Tuesday February 9, 2010 year: 130 No. 60 the student voice of
The Ohio State University
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Local man advances in ‘Idol’
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thelantern University fundraising struggles At halfway point of the fiscal year, OSU has raised 44 percent of its $300 million goal DAN MCKEEVER Oller Projects Reporter mckeever.16@osu.edu Ohio State’s bold fundraising goals have met an economy shrouded in uncertainty. OSU ofÿcials plan to raise $300 million during ÿscal year 2010 for its colleges, lower units and branch campuses. This goal includes money gathered from the two-and-a-half year, $100 million campaign to fund the Students First, Students Now program, and a $75 million campaign ending in 2013 to fund Project ONE, the $1 billion expansion of the OSU Medical Center. But college fundraisers across the country are struggling in a shaky economy, and OSU’s are no exception. Peter Weiler, OSU’s senior vice president for University Development, reported on OSU’s fundraising challenges to the Board of Trustees’ Development and Investment Committee last Thursday. The Students First, Students Now initiative, to which OSU President E. Gordon Gee donated his $20,053 raise in October, is ahead of schedule, having raised 46.5 percent of its $100 million goal through 40 percent of the fundraising period.
But fundraising on the $300 million goal, which Weiler described as “highly aggressive,” was behind through December. OSU raised almost $133 million, or 44.3 percent of the goal, through Dec. 31, the halfway point of the fundraising period. Under better economic circumstances, OSU would have reached about 55 percent of that goal, Weiler said. Although the fundraising effort gained some ground in January, December is a crucial month for fundraising, which tends to decline gradually until June, he said. Some of the 32 units that share the responsibility for the $300 million goal are faring better than others. The OSU Alumni Association, which received $1 million as part of a gift from anonymous donors to honor Archie Grifÿn, is already at almost 300 percent of its yearly goal of $414,000. OSU’s Newark campus, on the other hand, has tallied only 6 percent of its goal of nearly $1 million. The College of Nursing has raised slightly less than 15 percent of its goal of nearly $2.3 million. The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity has raised only 12.2 percent of its $3 million target. Perhaps the most surprising laggard is the Moritz College of Law, whose alumni enter a relatively lucrative profession. The college has raised only 10
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ENTOURAGE AT OSU Rex Lee, of HBO’s ‘Entourage,’ talks to Brea Heidelberg, a graduate teaching associate, Monday night at Independence Hall. Lee was on campus for an OUAB event.
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Buckeye coach Thad Matta has voiced support for letting more teams compete in the NCAA Tournament
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ANDY GOTTESMAN / Lantern photographer
New building aims to boost OSU sciences MICHAEL TOBIN Lantern reporter tobin.61@osu.edu In 2014, Ohio State will open a sophisticated new chemistry building that administrators say will make the university’s science programs more competitive. The $126 million Chemical Biomolecular and Engineering and Chemistry building will replace a hodgepodge of old and in some cases dangerous science labs and classrooms. The chemical
engineering side of the building will be called Koffolt Lab. The Chemistry Department has not chosen a name for its side of the building yet. The new facility will “make recruiting easier at every level,” said Stuart Cooper, chair of the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering. “What we have now can be a disadvantage.” A modern building will attract graduate students, freshmen and faculty. Administrators hope to increase faculty from 18 to 22, he said. The building will include new laboratories for multiple sciences, instructional spaces and building
support, according to a Facilities Operations and Development report in November. The building project has been in the works since 2002, but will ÿnally be put into motion by June 2011 with the demolition of Boyd Lab, Johnston Lab, the Aviation building and Haskett Hall. The Chemical Biomolecular and Engineering Department has submitted campus proposals and feasibility reports since 2002, Cooper said. The
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Chemical reaction mistaken for gas leak causes evacuation KAILEY LATHAM Lantern reporter latham.45@buckeyemail.osu.edu The lecture hall in Evans Lab was evacuated Monday morning after a graduate student mistakenly caused a foul-smelling chemical to leak into the building’s ventilation system, said John Herrington, the safety coordinator for Ohio State’s Department of Chemistry. Occupants of the building thought there was a gas leak because the chemical, t-butyl mercaptan, is what gas companies put into natural gas so that leaks can be detected. Natural gas is odorless.
Columbus Fire Department engines and rescue vehicles responded at about 1 p.m, said Bob Armstrong, director of Emergency Management. OSU Emergency Management and Environmental Safety also came to the scene. No injuries occurred and no damage was done to the building. Emergency services determined that there was no danger and classes continued as normal. “It’s a normal chemical reaction we did in our group. It leaked out into the air, but it’s non-toxic,” said Toby Sanan, a graduate student who is part of the lab group that works with the chemical in Evans. Mercaptan is heavier than air and it spreads fast, said Gerhard Raimann,
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Marketing students win $50K, plan party for Fisher friends
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WE 26/21 snow TH 25/11 mostly cloudy FR 23/12 mostly cloudy SA 28/20 am clouds www.weather.com
BOBBY GARTRELL Lantern reporter gartrell.7@osu.edu A team of Ohio State MBA students won a $50,000 prize at the 2010 Marketing Summit at Wake Forest University on Feb. 6. The contest, sponsored by IBM, saw OSU avenge its loss in the 2009 summit. The sevenmember group defeated a pool of teams from seven universities. Consisting of graduate students Vandana Agrawal, Seth Blatter, Michael Hrostoski, Jeremy
Jacobs, Ryan Kilpatrick, Eduard Lapteanu and Chad Stutz, the team was one of only eight schools selected from an applicant pool of 83 other universities throughout the world. They were lead by professor Marc Ankerman, a senior lecturer in management and human resources at OSU. For the contest, the teams were assigned to act as internal consultants for IBM and work with members of the company to develop a marketing plan that would create business for IBM in Dubai. As part of IBM’s “Smarter Planet Campaign,” the teams had to develop a model for their “Smarter Cities Initiative.” They received the case at 8 p.m. Thursday and
had to have the project ÿnalized by 7 a.m. Saturday, giving the team very little time to be deliberate about the project. “I only slept for 20 minutes on Friday night on the hardwood ° oor in our breakout room,” Hrostoski said. The team came up with a comprehensive marketing plan, which included several mock print ads and a 30-second commercial made by team member Chad Stutz. The judges told the team that having solid ÿnancial data separated the group from the competition.
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