OSU veterans break bread together

By SUSAN WITTSTOCK, onCAMPUS staff

Once a month, a lunch takes place in the Faculty Club, attracting young, old, vice presidents, custodians, men, women, professors and staff. They come to talk, eat, learn and, perhaps most importantly, spend time with others who share a common experience: service in the military.

The lunches are sponsored by Veterans Affairs, part of Ohio State's Office of Human Resources, and have taken place since July 2001. "Several of the veterans wanted to get together to eat lunch and get to know one another better. There are a lot of veterans on campus, but they don't always get to meet each other," said Bill Hospodar, director of veterans affairs.

All Ohio State veterans and friends are welcome to attend the lunches, which always include a speaker. Attendance has grown from an average of five to 10 to between 25 to 30.

"What this has fostered, at least what many have told me, is that now they're getting to know folks in departments across the campus. It's a vehicle for community," Hospodar said. "We have a wide variety of people attending, but they have one thing in common -- service in the military -- and they're proud of that."

Gregory Travalio, associate dean for professional relations and Lawrence D. Stanley Professor of Law in the Moritz College of Law, attends many of the lunches. Travalio, a colonel in the Judge Advocate General's Corps in the U.S. Army Reserve, said he enjoys the chance to interact with others with a military history. "It's a nice chance to get together with a bunch of people with something similar in their backgrounds. Most people there view their military experience -- no matter how brief or lengthy -- as a significant event in their lives. There's that sense of community," he said.

James Dertinger, coordinator of education and safety programs for the Department of Physical Facilities, is also a long-time attendee of the lunches and cites both the collegial atmosphere and the chance for continuing education as his motivation. "The speakers present really great material and I've met some wonderful people," said Dertinger, who served as an Army combat engineer for two years. "If not for the lunches, I never would have met a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, I wouldn't have been exposed to people in the Mershon Center, and I've learned a lot about resources for veterans at state and federal levels."

Speakers for the lunches have been a diverse group, including: military experts, many on Ohio State's faculty, speaking on wars from World War I on through to Iraq; former and current military officers, speaking from personal experience; and presenters on general interest topics, such as military benefits, wellness and financial planning.

Although lunch attendees are normally asked to pay for their own meals (the Faculty Club waives the non-member fees), veterans are invited twice a year to free recognition lunches. This year's Veterans Day Lunch, by R.S.V.P. only, will take place Nov. 7 and will include a talk given by retired Gen. Lester Lyles, former commander of the U.S. Air Force Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.

Veterans Affairs also offers a free Armed Forces Day lunch in May, honoring those currently serving in the military. The luncheon activities include the presentation of the Arnold Skurow Student Veteran Award to student veterans attending Ohio State. The award, which is funded through a Veterans Affairs Campus Campaign fund, is given to students who have demonstrated involvement in veteran and community activity and achieved academic success. Approximately 150 veterans attend the recognition lunches, Hospodar said.

Hospodar is unaware of any other universities offering organized fellowship for veterans. "To the best of my knowledge, we are unique in this respect," he said.

Ohio State's Veterans Affairs office was started in 1992, after a Department of Labor investigation determined that the university needed to create a more positive environment for veterans and called for the implementation of outreach and affirmative action programs. "Ever since then, we've tried to help veterans however we can and create a pleasant situation for them, while reminding the university of its legal obligations," Hospodar said. "I think the university now does offer a positive environment for veterans. Like everything else, though, it needs constant maintenance."

There are approximately 2,000 faculty and staff veterans on campus and about 1,000 students, Hospodar estimates, with about 150 faculty and staff and 350 student members of the Reserves or National Guard. "Some are now serving in Iraq, Bosnia and Afghanistan," he said.

Hospodar himself is a veteran. He retired as a colonel after 28 years in the Army. His military career included two years in Vietnam and teaching ROTC at Ohio State in the early 1970s, when anti-war riots took place on campus. He is leaving the university at the end of November after 11 years of service. He will assume the position as director of the Troops to Teachers program at the Ohio Department of Education, where he will coordinate efforts to recruit military veterans to become teachers in math and science for urban and rural public schools.

Nestor-Baker has plans for P-12 Project

By RANDY GAMMAGE, onCAMPUS staff

Nancy Nestor-Baker, the new director of Ohio State's P-12 Project, had an excellent role model to follow as she developed a career in higher education.

Her father is the late Harold Nestor, former president of Columbus State Community College.

"He had a great deal to do with the way I look at higher education. He always told me 'You need to be a walking, talking, shouting advocate for higher education for everybody,'" she said. "Now, it just oozes out of my pores. It is what I am."

Nancy Nestor-Baker

She returns to Ohio State -- her alma mater for bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in education -- from the University of Cincinnati, where she served as assistant professor of education and coordinator of its educational administration program.

Appointed director in July, Nestor-Baker said she will provide the leadership to continue to develop the P-12 Project beyond the substantial foundation that already has been accomplished by former director Daryl Siedentop, who stepped down from the post at the end of summer quarter.

The P-12 Project is a universitywide program through the Office of Academic Affairs with the College of Education serving in the lead role. The overall mission of the project is to assist in the improvement of Ohio's schools, particularly in districts that serve children and youths from lower socio-economic families.

Nestor-Baker said that a number of initiatives developed under Siedentop's leadership -- notably Community Connection, which matches faculty and students with neighborhood schools and community service organizations, and the University Neighborhood Schools program, a collaboration with Columbus Public Schools to provide research and academic and social services to schools, students and families -- are poised to take a big leap this year.

"Our challenge is to find ways to take them to that next level, so this is a very exciting time to be on board as director of the P-12 Project," she said.

To date, the P-12 Project's most visible effort is its relationship with the University District schools.

"We have a very strong commitment to the area east of High Street, and we're going to continue that," Nestor-Baker said. "The 13 schools in the University District run the gamut of educational opportunities and it's a wonderful way for Ohio State's P-12 Project to be involved with the Columbus Public Schools."

However, the project's focus extends beyond that. Sub-committees are expanding after-school youth development, service-learning opportunities, academic assistance and social services.

One emerging initiative -- the Columbus Public Schools (CPS)-Higher Education Partnerships -- teams Ohio State, CPS, Columbus State Community College and Otterbein College on a mission to help improve the education of students attending CPS. Nestor-Baker said the partnership calls for a seamless network, P-16 and beyond, of integrated urban education programs, services and experiences to ensure that students make successful progress from pre-school through their college years. Ultimately, it will maximize the resources of each partner as well as promote collaborations in pursuit of funds.

"We can have a real impact nationally on the way higher education institutions interact with urban school systems," Nestor-Baker said.

A number of P-12 Project initiatives are in the incubation stage. For example, a framework is being developed to establish a research infrastructure that brings together researchers from different fields with similar interests to create a network to develop projects and acquire funding in the areas of childhood inactivity, obesity and diabetes.

"That fits in well with the land-grant mission of Ohio State and President (Karen) Holbrook's leadership vision. I feel like we are at a good place at a good time," Nestor-Baker said.

In addition to Columbus-area efforts, Nestor-Baker is looking forward to working with the regional campuses to expand Ohio State's P-12 presence.

"P-12 is not only about the Columbus area, nor is it only about urban students," she said. "The regional campuses are key to our efforts in other parts of the state and they tend to have strong relationships with their local communities. I've spoken with some people involved with outreach at the regionals and am making plans to visit each campus."

She feels the crosscutting skills she developed while juggling teaching and administrative duties at the University of Cincinnati for three years with her role as a board member and later president of the Westerville City Schools Board of Education have made for an easy transition to her current position.

"I've spent most of my life in this area and have acquired a lot of understanding not only about Ohio State but the Columbus community," she said. "As I grew up I was able to witness the changes occurring in Columbus and the stresses that go with those changes. When I think and talk about going out there and developing partnerships with the community, understanding the history of the city makes it easier to jump in and swim faster."

For further information regarding the P-12 Project, visit its Web site at www.p12.osu.edu.

Sweet pursuits: New Eminent Scholar unravels biochemical mysteries of sugar

By HOLLY WAGNER, Research Communications

The latest Eminent Scholar to join Ohio State's faculty is a glycobiochemist -- he studies the role that cellular carbohydrates, or sugars, play in immunity and disease.

Peng "George" Wang is the Ohio Eminent Scholar in macromolecular structure and function and is also the third Eminent Scholar to join the College of Biological Sciences. Wang comes to Ohio State from Wayne State University in Detroit, where he was a professor of organic chemistry and biochemistry.

Peng "George" Wang

His research interests in cellular carbohydrates are as pervasive as table sugar is in the American diet. Wang studies how these sugars function from a biological, chemical, agricultural and bioengineering standpoint. These sugars -- in forms quite different from those found in food -- are an important component of each cell in our body.

"That importance is just beginning to be realized and understood," Wang said. "Synthesizing complex carbohydrate molecules is the frontier of modern synthetic chemistry."

Compared to genomics and proteomics -- the study of proteins -- glycomics is a relatively new field. Researchers have been studying these complex biological carbohydrates in earnest for only 10 or 20 years, Wang said.

"Cellular carbohydrates have an important role in almost every aspect of the life cycle, but we know relatively little about how they work," Wang said. He added that many of our current vaccines are derived from the sugars covering cells, and that if researchers can get a better understanding of the nature of these sugars, they could develop new and better vaccines and medications to fight disease.

"Every human cell contains carbohydrates," Wang said. "It's how the body initially identifies a cell -- sugar is involved in the initial step of every cell-to-cell communication."

For example, if a bacterial infection develops in the body, the body zeroes in on the intruding bacteria. The first thing the body detects is the sugar on the surface of that invader.

"Sugar is involved each time a cell interacts with another cell, whether it's in immunology, cancer or an infection," Wang said.

The lack of information on how cellular sugars work has much to do with the fact that these compounds are prohibitively expensive to reproduce in great quantities. But Wang has devised a couple of methods to help solve that problem.

"If we can produce cellular sugars in mass amounts, we can develop better, more targeted vaccines and drugs to fight disease in humans, animals and plants," Wang said.

He and his colleagues have spent the last several years developing relatively inexpensive ways to produce cellular carbohydrates on a large scale, methods Wang refers to as "superbug" and "superbead."

He came up with the idea of using a simple system -- such as bacteria -- to produce desirable quantities of cellular sugar. But first he needed to figure out how human cells made sugar.

What he found when he studied human cells was a complex pathway requiring a number of enzymes to make sugar. He cloned each of these enzymes and connected their genes together to produce an artificial gene cluster. He then transferred that new cluster of genes to a strain of E. coli bacteria. (Other microorganisms, such as yeast, would work as well, Wang said.) The E. coli then became a superbug, producing the same kind of sugar that a human cell would typically produce, and on a much larger scale.

For the small- to medium-scale synthesis of carbohydrates, all of the enzymes along the biosynthetic pathway of the desired sugar can be placed on tiny synthetic beads, which Wang calls superbeads. These beads will then catalyze the production of the sugar in a cellular system.

"Both are simple systems that can manufacture biomedically important carbohydrates," Wang said. "The complex of sugar on a cell's surface can be used to make new kinds of vaccines, anti-cancer drugs and even functional foods. Using superbugs and superbeads to create the necessary carbohydrates could ultimately reduce the cost of manufacturing these kinds of goods."

Wang joined the Ohio State faculty Oct. 1. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has published more than 140 research papers, reviews and book chapters and has submitted several patent applications.