Marion Campus to Be a Site for National Youth Service Day

Students from The Ohio State University at Marion and Marion Technical College will take part in the National Youth Service Day events in the community.

On Friday, April 20, the Marion Campus will be a drop-off location for the "Re-Stock by Youth 2001," a collection point for food and personal hygiene items that will be donated to community food pantries.

Any community member wishing to make a donation may drop it off at the campus between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on April 20. Volunteers will be on hand to help donors unload their cars, and otherwise assist as needed. Donors should proceed to the circular bus pick-up area near the entrance to campus where there will be a tent in which the volunteers and donations will be located. Marion County high schools are also accepting donations from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Both Marion Kroger locations are accepting donations from noon to 6 p.m.

On Saturday, April 21, from 9 a.m. to noon, volunteers also will also be on campus participating in the Marion County Youth Pride Day, a clean-up effort occurring at several county locations. Following the campus clean-up, volunteers will gather with other participating youth at Tri-Rivers for a pizza party and a presentation.

The Marion Campus effort is being coordinated by campus Librarian Betsy Blankenship.

More details about the National Youth Service events in Marion County can be obtained at www.mariononline.com/vip.

The Marion Campus is located on State Route 95, about one mile west of U.S. 23 in Marion. Ohio State Marion serves the residents of north central Ohio, including Crawford, Delaware, Hardin, Marion, Morrow, Union, and Wyandot counties

Young Women's Business Academy Planned for Ohio State Marion Campus

Teen-age girls are invited to experience the world of business and learn about entrepreneurship at the "Young Women's Business Academy," sponsored by The Ohio State University at Marion, Ohio State University Extension of Marion County, and Heritage Trails Council of Girl Scouts.

The week-long Academy will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the Marion Campus, 1465 Mount Vernon Ave., June 11 to 15. A dinner followed by an awards presentations will begin at 6 p.m. on June 15.

Young women who are entering their freshman, sophomore, junior or senior years of high school are eligible to apply. The fee is $75, and full and partial scholarships are available. Registration deadline is May 1.

"I believe this program will provide tremendous insight for young women who have an initial interest in general business, a family business, or owning their own business in the future," said Karen Ream, program manager with Ohio State Marion. "The camp will provide a real opportunity to explore their future in a college setting while having a fun time networking with other young women who have the same goals."

"This will provide young women the opportunity to learn about what it takes to begin and run a successful business," said Deborah Shade, director of Community Relations for Ohio State Marion.

Academy participants will experience workshops and seminars on business-related topics, and personal growth and self-esteem issues. In small groups, the women will learn about setting goals, marketing plans, business financing, networking, and other timely topics from professional businesswomen.

Field trips to area businesses are planned, and will be organized around the participants' interests.

Throughout the week, the young women will work in small groups to formulate their own business plan. At the end of the week, the women will present their business plan to parents and other participants.

Financial support from the program has come from Heritage Trails Council of Girl Scouts, the Kellogg Foundation through the Ohio State Marion Outreach and Engagement Committee, CitiFinancial, and Kroger Co.

Scholarship funds have generously been provided by Kroger Co., NaChurs-Alpine Solutions, and the Marion Women's Business Council, Marion General Hospital, Kable Fulfillment, Karen Ruth Media Consultants, ProMo Costumes Inc. Nancy Kinney HER Realty, Kathy Lyons and Darleen Dyer of Women's Business Council, Brinkman Advertising, and Phyllis Minks and Ann Lowe.

For more information or to obtain registration information, contact (740) 389-OSUM, extension 6341.

The Marion Campus is located on State Route 95, about one mile west of U.S. 23 in Marion. Ohio State Marion serves the residents of north central Ohio, including Crawford, Delaware, Hardin, Marion, Morrow, Union, and Wyandot counties.

Free Workshops to Help Students Prepare for ACT Exam

The Ohio State University at Marion offers free workshops to help students prepare to take the ACT exam.

The winter workshops will be held May 1, from 5 to 8 p.m., in room 100 of Morrill Hall, on the Marion Campus, one mile west of U.S. 23 on State Route 95 (Mt. Vernon Avenue.)

University admissions counselors will offer advice on test-taking strategies and what to expect on testing day, and also provide a review of the ACT practice test.

All participants will receive a free ACT Assessment Sample Test booklet.

Workshop registration is requested, and can be made by calling (740) 389-OSUM, extension 6242.

Ohio State Marion serves the residents of north central Ohio, including Crawford, Delaware, Hardin, Marion, Morrow, Union, and Wyandot counties.

Outstanding High School Juniors to Be Recognized at Ohio State Marion

More than 100 outstanding high school juniors will be recognized by The Ohio State University at Marion and the OSU Marion Alumni Club on May 9 at the Marion Campus.

The students were nominated by their high school guidance counselors and have received invitations.

The event will begin at 7 p.m. with a social time to meet faculty, staff, alumni and other students and their parents. The event will be held in Morrill Hall and a dessert buffet will be served

From 8 to 9 p.m., the students and their parents will attend one of several sessions on subjects such as Ohio State University's Honors Program, Financial Aid options, Ohio State campus life, regional campus opportunities, and college planning tips.

Presenters will be Dan Ferrell, head of OSU's Honors/Scholars programs, and David Gall, assistant director of undergraduate admissions for Ohio State, plus OSU alumni, faculty, staff and students. The event also will include door prizes and the presentation of a framed recognition certificate for each student.

For more information, contact Ohio State Marion admissions coordinator Matt Moreau at (740) 389-6786, extension 6337, or contact him through e-mail at moreau.1@osu.edu.

Ohio State Marion serves the residents of north central Ohio, including Crawford, Delaware, Hardin, Marion, Morrow, Union, and Wyandot counties.

Public Invited to Join Ohio State Marion's Cinco de Mayo Celebration

Celebrate Hispanic heritage with Ohio State Marion during the campus' second Cinco de Mayo celebration.

The event will be held May 5 (Cinco de Mayo) from 1 to 4 p.m. on the campus lawn north of the Alber Student Center. In the event of inclimate weather, the celebration will move indoors to the Alber Center gymnasium.

The event will feature a hog roast, Mexican foods, pinatas, music, arts and crafts, and Mexican heritage displays.

The cost is $3 for an adult who brings a covered dish; $5 for an adult without a dish; and $1.50 for children under 12. Children age 6 or under are free.

Cinco de Mayo is a holiday celebrated on May 5 by Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Its name is Spanish for Fifth of May.

Cinco de Mayo commemorates the victory of a Mexican army over a French army at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. The Mexican army, led by General Ignacio Zaragoza, won the battle even though the French force was better armed and three times as large The holiday of Cinco de Mayo is more of a regional holiday in Mexico, celebrated most vigorously in the state of Puebla. Though there is recognition of the holiday throughout the whole country, it's nothing like that found in Puebla.

Celebrating Cinco de Mayo has become increasingly popular among the Hispanic communities in the United States. Today's holiday is a celebration of Mexican culture, of food, music, beverage and customs unique to Mexico.

For more information or to obtain registration information, contact (740) 389-OSUM, extension 6219.

Marion Campus Prairie Plant Sale Set for May 5

Spring is in the air and many of us are just itching to get outside and enjoy all that Mother Nature has to offer.

One such opportunity is the Marion Campus Prairie and Nature Center's third annual Seed and Plant sale planned for May 5 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Many kinds of native plants and seeds will be available, including royal catchfly, black-eyed Susan, prairie larkspur, purple coneflower, and more.

Guests should park in the student parking lot near the Alber Student Center, where they will catch a horse-drawn shuttle that will transport them to the prairie. The shuttle is courtesy of the Morrow County Draft Horse Association.

Also part of the day's festivities will be guided educational tours of the prairie, and information on Ohio's prairies, past and present. Guests also can purchase a pioneer lunch cooked over a fireplace and purchase birdhouses, birdfeeders or plant stakes.

For more information, contact Gale Martin or Rick Key at (740) 389-6786, extension 6269, or Robert Klips at (740) 389-6786, extension 6263.

In case of rain, the sale will be held May 12 during the same hours.

Ohio State Marion's Norman Thomas Lecture to feature Native American Expert Roy T. Wortman

Kenyon College History Professor Roy T. Wortman, an expert in Native American history, will be the featured speaker at the 30th annual Norman Thomas Lecture at The Ohio State University at Marion. Wortman's lecture, titled "Major Turning Points in North American Indian History," will be held May 10 at noon in the Morrill Hall auditorium, 1465 Mt. Vernon Ave., Marion. It is free and open to the public.

Wortman teaches and publishes in the fields of political and North American Indian history. In April 2000, he was named the first senior faculty recipient of Kenyon's Trustee Teaching Excellence Award. In 1999-2000, he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar and American Faculty Fellow in the Department of Indian Studies in the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College in Canada. Earlier, in 1992, he served as Canadian Embassy Faculty Grantee and Research Professor in Indian Studies at the same college. He held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, the Newberry Library-Associated Colleges of the Midwest Humanities Seminar, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, among others. He initiated teaching workshops in American Indian history for college faculty and worked with public school teachers in integrating Native American history into the curriculum.

He holds a doctorate from The Ohio State University, a master's degree from University of Colorado, and an undergraduate degree from Colorado State University.

The lecture program is named in honor of Marion native Norman Thomas, a tireless advocate of pacifism, civil rights, socialism, anti-Communism, and civil liberties. Thomas, a theologian, was United States presidential candidate on the Socialist Party ticket six times between 1928 and 1948. By the time he died in 1968, many of the ideas he suggested in his early career had been adopted by both major political parties in existence.

This year's lecture is sponsored by Ohio State Marion's Honors Program and Marion's Fahey Bank.

Sherie Szeman, Author of Two Critically Acclaimed Books, to Present Five Nights Event

Sherrie Szeman, author of Only With the Heart and The Kommandant's Mistress, will be the featured presenter May 3 as part of Ohio State Marion's Five Nights on Campus.

Szemen will read from her works beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the Morrill Hall auditorium at Ohio State Marion, 1465 Mt. Vernon Ave., Marion.

A teacher as well as an author, Szeman received her doctorate in creative writing from the University of Cincinnati in 1986. She has taught creative writing, literature, technical writing and composition at the university level for 21 years. She currently is associate professor of English at Central State University near Dayton.

She arrived on the literary scene about seven years ago with The Kommandant's Mistress, a highly charged, evocative and emotional story of a young Jewish woman taken as the mistress of a death-camp commandant. A Dayton Daily News critic called it "a gorgeous yet risky foray into the horrors of the Holocaust told in Szeman style, separated into sections written from the two principal players points of view."

With her unique style, the critic describes, Szeman takes "chances and challenges readers with flowing prose that leaps over decades and events: Her books read like our minds work."

The Kommandant's Mistress was awarded the University of Rochester's 1994 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize "as the outstanding work of fiction written by an American woman" and was chosen as one of the New York Times Book Review's best books of the year. Plans also are under way to make the novel into a movie.

Since its publication in 2000, Only With the Heart has garnered critical acclaim as "poignant novel of love, memory and family responsibility." (Publishers Weekly review, July 24, 2000.) It is the story of a woman with Alzheimer, her son and her daughter-in-law, who is her primary care-giver.

"Alzheimer's disease claims more than its victim ŠThe novel is dead-on in its depiction of the destructive power of a disease that can devastate a family."

Five Nights on Campus, the cultural arts series sponsored by The Ohio State University at Marion, is in its sixth season on the Ohio State Marion Campus, 1465 Mt. Vernon Ave. Tickets for Szeman's reading are $3 for students and $7.50 for adults and will be available at the door. For ticket information, contact the Office of Community Relations at Ohio State Marion, (740) 389-6786, extension 6279.

A special Five Nights on Campus event will be Sunset Serenade at 5 p.m. on June 24, following Celebrate Summer: Marion's Art and Music Festival. This outdoor concert on the steps of the Marion Campus Library will feature jazz ensemble Charged Particles, performers from Opera/Columbus, and the brass ensemble Quintessential, performing patriotic numbers. This event is a "Five Nights Extra" - free to season ticket holders. Regular ticket prices are $8 for an individual and $15 for a family. The event is sponsored by and is a fund-raiser for the WOSB Advisory Council to provide education projects in local elementary schools and maintenance of the broadcasting equipment that serves Marion, Wyandot and Crawford counties.

This year's sponsors for the Five Nights series are Whirlpool Corp., Adelphia, Marion Steel Co., WDIF, Bun's Restaurant, Verizon, Wyandot Inc., Medical Mutual of Ohio, and Herald Printing in New Washington.

$690,000 Grant Awarded for Regional Workforce Training Center in Delaware County

The Alber Enterprise Center of The Ohio State University at Marion was recently awarded a $690,000 grant by the Ohio Board of Regents to establish and equip a regional workforce training center at OSU's new Delaware Center, currently under construction at U.S. 23 and Orange Road.

The training center will be a satellite office of the Alber Enterprise Center and will serve businesses in Delaware, Union and Franklin counties.

Alber Enterprise Center Director Eileen Smith said the funds and services it will offer are part of an ongoing effort by state universities, the legislature, and Ohio State President William Kirwin to help "keep companies in the state, along with their employees."

The types of training to be offered include computer training, web design and maintenance, networking and certification programs. Area companies also can benefit from courses on how to utilize e-commerce to facilitate business. In addition, the center will offer customized training to develop leadership, improve supervisory and technical skills, quality improvement, team development, and other performance improvement programs.

The companies will pay for the services, although grant money may be available to help offset costs.

The training center will house a general computer lab and a high tech computer lab. Also available will be a "portable" computer lab that will be available to travel to businesses to conduct the training.

Delaware and Union are counties with the lowest unemployment rates in the state. The training center will allow potential workers from outside the area receive the training they need to compete for and hold jobs at the new businesses locating in these counties. Smith said the Alber Center will be surveying area businesses to ascertain the types of training needed. A full-time manager of corporate education will be hired to oversee the programs provided and to work with businesses to meet their training needs.

The Alber Enterprise Center partners with OSU Extension and the Enterprise Ohio Network, which is comprised of 53 schools of higher learning dedicated to making Ohio-based companies more competitive. Named in honor of Marion businessman and philanthropist George Alber, the center has been providing general and specialized workforce and industry training since 1996 (?).

For more information, contact Smith at (740) 389-6786 ext. 6312, or e-mail her at smith.1394@osu.edu.