That’s What She Said

Lynda K. Hall, professor of psychology, has something to smile about. Her son, Jeremy Boyd, a seventh-grader at Heritage Middle School in Westerville, Ohio, was part of the school’s team that took home first prize in the Future City National Finals Feb. 18-20 in Washington, D.C.

The mission of the National Engineers Week Future City Competition, now in its 16th year, is “to provide a fun and exciting educational engineering program for seventh- and eighth-grade students that combines a stimulating engineering challenge with a ‘hands-on’ application to present their vision of a city of the future.”

Hall said she could not have been more proud of the work her son did on the project.

As a member the Future City team, he worked to put together a simulation of their city with the videogame SimCity 3000, write an essay and an abstract about the city and make a scale model to be presented at the competition. The model had a budget of $100, so most of it was created from recycled materials, Hall said.

Boyd’s team placed their city of the future, RA, in Egypt, an unusual choice among the teams. Most chose well populated areas. Hall said they chose to place it in the desert to “look at how people will adapt.”

The topic for this year’s essay focused on how nanotechnology would be used to monitor the city’s infrastructure.

Their winning essay focused on how this technology would be used to manage their city’s sewer systems.

“The technology would provide RA engineers with precise data, a state-of-the-art monitoring system, automated repairs and precise problem detection that is economically advantageous, protects citizens’ heath and preserves the environment,” the students wrote.

The Future City competition consists of 1,100 middle schools from across the nation. Hall said she believed most schools were private schools which had more of a say in the way students spent their day.

“One school had Future City as a class period. We did ours on evenings and weekends,” Hall said.

Heritage Middle School won their regional competition held Jan. 19 at the Columbus Science Institute, qualifying their team for the national competition.

The presentation team, which Boyd was a part of, was only part of the group that created RA.

A group of twenty students, their teacher and a volunteer engineer who served as the team’s mentor, all worked hard on the competition’s four areas. The group then voted on the three students who would represent their team at the competition.

Hall said the Heritage’s volunteer mentor, Ted Beidler from the Franklin County, Ohio Engineering Department, let the students decide what they wanted to do with their city. He was hands off but would step in when he saw a problem.

“He pointed out their pitfalls,” Hall said.

The students were expected to know about their city and to be prepared to defend it, as they would be judged by a panel of engineers during their presentation.

After the top five schools were chosen, the students had to repeat their presentation in front of a larger audience consisting of the judges, parents and the other teams.

There has been only one other team from Ohio to place in the top five of the competition, Hall said.

One of those students, now in high school, helped this year’s team with their project.

Hall said the team was thrilled when they made the top five, let alone the top spot.

“We were really shocked when we realized they were the first place winners,” Hall said.

The rest of the teams immediately congratulated them after the awards were announced, she said.

“They were all so supportive of one another,” Hall said. “Their character really impressed me.”

Hall said the most surprising part of this adventure is not that the team took home the first place trophy, but that these students were determined to create a better way of life for the future. They were set on creating a safer, more efficient and “greener” world.

“They want to be part of the solution,” Hall said.

FROM: Volume 146, Issue 18: March 6, 2008

Students often spend a semester abroad during their college experience, but rarely do professors have the same opportunity. Mark P. Gingerich, James S. Britton Professor of European History here at Ohio Wesleyan, returned to campus in January after spending a semester in Turkey.

Gingerich was invited to teach at the Center for Russian Studies at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey as a visiting lecturer for the fall of 2007. The university was the first private university in Turkey.

“They offered me the position for a year,” Gingerich said, “but I couldn’t swing that.” Instead, he opted for one semester.

Though he was formally a part of the International Studies department at Bilkent, Gingerich taught strictly history courses.

At OWU, Gingerich has specialized in modern European history since 1991, where his course on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany is extremely popular among students. At Bilkent, his classes covered a broader timeline.

At the undergraduate level, Gingerich lectured on European political and diplomatic affairs spanning the years 1648 to 1914. He also taught a graduate seminar on the affairs of the Soviet Union during World War II.

In comparing OWU to Bilkent, Gingerich said most students were of the same high caliber.

The main difference though, was that while the university was an English-based institution, most of the students were not native English speakers.

“I found that a constant challenge,” he said. “I had to make sure I always spoke clearly. I tried to say everything twice using different ords and terms.”

Opportunities like this are not unheard of, but generally professors ave to apply for programs such as these through scholarly programs like Fulbright. In Gingerich’s case the opportunity arose out of his personal and professional connection with the director of the Center for Russian Studies.

“I got a phone call and was asked if I wanted to do it. It was not something I had to apply for. It was an invitation so I decided to take it,” he said.

Gingerich was accompanied by his wife, Suzan Osman, instructor of Middle Eastern history at OWU, and their twin daughters. The opportunity to share the experience with his family was ultimately what sold Gingerich on the trip.

“Quite honestly, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity,” he said.

Gingerich’s connection to the director of the Russian Studies Center is not the only connection he has to Turkey. His wife previously ived in Istanbul in the 1980s and is fluent in Turkish.

“If she had no connection, I would have still thought about it because I have friends in the faculty at Bilkent,” Gingerich said.

The opportunity to return to Turkey was exciting to Osman and it had always been a dream of hers to return. As for the couple’s eleven year old daughters, it was hard to transition to living in another country.

“They really missed their friends [and] they missed their school,” Gingerich said.

“They made friends at school and we have family friends with girls right about their age, but we were kind of isolated,” he said. “We lived on campus and there weren’t a lot of kids right in the apartment block where we were.”

Gingerich said that while the experience was positive, it was also unusual.

“To be in a different country, to teach European history in English; there are very few opportunities in Europe to do that. If you’re teaching American history and you are an American, you have a much better chance of being brought somewhere else.”

Gingerich said it was more common to bring in someone from a European background to teach European history rather than an American.

When asked if he would pursue the opportunity again if it should present itself, Gingerich said he would seriously consider it.

“It’s quite disruptive for one’s family. If I do it again in the future I would probably wait until my daughters are in college so it would just be my wife and I.”

Gingerich also said that his decision would depend on the location.

He knows the area of Ankara now and thanks to sightseeing trips he has seen at least some of Turkey outside the capital city.

“We took every opportunity we could [to explore]. It was difficult of course because I was teaching five days a week and my daughters were in school for a very long school day,” he said. “But we made it to Istanbul a couple of times [and] we went up to the Black Sea region.”

After pushing up his final exams due to the overlapping schedules with OWU, Gingerich and his family spent a few days in Munich, Germany before returning home.

The experience may have been a once in a lifetime opportunity and a lot of fun, but Gingerich seemed happy to be back.

From: Volume 146, Issue 17: February 28, 2008

Ohio Wesleyan’s faculty met on Monday to discuss tuition increases, campus construction and the incoming class of 2012.
David Robbins, provost and interim president, announced that the total cost of attending OWU will be raised to $41,970 next year.

This is a 5.5 percent increase in tuition and a 3 percent increase for both room and board. In addition, the technology fee will be raised another $40.

Last spring, the Board of Trustees increased the total cost of attending OWU to $39,960. They said that raise helped to balance the school’s budget.

However, that budget, as well as the tuition increase, were approved prior to the announcement of former President Mark Huddleston’s departure from OWU. The presidential search that followed his exit last June was therefore not taken into account when the budget was accepted. However, Robbins said the original budget was on track without taking into consideration the cost of the search.

Robbins said the university plans to beautify OWU’s campus by replacing the memorial gate on Sandusky St. leading to Slocum Hall.

The renovation was made possible by a gift from the class of 1959.

The school plans to construct a plaza in front of Slocum Hall using other funding. The plaza will honor the men and women who have donated at least $1 million to the university.

Other works will be finished as the funds became available, Robbins said.

For example, he said he is hoping to repair and replace the south wall of Selby Stadium when the school can afford to do so.

Margaret Drugovich, vice president for strategic communications and university enrollment, said OWU’s number of applicants is increasing, despite the rise in tuition. The number of American applicants is up 14 percent while the number of international student applications is up 16 percent. Drugovich also said the number of cancelled applications is decreasing.

Drugovich said the number of deposits that have already been received is higher than it has been in years. Admitted students have until May 1 to put down a deposit to hold their spot in OWU’s class of 2012.

Referencing the new class, Drugovich announced that Slice of College Life, OWU’s program to welcome admitted students to campus, will be held April 13 and 14.

Other topics discussed in the meeting include:

• Homecoming weekend will be Oct. 10-12. It will coincide with President Rockwell “Rock” Jones’ inauguration.
• OWU’s Phi Beta Kappa honor society will be celebrating its centennial this year. The celebration will be March 5 with speaker John Churchill in Gray Chapel at 7:30 p.m.
• A memorial was read by Dennis Radabaugh for the late William D. Stull, a former Ohio Wesleyan professor of Zoology who passed away last May. He was 95.
• OWU received a wire totaling $3 million last week from the Manchester estate. This brought the Ida Austin Manchester endowment to $7 million.

FROM: Volume 146, Issue 16: February 21, 2008

Ohio Wesleyan hired 12 new faculty members for the 2007-2008 academic year. As the fall semester is now over, the professors are no longer the new kids. They came from various backgrounds and various areas of the country, but they are all enjoying teaching here at OWU.

Before joining OWU as a professor in the neuroscience program, Jennifer Yates held visiting positions at various schools in the northeast. She is now an assistant professor of psychology.

Yates said she prefers OWU to her other schools and that the university is what she would have expected from a private liberal arts institution. She was hoping for smart and friendly students and for a school with interests in research.

“All those things I was hoping for and got,” she said.

Entering a new environment can be difficult as a student or a professor. As for adjusting to the OWU community, Yates said she is hitting her stride.

“People in the college have been super supportive making sure I get on my feet,” she said. The usual problems of knowing where to be and where to get copies of tests were all that Yates had to deal with.

“Nothing that held me back for too long,” she said.

This was the trend across campus among the new faculty. Assistant Professor of English Mark Allison said that it took him awhile to learn how to get certain things done.

“At any institution there’s always a learning curve,” Allison said. “But everyone was extremely helpful so the problems never became big problems.”

Allison earned his undergraduate degree from Kenyon College, a small liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio.

From his own experiences, he said he had some idea of what to expect at OWU.

“I enjoy how friendly and supportive the environment is here,” he said. “I was pleased to see OWU lived up to my expectations.”

Allison Baird Lovell, assistant professor of humanities and classics, recently left Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. She said at Stanford students had been more aggressive. The relationship between student and professor from the students’ perspective was one of customer service with a “you’re here to serve me” mentality.

“Here I find it a little more traditional,” she said. “People have more respect for the faculty.”

But that is not the only reason Lovell prefers OWU to larger learning institutions. For starters her position is tenure track meaning a long-term commitment and a future. At Stanford
she said it was a revolving door position or a stepping stone.

At Stanford Lovell taught as a Postdoctoral Humanities Fellow. Each quarter she was responsible for three classes of mandatory humanities courses. She described the environment as a “transient situation.”

“I prefer the environment of a small liberal arts college,” Lovell said. “I can cultivate connection ties with students and develop mentoring relationships with students over a period of time as opposed to the one course.”

Lovell also said she liked that she has more of a say in what she is to teach here at OWU.

“[At Stanford] there were drawbacks. I did not have autonomy over my courses. We were assigned courses to teach. We did not choose the readings or the pace of the course. Here I can design my courses. There are a lot more possibilities.”

Overall Lovell agreed she had a good first semester at OWU. Next semester she will be teaching some of her own courses in the humanities and classics. She said the only thing she had trouble with in the transition from California was getting used to the colder weather.

Other faculty members who were new to OWU last fall were David Alexander, Kristina Bogdanov, Christopher Fink, Frank Hobbs, Zackariah Long, Lisa Patrick, Melinda Rhodes
and David Walker.

FROM: Volume 146, Issue 15: February 14, 2008