Diversity UPDATE
SUMMER 2004
MESSAGE FROM MAC
Vice Provost for Minority Affairs
Dear Friends of Ohio State:
The American Council on Education (ACE) recently recognized Ohio State for its participation in a program called College is Possible (CIP). CIP was originally created to provide information for students and their families about obtaining financial assistance to contend with rising college costs. This year, ACE launched the College is Possible II project, which is aimed at convincing middle school and high school students that a college education is an obtainable goal for all. This is done by disseminating motivational messages, identifying and sharing best practices, conducting and encouraging research, and forging strategic partnerships with K-12 organizations and community advocates. Campus liaisons representing each institution, including one from Ohio State, meet regularly to discuss the results of their interactions with students, share challenges and successful program models, assist with the research agenda, and shape long-term project goals. As you can see, this program addresses issues at many levels and we are excited about the possible outcomes of our participation.
CIP is just one of many new initiatives that we are undertaking to assist our minority students while they navigate from phase to phase during their college careers. Some of our programs are quite practical Ð designed to meet the basic needs of our students, such as academic or financial aid advising Ð while others are meant to instill the values of service and community. In the coming year, the university will be launching two new programs Ð a campus workshop to prepare minority students for college, and a world service project that will send them into communities in need. Please watch this space for updates on these and many other activities as they unfold.
As always, I ask you to take a moment to review this publication and share it with your colleagues.
Sincerely,
Mac A. Stewart
Vice Provost
Minority Affairs, Alumni Association Host Outreach Program
This summer, the Office of Minority Affairs started a new educational outreach program designed to increase the number of African American males in greater Columbus who are academically prepared for college. The new program was derived from the African American Male Initiative at Ohio State, which provides specialized resources to retain and graduate African American male students. Mac Stewart, vice provost for minority affairs, and Archie Griffin, president and CEO of the Ohio State Alumni Association, hosted the program for 24 African American male fifth-graders from the Columbus Public Africentric School. The event took place at the Longaberger Alumni House and included visits to the Woody Hayes Athletic Center and Frank W. Hale Jr. Black Cultural Center. Stewart said the goal of the program is to ensure that students receive encouragement and the proper information to become academically prepared for college before they reach middle school or high school.
According to the American Council on Education's annual report, approximately 37 percent of both male and female African American high school graduates, ages 18 to 24, are enrolled in college, compared with 42 percent of African American women of the same ages. Caucasians are similarly enrolled at 46 percent. "National statistics clearly show that the percentage gap of African American males enrolled in college is widening compared with African American females and Caucasians," Stewart said. "In addition to our many efforts at Ohio State to retain and graduate African American men, it has become increasingly important to ensure that young people receive proper guidance with regard to their academic future as early as possible."
Griffin, now leading the Alumni Association after a career in the Ohio State Athletics Department, was one of Ohio State's most celebrated football standouts. He told students that among his accomplishments, which included winning the only back-to-back Heisman Trophies ever awarded, none was more important than the degree he earned from Ohio State. "Football was the vehicle I used throughout my life to get the education I wanted," Griffin said. "Getting good grades was extremely important to me and my family."
He also challenged students to try his "3-D" philosophy. "Desire, dedication and determination are the three goals I use every day in my life," Griffin said. "They represent a commitment to be the best you can be and are still important to me in my professional life as president and CEO of the Alumni Association."
Progress Report
Faculty and Staff Recruitment
At their July meeting, the university's Board of Trustees approved the administration's plan to provide access to healthcare benefits to a broader range of dependents of faculty, staff, graduate associates, and students as well as subsidized coverage for eligible domestic partners and their children. In proposing the benefits extension, President Karen A. Holbrook told the board the issue has been a high priority of her administration because of its importance to recruiting and retaining world-class faculty, staff and students, major elements of the university's Academic Plan and Diversity Action Plan, as well as its value in creating a positive work/life environment for all employees. No state-appropriated funds will be used.
The Fisher College of Business hired Anne L. Beatty as the Deloitte and Touche Professor of Accounting, the first woman to hold an endowed chair in accounting at Ohio State. Her research focuses on the importance of accounting in debt contracting and bank capital regulation, and she is also an expert in the economic effects of accounting. Professor Beatty's research has been published in many journals, including The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research and the Journal of Financial Economics. Before joining the faculty of Fisher College, Professor Beatty taught financial accounting and empirical financial accounting research at Pennsylvania State University's Smeal College of Business. She also taught at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of Illinois. She earned her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an MBA and BA at the University of Chicago.
Seventeen women and 14 minority faculty members, five of whom are female, were recruited into senior- level faculty positions and arrived on campus during the 2003-04 academic year. The university also will welcome more than 80 new junior minority faculty this fall, including 48 women.
Student Recruitment and Retention Undergraduate Admissions, Minority Affairs, the Alumni Association, and University Relations are teaming up to develop new communications initiatives intended to encourage African American youth in central Ohio to go to college--and particularly to Ohio State. Their first collaboration takes the form of radio ads that began running the first week of October on Columbus urban radio stations, featuring messages from current students and parents.
Ohio State recently hosted the first-ever Ohio Science and Engineering Alliance (OSEA) student research forum. Funded by the National Science Foundation, OSEA is part of the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, which was created to improve the retention of undergraduate minority students and to encourage more of these students to pursue graduate study. More than 150 people from around the state attended the two-day event that offered keynote speeches by Oliver G. McGee III, professor and chair of civil and environmental engineering and geodetic science, and Judith Gwathmey, professor of medicine at Boston University Medical Center and senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School (Ph.D. from Ohio State in veterinary physiology, pharmacology and toxicology). The event also featured more than 45 research projects, workshops, and a recruitment fair attended by corporate and government employers as well as graduate schools from the State of Ohio.
Academic and Research Programming
The John Glenn Institute will offer a new diversity seminar through its Management Advancement for the Public Service (MAPS) series. Titled "Diversity: Inclusion, Consciousness, Integrity and Ethics," the seminar focuses on the belief that most employees want to handle work relationships without being affected by stereotypes and prejudices. The objectives of this session are to share the broad definitions of diversity, understand the organizational imperatives of diversity, and increase individual comfort zones in workplace interactions.
Leadership/Recognition
The editors of Science Spectrum magazine and US Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine have selected Oliver G. McGee III, professor and chair of civil and environmental engineering and geodetic science, as one of the "50 Most Important Blacks in Research Science" for 2004. Honorees are chosen for this annual list based on their work in making science part of global society. During the year that the list is publicized, its members are presented to young people as role models, and their accomplishments are upheld as examples of the important contributions made on a daily basis by the small but growing cadre of African Americans in the field.
Howard M. Johnson, a three-time Ohio State graduate, received an honorary doctorate at the summer quarter commencement ceremony in August. Johnson is the Graduate Research Professor in microbiology and cell science at the University of Florida. He has received international recognition for his contributions to understanding the immune system. Additionally, his immunology research has played an important role in the treatment of multiple sclerosis.
The Fisher College of Business recently hosted its third annual Diversity Business Awards and Alumni Reception at the Blackwell. Awards were presented to both an individual and a corporation for their efforts in support of diversity at the Fisher College. Ami Scott, an attorney with Mayer, Brown, Rowe and Maw in Chicago, and Ross Products, a world leader in nutrition and a division of Abbott Laboratories, received the 2004 awards.
The Columbus Bar Association recently elected Ohio State's associate legal counsel, Kimberly Shumate, as its president. Shumate will be the first minority woman to lead the bar. In addition to continuing the CBA's diversity partnership initiative, Shumate said in the coming year the bar would focus on expanding its membership and encouraging younger attorneys to take on active roles within the organization. She said she hopes to serve as an example to younger attorneys.
Access for the Disabled
The United States Access Board released new guidelines designed to continue to meet the needs of people with disabilities and keep pace with technological innovations. New provisions for ATMs require audible output so that people with vision impairments are provided equal access, reach ranges have been lowered to better serve people who use wheelchairs and persons of short stature, and new standards for recreation facilities have been incorporated. The ADA Coordinator and the Office of Facilities Planning and Development will be updating Ohio State's building standards, developing training for staff and exploring ways to provide training to the design community.
The National Center on Accessible Information Technology in Education included Ohio State's web accessibility policies under its Promising Practice section. According to the Center, "Ohio State is particularly noteworthy in that they have a strong tradition of providing web accessibility support services to their faculty, staff, and teaching assistants." Ohio State recently approved a set of web access policies and standards to ensure equal access to information for all of its constituencies.
Awareness
A recent edition of Theory into Practice, a quarterly journal published by the College of Education, contained an article titled "Sexual Identities and Schooling." The piece argued that no subculture is more oppressed in schools than lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people, with schools for the most part failing to provide any kind of support system for students or faculty who are not heterosexual. It offered a range of perspectives regarding institutional practices that serve to silence and deny the voices of non-heterosexals in school contexts, as well as the resistance encountered from students, teachers, administrators, and researchers.
Cedric Jennings, whose story was documented in the best-selling book, "A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League," joined the Ohio State University Young Scholars at the Samuel DuBois Cook Summer Academy. Jennings discussed the challenges he faced as a student in an inner city school district, and how he was able to rise above those obstacles as he went on to graduate from Brown University. At his request, Jennings also spent a day with the Young Scholars, joining them for classes, meals, lectures and a talent show.
Ohio State hosted a national symposium that examined how racial, gender, class and other forms of inequality in the United States are linked to issues concerning crime and justice. The symposium was called "Inequality, Crime and Justice: Challenges and Prospects," and was sponsored by Ohio State's Department of Sociology and the university's Criminal Justice Research Center. It featured top faculty from around the country who discussed cutting-edge research on the topic. One session was held on race and class implications of DNA technologies used by law enforcement, and another addressed the political disenfranchisement of felons -- a hot topic in light of the controversial 2000 presidential election and the upcoming election this November. Other topics included racial and ethnic differences in views about justice, differential causes of crime, and gender and racial disparities in youth violence.
Outreach Activities
The College of Dentistry and the OHIO Project sponsored a seven-week summer "Introduction to Dental Assisting" course for under-represented minority high school students. The program is funded by a five-year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and is designed for students who have an interest in science and are considering a career in the health profession. It introduced students to the professions of dentistry, including its specialties, and dental hygiene and the vocations of dental assisting and dental laboratory technology.
Dr. Suellywn Stewart, a physician in the Medical Center's primary care network, has begun seeing patients at the new OSU Family Practice on the south side of Columbus. A graduate of Saba University School of Medicine in Saba, Netherlands Antilles, Stewart provides diverse family medical care, with a clinical interest in addiction medicine, prevention and working with the medically underserved. Stewart is a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Medical Women's Association, the American Medical Association, the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians and the Columbus Medical Society.
