By Jo McCulty Jordi Miralda-Escudé, associate professor in the Department of Astronomy, is teaching "Introduction to the Science of Climate Change" this quarter as part of the freshman seminar pilot program. "The seminars offer me the opportunity to teach in a new scientific area for me," he said. "I’m learning more about the topic and enjoy hearing the students’ perspective of it."

Seminars offer first-year students a glimpse of research

By JONI BENTZ SEAL, onCAMPUS staff

Before beginning her tenure as president of Ohio State, Karen Holbrook revealed in an interview with onCampus her desire to institute a freshman research seminar series like the ones enjoyed at colleges and universities across the nation.

Just 14 months after her arrival, nine seminars are in progress this quarter and 19 seminars are approved for spring quarter as part of a pilot program to introduce first-year students to the importance of research in the learning process.

Edward Adelson, associate executive dean of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences, said the initiative owes its genesis to Holbrook. "She brought the University of Georgia model to us with much enthusiasm after witnessing its success there, and was anxious to see a similar program launched at Ohio State."

The Arts and Sciences Committee on Curriculum and Instruction (CCI), the overarching curriculum committee for the collective colleges, was charged with the development and oversight of the two-year pilot program, which this quarter involves 118 students and nine faculty.

"The seminars are intended to both broaden and intensify the student’s academic experience freshman year with an in-depth exposure to a particular academic area with faculty guidance so that students will learn about the discipline and how that faculty member functions within that discipline," said David Horn, professor of entomology and the CCI representative from biological sciences.

Open only to first-year students, the one-credit seminars are offered from 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. for 10 Fridays each quarter. Class size is capped at 20, and students can enroll in only one. During the two-year pilot period, the seminars will be offered winter and spring quarters, and provide an academic counterpart to the existing Survey 100 class, also a one-credit course students take autumn quarter to get organized and understand the challenges to succeed in college, Adelson said. "The two can be seen as a package to get students best-prepared for the advantages of a comprehensive research institution early in their academic career."

Mathematics major Jenna Shock is taking "A Literary Approach to Understanding Creativity in Mathematics" this quarter with Peter March, chair of mathematics. She learned about the seminar from her adviser, who knew of Shock’s interest in math and assured her it was not a regular math class but more about analyzation, which Shock found intriguing.

"I’m learning how to think about math in a different light," Shock said. "The class incorporates the ideas of math into a debate-style atmosphere and there’s a lot of active discussion with the instructor. It is reaffirming my choice of major."

Getting started

Adelson said the big challenge was to expedite implementation of the program while ensuring the academic integrity of the courses.

"We wanted to be sure that, in every way, the courses adhere to the curricular approval process that the faculty has carefully constructed," Adelson said. "Every seminar proposed goes through the same rigorous requirements and process as traditional courses."

The seminars, which will vary each year, are proposed by faculty and approved by the CCI. One distinction, according to Adelson, is that faculty will own the courses and can offer them according to opportunity. He explained that this differs from the normal course approval process, where a course is not connected to specific faculty, but approved for a department.

Although faculty interest in the program was phenomenal, Adelson said the committee was careful to get broad representation across the five colleges in the limited number of courses selected for the pilot quarters. Next year, however, there will be a general call to faculty for course proposals.

"I think many faculty always wanted to do this, but never had the mechanism to do so," Adelson said. "We’ve structured a flexible program that gives faculty the opportunity to teach something small but targeted and of great interest to them that they might not otherwise get the opportunity to teach. And, it gives students the chance to explore an entirely new area, and learn from an expert of great note in his or her field."

Adelson believes the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences were chosen to pilot the program since they serve as the academic core of the university. He said the newfound sense of cooperation among the colleges these last eight months resulted in the effusiveness to look across what used to be borders.

"The freshman seminars are a good example of the interdisciplinary collaboration on research experiences on the curriculum side," he said. "I don’t think we could have pulled it together so quickly if we were separate entities."

According to Horn -- who was the beneficiary of a similar program as an undergraduate at Harvard -- freshman seminar programs have been welcome additions to many of Ohio State’s peer institutions, including UCLA and the University of Michigan, whose programs were considered as models. Ultimately, a program comparable to the University of Georgia’s was selected for its intimacy and brevity. A similar program also exists in Ohio State’s Honors Program but will remain untouched, Horn said. The goal for the new program is to open research and curricular opportunities to all first-year students across the university. While the faculty involved in the pilot are from arts and sciences, students from other colleges are welcome to enroll.

Evaluating the program

Horn said the goal to attract one-third of the university’s freshmen into the program each year -- the bar at the University of Georgia -- would require upward of 200 seminar offerings per year. Between 60 and 90 seminar courses are anticipated for the 2004-05 academic year. He said evaluations of the winter and spring quarter seminars from students, faculty and college curricular deans or committees will be conducted, and the program will be fine-tuned and prepared for expansion to the university’s other colleges "ideally starting next academic year, or perhaps the year after," Horn said.

The pilot also affords the luxury to make other enhancements: one possibility Adelson mentioned was the potential to provide the seminars in residence halls, further encouraging the cozy, comfortable interaction between students and faculty.

"Ohio State’s program will look different from what its peers are doing and will allow us to take advantage of the excellence of our faculty as teachers and researchers and the commitment they have to students," Adelson said. "We have the opportunity to do something extraordinary with it and roll the best of many programs into one."

Adelson praised the energy the Committee on Curriculum and Instruction has invested in developing the pilot. "They are committed to look at it from every angle and make sure we’re getting the right product," he said. "After all, seminar courses help students realize where the treasures are -- not just academic content, but the true treasures -- our faculty."

Winter Quarter Freshman Seminars

• The Culture and Ethics of Modern Science, Charles Brooks, Biochemistry

• Learning and the Architecture of the Mind, Peter Culicover, Linguistics

• Biotechnology and Society: What Are the Issues Today?, Erich Grotewold, Plant Biology

• Science Fiction and Philosophy, Kai Hammermeister, Germanic Languages and Literatures

• A Literary Approach to Understanding Creativity in Mathematics, Peter March, Mathematics

• Introduction to the Science of Climate Change, Jordi Miralda-Escudé, Astronomy

• Fatal Attractions: Women, Men, and Romance, Linda Mizejewski, Women’s Studies

• Religion, Philosophy and Science -- Conflict and Accommodation, T.M. Rudavsky, Philosophy

• Fact, Fantasy, Fallacy: Science in Cinema, David Stetson, Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology

Drawing the line

Photos by Jo McCulty Industrial design student Gyuchul Sung works on a class project.

Design students follow arduous path to graduate

By SUSAN WITTSTOCK, onCAMPUS staff

When a student applies to the Department of Industrial, Interior and Visual Communication Design, he or she is usually asked to draw an object, sometimes a backpack, sometimes a cell phone or a hand with a pencil. The seemingly simple task is intended to reveal important traits like creativity, drawing skills, the ability to conceptualize, and a knack for innovation to the panel of faculty who judge the submitted portfolios.

Every year, about 50 students pass muster, with 15 to 18 students invited to matriculate as sophomores into each one of the department’s three tracks. An additional 12 to 18 graduate students are invited to come earn either an MA or an MFA.

The journey they take to graduation is an intense one. They’ll be called upon to perfect drawing and computer skills, design numerous projects, create models using power tools in an on-site industrial shop, understand light and its effect on materials, communicate their concepts narratively, and professionally present their work. Along the way, they’ll form close bonds with fellow classmates, take cat naps on beat-up couches in the corner of studios, and heat up many late night dinners in microwaves.

In short, they become professional designers.

"I think it’s one of the most exceptional educations offered at this university," said Wayne Carlson, chair of the department. "We have a unique teaching environment, with very few lecture courses and lots of hands-on work. We spend a lot of time with our students."

Wayne Carlson

Industrial design is essentially product design, planning for the production of everything from kitchen appliances to furniture. Interior design is about planning the use of space within commercial, industrial and institutional buildings. ("This isn’t ‘Trading Spaces!’ Carlson warns. "We’re not doing interior decorating.") Visual communication design, sometimes called graphic arts, encompasses everything from design for printed media such as books and newspapers to Web pages, product graphics and multimedia.

Graduate students study one of four areas of emphasis. Design development encourages original research to add to the field; design education trains students to be teachers; design management offers training in how to organize and run a design firm; and digital animation and visualization, offered in collaboration with the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD), develops computer animation and graphics for communication and research in business and artistic fields. The design management track is offered in partnership with the Fisher College of Business.

The department is primarily located in Hopkins Hall, but also has a few studios and exhibition space in the basement of Hayes Hall as well as use of ACCAD’s labs on west campus. There are 12 full-time faculty and another 10 to 12 adjunct faculty, usually working professionals, that teach courses. Faculty include Ohio Eminent Scholar Noel Mayo, a national leader in product design, Susan Metros, the university’s deputy CIO, and Brian Stone, who won the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2002.

Display cases on the third floor of Hopkins show off student work. In one, detailed drawings of a bus cockpit by an MFA graduate are on display. The student, who was hired by Lear Corp. in Detroit, was studying how people perform work in small spaces. Another display shows foam models exploring the concept of flow in buildings. Consequently, the building models are almost whimsical, with sharp angles and divergent walls.

"We use a lot of cardboard and a lot of foam," Carlson said, not to mention a lot of pencil and paper. "Learning hand-drawing is so important to their success. We strongly believe the computer is one more tool, but not a substitute, for hand-drawing."

That said, the department offers students plenty of opportunities to learn the technological aspects of the field. "We’re using technology a lot with computer aided design. Students are experimenting within the context of the computer," Carlson said. Undergraduate and graduate and faculty computing labs provide PC and Macintosh computers outfitted with computer-aided design, animation and three-dimensional modeling programs. For sophisticated multimedia programs, students and faculty use the Emerging Technologies Studio. Originally developed by Carlson when he was chair of ACCAD in the 1990s, the studio’s state-of-the-art technology is now available to all College of the Arts students and faculty.

A point of pride is the Thomas and Kathleen Huff Lighting Laboratory where the interior design students can experiment with approaches to lighting. The lab has numerous kinds of lights available, including low intensity, lights with color, cool lights, warm lights and incandescent lights. Students can see how different kinds of lights work in models they’ve built or on samples of floor and wall coverings that they are considering using.

Juniors and seniors are assigned a studio room for the entire year and provided keys to the space so they can work on projects as needed. "We encourage them to work in teams," Carlson said. "This is where we really get them familiar with the importance of hands-on modeling. They design on paper, then with clay or with foam. They’ll make very rough models, then a scale model, then a design model. By doing that, they discover the things about design that work or don’t work."

Class assignments are often evaluated not only by faculty, but by professionals. "One of the strengths of the department is the role of the professional community. We regularly have visitors who come in and critique, evaluate and teach our students," Carlson said. By graduation, students have a portfolio of at least eight to 10 projects (representing studio projects over their three-year program) that they can show to prospective employers.

Employment, of course, is the goal. "Students often start work with large design firms, work for a few years, then move on to establish private design firms," Carlson said. Other students enter the film industry, Web design or architecture. "The opportunities change almost daily. We provide them with a foundation in design and communication that they can build on for a lifetime."

Engineers earn Early Career awards from DOE

Pair develops software to manage data

By PAM FROST GORDER, Research Communications

Software from Ohio State may soon have researchers standing inside virtual supernovae or querying scientific search engines, thanks to two new awards from the Department of Energy (DOE).

Han-Wei Shen and Hakan Ferhatosmanoglu, both assistant professors of computer and information science, recently received DOE Early Career Principal Investigator (ECPI) awards, which help exceptionally talented computer scientists and other researchers develop research programs early in their careers.

"We’re pleased with the news that Dr. Shen and Dr. Ferhatosmanoglu have been honored with these awards. These two faculty members are excellent examples of the exceptional researchers we have been recruiting for our college," said Jim Williams, dean of the College of Engineering.

"The fact that they received this award in just its second year of existence is further evidence of their important impact at Ohio State and the College of Engineering," he continued.

The engineers earned two of the largest award amounts given by DOE in this round of funding. Both will receive approximately $300,000 over three years.

Shen’s project, "An End-to-End Processing Pipeline for Large-Scale, Time-Varying Data Visualization," will develop computer visualization algorithms to help scientists glean critical information from computer simulations. Because computers can generate vast amounts of complex data, scientists need an efficient way to create animations, manipulate data quickly, and pick out the most important results.

For example, astrophysicists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working on large-scale simulations of exploding stars known as supernovae. Shen wants his software to generate a three-dimensional virtual supernova; scientists will be able to "walk" around inside the exploding star using a computer mouse. Shen’s software also will allow them to perform efficient space-time data navigation and detect interesting features.

Ferhatosmanoglu’s project, "Scalable Storage and Efficient Retrieval of Large-Scale, High-Dimensional Scientific and Biomedical Data," will build search engines for scientific data in areas such as high-energy physics and molecular biology. Just as Internet search engines enable people to search billions of online documents quickly, Ferhatosmanoglu’s software will let scientists search through the results of a complex computer simulation to get the information they need.

For instance, many researchers regularly search through GenBank, the national online repository of DNA-related data maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

The GenBank database nearly doubles in size every 15 months, so normal search methods get slower over time. Ferhatosmanoglu said the search engine he is developing currently runs approximately 100 times faster than the one normally used for GenBank.

DOE awarded nearly $3 million in ECPI funding in 2003, to institutions including Columbia University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University. Begun in 2002, the ECPI program helps researchers establish careers in applied mathematics, computer science and high-performance networking. Another area of focus is collaboratory research -- the development of software that helps physically separated laboratories work together.

NEWS briefs

Recent news items in an abbreviated format.

OSU physicians dominate 'Best Doctors' list

An overwhelming majority of central Ohio physicians included in the national survey of "Best Doctors in America" are faculty members at the Ohio State Medical Center. The list is considered to be one of the more prestigious and credible tools available to consumers for selecting a doctor. Approximately 75 percent of central Ohio physicians listed in the survey are Ohio State faculty at one or more of the OSU-owned or affiliated hospitals.

The survey, compiled using peer review-based evaluations and updated for 2004, includes physicians in primary care fields and specialty areas such as cardiology, surgery and pediatrics. Approximately 200 physicians from central Ohio are on the updated list, and nearly 150 are Ohio State physicians. The "Best Doctors" database contains names of about 31,000 doctors in the United States, all who have been chosen through a peer-review process in which thousands of doctors have participated. Only physicians who earn the consensus support of their peers are included in the list.

Glenn Institute names social capital scholars

The John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy has named David Landsbergen, associate professor of public policy and management, and Angela Stuber, executive director of the Ohio Community Computing Network, its first two John Glenn Social Capital Scholars. Social capital includes the networks, community bonds and trust that a culture develops. The Institute’s Social Capital Scholars pursue projects that build social capital directly and produce research illuminating the best mechanisms for creating that capital. Landsbergen and Stuber will develop a network of central Ohio organizations providing information technology to schools, libraries and community computing centers. Published reports will guide other communities in creating these networks and offer insight into the means of fostering social capital in underserved communities.

Medical school applications rise sharply

The number of applications to Ohio State’s College of Medicine and Public Health this year grew 14 percent (from 3,293 for the 2003 entering class to 3,803 for the 2004 entering class), more than triple the national increase in applications of about 4 percent (33,860 compared with 32,552 last year). In addition, the number of secondary applications -- those from students who have narrowed their search and have OSU as their top choice or as a finalist -- to the college has increased by 29 percent (from 1,989 for the 2003 entering class to 2,809 for the 2004 entering class).

Online tool provides alcohol education

A new online alcohol education tool, MyStudentBody.com, is now available to Ohio State students, staff and faculty. The site is sponsored by the Student Wellness Center and can be accessed for free. As first-time users, faculty or staff can use the school code "wellness" to enter the site. Students, however, should use the school code "Buckeyes" to access the site. Students can explore MyStudentBody.com freely or be instructed to complete one of five specific sequence activities designed for first-year students, Greek students, student athletes, students who have received an alcohol-related judicial sanction, or students in general. After finishing a required course, students can print out a completion certificate for class. Several instructors have already incorporated this tool into their courses.

Alumni show strong presence in Peace Corps

Ohio State was recognized in a Jan. 20 letter from the Peace Corps for earning a top-25 spot in the corps’ list of "Top Producing Colleges and Universities," which ranks institutions based on the number of alumni who currently serve as Peace Corps volunteers worldwide.

Ohio State ranked 14th among large colleges and universities, with 63 alumni representing the university and the United States in some of the more than 70 countries in which the corps is currently serving. Volunteers commit to 27 months of training and service overseas, learning to speak the local language and adapt to the culture and values of the people they serve as they carry out the corps’ mission to promote world peace and friendship by promoting a better understanding of other peoples.

Central Ohio Tech Council honors Metros, Link

Susan Metros, deputy chief information officer, executive director for e-Learning and professor of design technology, has been named recipient of the Columbus Technology Council’s prestigious 2003 Top Contributors to the Advancement of Technology Award as Educator of the Year. Metros was honored for spearheading the university’s efforts to establish an instructional technology support center that will enhance the integration of new technologies in teaching and learning. Timothy Link, chief information officer for Ohio State Newark and Central Ohio Technical College, was a finalist for the award in the categories for Outstanding Educator Advancing Technology and Small Business Executive of the Year. Metros and Link were honored at an awards ceremony Jan. 22 in Columbus. Fred Sanfilippo, senior vice president for health sciences and dean of the College of Medicine and Public Health, gave the keynote address after an introduction by Gov. Bob Taft.

The Columbus Technology Council encourages and fosters formation and growth of technology-based companies and facilitates effective use of technology to strengthen central Ohio’s economy.

Medical student wins top research prize

Mark Lorenz, a third-year student in the College of Medicine and Public Health, has placed first in the National Neurofibromatosis Foundation’s peer-reviewed, worldwide competition for the NF Research Prize. The award includes a $10,000 stipend and an invitation to attend the annual meeting of the NNFF International Consortium for the Molecular Biology of NF1 and NF2 in Aspen, Colo. The NF prize was created to stimulate interest among young scientists in NF research. Entries are solicited from graduate and post-doctoral students from around the world. Lorenz was the only medical student to win the award this year.

next page...