Thursday May 20, 2010 year: 130 No. 111 the student voice of
The Ohio State University
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Video: ‘Best Day of Your Life’ at OSU sports
OSU baseball in dire need of wins
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thelantern After turmoil, new dean named RICHARD OVIATT Lantern reporter oviatt.3@osu.edu The Ohio State College of Social Work named Tom Gregoire its new dean this month, ending a nearly 10-month search for the new face of the program. Gregoire isn’t exactly a new face though. He has been on the OSU faculty since 1996 and stepped in as interim dean when William Meezan resigned amid controversy last summer. This made the search for a permanent replacement easy on OSU and Gregoire, who did not even interview for the position. “The process was in some respects a yearlong interview,” Gregoire said. “I did not have a formal interview as often happens, but I was given the opportunity to do the job and allow for the provost, and the other folks who make these decisions, to see if I did it to their satisfaction.” His tenure as interim dean could not have come at a more challenging time. The program leaders
were in the midst of planning how they would adapt to semesters while working to keep the program’s accreditation, which they must apply for once every eight years. “We were lucky because our accrediting organization changed the standards for everybody nationally, so we’re maybe the only place in the country that gets to start all over with its curriculum while the rest of our peers are trying to adjust to these accreditation standards while they’re still teaching their same old courses,” Gregoire said. Gregoire said he is excited about changing a program he has been involved with for so long. He received his doctorate from the University of Kansas in 1994 and joined the OSU faculty shortly thereafter. An expert on substance abuse, he was a three-time winner of the program’s award for best graduate instructor. He moved on to the administration side of things in 2003, when he began serving as an associate dean and the director of the Master’s of Social Work Program. When Meezan resigned, Gregoire was almost immediately appointed as interim dean, and he served in that position for eight months before
his ofÿcial appointment this month. The position became available after Meezan resigned, citing physical and personal issues as the cause. Meezan had been at the center of two controversies the previous academic year. He was sued by professor of social work Rudolph TOM GREGOIRE Alexander for discrimination based on race, and he was later accused of inappropriate behavior by the university when he spoke at a student orientation wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “rub my nuts.” Gregoire is not concerned with the program’s recent history. “I came into this program with a focus on the future,” he said. “What’s happened, has happened.”
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Half-naked humanitarians run for a cause LAUREN HALLOW Lantern reporter hallow.1@osu.edu For those who have ever wished to run down High Street yelling “We’re going streaking!” like Will Ferrell in “Old School,” tonight’s your chance. Ohio State students and AXE, a male grooming brand, have teamed up to bring the ÿrst OSU AXE Undie Run Challenge to Columbus. Tonight’s run encourages students to give the clothes off their backs — literally — to the homeless, and then run about a mile in their underwear to celebrate their philanthropy. All the clothing shed will be donated to a local homeless shelter, the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless. The challenge is between OSU and nine other universities. AXE will provide bins and will weigh clothes donated at the event. Whichever school donates the heftiest load of clothes
Bonnaroo preview
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During the second week of June, the multi-stage festival will draw big-name musicians to Manchester, Tenn.
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ZACH TUGGLE / Lantern photographer
Alisha Chow, a fourth-year in communication, and Jake Schnall, a third-year in marketing and logistics, talk with students to promote the AXE Undie Run Monday afternoon outside the RPAC.
Prof ranks 7th on RateMyProfessor.com
Top-ranked professors in the country
RACHEL JACKLIN Lantern reporter jacklin.5@osu.edu
1. Kimberly Duvall-Early
At the end of each quarter, Ohio State urges students to ÿll out evaluations of professors through the school’s system. But on RateMyProfessor.com, an online teacher database, students tend to be a bit more candid with their opinions. Fortunately for OSU’s Steve Chordas III, responses to his teaching have been so favorable that he is ranked No. 7 on the website’s 25 Highest Rated Professors list. “This guy is what other Ph.D’s at OSU should emulate,” wrote one student about the biology department’s senior lecturer. He’s a “class act, treats students fairly, and is just a happy-go-lucky kind of guy.” Another visitor of the website wrote, “He is the only reason why I go to Bio. He is what the class needs to make it tolerable.” In addition to comments on the website, students numerically rank each professor using a ÿve-point scale assessing clarity, helpfulness, easiness and rater interest. To create the top 25 list, each professor’s average rating was used, and only professors with
STEVE CHORDAS
30 ratings or more were included, according to the website’s methodology. For Chordas, who has been at OSU since 1999, news of his high ranking came as a surprise. “It was quite a shock — almost unbelievable,” Chordas said. “I think of myself as an average guy, so I’m humbled by it. It’s validation that what I’m doing is
reaching students.” Chordas was Ryan Moore’s instructor for Biology 101 during Winter Quarter 2009. “Steve was great,” said Moore, a third-year in marketing. “He surprisingly kept me awake for the full hour and 48 minutes (of the class) and he generously gave me and every other student 100 percent on the midterm.” This “generosity” was the result of a mishap in February 2009 that left instructors without enough copies of a midterm to hand out to students. About
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Psychology, James Madison University
2. Judith Kara Faust Psychology, Southeastern Louisiana University
3. Daryao Khatri Physics, University of the District of Columbia
4. Joyce Boland-Devito Business, St. John’s University
5. Bill Daly Political Science, Richard Stockton College
6. Jim Thomas Philosophy, University of Maryland – Baltimore County
7. Steve Chordas Biology, Ohio State University
8. Paul Morgan Jr. Business, University at Albany (SUNY Albany)
9. James Amirkhan Psychology, California State University Long Beach
10. Jim Javor Mathematics, University at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo) Source: ratemyprofessors.com
MOLLY GRAY / Lantern designer
After 10 years of requests, Cricket Club’s grass cut shorter
mostly sunny
FR 76/64 few showers SA 76/62 t-storms SU 83/64 partly cloudy MO 83/65 partly cloudy www.weather.com
JESSICA OSTRAU Lantern reporter ostrau.1@osu.edu The Ohio State Cricket Club has been requesting shorter grass for 10 years. Finally, Karen Crabbe of Facilities Operations and Development is helping the team trim its troubles away. Crabbe has instructed the Facilities Operations and Development groundskeepers to cut the grass half an inch shorter by the Jesse Owens
West Tennis Center, where the cricket pitch is located, said Romel Somavat, the club president. The 3-inch grass will now be cut to 2-and-a-half inches using a Toro Zero Turn mower. In the past, when the club played on the pitch, even the All-American club president, Somavat, hit ° y balls because the grass was too long to hit grounders, he said. “It was the only way we had a chance of scoring any runs,” Somavat said. By keeping the ball on the ground,
a batsman limits the chances of an outÿelder to make the play, Somavat said. However, the men of the OSU team had to adjust their technique to an all ° y-ball game. “When guys played on our team for a couple of years, they were actually getting worse,” he said. The shaggy carpet of grass prohibited the team from executing simple shots, but hope has been renewed. Members of the club complained about the grass height to the
Department of Recreational Sports, but the team never saw improvements, Somavat said. Through e-mail, different directors in Rec Sports told Somavat, who has been president for two years, that Facilities Operations and Development was unable to make any changes to the grass length. However, no one ever put the team in direct contact with Facilities Operations and Development, Somavat said.
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