and education and training programs, Lichter said. And more attention needs to be paid to preventing unwed childbearing.

"The goal of strengthening families might be best served through a larger package of social and economic policies that promote the marital, educational and employment needs of the disadvantaged," he said.

The research was supported in part by grants from the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

OIA introduces teachers to Global Hotspots

Outreach program takes educators to school

By RANDY GAMMAGE, onCAMPUS staff

The Office of International Affairs is as rich in outreach activities as it is in cultural diversity.

A prime example is the Global Hotspots workshop series, hosted by OIA's five International Area Studies Centers, that provides central Ohio middle- and high- school teachers with a fun way to gather accurate information about different cultures that they can then share with their students. The five-week workshop -- held Thursday evenings Feb. 26-April 1 at the Mershon Center and Younkin Success Center -- explores a different geographical area in current events each week with a lecture, a question and answer session, and snacks and refreshments representative of that region.

Each workshop session focuses on a particular world region and is designed and hosted by the area studies center dedicated to that region. For example, the Center for Slavic and East European Studies will present "Crime and Corruption in the Balkans" on March 18. The other area studies centers are the Center for African Studies, East Asian Studies Center, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Middle East Studies Center.

Funding is provided by the area studies centers and the U.S. Department of Education Title VI Program.

The objective of the workshop series is to help incorporate international education into the classroom at all grade levels by providing educators with up-to-the-minute information, as well as the tools to explain and explore global events as they unfold, said Jenny Spolnik, OIA's P-12 international outreach coordinator.

"We always receive a lot of compliments and many of the teachers return the next year," Spolnik said. "By offering different topics and speakers each week it keeps it fresh and exciting for them."

Robin Hren, a teacher of contemporary global issues, psychology and senior social studies and a department chair at Mount Vernon High School, is one of those teachers returning to the Hotspots workshop this year.

She said this series, and several other workshops conducted by OIA, as well as her travels abroad have enriched her classes tremendously.

"Many teachers think that you have to be able to take everything ‘ready made' from a workshop for that outreach to have been worthwhile. That is so untrue," Hren said. "The presentations are given by people who know so much more about certain areas than I do so the knowledge can fit in many places and be put into different formats."

An example of that, she said, would be incorporating knowledge of oppression and its emotional impact into her psychology class discussions.

Hren attended "Deprivation, Violence, and Identities: Mapping Contemporary World Conflicts" last October at Mershon Center, and has attended and helped plan the Global Institute, a week-long workshop hosted each summer by OIA.

The Global Institute is currently being revamped and is one of the projects slated for review by a P-12 advisory committee currently being formed, Spolnik said. The committee, comprised of eight central Ohio P-12 teachers, Spolnik and Amy Weir, OIA communications and outreach officer, will meet quarterly to discuss current programs and devise additional outreach activities.

OIA and the individual area studies centers offer a variety of outreach programs. Among them are:

• The Global School Bus is a new offering this year that formalizes an already existing program that sends Ohio State graduates, instructors and international students and their spouses into the schools to make presentations about different countries and cultures. Educators may view the list of available presenters online at oia.osu.edu/bus-t.html.

• Ohio State has partnered with Indiana University to present "Teaching About Asia," a new graduate level seminar for middle- and high-school teachers being held Tuesday evenings throughout winter quarter. The course is designed to give teachers a basic foundation to teach about the East Asian countries of China, Japan and Korea and to explore resource material and strategies for introducing East Asia into their classrooms, Spolnik said. Participants get free books and are eligible to earn a stipend and a spot on a future study tour upon completion of the requirements.

• The Summer Workshop on Middle Eastern Cultures offers six credit hours of graduate level course work on the ever-changing societies of the Middle East. The workshop will be held June 14-25.

• Study abroad trips for 2004, specifically designed for educators, include Spring Break in Costa Rica, Mesoamerica for Math and Science Teachers, and Summer Sessions Abroad for Spanish Teachers in Paraguay.

• Japan and China artifact boxes containing clothing, traditional toys, maps, music and a variety of other items to be used in lesson plans by P-12 teachers can be borrowed for up to two weeks.

To learn more about the area studies centers at Ohio State and the Office of International Affairs in general, visit the Web at www.oia.osu.edu. For details on the Global Hotspots workshop series, call Jenny Spolnik at 292-6053 or e-mail International Affairs at oia@osu.edu.

OSU professors help, learn in Russian forests

By CAITLIN MCHUGH, OARDC intern

Forestry research at Ohio State is branching out into Russia.

Roger A. Williams, assistant professor of forest ecosystems management, and James Kinard, professor of accounting and management information systems, received a grant from the U.S. State Department that took them to the forests of Tomsk, Siberia.

"I've always had an interest in international forestry," Williams said. "I thought forestry and business would make a good marriage."

One of the objectives of the program is to provide a cultural exchange. In 2002, seven faculty members from Tomsk State University came to Ohio to visit and learn.

"Every time we bring them over, we have an area of education and a developed theme to focus on," Williams said. "For instance, we've previously covered GPS (Global Positioning System), GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and computer modeling. It's an exchange of information, education and technology."

This year, the theme will be forest fires, a big concern in Siberia. The group will visit forests in the western United States and the National Interagency Wildland Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Williams presented a paper highlighting the National Fire Management Plan at a conference in Krashoyarsk, Russia, last summer.

A second objective is reviving the plummeting forest industry after the breakdown of communism.

"Forestry enterprises used to contribute 15 percent to the economy in Tomsk, and now it's about 1.5 percent," Williams said. "That is a major drop-off. A lot of that is due to a lack of knowledge of how to do things and a lack of investments because the government was no longer funding the industry. So we're working with potential forest industries to utilize resources and major markets."

Siberia also lacks an adequate transportation infrastructure. Few roads and railroads make most forests difficult to access. Besides adding more difficulty to the economy, it presents a challenge to a current research project to study carbon sequestration in Siberian forests, which is part of the third objective to develop research projects. To study carbon storage in the forests, the forests have to be accessible.

"Many forests aren't accessible and they are maturing. The mature trees can't pull as much carbon out of the atmosphere as the younger ones," Williams said.

Carbon sequestration refers to the storing of atmospheric carbon in plants so that the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be reduced or slow down. Excessive carbon in the atmosphere contributes to ozone layer damage and the greenhouse effect.

One solution to boosting the industry is a nutritious crop known as kedar seeds, or pine nuts. Kedar makes up approximately 90 percent of the stone pine forests in Russia, or approximately 36 million hectares, making an abundance of the little nuts, which bring an excellent price in the United States.

In addition, the nuts weigh very little, easing the burden of shipping that plagues the economy. One food company developed a plantation of kedar trees specifically to harvest the nuts, which are an excellent source of protein.

The nuts can be ground to make flour and their oil can be used for medicine and aromatherapy.

"The most important thing is that we are able to develop a long-term, long-standing relationship with Tomsk State University and develop the forestry sector and resources," Williams said.

The scientists' study, "A Strategy for Economic Development of the Forestry Sector in Tomsk, Russia," was published in the July/August 2003 Journal of Forestry.

The program is funded by the state department's Humphrey Fellowships and Institutional Linkages Branch.