ASCENT Spring 2015 by College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State

SPRING 2015

ASCENT

NEWS FROM THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

on the COVER CATALYSTS FOR INNOVATION From cover to cover, this issue of ASCENT features our leaders of innovation. Pictured on the cover in the new, ultra-modern CBEC Building (pg. 18): (l-r, clockwise) Tanisha Robinson, alumna and “unicorn” entrepreneur (pg. 14); Daniel Thompson and Hannah Shafaat, NSF CAREER Award recipients (pg. 33); and P. Christopher Hammel, director of the Center for Emergent Materials (p.22).

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MEET SUSAN WILLIAMS

INTERNSHIPS LEAD TO AN EMMY? PRESSING AHEAD

VICE DEAN, COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

MEET THE NEW DIRECTOR OF THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRESCRIPTION FOR CHANGE

STATISTICS KEY TO UNLOCKING CRITICAL HEALTH INFORMATION

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THE NEW CBEC BUILDING

LIGHT SCULPTURE MERGES SCIENCE AND ART

CENTER FOR EMERGENT MATERIALS

ASCENT WELCOME to the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University. For us, ASCENT reflects the amazing potential and value of an arts and sciences education at Ohio State. The Buckeye experience is powerful, transformative and stays with us throughout our lives, reaching far beyond geographic borders. We want to share these stories with you and we hope that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll share your stories, ideas and feedback with us.

The act or process of ascending; advancement

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TRANSFORMATIONAL INVESTMENTS

RATNER AWARDS

EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS

FOR DISTINGUISHED TEACHING IN ARTS & HUMANITIES

CIRCULATION ASCENT is mailed 2x/year to alumni (circulation 172,500). We also send supplemental updates to our alumni, students, faculty, staff, donors and friends throughout the year via e-newsletter. GO GREEN ASCENT is printed with environmentally friendly papers (30% post industrial and 100% post-consumer fibers) using soy-based ink. To receive just the e-newsletter and save a tree, please contact us. CONTACT US/UNSUBSCRIBE Please send us your feedback, comments and story ideas. Additionally, you can always choose to stop receiving this magazine by sending an email to asccomm@osu.edu or a note by mail to: 1010 Derby Hall, 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, Ohio 43210

EDITOR Libby Eckhardt | EDITORIAL STAFF Elizabeth Tarpy Alcalde, Victoria Ellwood, Sandi Rutkowski | DESIGN STAFF Greg Bonnell, Andrew Bromwell, Karin Samoviski

Dunn Family in Cutigliano, Italy. September 2012

PHOTOGRAPHY Janell Strouse | WEB COMMUNICATIONS Eva Dujardin Dale, Jody Croley Jones, Kevin Whaley

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 186 University Hall | 230 N. Oval Mall | Columbus, Ohio 43210 | asc.osu.edu

In EACH Issue MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN

NEWS & NOTES

ALUMNI NOTES

SCIENCE & SCHOLARSHIP artsandsciences.osu.edu

David Manderscheid | Executive Dean and Vice Provost Susan Williams | Vice Dean Janet Box-Steffensmeier | Divisional Dean, Social and Behavioral Sciences Christopher Hadad | Divisional Dean, Natural and Mathematical Sciences Mark Shanda | Divisional Dean, Arts and Humanities

A MESSAGE FROM DEAN MANDERSCHEID Perhaps we should call this issue of ASCENT, “The Power Issue.” Certainly, none has better illustrated the power of the arts and sciences. On the front cover, photographed in the lobby of CBEC — our new, powerhouse research building where some of the world’s greatest problems will be addressed — we feature four powerhouse problem-solvers: NSF CAREER Award winners, chemist Hannah Shafaat and mathematician Daniel Thompson; Christopher Hammel, physics professor and director of Ohio State’s Center for Emergent Materials, an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center; and alumna/ empire-builder Tanisha Robinson. Inside — more people and places driving change, discovery, innovation, entrepreneurship, philanthropy. A few highlights: •

World-acclaimed historian Geoffrey Parker explains HOW to study history, he said, “You can’t ask ‘why?’ until you know how”

•

Statistician Eloise Kaizar shows how a relatively small, targeted grant can make a real difference in a critical area

•

Music professor David Huron travels the world studying how people react to music

•

Donald Dunn, WWII veteran, Silver Star recipient and friend of the history department, tells why he funds students’ studies of military history

•

Honors undergraduate, economics major Gabe Englander “just wants to do research that matters”

Don’t we all? Please let us hear from you. Our alumni remain our best friends, most powerful advocates and our ultimate legacy.

DAVID MANDERSCHEID, PhD Executive Dean and Vice Provost College of Arts and Sciences, The Ohio State University

To support the College of Arts and Sciences, visit go.osu.edu/give-asc {#310982}.

BUCKEYE NATION: FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS Anyone who’s spent any time on the Oval knows that the chimes of Orton Hall create the soundtrack for the Buckeye Experience. This year marks the 100th anniversary of this beloved tradition. Throughout each day, 25,000 pounds of bells chime in the key of E-flat on the quarter hour, helping all chart their course for the day. Students began signing their names on the door to the bell tower in the early 1900s and, although unauthorized, continue to do so today — names cover the brick walls inside the tower. See and read more on the back cover.

MEET SUSAN WILLIAMS, VICE DEAN, COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

On Nov. 1, 2014, SUSAN WILLIAMS began her full-time appointment as vice dean, College of Arts and Sciences — continuing a more than 23-year career at the university. In this new role, Williams is responsible for coordinating faculty affairs across the college, serving as deputy to the executive dean in supporting college-wide initiatives and supporting cross-college collaboration. Williams came to Ohio State as an assistant professor in the Department of English in 1991; she taught American literature and served as graduate director. In 2005, Williams received the Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, and she was promoted to professor in 2006. Williams is the author of Confounding Images: Photography and Portraiture in Antebellum American Fiction and Reclaiming Authorship: Literary Women in America, 1850-1900. Most recently, Williams served as vice provost in the university’s Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) for five and a half years. artsandsciences.osu.edu

We sat down with Vice Dean Williams to get to know her a bit better.

Q. What excited you most about coming to the College of Arts and Sciences?

A. When I was in OAA, I had the opportunity to watch the evolution of five colleges into the College of Arts and Sciences. I was and am very excited about what we can accomplish as one college. I want to be an advocate for the arts and sciences, which is my intellectual home.

Q. Dean Manderscheid has said that his goal is for the college to be the best arts and sciences college in the country. What does that goal mean to you? A. I think that being the best College of Arts and Sciences means that we will be seen as a leader in fostering research, scholarship and teaching in the basic disciplines and interdisciplinary programs in the arts and sciences, not only for the university but for the nation. You can find the entire interview online at go.osu.edu/s-williams.

NEWS & NOTES

WANT MORE? SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY E-NEWSLETTER AT GO.OSU.EDU/ASCNEWS

HAPPY 100

“I loved dancing and thought it should be the center of the whole university.” That’s how Helen Alkire, who continues to attend Ohio State dance performances today, sums up her role in establishing the widely acclaimed dance program. Alkire, who turns 100 in May, founded the program in the early 1950s, while serving on the faculty in physical education, where the dance program resided. When the College of the Arts was formed in 1968, Alkire became chair of the Department of Dance, continuing in that role until 1983. Alkire was a national leader in developing standards for dance in higher education and helped found the National Association of Schools of Dance. Her strong connections with professional working artists helped establish the department’s focus on visiting artists and scholars. Her interest in developing dance literacy led to the creation of the Dance Notation Bureau Extension, positioning Ohio State as a leader in dance documentation and analysis.

WOMEN’S, GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES CELEBRATES 40 YEARS! 2015 marks the 40th anniversary of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) programming at Ohio State. Since its inception, faculty and students in WGSS have raised awareness and introduced new modes of thinking about gender and sexuality and contributed to social change. The department will be hosting an anniversary celebration on May 1, 2015 to commemorate its past, honor those who helped the department grow, and unveil plans to inspire a new generation of gender and sexuality scholars and feminist leaders committed to social justice.

HISTORIAN DELIVERS AUTUMN 2014 COMMENCEMENT History Professor David Steigerwald prepared his commencement address the way the winner of an Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching (2009) would: by asking students what they wanted to hear. The result: a personal, engaging, reality-based, yet reassuring, send-off, peppered with humor and insight, avoiding platitudes; seasoned, of course, with historical context.

“Your historic challenge is to navigate through a world of uncertainty … Your way ahead won’t be straight. But don’t think about it as crooked. Think about it as wonderfully varied ... If all we did here was training you in one skill, for one job, in one place for the rest of your lives, they’d call us a trade school, not a university. You haven’t been trained here. You’ve been educated, and those are different things.”

IN THE MEDIA Arts and Sciences faculty members are authors and featured experts regularly cited in national media — check out these recent news flashes. If you’d like to see more visit asc.osu.edu/inthenews.

TELL US YOUR STORY! asc.osu.edu/yourstory

JOHN MUELLER, PROFESSOR, POLITICAL SCIENCE “How French Intelligence Missed the Charlie Hebdo Terrorists” -TIME, Jan. 14, 2015 (co-authored with Mark Stewart) Mueller and Stewart are co-authors of the forthcoming Chasing Ghosts: The Costly Quest of Counter Terrorists in the United States.

JESSIE FOX, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, COMMUNICATION “Men Who Share Selfies Online Show More Signs of Psychopathy, Study Says” -TIME, Jan. 15, 2015

“It’s not surprising that men who post a lot of selfies ... are more narcissistic, but this is the first time it has actually been confirmed in a study. The more interesting finding is that they also score higher on this other anti-social personality trait, psychopathy, and are more prone to self-objectification.”

WENDY PANERO, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, EARTH SCIENCES “How the Earth made its own water – out of rocks”

-PRI, Jan. 10, 2015

“When we look into the origins of water on Earth, what we’re really asking is, ‘Why are we so different than all the other planets?’ In this solar system, Earth is unique because we have liquid water on the surface. We’re also the only planet with active plate tectonics. Maybe this water in the mantle is key to plate tectonics, and that’s part of what makes Earth habitable.”

CHIBUNDU NNAKE (BA, Sociology, 2005), program fellow at Reach, Inc.; education consultant for B.E.L.L. Consulting and assistant general counsel for Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc. Ohio State means growth to me. Every time I visit the campus, speak to my old advisors or run into alumni, I am able to speak about the four years that I spent forging many of my beliefs, value systems and learning how to better navigate the world. I became a better leader as a result of my experiences at Ohio State. While at Ohio State, I was involved in numerous student organizations and I loved the business side of them. That is the primary reason I concurrently pursued my MBA with my law degree. It also means family. There is nothing like seeing that Block O on someone’s hat, car or shirt and instantly forming a bond. No matter the decade we were in attendance, it is like we went to school at the same time. I have found so many of my lifelong friends because of Ohio State. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to become an alum of this great institution. Do Something Great. Go Bucks! continued on pg. 9

GEORGE WANG graduated Phi Beta Kappa in molecular genetics in 2003 and headed to Stanford for a PhD and a career investigating the development of the nervous system using genetics. Several years into his doctoral work though, Wang began to look at alternative career paths. “I went back to my days at Ohio State when I volunteered with Ohio Staters, Inc., and I thought, ‘I want to replicate that feeling again,’” said Wang. So, shortly after he earned his PhD, Wang, along with fellow Stanford graduates Adam Kircher and Kiah Williams, co-founded SIRUM (Supporting Initiatives to Redistribute Unused Medicine), a nonprofit organization using a technology platform that allows health facilities, manufacturers, wholesalers and pharmacies to donate unused medicine rather than destroy it.

“Our mission is to reduce barriers to health for the underserved by increasing access to donated medicine. Think of us as a Match.com for unused medicine.” {George Wang}

“SIRUM connects safety-net clinics with donated drugs through an online peerto-peer community,” explained Wang. “SIRUM’s technology aggregates unexpired, surplus medicine from donors and, at the same time, collects details on the needs of clinics.”

When a match is found, SIRUM’s system automatically generates shipping labels, packing slips and courier pickups, coordinating all of the donation logistics necessary to ship medicine directly from donor institutions to clinics in need. “We never touch the medicine,” said Wang. “We’re the logistics guys.” The California HealthCare Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation fund SIRUM. Wang says that his experiences, as both a researcher and a volunteer at Ohio State, prepared him to tackle the task of creating a start-up company. “One of the big projects I worked on as a member of Ohio Staters, Inc., was the creation of the University Museum (still in University Hall today). I loved all of the aspects of that service project: designing, researching, testing and then launching the final product — that was my idea of a social scene.”

A HARD PILL TO SWALLOW • 1 in 4 adults in the United States struggles to afford prescriptions • 50 million Americans skip prescriptions because of cost • $5 billion worth of medications go unused every year — they are flushed, incinerated or thrown away • Adults with insurance make up about 50 percent who can’t afford prescriptions; insurance doesn’t inoculate against the high cost of drugs • SIRUM estimates that at least $700 million worth of medications could be salvaged each year from health care facilities alone • SIRUM has redistributed 1 million pills, which have benefited approximately 20,000 low-income patients

ALUMNI NOTES continued from pg. 7

As an undergraduate researcher (Professor Erich Grotewold was Wang’s mentor), Wang learned acquired skills that translated seamlessly to business.

ARTHUR BROWNSTEIN (PhD, chemistry, 1960), retired chemist, general manager and board member, ExxonMobil Corp; author of the book, Renewable Motor Fuels: The Past, the Present and the Uncertain Future. Ohio State offered an unmatchable environment for a professional and productive career in the chemical industry. OSU’s generous grant to me of a fellowship made my attendance in their graduate school possible.

“When you are doing research, you’re trying to do something that no one has done before,” said Wang. “It’s the same thing when you’re launching a start-up company. You have an idea, you test your idea, you refine your idea, you go through starts and stops and then it hopefully comes together.”

VALERIE EVANOFF (BS, microbiology 1992), founder and CEO, CrossResolve. Ohio State opened my eyes to a world larger than I thought possible. It gave me the tools to become a working scientist, a solutionist and an entrepreneur. From my very first class, I knew I was in the right place to build my foundation for a remarkable future.

To date, SIRUM has redistributed 1 million pills, which have benefited approximately 20,000 low-income patients. “Our goal,” said Wang, “is to get medications to all 50 million Americans who currently skip their prescriptions due to costs. We want to make a difference in their lives.” You can listen to an interview with George Wang on NPR’s Marketplace at go.osu.edu/ sirum.

SHARI GOLDHAGEN (MFA, 2002), writer. Ohio State was formative to my development as a writer. My professors not only taught me craft, but they were also instrumental when it came to helping me find an editor and agent. Even today, they still are going above and beyond the call of duty! (Goldhagen’s second novel, In Some Other World, Maybe, was published in January 2015) ROBIN LITTELL (BA, psychology, 2000), writing instructor and director, Writing Institute, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio. My bachelor’s degree from Ohio State provided a solid foundation for a career in education. I was a non-traditional student with a preschool teaching background before I earned my psychology degree at the Lima continued on pg. 11

STATISTICS KEY TO UNLOCKING CRITICAL HEALTH INFORMATION

NEW APPROACH WILL FACILITATE PEDIATRIC TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY (TBI) RESEARCH

“More than half a million American children visit the emergency room with a head injury each year, so even this simple pilot project has potential for broad impact.” {Eloise Kaizar}

Statistician ELOISE KAIZAR, who is “always interested in research in health sciences and how to apply the results to problems in the real world,” sees her new project, which was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, as a chance to make a real impact on a critical area. Kaizar’s work to develop new statistical methodology will pave the way to support a model pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) data bank, the first of its kind in the nation that will directly facilitate efficient TBI research on previously inaccessible questions. Kaizar is drawing on completed, designed research conducted by an internationally recognized team of TBI researchers: Terry Stancin of MetroHealth Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University; Gerry Taylor of Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University; Shari Wade of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati; and Keith Yeates of Nationwide Children’s Hospital and University of Calgary.

“As you can imagine, recruiting families of children with new head injuries and keeping them enrolled for longterm and intensive follow-up is exceedingly difficult and costly. One of our target studies was made possible by focusing only on school-aged children 6-12, whereas a later project recruited only preschool-aged children 3-6 years old.” Kaizar explained that only by combining the studies via sound statistical methods can reliable conclusions be made across the entire 3-12 age range — a period of profound developmental change.

With this team guiding the clinical application, Kaizar and her students will develop statistical methods to combine data from similar (but not identical) research studies. This will unlock access to scientific discoveries otherwise out of reach. “The potential for application is nearly limitless,” she said. “But, the new statistical methods will be particularly helpful for overcoming the size and breadth limitations typically seen in research on difficultto-study populations and conditions, such as TBI.

“However, to complete such a synthesis we must solve statistical modeling problems, such as harmonizing different cognitive measurement scales used for the different age ranges without underestimating the variability in cognition across the affected children. By overcoming barriers like these, we can extract insight from the data without overstating our confidence in the newfound knowledge. “Even further, the statistical solutions we create to overcome practical problems, such as the inconsistent use of psychosocial measurements and scales, could be easily adapted for data sharing in a wide range of similar fields,” Kaizar said. Not bad for a two year project with a bottom line of $148,621.

ALUMNI NOTES continued from pg. 9 regional campus. After graduating from Ohio State, I felt I had a more well-rounded skill set to work with children and their families and, eventually, moved into administrative positions in the early child development field. My degree from Ohio State served as a springboard for numerous opportunities to pursue different paths, all of which have led to positions in the rewarding field of education. JOHN MCCLELLAND (MS, journalism, 1987), associate professor of journalism, emeritus, Roosevelt University, Chicago. A shared “aha!” moment. I was unsure whether I wanted to go back to newspaper editing or break into academia or try something entirely different. My time at Ohio State led to teaching at Miami University and then back to Illinois for a second career that included teaching opinion-writing in a small university with a social-justice mission.

REBECCA W. (MA, art history, 1987; MA, Chinese, 1985) and SCOTT G. MCGINNIS (PhD, East Asian languages and literatures, 1990; #BUCKEYE LOVE: read more stories @ go.osu.edu/buckeye-love

MA, Chinese, 1984). Rebecca is coordinator, Confucius Institute at Maryland; Scott is academic advisor and professor, Defense Language Institute-Washington Office, and coordinator, Interagency Language Roundtable. To us both, Ohio State has meant superb professional training and pretty wonderful personal ties. We met at Ohio State in the Chinese department in the fall of 1983. We both were awarded Title VI grants for Chinese language study after we were married, and had a terrific year in Taiwan at the Stanford University Language Center. Thank you DEALL (Department of East Asian Language and Literatures) for 29 years and SO much more. MONICA WHITE NDOUNOU (PhD, theatre, 2007), associate professor, drama and dance, Tufts University and author of Shaping the Future of African American Film: Colorcoded Economics and the Story Behind the Numbers (May 2014). The book was selected for the American Theatre and Drama Society’s 5th annual “Brilliance of the

continued on pg. 13

Eminent, influential, prolific historian GEOFFREY PARKER is adept at unraveling the intrigues, alliances, disruptions and disasters of 16th century empires and monarchies, reweaving them into compelling, relevant accounts that resonate today. For Parker, who describes himself as a “how-to” guy, the “how” is always the starting point. “You can’t ask why until you know how,” he said. He has been asking it — to great effect — for a long time. Parker, who grew up in Britain shortly after WWII, learned early that war and largerthan-life figures, good and evil, help shape the world. The legacy of the Luftwaffe was everywhere.

“From the age of 5 or 6, I was aware of bombed-out land all around me — acres and acres of desolation. It had a profound influence on me, and I wanted to know how it happened. Adolf Hitler had a way of getting your attention — even after he was dead.” {Geoffrey Parker} Educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, under the tutelage of noted historian John Elliott, Parker learned a very useful skill, how to “read” history. “He taught me to gut massive amounts of materials really quickly and distinguish what is truly significant.” An expert on Spanish and military history of the early modern era, Parker’s books are meticulously researched, by necessity long and real page-turners. Just try to resist the allure of King Philip II, Spain’s most famous monarch, exercising executive power from age 16, leader of the world’s first “Superpower” from 1556 to 1598, builder of El Escorial (now a UNESCO World Heritage site), the architect of the Spanish Armada and the subject of Parker’s latest biography, published last November.

Geoffrey Parker — Andreas Dorpalen Professor of European History, Distinguished University Professor, winner of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for History in 2012 (the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for historians) — is the world’s leading authority on King Philip II. Parker is already deep into his next book, a fresh look at Charles V, Philip’s father.

To support the Department of History, visit go.osu.edu/give-asc {#302765}.

Forget that Parker had already published Philip’s definitive biography. History happened. In 2011, Parker finally finished a book that had taken him out of what he calls his comfort zone, sent him around the world and occupied nearly a decade of his life, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Castrophe In the Seventeenth Century. Almost immediately, a startling discovery sent him back to familiar territory: a forgotten cache of 3,000 unidentified documents at the Hispanic Society in New York City. Acquired at the turn of the 20th century by Archer M. Huntington, the society’s founder, they were placed in Huntington’s private vault and only entered the Hispanic Society collection itself after Huntington’s death in 1955. There they sat untouched until an archivist, who was not sure of their provenance, brought them to Parker’s attention. “I soon identified many important letters, notes and administrative documents, many written by Philip himself, along with two sets of long letters of advice on ‘how to be a king’ (one for Philip’s eyes only) written by his father, Charles V. No one had seen them for more than 400 years.

It should not be a surprise. Geoffrey Parker, whose prize-winning book, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century, chronicles a harrowing time of world-wide chaos reportedly reducing world population by a third, is reading The Narrow Road to the Deep North by critically acclaimed Australian novelist Richard Flanagan. The 2014 Man Booker Prize winning-novel is about a group of Australian POWs, who were among 300,000 Allied prisoners Imperial Japan brutalized into building the Thailand-Burma Death Railways in the early 1940s — something the British had dismissed as impossible to do. The Japanese made it possible by using their captured Allied soldiers as disposable labor, costing the lives of more than 12,000 prisoners.

“It made me realize the role that serendipity has played in my life as an historian.” For the next six months, Parker and two former graduate students, powered by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant and scholarly fervor, sorted and catalogued these lost pieces of the past. “Some of the documents changed the way I had seen individual problems, re-interpreted certain events, or shed new light on complex issues.” In other words, what he had found called for a new book, and Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II was born. By the way, the book that took him out of his comfort zone, Global Crisis, won attention, accolades, awards and the 2014 British Academy Medal for “a landmark academic achievement … which has transformed understanding of a particular subject.” Parker’s work draws parallels between then and now that make it clear that history has lessons to teach — and more than ever, we need to learn them. Geoffrey Parker is not only a consummate scholar, he is a dedicated educator and mentor, shaping the minds and winning the hearts of thousands of students, both graduate and undergraduate, during more than 45 years in the classroom. In 2006, he was recognized for his outstanding teaching with an Ohio State Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award.

ALUMNI NOTES continued from pg. 11 American Theater” event in New York on March 19, 2015. In addition to having an amazing mentor and inspiring professors across campus, I also had my first study abroad experience in Cuba while attending Ohio State. I learned a great deal about national identities in the U.S. and abroad and about myself and my profession. My experiences at Ohio State helped prepare me for the work I am doing now as a scholar-artist and faculty member at Tufts University. JAMES M. NOLAN (PhD, psychology, 1989; MA, psychology, 1986; BA, English, 1975), president, Southwestern College, Santa Fe, New Mexico. But for Ohio State, I would never have become president of a graduate school of psychology. I never did well in high school, but flourished at Ohio State. I was encouraged by meaningful and life-changing relationships with faculty in the English department, and then ultimately finding my calling through Ohio State’s counseling and psychology program. I write most of our college’s blogs, website and marketing materials, and am amused that I am, to a significant extent, a “writer,” even with the title “president.” Now THAT is the value of a degree in English! continued on pg. 16

“I need to continue building my empire because I want to address major social issues through philanthropy.” {Tanisha Robinson}

EMPIRE BUILDER It’s not very often that we feature an alumna who hasn’t actually graduated – but Tanisha Robinson, 33, is an extraordinary individual — or a “unicorn” as she says. “I’m a young, black, female entrepreneur, who is out — I’m sort of hyper marginalized,” said Robinson. “I’m two science classes short of my bachelor’s degree, but I’m too busy right now to think about it. I have an empire to build.” Robinson, who recently has been featured by Huffington Post and Fast Company, is the co-founder of Print Syndicate, Inc., a rapidly expanding online retail business launched in November 2012. Print Syndicate earned $4 million in 2013, $12 million in 2014, is currently valued at $20 million and is on track to grow to upwards of $100 million in the next few years. “I spoke at an event recently and asked the crowd, ‘How many of you want to change the world for the better?’ Nearly everybody raised their hands. Then, I asked, ‘How many of you want to be really rich?’ Hardly anyone raised their hands. I said, ‘I do!

To support the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, visit go.osu.edu/give-asc {#307883}.

Money is a lever for change. Bill Gates is able to address global infant mortality rates because he’s a billionaire.’ “I need to continue building my empire because I want to address major social issues through philanthropy. Last year our staff gave 1,000 hours of service on company time. Next year our goal is 2,000.” DESIGN FACTORY With workers at a new warehouse in nearby Grandview Heights and in their main offices in downtown Columbus, they’re up to more than 100 since their November 2012 launch started with just four employees. Currently, Print Syndicate, Inc., hosts three brands: Human, Activate Apparel and Merica Made. All sell products like shirts, phone cases and home goods featuring catchy, timely phrases and jokes turning memes and current pop culture into licensed merchandise. They have 16,000 feet of office space at the corner of State and High Street facing the Ohio Statehouse. “Our mission is ‘To Enable self-expression through exceptional design.’ We’re always working to be super-relevant. We keep our eye on the news and social media and create goods and items that help people express themselves. A big part of our business model is technology-based. “We’re going to be launching another brand soon, Craftpride, that focuses on knitting, cross stitch, crochet. People love to display their interests and express themselves in unique ways. “We have a team of content designers, graphic designers, web coders and product photographers in the office and then people in the warehouse,” she said. “I’m a big believer in fair wages, so we pay all of our workers a livable wage and provide affordable health care. “Columbus is ideal because of its central location and availability of

skilled creatives (artists, designers and writers) because of Ohio State and the Columbus College of Art and Design.” NOT A STRAIGHT PATH Starting out in Liberty, Missouri, “the evangelical Bible belt,” in a conservative Mormon family, Robinson felt that there was really nothing there for her. Her path to Ohio State was not a linear one; after Missouri, she attended Brigham Young University in Utah before joining the U.S. Army. “It might sound funny, but actually joining the Army was less conservative than my life up to that point,” she said. “My parents were very devout and women were raised to be wives and mothers. But growing up like I did, and then being in the Army, gave me a strong work ethic, a commitment to service and the capacity for discipline.” In the Army, she learned Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in California and later became a translator in Syria. continued on pg. 16

Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ohio State is one of the top three producers of Arabic majors in the country. Beyond the cumulative courses that cover all the basic skills over three years, there are advanced courses conducted in Arabic such as modern literature and medieval literature, the Qur’an, Arabic dialects and Arabic media, among others. There also are courses in English on Arab culture and Arabic literature in translation, as well as many courses on Islam. The U.S. Department of State considers Arabic a critical language.

CHANGE AGENT continued from pg. 15 “I can’t sing or play music and I’m not artistic, but languages just come to me,” she said. “I speak Arabic, German, Spanish and English. “When I was kicked out of the Army for being gay, I decided to go back to school. When I was at the Defense Language Institute, I met Mahdi Alosh, the previous chair of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. I got into Ohio State and Georgetown but chose Ohio State. “In 2007, I received the Huntington Fellowship at Ohio State and went to study in Damascus and when the fellowship was over, I didn’t come back. I stayed in Syria and taught English. I traveled; I worked on women’s rights and I explored the Mediterranean.” “I came back to Columbus though. This is a great city with a lot of opportunity. It was the first time I felt like there were no consequences for just being me.”

ALUMNI NOTES continued from pg. 13 RYAN SCOTT (BA, interactive communication, 2006) freelance sports TV camera operator, ESPN, NBC, CBS. If it were not for Ohio State I would have never found my calling in sports television, would not have had opportunities to work hard and meet the people that shaped where I am at today. RALPH WAGNITZ (BS, music performance, 1972), playwright and composer. My success as a musician is entirely due to the outstanding teaching at Ohio State University by Donald McGinnis and James Jones, as well as other music faculty. The music ensemble performance opportunities at Ohio State were integral to my success. Five months after graduating from Ohio State I began performing with The Cleveland Orchestra. I performed another 10 years as a freelance musician in Minneapolis/St. Paul and as music faculty at the University of Montana. ROBERT WEBNER (BA, journalism, 1980), partner, Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease LLP. From 1977 to 1979, I spent huge amounts of time in an unassuming brick building tucked away at an anonymous intersection on the sprawling campus of the Ohio State University. It was the home of the School of Journalism, known to its denizens as the ‘J-School.’ It was where my friends were, and the epicenter of my little college universe. For an aspiring reporter, it was a little slice of journalistic heaven that made you feel like you were part of a real newsroom — and you were.

INTERNSHIPS LEAD TO AN EMMY?

BY MOLLY KIME, COMMUNICATIONS STUDENT

“Winning an Emmy was pretty surreal and exciting. If you had asked way back when if I thought I would be at the Emmy Awards, I would have thought you were crazy,” said KATIE LUCAS. Lucas, who graduated in 2008 with a degree in English literature and minors in communication and business, works at HBO as an associate editor for digital content. She writes for the Game of Thrones Viewer’s Guide, which features “Inside the Episode” videos, recaps and interviews with the cast and crew. Her team recently won the Interactive Emmy Award for User Experience and Design for Game of Thrones Viewer’s Guide. Lucas got her start with internships in Columbus with the local CBS radio station, the local NBC affiliate, PromoWest Productions and Brighter Minds Media.

“The big-school environment gave me the skills and the opportunities to succeed. Ohio State taught me that hard work pays off and you can do anything you want.” {Katie Lucas} After graduating, she was accepted into the page program at NBC where she worked for Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. She worked for The Dr. Oz Show for three years writing web content and started her own blog where writers review fictional characters on TV shows. The success of her blog, Character Grades, helped Lucas land her job at HBO. Last November, Lucas had the opportunity to meet with a group of arts scholars and media marketing and communications scholars who traveled to New York City. Lucas was one of 10 alumni with whom the students connected during their trip. She gave them advice and shared her story of success with them. Lucas credits much of her success to these internships. She encourages students interested in the entertainment field to be confident and aggressive and stresses the importance of networking.

PRESSING AHEAD Last December, TONY SANFILIPPO joined The Ohio State University Press as its new director. He came to the university from Penn State University Press, where he was assistant director. He has more than 14 years of experience as a leader and innovator in academic publishing and 20 years in bookselling.

We sat down with Sanfilippo to gain some insight into the press now and plans for the future.

Q. What drew you to Ohio State? A. First of all, Ohio State is very much like Penn State, institutionally. It’s a public, land-grant university with a focus on service. And the press has a clear focus on literature and literary studies. Plus, I have to say the staff is very smart and very good at what they do.

Q. Ohio State’s press is relatively small compared to other university presses, correct?

Ohio State’s University Press is an internationally recognized academic publisher that dates back to 1957. It publishes about 30 new books per year. To support the Ohio State University Press, visit go.osu.edu/give-asc {#605418}.

continued on pg. 25

CBEC: Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Chemistry Building, Ohio Stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only LEED-certified laboratory building, opened for classes January 2015.

To support the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new building, visit go.osu.edu/give-asc {#312441}.

Two powerhouse departments. Two colleges. One structure optimized for collaborative impact. From future-focused biomedical innovations to energy-efficient materials research, some of the world’s greatest challenges will be solved here. The CBEC Building: • Expands hands-on learning opportunities for students • Attracts exceptional faculty and graduate students • Facilitates collaborations and partnerships to accelerate discovery • Boosts Ohio State’s profile as a leader in 21st century research • Fuels Ohio’s economy through partnerships with industry

Early this year, researchers in Arts and Sciences’ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the College of Engineering’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering moved into their new space. Now, it is changing the ways we do research. From the outside in and the inside out, this building’s novel design of openness, transparency and connectivity provides a welcoming environment that facilitates conversation, interaction and innovation. CBEC is a CATALYST OF INNOVATION — from the basement laboratory wing to the lobby with its wave wall and incredible LED installation by internationally renowned artist Leo Villareal to the Dow Student Lounge on the 6th floor with its sweeping view from campus to downtown. These visually stunning and inviting spaces are not just equipped to jump-start research teams, the laboratories were specially-built to accommodate the latest instrumentation required for leading-edge research and to be a true catalyst for discovery in the 21st century. Is Ohio State unusual among the top research schools in the country combining this type of interdisciplinary research and collaboration in a shared setting?

Simply stated: Yes. According to CHRISTOPHER HADAD, divisional dean of natural and mathematical sciences, who has been a part of this project since the beginning. “When we look at the country’s top 20 or so research institutions, which includes Ohio State, there have been some buildings that combined chemistry with biology but mostly from a teaching point of view. And, there are some engineering buildings with a framework similar to CBEC, such as those at Caltech and UCLA, but they do not combine disciplines,” said Hadad. “Interdisciplinary activities usually do not involve buildings and coherently designed spaces to enhance collaborations and interdisciplinary research, — which is one of CBEC’s goals. “Will there be even more interdisciplinary grant applications with people working together? Will there be jointly mentored graduate students and postdocs between the two departments? There were already some of those interactions between the 2 faculty groups — I am hopeful that this new building will further facilitate those interactions and that science (and society) will reap great benefits.”

continued on pg . 20

EXPLORE CBEC TWO CONNECTED BUILDINGS •

A six-story tower for offices and theoretical research connected by bridges to a four-story lab wing with experimental research and teaching spaces

•

Houses the new Koffolt Laboratories, named for former chemical engineering department chairman Joseph Koffolt

•

Transparent floor-to-ceiling glass exteriors with sunshielding mechanisms to maximize sunlight in winter and minimize in summer

LOBBY/FIRST FLOOR •

Two-story, 140 ft. long “wave wall” of trapezoidal glass panels that enclose the perimeter lobby and lounge spaces at ground level

•

A 71-foot-wide-by 9-foot-tall hexagonal LED light array by internationally renowned artist Leo Villareal (see pg. 21)

•

Glass wall allowing multi-floor view of the Unit Operations Lab’s high-bay area

BASEMENT LABORATORY WING •

20-foot floor-to-celling height accommodates today’s massive, state-of-the-art instrumentation to support intensive research

•

Core Laboratories: Nucleur Magnetic Resonance, Surface Characterization, X-ray Crystallography, Polymer Chemistry, Rheology, Polymer Processing and Biotechnology

ON EACH FLOOR •

Laboratory neighborhoods on each floor provide research space for 400+ scientists/engineers; include central core of cold rooms, conference rooms, student offices, centralized services and multiple lounges with ample interactive spaces to facilitate research collaborations across disciplines

TOP FLOOR (6TH FLOOR) •

Dow Student Lounge: With spectacular views of campus and downtown Columbus, the lounge features two distinct areas — a high-ceiling quiet reading area with window walls and a group collaboration space equipped with large format displays and workstations.

continued on pg. 32

LIGHT SCULPTURE MERGES SCIENCE AND ART VILLAREAL INSTALLATION ILLUMINATES CBEC BUILDING LOBBY

Rendering of new installation by LEO VILLAREAL.

“My goal is to use the building block of the hexagon to create a visual representation of the creative process at work. I believe through abstraction and light, it will be possible to communicate with students and teachers from a wide range of disciplines.” {Leo Villareal}

Renowned New York-based artist Leo Villareal, one of the world’s most prominent light sculptors whose colossal installations combine LED lights and encoded computer programming, was commissioned to create a work within the new Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Chemistry (CBEC) building. “This artwork is unique in its fusion of light, art, science and technology,” Villareal explained. The piece is a 71-foot-wide-by-9-foot-tall array illuminated by thousands of 1-inch LED nodes. Installed at the building’s main entrance, it can be viewed inside as well as outside through the building’s massive curved windows. Villareal, who is widely known for his works such as The Bay Lights on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and Multiverse in The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., has more than 25 years of experience in creating public sculptures that deeply integrate with their sites. Of CBEC, Villareal said, “I am very inspired by Pelli Clarke Pelli’s architectural design and its deep and sensitive integration into the campus. Activating the lobby with a major light sculpture will bring life and energy to the space.” The artwork was commissioned through Ohio’s Percent for Art program, which is directed by the Ohio Arts Council and provides funds for acquiring works of art for new or renovated public buildings in Ohio. Multiverse, 2008. The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. {photo: James Ewing Photography, courtesy Sandra Gering Inc., New York, NY}21

CENTER FOR EMERGENT MATERIALS CENTERING ON EXCITING, BROAD-IMPACT, ECONOMY-BOOSTING SCIENCE

“One of our goals is to increase both quantity and quality of scientists and engineers prepared to contribute to and lead research, development and commercialization in materials-related fields.” {P. Christopher Hammel}

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) recent six-year, $17.9 million grant renewal for Ohio State’s Center for Emergent Materials (CEM), an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), funds audacious long-term studies of forward-looking new materials on the very edge of the possible. 22

“This is not about short-term funding with clearly-defined achievable goals. This supports our focus on adventurous, foundational research enabling far-reaching technologies. Great science is the heart of this funding,” said P. CHRISTOPHER HAMMEL, Ohio Eminent Scholar, physics professor, CEM director. After a rigorous, hyper-competitive review process, only 12 MRSECs were funded nationally.

To support the Center for Emergent Materials, visit go.osu.edu/give-asc {#314219}.

“CEM is a prime example of how collaborative partnerships can bolster manufacturing.” {Senator Sherrod Brown} “This approach allows us to assemble researchers with diverse skill sets and expertise who can handle challenging multi-faceted scientific issues integrating materials synthesis and growth, characterization, novel probe development and theory and modeling,” Hammel explained. Their main challenge is to enhance technology and improve energy efficiency through discovery of new materials, novel phases of matter and innovative spin science. The benefits that CEM’s infrastructure investments provide Ohio State and the state of Ohio cannot be overstated.

SHAWNA HOLLEN, postdoctoral researcher at CEM, is positioning a sample for graphene growth on a copper crystal using a SPECS CreaTec low temperature scanning tunneling microscope system.

Since its creation in 2008, 11 Ohio companies have benefited directly from the cutting-edge materials research tools that the CEM-supported NanoSystems Laboratory provides university and industrial researchers, such as Lake Shore Cryotronics in Westerville, to advance the field of magnetoelectronics.

These NSF flagship institutions form a national network of top materials research programs at top research institutions — Princeton, Harvard, MIT and Ohio State among them — capable of performing complex and ambitious multi-disciplinary sciences.

CEM also identifies and nurtures future leaders, “One of our goals,” Hammel said, “is to increase both quantity and quality of scientists and engineers prepared to contribute to and lead research, development and commercialization in materials-related fields.”

The driving idea behind the MRSEC program is to identify and fund collaborative materials research by elite teams of leading researchers from multiple disciplines to address difficult, fundamental problems in science and engineering.

Focused, coordinated, sustained activities are in place engaging groups from elementary school students through faculty ranks, with diversity enhancement efforts tightly interwoven into every educational and outreach activity.

Interdisciplinary research groups (IRGs) — eminent faculty, their students and postdoctoral researchers — tackle scientific problems too large and/or complex for one person or one group to impact.

“We are absolutely committed to increasing diversity in science and engineering by eliminating barriers to the success of underrepresented groups,” Hammel said.

RESEARCHING THE SOUNDS OF MUSIC

DAVID HURON, professor in the School of Music, and some of the “squeaky toys” used in his cute-sound research.

To support the musicology program at Ohio State, visit go.osu.edu/give-asc {#643468}.

When you think of Ohio State as a top-tier research institution, you might think of its state-of-the-art medical research. Scientific investigations. Engineering explorations. Arctic climate research. But music research?

Interestingly, a baby’s vocal tract is similar to the 20 ml volume compared to a much larger volume in adults. “When an infant gurgles and coos, we agree that the sound is cute,” he said, “and that evokes nurturing and protective parenting behaviors.”

Yes — Ohio State has a robust research program in music.

Huron’s studies are ongoing, and he sometimes collaborates with the Wexner Medical Center to gauge humans’ reactions to music.

“We take our music research very seriously,” said DAVID HURON, Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of Music and a member of Ohio State’s Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences. He is one of a growing number of music scholars in the field of music cognition, which attempts to answer questions related to the experience of music. Huron, who has traveled the world studying people’s reactions to music, has delivered nearly 400 lectures in 24 countries. His research focus is on music and emotion. One of his recent studies delves into the phenomenon of music and sadness. “It’s a curious problem,” he said. “Why would people intentionally seek out music that makes them sad? It’s kind of a paradox — if you’re feeling sad, why would you want to listen to music that makes you sadder? But 50 percent of the population would say that they like listening to sad music.” Another study, carried out by postdoctoral researcher DAN SHANAHAN, examined the “pace of life” phenomenon reflected in music. This project compared people in urban environments with a faster pace of life, where they talk faster and walk faster, with people in rural areas with a slower pace of life. Sure enough, with the help of music streaming company data that correlated millions of music choices with geographic information, people in more urban areas chose faster-paced music compared with their rural comrades.

Huron came to Ohio State in 1998, but the university has a long history in the psychological study of music, which has continued virtually non-stop since the 1920s. The School of Music holds a preeminent worldwide reputation in music cognition; at a recent international conference in Greece Ohio State-affiliated researchers, including faculty, alumni and current students, made a whopping 24 presentations.

PRESSING AHEAD continued from pg.17 A. Yes, that seems to have been a conscious decision for the press in the past. However, I intend to help the University Press grow – it is in the perfect position to grow because of a healthy endowment that dates back to its publication of . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer. We may expand the focus of the press and find new ways to collaborate with other areas of the university.

Q. At Penn State, you introduced a robust digital publishing program. Do you plan to delve into digital publishing here, too?

One of Huron’s most interesting recent studies, with doctoral researcher JOE PLAZAK, asked the question, “What makes a sound cute?”

“We went out and bought a whole bunch of squeaky toys. We had people listen to a range of sounds – from the squeeze toys and music boxes to tuning forks, animal calls, electrical appliances and more. Listeners had no difficulty identifying the sounds that are cute.” {Joe Plazak} Huron took the sounds “apart” to determine where the cuteness comes from. He deducted that the cutest of the sound resonators were around 20 ml in volume — cute sounds apparently arise when a small resonant cavity is activated using a small amount of energy through a small aperture (think of a dog’s squeaky toy).

A. Absolutely. It’s a bit challenging because we outsource our distribution to the University of Chicago Press. That means digital booksellers treat the books as if they’re an imprint the U of Chicago. As part of our larger branding goal, we want to work with retailers like Amazon directly. We want to be sure that Ohio State’s name is on everything we do. Digital publishing is important and we’d like to be sure our brand is featured on that front.

Q. At Penn State, you had an active internship program for students. Do you plan to start a similar program here?

A. Of course! The internship program helps create the next generation of publishers, and gives students opportunities in publishing that they otherwise might need to go to New York City for. Quite a few of the interns at Penn State ended up entering lucrative careers in commercial publishing.

continued on pg. 32

Endowments allow donors to establish an enduring legacy that reflects their values; build a lasting relationship with faculty and staff working to become the best in the country in teaching, research and service; and transform the student experience in ways that have lasting and rippling effects far into the future.

“In the College of Arts and Sciences, there is one vision: to be the best arts and sciences college in the country. The greatest institutions have the best minds, the most-innovative researchers and inspiring teachers. That is what these chairs and professorships are all about.” {Executive Dean David Manderscheid}

On Oct. 15, 2014, the College of Arts and Sciences hosted its inaugural Honoring Excellence ceremony to recognize endowed chairs and professors and donors whose transformational investment in the college has enabled our faculty to achieve a nationally recognized level of excellence.

CARTER PHILLIPS AND SUE HENRY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE At the ceremony, SKLYER CRANMER, the Carter Phillips and Sue Henry Associate Professor of Political Science, spoke of the transforming nature of an endowment. “Why I’m Ohio State has a lot to do with Carter Phillips and Sue Henry,” said Cranmer. “Their gift has given me the freedom to do political science, not within a narrow disciplinary boundary, but to follow the most interesting, the most relevant and the hardest problems, wherever they present themselves.“

To find out more about creating an endowed chair or professorship, contact Scott Self {self.43@osu.edu; (614) 292-9200}.

Cranmer specializes in network science. He joined Ohio State from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned a BA in criminal justice and a MA in international relations from San Francisco State and then received his second master’s and PhD in political science at the University of California, Davis.

“During the three years before I graduated from Ohio State, I had the opportunity to work with extraordinary political scientists, which, when coupled with my classroom studies, prepared me for the rest of my professional life,” Phillips explained. “It’s hard to imagine a better gift that I could give an institution that gave so much to me and contributed so much to my professional success.”

CARTER PHILLIPS (BA, political science, 1973), partner, Sidley Austin LLP, reflected on his own days as an undergraduate when deciding to endow a professorship in political science.

continued on pg. 29

Skyler Cranmer

RATNER AWARDS DISTINGUISHED TEACHING AWARDS IN ARTS AND HUMANITIES RON RATNER wasn’t always a Buckeye. In fact, he said that before being appointed to Ohio State’s Board of Trustees in 2007, “the only time I’d ever been on campus was for three and a half minutes getting pinned in a high school wrestling match.” But times have changed. “I made a real commitment to engage with the university and have spent a lot of time on campus and in Columbus,” said Ratner, a Clevelander native. “I became a real fan of the university. I became a Buckeye.”

“Ohio State has extraordinary faculty who use creative and innovative ways of engaging with students.” {Ron Ratner}

stumbled upon this idea; it seemed to work on many levels. We hope it has a real impact on teaching, on the faculty and ultimately on the students, in and beyond the classroom,” he said. The Ratners were present when the five inaugural awards were formally presented last fall.

Now, Ratner and his wife Deborah are making an impact on teaching at the university through their generous teaching awards. The awards, presented for the first time last fall to five faculty members in arts and humanities, recognize faculty for making a difference in students’ educations, lives and careers. Last fall, the couple made a $1 million gift to establish the RONALD AND DEBORAH RATNER DISTINGUISHED TEACHING AWARDS. The current-use gift will fund the awards for at least 10 years. Each year, five faculty members will receive awards, which include a $10,000 cash prize plus a $10,000 teaching award to fund future projects. Ratner is executive vice president and director of Forest City Enterprises, Inc., and president of Forest City Residential Group. Deborah is founder of ArtWorks, a Cleveland-based arts apprenticeship program for teens, and Reel Women Direct, an annual award for women film directors.

2014 HONOREES KATHERINE BORLAND associate professor, Department of Comparative Studies, director of the Center for Folklore Studies

RICHARD FLETCHER associate professor, Department of Classics

SUSAN HADLEY professor, Department of Dance

“Higher education has been a philanthropic interest in my family for a long time,” Ratner said. “Faculty, particularly in arts and humanities, are unsung heroes; this is the core of where a quality education lies.”

DANIELLE MARX-SCOURAS

The idea of honoring teaching practices resonated with the couple. “We started thinking about where we could make a difference and

ELIZABETH RENKER

professor, Department of French and Italian

professor, Department of English

(l-r) Susan Hadley, Deborah Ratner, Katherine Borland, Ron Ratner, Danielle Marx-Scouras and Elizabeth Renker (not pictured, Richard Fletcher) 27

EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS EXPLORING THE MANIPULATION OF INCENTIVES TO SPARK PREVENTIVE ACTION

When GABE ENGLANDER, a fourth-year honors student from Cincinnati, declared his major in economics, he had a rather lofty goal in mind: to become an advisor to the President of the United States. And now?

“Ninety-seven percent of the islands are closed to human settlement, and environmental laws are effectively enforced,” said Englander. “The islands provided a compelling example of the power of financial incentives to promote environmental welfare.” He recognized intuitively a key precept of economics: manipulation of incentives can help lead to environmentally- and sociallybeneficial outcomes.

“I just want to do research that matters,” he said. Englander indeed has a very promising future in research. In fact, he has been awarded three separate grants, totaling $23,000, for his current research project on decision-making in the face of uncertainty. This work has applications that range from climate change to cancer prevention, two subjects Englander is passionate about. Englander decided to pursue economics after he took a trip his freshman year with his grandmother to the Galapagos Islands.

In autumn 2013, Professor PJ Healy recommended Englander for a new, yearlong research-intensive experimental economics course that paired Englander with a PhD student to collaborate on the development, design and implementation of an economics experiment over the course of the year. At the same time, Englander began working with Healy and Professor Katherine Coffman on what would become his senior thesis.

continued on pg. 32

TRANFORMATIONAL INVESTMENTS continued from pg. 27

“My perspective on philanthropic investment is summarized in the words of Maya Angelou: ‘When you learn, teach. When you get, give.’” {W. Rodney Sharp}

ROD SHARP PROFESSORSHIP IN MICROBIOLOGY John Reeve has held the Rod Sharp Professorship in Microbiology since 1999. Well known as the discoverer of archaea histones, small DNA-binding proteins that are the precursors of histones in eukaryotes, Reeve has witnessed firsthand the longterm impact of an endowment on graduate training and research capacity. “Rod Sharp’s endowment has helped promote, expand and diversify graduate education and research in the Department of Microbiology and allowed me to pursue intriguing novel observations and investigate unusual microorganisms,” said Reeve. W. RODNEY SHARP, co-founder, DNA Plant Technology Corporation and former professor of microbiology at Ohio State, believes that an endowment is the best way to maintain a valued relationship with the university. “The endowed professorship has provided an opportunity to express my appreciation for 60 years of continuous collaboration with Ohio State beginning with three years of undergraduate studies, a professorship, advisory roles and, more recently, service on the Arts and Sciences Dean’s Advisory Council,” said Sharp.

Bruno Cabanes

DONALD G. DUNN AND MARY A. DUNN CHAIR IN MODERN MILITARY HISTORY History Professor BRUNO CABANES (pictured above) is bringing more than 15 years of scholarly work on the transition from war to peace in the 20th century to Ohio State students thanks to the new Donald G. Dunn and Mary A. Dunn Chair in Modern Military History.

“Ohio State is well known for its long tradition of excellence in military history. Because of Donald Dunn’s tremendous generosity, I plan to build a strong research program, with my colleagues and our graduate students, on postwar transitions.” {Bruno Cabanes} Read more about the Dunn Family’s legacy of giving on pg. 30.

THE GENEROSITY OF THE DUNN FAMILY ENSURES GENERATIONS OF STUDENTS WILL STUDY MILITARY HISTORY In 1945, DONALD DUNN was awarded the Silver Star for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action” against the enemy while serving with the 10th Mountain Division during World War II. It’s not something that Dunn talks about without prompting, but he does wear a Silver Star pin on his lapel. That pin launched the beginning of many conversations and a lasting friendship with Peter Mansoor, associate professor and General Raymond E. Mason, Jr. Chair in Military History. Dunn first met Mansoor over lunch at the Faculty Club several years ago. Mansoor noticed the pin and learned that Dunn had traveled to Italy to try and locate the battlefield where he earned his Silver Star but was unable to do so. Mansoor then went to Washington D.C., to scour the archives to locate Dunn’s unit. “It was part luck, part skill, but I found a treasure trove of documents about Donald’s unit — maps, combat diaries, after-action reports and overlays,” said Mansoor. With that information in hand, Mansoor traced the route of Dunn’s company, from the time he got to Italy all the way through to the time Dunn was wounded, on Hill 775. Mansoor and Dunn then traveled to Italy twice; once in 2011 with a small group of friends and again in 2012, with Dunn’s children and grandchildren. “It was quite a moment in my life,” said Dunn. “It will stay with me until my last breath.” In 2012, Dunn established the Donald G. Dunn Scholarship Fund, providing scholarship support to undergraduate and graduate students in the study abroad program who are studying WWII history. “Millions are impacted by war and we need to know how in order to move civilization forward,” said Dunn. In 2013, Dunn’s family established THE DONALD G. AND MARY A. DUNN CHAIR IN MODERN MILITARY HISTORY, honoring Dunn’s service and the memory of their mother as well. Andy Dunn, Donald Dunn’s son, accompanied his father on the family trip to Italy and said that the experience opened his eyes to the importance of preserving and retelling history.

DONALD DUNN at the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial, Italy. go.osu.edu/dunn-video

To give to the Dunn Scholarship Fund, visit go.osu.edu/give-asc {#645077}.

“My family established the chair so that generations of students could study the causes and nature of war. Perhaps the knowledge from such study might be a factor in the promotion of peace.” {Andy Dunn}

Donald Dunn echoed his son’s sentiments. “I feel so good about this gift,” said Dunn. “What could be more significant to the study of world history than the history of wars? The aspects of war, how we humans get into them, the good as well as the mistakes, we need to study all of it so that maybe the world, going forward, will be stronger.” According to Mansoor, most universities don’t have a single military historian on their faculty. At Ohio State, there are several; two of them hold endowed chairs. “The gift that Donald’s family made in establishing a chair in military history has established the Department of History as the top in the nation, and arguably in the world, in the field,” said Mansoor. “This is a gift that will reverberate down the generations, as students come and learn all of the aspects of what has shaped mankind. You cannot ignore the impact of war and warfare on the development of civilization, for better or worse.” Bruno Cabanes (see pg. 29) is the Donald G. and Mary A. Dunn Chair in Modern Military History. For the past 15 years, Cabanes has studied the transition from war to peace in the 20th century, with a focus on the aftermath of World War I. Prior to coming to Ohio State, he taught for nine years at Yale University. “Thanks to the tremendous generosity of the Dunn family, I plan to build a strong research program, with my colleagues and our graduate students, on postwar transitions. Teaching the transition from war to peace can get really interactive in a university like Ohio State, where roughly 1,500 veterans are on campus,” said Cabanes. Dunn, a Pennsylvania native, attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut, before volunteering to serve in World War II. Although he did not graduate from Ohio State, Dunn considers himself a Buckeye at heart. “Oh yes, I’m a Buckeye.”

PRESSING AHEAD continued from pg. 25

CATALYST FOR INNOVATION continued from pg. 20

I want to work with faculty in other departments, such as English and history, and intertwine the internship opportunities with academic programs. I plan to have the internship program fully fledged and up and running by fall – if not before.

INNOVATION IN ACTION

Q. Anything else you’d like to add about your new role at Ohio

Several groups of chemistry researchers gladly moved from spaces long-outdated for modern research to a building specifically designed to foster high-powered work. Here’s a look at just a few of the things going on inside CBEC right now to solve critical problems, from biomedical innovations to energy-efficient materials:

State?

A. Yes. I want to make more of our books accessible to the citizens of Ohio. Part of our duty as an institution of this state is to publish books that are relevant to the people who live here, books with a regional focus, perhaps, and books about the history of the area and history of the university.

•

CHRISTOPHER HADAD’S group targets design of novel enzymes for unique function to protect us from the ravages of exposure to toxic agents including pesticides and chemical nerve agents

•

JOSHUA GOLDBERGER’S interdisciplinary team seeks ways to control and modulate germanium and tin’s thermal conductance and thermoelectric properties, manipulating them on the atomic level — work that may net new engineering tools for thermal processes including heatflow control

Englander had wondered for several years why, despite increasingly certain and alarming projections about the probability and magnitude of economic losses from climate change, public investment in mitigation and adaptation activities remained well below the socially-efficient level.

YIYING WU and his team developed the world’s first solar battery, the KAir Battery, which converts light to electricity using air and creative chemistry. Ultimately, their hope is this technology will be used widely by the power industry, bringing down the costs of renewable energy worldwide

One unexamined explanation that captured his interest was that at the local level, future negative climate events are uncertain both in terms of their probability and in terms of their actual magnitude. He designed an economics experiment to test how these two types of uncertainty affect climate change spending.

•

BARBARA WYSLOUZIL’S aerosol science research has implications for biological and biomedical applications. Her group currently studies formation of new particles from the vapor phase, the internal structure of multi-component particles and further transitions within particles, including crystallization and structural transitions

I also want to reach out to the university community. As a University Press, we specialize in particular disciplines and reach out to authors all over the world. But I also want to reach out much more to the local community and larger Ohio State community too.

EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS continued from pg. 28

“After I started working on this project I realized that my experiment could speak to another decision problem in a completely different domain: how uncertainty affects individual willingness to take preventive action against getting cancer,” said Englander. Englander then applied for and was awarded a Pelotonia Undergraduate Fellowship to expand his senior thesis project to apply the tools of experimental economics to improve the communication of ambiguous prognoses to cancer patients. He also aims to discover the most effective communication strategies for encouraging cancer-reducing behaviors among the general public. Englander’s honors thesis, “Multi-dimensional Ambiguity and Individual Willingness to Take Preventive Action,” will be submitted for publication later in the year. He expects to graduate in spring 2015 with a BS in economics and minors in math and statistics. He plans to pursue a PhD in economics with the goal of becoming a professor of economics.

SCIENCE & SCHOLARSHIP The College of Arts and Sciences is a powerful force for positive change. In the arts, in the humanities, in the sciences — scholarship, research and teaching is underway that is changing how we see and interact in the world and changing the world itself. We are among Ohio State’s leaders in gaining research support from state and federal agencies, business and industry and receiving top scholarly awards, honors and recognition for work that has had significant impact.

THREE YOUNG ASC RESEARCHERS KICK OFF 2015 WITH NSF CAREER AWARDS This winter, Chemist HANNAH SHAFAAT, mathematician DANIEL THOMPSON and mathematician/computer scientist ANASTASIOS (TASOS) SIDIROPOULOS learned they would receive NSF CAREER Awards — the top award given by the National Science Foundation to support the work of the nation’s most promising junior researchers. Selection means you exemplify exceptional research, teaching excellence and commitment to integrate teaching with research. SHAFAAT’S fiveyear, $520,000 award supports her studies of metalloenzymes that carry out valuable reactions important to alternative energy sources and clean energy storage.

Hannah Shafaat

Shafaat wants to harness advantages of bioinorganic platforms to get molecularlevel insight into mechanisms of catalysis to guide design of increasingly efficient and robust catalysts for application.

“We want to make hydrogen from water,” Shafaat said. “If we can see how it is produced in nature and figure out the mechanisms involved, we can build catalysts of our own.” “Many researchers are making molecules right now, but we are taking a new approach to understand how it works on a detailed molecular level. Protons are so small, it is difficult to ‘see’ them. But if we can see how these processes happen, we can make it better.” To do that, she has set up a new laser system to help her group get a better look at the proteins that are catalysts for hydrogen production.

THOMPSON’S five-year, $445,000 award funds his core research program in pure mathematics and allows him to develop connections to the applied setting of bioinformatics. Thompson said, “I’m always looking to relate my work to other areas. The grant allows me to work in the applied setting of bioinformatics at the NSF-funded Mathematical Daniel Thompson Biosciences Institute, where I can bring my training in pure math to bear on interpreting complexity and say something real about issues in bioinformatics. The connection is that a big complicated data set can look quite a lot like a chaotic dynamical system. “The thing about basic research is that you are developing this foundation, building this world, and you’re free from worrying too much about anything practical, and then you hear about problems in biology dealing with big data sets and you realize that you have all these tools from the pure theory that can be adapted to measure those complexities.” SIDIROPOULOS’ five-year, $500,921 award funds a project that uses diverse mathematical tools in geometric data analysis to forge new connections between mathematics and computer science. As the ability to collect massive, multifaceted, and sometimes seemingly unrelated, amounts of data has accelerated, the need for mathematicians who can wrangle them into relevant bits that can be extracted, managed and applied — and do it quickly and efficiently — has accelerated in tandem. continued on pg. 34

SCIENCE & SCHOLARSHIP continued from pg. 34

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY ASSOCIATION NAMES ASC PROFESSOR ONE OF MODERN ERA’S MOST EMINENT PSYCHOLOGISTS Psychology professor RICHARD PETTY joins a list of 200 of the most influential psychologists since World War II that includes B.F. Skinner and Jean Piaget. Also on the list: Ohio State Professor Emerita and Ohio Eminent Scholar Marilynn Brewer and Ohio State psychology graduates Walter Mischel and Claude Steele.

GEOGRAPHER AWARDED VAN CLEEF MEMORIAL MEDAL

Anastasios Sidiropoulos

“Being able to extract meaningful information from the abundance of raw inputs is often a major computational challenge,” Sidiropoulos said. “We know that somewhere in there lies any answer that we care to extract — eventually. The key is being able to do it quickly and efficiently. But in many complex systems there are no simple underlying rules for extracting information efficiently.”

“Geometrical methods have become an indispensable tool because data sets endowed with pairwise similarities can be interpreted as a geometric space.” {Anastasios Sidiropoulos}

ASTRONOMER WINS LANCELOT M. BERKELEY PRIZE The American Astronomical Society awarded DAVID H. WEINBERG, Henry L. Cox Professor in Astronomy and Distinguished Professor of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, the Lancelot M. Berkeley New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy. Weinberg was honored for leading contributions to SDSS-III, the third phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which has made dramatic advances in measuring the structure of the Milky Way and the history of the accelerating expansion of the universe.

EDWARD MALECKI professor, geography, was honored by the American Geographical Society for significant, original work in the field of urban geography. Malecki spent nearly 40 years studying cities and regional economic development, focusing on technological change; regional policy; technology policy; telecommunications and corporation location and behavior.

$2M ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM IN LANGUAGES This fellowship supports a partnership between Ohio State and five Ohio liberal arts colleges — Denison, Kenyon, Oberlin, Ohio Wesleyan and the College of Wooster — giving recent Ohio State language PhDs an opportunity to teach and do research at one of these exceptional colleges.

CHEMIST AWARDED HUMBOLDT RESEARCH PRIZE HEATHER ALLEN, professor, chemistry and biochemistry, received the Humboldt Research Prize from Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, recognizing internationally renowned scientists whose work has had significant impact in their fields and promises continued leading-edge advancements. Awardees receive $60,000 and an invitation to conduct research with German colleagues.

COUNCIL OF GRADUATE SCHOOLS/PROQUEST DISTINGUISHED DISSERTATION AWARD JOSHUA KERTZER (PhD, political science, 2013) was awarded the nation’s highest honor for doctoral dissertations for, “Resolve in International Politics,” which was selected from 71 nominees representing 25 disciplines in the social sciences. Kertzer currently is assistant professor of government at Harvard University, where he specializes in the intersection of international security, foreign policy, political psychology, and quantitative and experimental methods.

Find out more about ASC’s Science & Scholarship at asc.osu.edu/news.

FIVE-YEAR $2.6M NIH GRANT FUND AWARDED FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH ON SALMONELLA, COLONIZATION RESISTANCE AND FRUCTOSE-ASPARAGINE Microbiologists BRIAN AHMER and KELLY WRIGHTON, and biochemists VENKAT GOPALAN, EDWARD BEHRMAN and VICKI WYSOCKI bring individual expertise to bear on ways to defuse Salmonella’s ability to cause hard-to-control infections.

BIOCHEMIST NAMED 2015 SLOAN FELLOW Biochemist Marcos Sotomayor is one of a select group of 126 scholars from top institutions in the United States and Canada named 2015 Sloan Fellows. The two-year, $50,000 Sloan Research Fellowships have been awarded annually since 1955 to promising early-career scientists and scholars to recognize achievement todate and potential for significant future work.

FIVE-YEAR $2.6M NIH GRANT CHANGES HOW SPANISH FOR THE HEALTH PROFESSIONS IS TAUGHT Integrated Second Language Learning for Chronic Care, led by GLENN MARTINEZ, Spanish and Portuguese, and USHA MENON, nursing, is a unique opportunity to link academic curriculum to patient outcomes.

EARTH SCIENTISTS GRAB $1,025,949M: A PIECE OF A FOUR-YEAR $58M DOE/INDUSTRY MEGA-GRANT ANN COOK AND DEREK SAWYER are part of a massive project analyzing deposits of frozen methane under the Gulf of Mexico. Methane hydrate, found in abundance beneath the ocean floor and under Arctic permafrost, has enormous potential to increase the world’s energy supply.

Sotomayor’s research combines X-ray crystallography and molecular dynamics simulations to study the proteins that mediate our senses of hearing and balance.

“We use our inner ear in everyday life, all the time, not only to hear the world around us, but to detect motion of our head, to maintain our gaze and to discern up from down. Could you imagine going around the world without the senses of hearing and balance?” Sotomayor and his seven undergraduate students, six graduate students and two postdocs are learning how these biological processes work at a fundamental, molecular level. Combining X-ray crystallography, biochemical experiments and molecular dynamics simulations gives them a “magnifying glass” that lets them “see” these proteins in action at atomic resolution. The tools also let them look at adhesion proteins involved in the wiring of neurons in the brain or those implicated in cancer.

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THE BELLS OF

ORTON HALL This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Orton Hall Chimes. Delivered to campus in February 1915, they were purchased by the classes of 1906-11 and 1913-14 for $8,000 (the class of 1912 elected to donate a mantel piece to the Main Library instead). In 1949 the bells were renovated to chime at the quarter hour and the full Westminster Quarters melody to play at the top of the hour, as can be heard today. Orton Hall, one of the oldest remaining buildings on campus, opened in 1893 and is named after Edward Orton who was Ohio State’s first president and a professor of geology. From the tiles in the entrance hall to its walls and foundations, Orton is built from 40 different kinds of stone, laid in stratigraphic order according to relative positions in Ohio’s bedrock. Encircling the top of the bell tower are 24 columns with gargoylelike figures, which feature restorations of fossil animals. Today, Orton Hall is home to the Orton Geological Museum, the Orton Memorial Library of Geology and offices, classrooms and research labs for the School of Earth Sciences.