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3. 2008 O&E Awards
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2007 Outreach and Engagement Awards

Ohio State University Nominated Programs

In 2007, Ohio State recognized 15 outstanding outreach and engagement projects and selected two finalists for the regional Outreach Scholarship W.K. Kellogg Foundation Engagement Award and the C. Peter Magrath University/Community Engagement Award: The Sugar Creek Project and Engaged Partners—Improving the Lives of Children and Youth. The scope and quality of these 15 programs represent the broad spectrum of Ohio State’s partnerships with communities and industry.

The Ohio State University Rural Program — College of Medicine
Asian Health Initiative and La Clinica Latina — The Ohio State University Medical Center
Improving Access to Healthy Food — College of Public Health
College of Pharmacy, OSU Extension and Kroger
The OHIO Project: Uniting University and Community with Smiles – College of Dentistry
Office of International Affairs and Columbus Council on World Affairs<
Adventure Central: People + Place + Program = Partnership for Engagement — OSU Extension
COSI and Ohio State University
Expanding, Excelling and Enriching the Partnership between Education and Industry — The Ohio State University College of Engineering & Honda
City and Regional Planning (CRP) Internship Program
The Collaborative for Enterprise Transformation and Innovation: A Partnership for Performance — College of Engineering
Veterinary Medicine — including Honoring the Bond, Shelter, Prison and Greyhound Health and Wellness programs
Emerald Ash Borer Research and Outreach Initiative — OSU Extension

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The Ohio State University Rural Program demonstrates in an exemplary manner several program characteristics integral to complex and enduring university-community engagement. Established in 1998 as a training program in family medicine, the program has become a virtual “rural health professions campus” crossing the disciplines of medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, and involving learners at various stages of professional development. It is both rooted in and builds upon a tradition of engagement between the Ohio State University and the community of Logan County, Ohio, spanning several decades. The program is the latest in a succession of partnerships in health care between university and community: Bellefontaine Cardiology, a James Cancer Center satellite, and The Ohio State Health Network of central Ohio hospitals and health care organizations.

Over 13 years, from original vision through implementation and subsequent adaptation, the program and the larger campus-community partnership have been blessed by continuity of leadership, at both the university and community level. A rural program director recruited out of rural practice functions with relative autonomy in the community in both clinical practice and teaching. At the same time that he is employed by the local hospital, he maintains a close relationship with the university’s Department of Family Medicine and serves the College of Medicine as assistant dean for rural medical education.

Originally conceived as a simple apprenticeship-style training program based upon the “1-2” model of residency training in Washington State and elsewhere, the program was first accredited by the ACGME in 1998. Up to two resident physicians each year began their first year of training in the university setting capitalizing upon the opportunities for education at Children’s Hospital and the University Hospitals in Columbus, Ohio. Then, continuing their education in a setting more relevant to subsequent rural small-town practice, the physicians in training transferred to Logan County. Through videoconferencing technology they remained involved in didactic sessions with their peers in the university, each group benefiting from the experiences and perspectives of the other.

Declining student interest in family medicine in the face of increasing demands for more community-relevant training prompted an adaptation. Now creatively configured as an integrated three-year program based in the rural community and marked by intermittent immersion experiences in the urban hospitals, it has become the nation’s first ACGME accredited “2-2-2” integrated rural training track over all three years of training.

Other opportunities to train medical, nurse practitioner, and pharmacy students have been woven into the fabric of the program. A Rural Health Scholars Retreat and a longitudinal experience in leadership development, initiated in 2001, has brought national experts in rural health to interact with students in a small group setting, this year engaging students from seven of Ohio’s eight medical schools. Nurse practitioner students participate with students and residents in Clinical Jazz and pharmacy students from another regional university participate in hospital rounds.

Sustainable campus-community efforts such as this depend upon enduring personal relationships and a multistranded infrastructure that have the continuing capacity for adaptation, improvisation, self-repair, and redirection.

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Asian Health Initiative and La Clinica Latina – The Ohio State University Medical Center

Asian Health Initiative started in June 1997 as a collaboration of OSUMC, Family Practice Foundation, Asian American Community Services, Asian American Council and Southeast Asian Ministries. The mission of the program was to improve the health status of medically underserved Asian populations in Central Ohio. The program also provided service-learning opportunities for students. A community advisory group was formed to oversee clinical operations, scheduling appointments, recruiting volunteers, providing transportation and interpretation services. The community advisory group has individuals from community-based agencies, public health organizations and community members. The volunteer medical director provided a learning environment for medical students and students from other Colleges on campus. The students have the opportunity to apply classroom knowledge in an actual patient care setting. The partnerships provide free medical services to underserved Asian and a point of entry into the health care delivery system. The free medical care is provided three times a month in space provide by OSU Family Medicine. The OSU Medical Center provides funding for the entire laboratory services for clinic and staff from Asian American Community Services (AACS) schedule the appointments for patients. AACS also provides an interpreter and transportation services for the patient. Since, it inception the Asian Health Initiative has served over 1,000 patients. These patients mostly would have received medical care in some local Emergency Department; however, because of this initiative the cost of care is more cost effective and efficient. The health care provided is more culturally competence.

This community and campus partnership model was also used to establish La Clinica Latina, which provides medical services to Latino population. La Clinica Latina started in May 2001 to provide medical care to the Latino and Hispanic population of central Ohio. The clinic mission is providing health care to underserved Latino/Hispanic populations and culturally and linguistically appropriate services. A community advisory group was established and students are an integral part of the program. The partnership provides free medical services. The free services are provided three times a month and most of the volunteers speak Spanish. The medical director provides a learning environment for the students. The OSU Medical Center provides funding for the laboratory services and Family Medicine provides the space free. The Latino Health Network is community-based organization that provides scheduling for the patients and provides support in operating the clinic. The clinic has serviced over 3,000 patients since opening its doors.

Asian Health Initiative and La Clinica Latina clinics operate from 4-9pm, when the space is usually not being used by Family Medicine. Both of clinics are published as one of several local free clinics and provide services to growing number of people needing health care. The clinics are a unique model that provides a bridge in the relationship between Campus, residents and community-based organizations. This clinic model at the same time provides a great service-learning opportunity for students and a valuable service to the community.

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Improving Access to Healthy Food – College of Public Health

Improving Access to Healthy Food is a project involving The Ohio State University College of Public Health and Columbus Public Health as a community partner. A major initiative of Columbus Public Health is to improve access to healthy food in areas of the city with high poverty rates. Research indicates that access to supermarkets and other stores offering fresh produce and other healthy foods often differs between impoverished and wealthier neighborhoods.

Graduate students enrolled in a Public Health service learning course conducted visual food item surveys in food stores located in an identified zip code, and participated in environmental scans of the area noting assets and barriers to a healthy lifestyle. Students also interviewed key informants who live and work in the zip code regarding their perceptions about access to healthy food and about residents’ eating and food purchasing habits, as well as their opinions about the feasibility of healthy food access strategies. Findings were consistent with research previously conducted in low income, urban areas. High cost and low availability of healthy food, along with other identified barriers, increase the difficulty of consuming a nutritious diet.

Quantitative and qualitative data were compiled into a final report that will assist Columbus Public Health in the community assessment process, culminating in an action plan for the identified community. Columbus Public Health is now better positioned to assist this community in working to increase access to healthy foods and inform residents about problems in their local food system, providing the necessary groundwork for implementing strategies that will bring healthier food into the community and helping the community prioritize its efforts.

This methodology will be used in a similar project in another zip code in Columbus this academic year. Graduate students in Public Health and undergraduates in the School of Allied Medical Professions will combine efforts to assist the community partner in creating conditions in which people can be healthy, in this case around the issue of access to healthy food. Both parties benefit. The community partner acquires information needed to fulfill its social change mission. Students benefit by developing critical thinking skills, gaining contextual understanding of complex issues, engaging in thoughtful decision making, applying theory to practice, and maximizing the learning process through the exchange of ideas with others. Providing opportunities for students to engage in service learning as a form scholarship has the potential to prepare them to become active and committed citizens and practitioners in a diverse society.

Funded by a 2006 Interdisciplinary University/Community Service-Learning Team Grant

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The evidence presented in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (1999) demonstrated that thousands of patients receiving medications in the U.S. were being harmed. The Ohio State University (OSU) College of Pharmacy faculty has been and continues to be poised to address these deficiencies of the U.S. health care system related to the use of medicines for improving health outcomes. The College is involved in local efforts that assess community health needs that develop and implement needs-based interventions that address disease prevention and maintenance of health. Likewise, OSU Extension is engaged in local health education programs that address a variety of topics including health literacy, diabetes, diet, nutrition, heart disease, obesity, healthy behaviors, healthy lifestyles, disease prevention, and access to health care services. These community-based health education programs joined together and applied successfully for an OSU Cares faculty support grant in 2006. The OSU CARES grant, “Partner for Promotion—An OSU Extension–Pharmacy Initiative,” resulted in the efforts by three University-based partners (OSU College of Pharmacy, OSU Extension Community Development and the OSU Extension Family and Consumer Sciences) to involve Pharm.D. Students (i.e., enrolled in advanced practice community pharmacy clinical courses), county Extension educators, and community pharmacists (i.e., adjunct clinical faculty) in effective community-based health education efforts. The model created an approach and methodology for conducting health needs assessments and using that information to develop appropriate educational interventions that improve health literacy, promote healthy behaviors, and enhance access to health care. Later in 2006, the partners applied successfully for an University Outreach and Engagement Excellence in Engagement grant that built on the work of the faculty support grant. The funding from the two grants has resulted in the Partner for Promotion model implementation in 16 pharmacies located in both rural and urban communities. Supported by College of Pharmacy Faculty mentors and OSU Extension Specialists and Educators, pharmacists and pharmacy students have conducted local health needs assessments. This has resulted in the development of appropriate patient education materials and programming in response to the identified specific local health care needs. Community specific strategies for offering and conducting patient health screening and referral services are being implemented for community-wide and targeted populations. Community pharmacists, Pharm.D. Students and OSU Extension Educators are working together to develop and disseminate health education resources to enhance health literacy and to promote preventative health and healthy behaviors. OSU Extension educators continue to focus on health literacy, preventive health and wellness programs, and services for the community at large and are able to market these programs to the community through the pharmacies. All partners are participating in strategies to measure program outcomes including short, medium, and long-term impacts. Finally, Pharm.D. Students are experiencing quality rotations, taught by community-based pharmacists in partnership with OSU faculty mentors, where they are employing clinical skills as well as improving business and management skills.

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In the late 1990s, Ohio’s citizens expressed to state leadership that access to dental care was their greatest unmet health need. State-sponsored surveys had shown repeatedly that certain populations—the poor, disabled, and minorities—experienced higher-than-average rates of dental disease and could not access care. In response, the Ohio Department of Health engaged the professional, advocacy, lay, educational and public health community in finding solutions. The College of Dentistry responded by securing a $1.5 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and began an experiment in outreach education unprecedented in its history. As the state’s flagship dental institution, the College committed to a fundamental change in its clinical education of students and began a process of making dental education relevant to our citizens, exposing students to populations they were being trained to help, and bolstering the fragile statewide network of safety net clinics with providers.

The college had much to gain. Its community dentistry experience was non-existent; its current model of dental education plagued by skyrocketing tuition, dwindling faculty, an aging campus clinic, and a perception as the “ivory tower.” In addition, the clinical experience of dental and dental hygiene students was weak in its representation of diversity, both in terms of culture and dental needs of Ohioans.

To create the OHIO (Oral Health Improvement through Outreach) Project, the College brought together members of various communities across Ohio to plan the grant and its operation. Many became community partners, contributing to education of our students and providing direction. For them, student presence represented both challenge and opportunity. The challenge was to integrate student providers into 23 care facilities whose primary mission was service and yet provide meaningful education. The opportunity was to expand their reach to more patients. In the long run, challenges became opportunities for professional growth and fulfillment and the realized opportunities challenged our 23 partners to provide even more benefit for approximately 38,000 Ohioans.

Our data show both a tremendous increase in services to Ohioans and a sense of partnership, professional fulfillment, and satisfaction in both community partners and 426 students over the five years of the project.

The College enjoys increased productivity of returning students in its clinics as well as a revitalized curriculum with early clinical experiences, exposure to cultural competency, and increased public health dental experience. OHIO Project faculty have generated scholarship including publications and presentation abstracts and assumed leadership status in a growing national dental outreach education movement. Within the University, the OHIO Project strengthened relationships between dentistry and other units in areas of diversity, outreach and admissions. The OHIO Project has stimulated additional funding totaling $773,450 for diversity initiatives and novel care delivery systems partnering with school, mental health, and faith-based communities as well as the dental community.

The best opportunities lie in the future. With its record established and funding secured through careful long-range planning, the OHIO Project prepares to expand into Ohio and create a network of care for patients and education for both students and faculty with distance learning, faculty exchange and other innovations.

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Office of International Affairs and Columbus Council on World Affairs

The Office of International Affairs at The Ohio State University (OIA) and the Columbus Council on World Affairs (CCWA) have been engaged in a successful partnership for the past 3 years to more effectively reach and address the needs of Central Ohio teachers and students in the area of international studies. Both organizations work with similar audiences and strive to heighten the quality and depth of international education in local schools. As a team these organizations more effectively reach these teachers and students and supply higher quality services. The organizations work together in different capacities to excel their programming efforts through projects such as the Educational Advisory Committee, Global School Bus, and Global Hotspots.

Recognizing the unique circumstances and needs of our educational system, OIA and CCWA formed an Educational Advisory Committee (EAC) in 2004. This committee is comprised of 14 professionals in the field of education representing local schools, community groups, and government. The group meets quarterly to advise CCWA and OSU on current and future programming. Their insights are used to adjust the format of programs, increase diversity of participating schools and students, and guide continuous improvement. Having an advisory body for two organizations ensures that efforts and expenses are not duplicated. The EAC is an essential component of their work.

The organizations also work together to bring speakers on international countries and cultures into local classrooms through The Global School Bus program, where presenters have reached nearly 4,500 students and teachers through 150 presentations in 2005-06. This year, training sessions have been implemented to better prepare these presenters to go into the classroom, working with teachers from the EAC to help train the volunteers to give age appropriate presentations and lead activities such as crafts, food demonstrations, discussions on daily life, show and tell of artifacts, and more. The organizations work together to recruit new volunteers, train them, and fulfill requests from teachers.

CCWA offers Youth Forums for students to attend a day-long event where they convene and debate topics of international importance. Between 80 and 100 students attend the forums. They hear perspectives from experts and/or other community stakeholders and use this information, in addition to research conducted onsite, to formulate logical arguments to their group’s assigned position. These student forums are directly linked to the academic content standards. Related pre- and post-forum materials are distributed to teachers for use in their classrooms. Concurrent with the Youth Forum, OIA offers a Global Hotspots session that delves deeper into the issues presented at the Youth Forum and is led by an expert in the field. Teachers are eligible for contact hours for their involvement.

The organizations work together to promote these and other programs through personal contact with teachers, conference attendance, district inservice workshops, newsletters, email announcements, and other networking opportunities. Experience has shown that the teachers and students involved in these programs crave more involvement and the partnership fulfills that need to offer various types of programs in different ways for constant growth.

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Three words summarize the engagement partnership at Adventure Central: people, place, and program. Adventure Central at Wesleyan MetroPark, an education center that targets urban youth in Dayton, Ohio, serves as a “hub” for out-of-school time programming. Opening its doors in 2000, Adventure Central is made possible through a partnership between Ohio State University (OSU) Extension, 4-H Youth Development, and Five Rivers MetroParks. However, the story of Adventure Central begins well before the doors opened.

A vision and common purpose guided early deliberations. Both organizations wanted to reach an urban audience, one traditionally underserved by park districts and land-grant universities and 4-H. The goals and mission developed in the early stages of the partnership continue to guide intentional programming. The process was characterized by patience — a willingness to wait, reciprocal learning, a focus on the big picture, and coming to agreement on how to measure success. The resulting effort is more than the sum of the parts, capturing the best of both organizations and doing what neither could accomplish alone. The challenges of relationships and of blending organizational cultures are outweighed by the benefits.

Among the lessons learned is that time devoted in the beginning pays dividends later. Despite turnover in people, the relationships have sustained. Consistent with what has occurred at the partnership level, the focus on relationships and a positive youth development philosophy carry over to sustained, long-term contact with youth and their families. This approach has allowed Adventure Central to grow from a pilot program serving 25 youth, to one that now engages nearly 400 youth and their parents. The staff now includes a diverse mix of full- and part-time paid and volunteer members. The capacity-building model of staff development is integral to success.

Adventure Central also involves the teaching and research missions of the university, serving as a site for students’ research, service learning, and class field trips. Annually, 50 students and 4 faculty members are engaged in authentic learning and outreach experiences. This exposure builds capacity when students take what is learned and use it in other settings. The combination of people, place, and program has created a synergistic effect and has leveraged new partnerships (e.g., University of Dayton) and funding. The current success has led to an extension of the initial partnership funding agreement through 2017 along with program and facility expansion plans.

It is not enough to provide a quality program and engage faculty, staff, students, and community partners. Our connection to university means that we need to extend the lessons learned to benefit other youth development efforts. We conceive of our role to include meeting local needs, capacity building within the community, and using the experience within the community to inform our scholarly work. Adventure Central has grown well beyond the initial vision, beyond a program for kids, to serve as a model how Extension remains relevant to the needs of today’s society and serves as a model of outreach and engagement in the 21st century.

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Though the history of cooperation between The Ohio State University and the Center of Science and Industry (COSI), an internationally recognized science center, extends across nearly four decades, it is not until recently that large-scale, formalized collaborative efforts were initiated that promote key elements of the missions of each institution. For COSI, the collaboration supports the museum’s three institutional focus areas (Early Childhood Learning, Family Learning, and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education). For OSU, the partnership provides a mechanism for outreach efforts that extend OSU teaching, research, and service outside the university walls for the benefit of the public. Three collaborative programs located within COSI exemplify how this partnership supports the missions of both institutions: WOSU@COSI brings operations of OSU’s public television and radio stations into dedicated studio facilities within the museum, allowing visitors access to exhibits about broadcasting as well as the opportunity to watch live production and broadcast of WOSU programs; the Center for Family Research is a multicollege research, assessment, and treatment initiative housed in COSI offices; and the Building Youth Leadership and Workforce Skills program of OSU Extension works with University District teens to develop work readiness.

Building on the success of these three joint projects, OSU and COSI have initiated an ongoing process of collaborative planning to develop new initiatives that further key priorities of each institution. In the summer of 2006, COSI and OSU partnered to invite OSU faculty to spend the day at the museum to stimulate conversation about how individual faculty might intersect with COSI’s focus on Early Childhood Learning, Family Learning, and STEM Education. From this grassroots planning, multiple initiatives have been developed, including a series of proposals for external funding in which COSI’s expertise in outreach is paired with OSU’s expertise in research, teaching, and service. For example, the Astronomy department and COSI are developing a teacher professional development/school field trip combination in which COSI staff and OSU faculty work together with middle and high school teachers and students. COSI and OSU’s Museum of Biological Diversity have formed a partnership that takes advantage of COSI’s innovative computer-based outreach and the Museum’s scientific expertise to develop programming for projects such as the Mendel exhibit that will open at COSI. The strengths of the innovative classroom teaching of OSU’s Introductory Biology Program will be combined with COSI’s successful informal education methods to examine new approaches to engage and excite the public about STEM. In an effort to further integrate OSU research with COSI institutional goals, COSI is creating laboratory spaces that will be available to OSU researchers on a competitive basis, allowing their research to be embedded within the fabric of COSI’s operation and increasing public understanding of the benefits of OSU research. These projects are representative of a unique ongoing collaboration that supports COSI’s goal of preparing the community for the future through its programming and promotes the mission and scholarship of Ohio’s land-grant institution.

The Center for Family Research received funding from 1997 and 2004 OSU CARES/OSU Extension Grants.

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Expanding, Excelling and Enriching the Partnership between Education and Industry — The Ohio State University College of Engineering & Honda

In 2000 Honda and OSU embarked upon the formalization of an unparalleled, bilateral collaboration between university and industry. Through a formal agreement, endowments which arise through investment of surplus funds from the operation of the nonprofit Transportation Research Center, Inc., are utilized for a wide variety of programs overseen by a collaborative group consisting of three members from Honda and three members from Ohio State. Diverse activities of the Honda-OSU Partnership span education, research and public service for a variety of audiences, providing funding for definition, maintenance, and implementation of programs in teaching, research and community outreach.

Programs for teaching include an interdisciplinary undergraduate capstone design program, tied directly to industry, in which students work in teams with engineers on-site in the industrial setting; funding for multimedia classrooms and for state-of-the-art distance education facilities for continuing education; programs that bring international visitors to OSU to enhance the content of existing courses with lectures offering an international perspective, integrated into existing curricula; enhancement of undergraduate honors programs through competitive scholarships and internships given to existing students in their final year of study; and, enhancement of graduate programs via endowed fellowships to attract the best and brightest graduate students to transportation-related fields.

Programs for research include a visiting scholar program to attract international scholars for extended stays, with the intent of integrating into existing research programs, and interacting with Honda research and development; a unique collaborative research seed grant program featuring matching funds for companies who partner with OSU faculty and students in research projects; manufacturing and workplace ergonomics initiatives in the form of research projects and facilities; participation of OSU faculty and researchers in a Summer Fellow Program, whereby OSU researchers spend part of their summer at Honda in Ohio working with practicing automotive engineers; and development of infrastructure and facilities for interdisciplinary collaboration in various areas, such as automotive engine test cell development, a mass spectroscopy system, a plastics injection-molding machine, unique capabilities in workplace ergonomics research, and funding for Ohio’s only hydrogen refueling station for fuel-cell-powered vehicles.

Programs for outreach, engagement, and extension include a one-week residence program aimed at increasing the awareness of high school students in the field of transportation, involving Honda for tours and other interaction during one entire day; the Math Medal Program recognizing outstanding math scholarship at high schools in the 15-county area around Honda of America (pewter medal, savings bond, and annual awards ceremony held at Honda); the four-year Honda-OSU Partnership Scholarship at The Ohio State University College of Engineering offered exclusively to incoming freshmen who were in the group of Partnership Math Medal recipients; summer intern programs for students from historically black universities, to spend several weeks at OSU’s Center for Automotive Research and to interact with Honda associates; and, a unique mentoring program, joint with Ohio State faculty, students, and Honda associates, aimed at local public schools to enhance engineering awareness in underrepresented groups, with emphasis in the STEM fields for middle school and high school students.

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The City and Regional Planning program at Ohio State University has a unique partnership with community agencies and organizations that places more than 50 graduate interns in positions around the local area and brings people from the community into the classroom to enhance the graduate program. External funding has allowed extra focus on community development and on rebuilding the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

CRP has redesigned portions of its teaching, research and outreach missions to make the best use of the community partnership. The first step was the creation of an intern seminar that meets every term and brings community partners into the classroom. This seminar was joined recently by a service-learning course that meets at the African American and African Studies Extension Center in a low income neighborhood of Columbus. The Extension Center’s outreach efforts have created a network of community partners who meet with the service-learning class to provide more on-site experience for students.

These two classes create a real partnership between the program and many different parts of the local community. Students work on tasks the communities define; faculty provide academic material and skills that assist with the students’ work and help them place that work in context; and the community partners bring their knowledge and skills to the students at their internships, in the seminars as well as in guest lectures and at other special events. This creates a three way exchange of information, skills, knowledge and experience that has enormous benefits for the students and faculty, the community and the University.

Students have taken on many different projects for their communities. Many have used their GIS training to create maps. Others have done traffic or parking studies, researched historic building codes or assisted local officials with disaster recovery. For many in central Ohio, these students are the face of the University. Individual interns often win awards and accolades from their communities; for example, the city of Columbus City Council presented all 12 of their interns and the CRP program with certificates of appreciation. Examples of student intern projects may be found at
http://knowlton.osu.edu/ksa-new/_student/?section=4.

The internship program received a HUD grant that provides even stronger community ties as community supervisors meet together to evaluate student work and placements. Another grant placed an intern on the Mississippi gulf coast in the summer as part of a team of graduate students and planning professionals planning the rebuilding of towns along the coast.

The CRP program further connects the program, its interns and the community with an annual exhibition and reception. Each intern submits a project for the exhibit. A juried competition takes place (the jury includes community members) to determine five prize winners. All intern sponsors, community members, students, families and the University community are invited to a reception at which the prizes are awarded. This provides a celebration of the accomplishments of the partnership and a renewal of commitment for the coming year.

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The Collaborative for Enterprise Transformation and Innovation: A Partnership for Performance — College of Engineering

Services make up 80% of the U.S. economy and a rapidly growing proportion of every other economy in the world. The use of information technology to transform the design and delivery of services is an active interdisciplinary research topic with potentially significant impact to the Ohio, United States and the world economy.

Since its inception within the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in 2002, the Collaborative for Enterprise Transformation and Innovation (CETI) has engaged in a collaborative consortium with faculty and students across disciplines at OSU and local community partners from city government, entrepreneurs, nonprofit organizations, and local industry around the use of information technology to transform services and their delivery to the citizen and the consumer. This consortium has accomplished almost 30 projects with a mix of classroom and industry-sponsored projects. We developed the IT Strategic Plan for the City of Columbus, and continued to work closely with the city in the development, validation, and adoption of the 311 system that provides a single point of entry to all nonemergency citizen services. We have been engaged in an ongoing multiquarter project with the OSU Agricultural Extension program to provide a simple, low-cost, mobile, hand-held application for profitable management of small farms. We worked with Engineers for Community Service (ECOS) to create the portal for Neighborhood Services Inc., a neighborhood-scale nonprofit agency that provides food, clothing, emergency assistance, friendly counsel, reliable referrals, and faithful advocacy to needy neighbors in the Ohio State University area. And we are working with large organizations as well; we are working with Nationwide Insurance and the Ohio State University Medical Center to bring best practices in IT service delivery and capacity management to bear on their operations. We have begun to extend our reach globally as well, with a collaborative Capstone project completed with Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Our community partners have benefited from the interdisciplinary, unbiased and holistic expertise and the fresh thinking that OSU faculty and students have brought to bear. Our Computer Science, Public Policy, Industrial Engineering, and Statistics students have been able to acquire an understanding of real-world problems. Through industry-embedded experiences, our faculty have identified new areas of interdisciplinary research, and have published multiple research papers on results from this activity. Most important, have been able to identify, validate, and develop curriculum with real impact in the classroom. We have generated approximately $350,000 in external funding for the University. In recognition of our activities, IBM recently gave us a $40,000 Faculty Innovation Award that we will use to do cutting-edge research on the boundaries of the known and unknown in technology-enabled services, and we recently received a Planning Grant from the National Science Foundation to become part of their Industry-University Collaborative Research Program in partnership with the Georgia Institute of Technology Center for Experimental Research in Computer Science.

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The College of Veterinary Medicine’s community outreach and engagement efforts include Honoring the Bond, Shelter, Prison and Greyhound Health and Wellness programs. A principal mission of the College is to prepare graduates to become highly skilled and society-ready veterinarians, actively engaged leaders and contributing community members. Through broad-based education, graduates advance animal health, educate and serve the animal-owning public and protect public health. With the growing recognition of the human-animal bond and central role of pets in the family, students’ community involvement is essential to understanding the impact of animals on society. The College comprehensively and cooperatively engages in community awareness and outreach with public partners, providing benefits to communities and society while affording students unique, practical learning experiences, which serves as a solid foundation for graduates to become lifelong contributors to their communities.

The Honoring the Bond Program provides students with communication skills vital to promote excellent veterinary care while providing hospital clients with family advocate services, educational resources and consultation services for bereavement decisions. Students operate a national Pet Loss Support Helpline to provide grief education and non-medical support for owners who have lost a beloved companion.

The College and Franklin County Department of Animal Care and Control implemented a collaborative program in 1996, the first program in the nation to bring students into a municipal shelter to perform routine surgeries under faculty supervision. It increases students’ hands-on experience, reduces animals used for teaching, and helps communities with pet overpopulation. It was registered as a service-learning course in 2001, expanded to include medical and dental services, and is consistently ranked by students as a superior learning experience. In addition to increasing technical skills, confidence and clinical competency, students become aware of the profession’s expectation for stewardship, accountability and public service.

The College works collaboratively with Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections to educate prisoners involved in the dog handler’s program. Students provide seminars on canine health to assist inmates in providing appropriate dog training and care. The program recently expanded to work with Safe Haven for Pets, an Ohio coalition providing emergency foster care for companion animals of domestic violence victims. Pets are housed at the Ohio Reformatory for Women and the College provides them with medical care and prisoner education. The program provides mutually rewarding interaction between students and prisoners, and reassures domestic violence victims of their pet’s safety and well-being.

The Greyhound Health and Wellness Program provides specialized outreach and education for owners and veterinarians through free consultation, website containing current health and research information, list-serve for veterinarians treating retired greyhounds, annual scientific conference on greyhound health, and medical care, spay/neuter, dentistry and subsidized chemotherapy for greyhounds with cancer. This program has the capacity to reach nearly 120,000 greyhounds in the U.S.

The College’s dedicated and committed faculty value the opportunity to provide important and beneficial community service while instilling in graduates an awareness of their pivotal role in fostering and preserving a healthy human-animal bond and their responsibility to their communities and society.

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Emerald Ash Borer Research and Outreach Initiative — OSU Extension

Since the discovery of emerald ash borer (EAB) in Ohio in February 2003, OSU Extension has worked closely with the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA), the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), USDA-APHIS and USDA Forest Service to formulate and deliver a cooperative research and outreach program targeted at key stakeholders, including educators, policy makers, homeowners, landowners, resource managers, green industry professionals, forest-products industry, and the general public.

An unprecedented exotic, invasive insect capable of wiping out native ash trees from North American forests and urban landscapes, EAB threatens to cause serious environmental and economic damage to Ohio and the rest of the nation. To address this rapidly evolving threat and provide the citizens of Ohio and beyond with the knowledge and resources to best manage the impact of EAB, OSU Extension has established a 20-member team made up of individuals with expertise and interest in EAB, trees, communities and communications. Such a coordinated, cohesive effort is essential to effectively address the needs of the diverse audiences affected by this insect, as well as to continue the positive support OSU Extension has so far given to state and federal agencies involved in EAB research, outreach, and regulation.

Examples of the team’s outreach successes include eight educational programs carried out in partnership with ODA and ODNR, covering topics such as insecticide options for EAB. These programs have directly reached more than 850 participants, and 10,000 people have been exposed to EAB messages through displays, demonstrations, and telephone and e-mail contacts. The university’s EAB website has become one of the most popular and trusted sources of information about this pest. In 2006, the site received 1,077,511 hits. A unique Ohio State-produced, credit card-size EAB ID card has been adopted by several states, USDA-APHIS, and the Forest Service. Hundreds of thousands of these cards have been printed and distributed to date. Furthermore, several fact sheets and bulletins have been developed by members of the team to address homeowner, landowner, and industry questions.

Because of the spread of EAB throughout the state, woodland owners and the forest-products industry have become key audiences. That is why OSU Extension has taken a proactive approach to addressing the forestry side of EAB, offering 15 presentations specifically targeted toward EAB issues throughout Ohio and reaching 746 participants. Another crucial topic is the utilization of infested ash trees and others being “preemptively” cut ahead of potential infestations. Workshops have been offered to help municipalities and other groups take advantage of this valuable hardwood resource; in addition, a short training video, “Turning Doomed City Trees into Lumber,” was developed as an introduction to wood utilization in an urban setting.

Research has also been an integral part of OSU Extension’s EAB team. Several projects, in partnership with the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, are underway as part of Ohio State’s comprehensive EAB efforts. These include development of a resistant ash tree; survey, detection, and risk assessment; impacts on forest ecosystems; and evaluation of insecticides to protect trees from EAB.

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