The Transcript – Page 115 – This is the archive of our old website

Fundraising central topic at faculty meeting

Ohio Wesleyan has not done a great job of keeping parents and alumni involved and connected to the university, according to the vice president for university advancement Colleen Garland.

That has to change and will change, Garland told faculty at their monthly meeting Monday, if the university is to raise an ambitious $200 million over the next seven years.

“Connect today, create tomorrow” is the newly minted logo for the fundraising campaign, which the Ohio Wesleyan Board of Trustees approved earlier this month.

Garland said Ohio Wesleyan’s fundraising improved over the last few years. On average, the university receives about $15 million in cash yearly, but raised more than $22 million during the most recent fiscal year.

However, Garland emphasized emphasized that giving goes up and down.

“We have had a terrific couple of years,” she said. “We are working very hard to maintain this momentum.”

Prior to settling on the $200 million goal, trustees asked for a “feasibility study” by an outside consultant to examine fundraising objectives.

The consultant interviewed about 50 of OWU’s likely donors at the highest potential donation levels to “test the funding objectives as well as the overall dollar amount,” while “probing each individual they interviewed for that person’s projected donation to the campaign,” Garland said.

The consultant’s report recommended a goal between the $180 million to $210 million. The report was presented to the trustees in May, but the $200 million campaign goal wasn’t settled on until earlier this month.

The report also suggested a split between types of donations, aiming for 75 percent in outright giving, with 25 percent coming from planned, or estate, donations. In the past, OWU heavily depended on estate gifts, Garland said, which was a reflection of the economy at the time. However, as the campaign proceeds, Garland said her office is looking “for something a little more aggressive” in terms of outright giving.

Garland also said in her report that there is no magic formula for determining a campaign goal, “but there are a few benchmarks you look at.”

One key benchmark is trustee giving as a percentage of the total. According to Garland, a minimum of 25 percent of the total goal should come from the Board, adding that at some schools that number is as high as 40 percent.

Garland said another important consideration is the wealth of the prospect pool. Reflecting on a screening of all of the alumni and parents in OWU’s “prospect pool,” Garland said the results are “very, very promising.”

“We feel very confident that we have the wealth in our prospect pool to raise this kind of money,” she said. The challenge will be to get people more involved and connected to the university.

“Most of these are people who have had almost no relationship with Ohio Wesleyan since their graduation,” she said.

Despite this, Garland said the trustees are very inspired from the campaign’s progress to date. According to Garland, “reach back gifts” from projects currently ongoing are included in the total funds raised, including the Merrick Hall and Edwards Gym projects. Consequently, OWU already has $47 million toward the $200 million dollar goal.

Additionally, Garland shared news of gifts that haven’t yet been booked. A couple, who wishes to remain anonymous, donated enough money to leverage up to 12 matching gifts of $250,000 or more. As of now, five of the 12 are already spoken for, Garland said. Two donors who graduated in the 2000s made commitments of $200,000 each.

“I’m not sure if that’s ever been done before,” Garland said.

Going ahead with $200 million goal over seven years will result in a three-year “quiet phase” or “leadership phase” where Garland’s office focuses its efforts on gifts at the highest levels.

“When we are ready to move into the public phase [the fourth year] we want to be at around $125 million before doing so,” she said. “If we are wildly successful, which is certainly possible, then we will reexamine that $200 million number and determine if that is the best we can do or might we reconsider.”

She said the campaign will require the hiring of five additional employees for her office for at least seven years. The university is in a hiring freeze and is even exploring whether there should cuts in the number of faculty and staff positions because of declining enrollment.

Garland said she appreciates that adding to her staff is a sensitive issue, but said funding for these positions will come from unrestricted bequests rather than the university’s operating budget.

Also at the faculty meeting:

The Faculty Personnel Committee provided proposed changes to the faculty handbook regarding promotions, tenure, probationary periods, merit pay and post-tenure feedback for faculty.
President Rock Jones highlighted admissions statistics for the year saying there’s been a slight increase in visits and applications to date, as compared to a year ago.
Jones also said newly admitted students indicated the top three categories of “most important” concern are the quality of their major, cost and outcome or job prospects of their education.
As a result, the Office of Admissions is looking at changing visiting programs to allow for more students to meet individually with faculty to help them better understand the quality of majors. In terms of marketing, there also will be a larger push to share post-graduate success stories with admitted students.
The faulty approved adding two courses to OWU’s catalog: a Poverty, Equity and Social Justice Course Connection capstone seminar, and Psychology and the Law.

Power outage restored after dark Delaware evening

Cheers populated Ohio Wesleyan’s campus when light returned Monday night after a power outage that put 18,050 Delaware County residents in the dark.

The blackout started at 6:33 p.m. when American Electric Power, the area’s primary electric supplier, lost a feed from FirstEnergy, another power company that feeds into its network, AEP spokesman Jeff Rennie said. The outage affected all of Delaware and an area southwest of the city.

About 12,000 customers, including OWU’s campus, had power restored around 7:40 p.m., Rennie said, but 6,000 are still without power. The county’s emergency management agency reported via Twitter that all affected customers should have power by 9 p.m.

AEP is still investigating what exactly caused the outage, the size of which is “very rare,” Rennie said.

The blackout affected all OWU buildings and halted evening dining services in Hamilton-Williams Campus Center and practices on Selby Field. Public Safety officers freed a student from the campus center’s elevator after it lost power, officer Sean Duffy said.

Students worked by the lights of their computers and cell phones on the JAYwalk and in hallways and a few lit rooms on the residential side of campus.

New mural reflects themes of social justice

The new mural in the amphitheater beside the Hamilton-Williams Campus Center uses symbolism and a painting technique called pointillism to celebrate “the diversity of people and cultures on this campus,” said senior Kerrigan Boyd, moderator of Citizens of the World House.

The mural was painted the weekend of Oct. 24 and was a collaborative effort between the Student Led Art Movement and Citizens of the World House, who brought in artist and muralist Jacque Fragua to help with the project.

Fragua is a Native American artist who works for Honor The Treaties, which is an organization that uses art and advocacy to amplify the voices of indigenous communities, according to their website.

Boyd said Fragua visited campus last semester to speak about his use of art as a tool for activism. She and her housemates were inspired by his speech, so Boyd reached out to the president of SLAM, senior (not sure about this…) Catie Beach.

“Catie actually said she had been wanting to do a mural too, so it was just kind of a series of perfect events that aligned very well,” Boyd said.

Boyd and Beach won October’s You Are OWU award for their work on the mural.

WCSA provided the funds for the project, and Boyd said they were “really supportive and generous.”

Boyd said there were a lot of administrative levels the project had to be approved on, but the process would have been much more challenging at a bigger school.

“Craig Ullom (Vice President of Student Affairs) and Sally Leber (Director of Service Learning) really championed the project and took it to the proper levels to where it needed to be,” Boyd said.

She said the amphitheater was chosen as the mural’s location because it was unutilized and the subject of the mural was based off Fragua’s work, which is focused on social justice.

“We know that’s broad, but it’s also a theme I think really unites us on campus, so we wanted the mural to be an expression of that,” Boyd said.

Both artistic and non-artistic students were invited to contribute to the mural and Boyd said she was “blown away” by how many people participated.

“I went to class on Friday until 1 and I came back and there was already so much on the wall,” Boyd said. “I think it really speaks to the inclusivity of the theme.”

The mural was painted in the style of pointillism, which Boyd said doesn’t require extensive knowledge of painting, but makes for beautiful art.

Freshman Ellen Sizer, a member of SLAM, said pointillism is a painting technique that uses small dots of colors in a pattern to create an overall image and is an offshoot of impressionism.

“I think it was genius because people who aren’t as artistically gifted can still contribute and the mural can look rad,” Sizer said.

Sizer compared the effect of pointillism to a city landscape, saying the view from far away is very different from the view up close.

“I was afraid that I’d screw it (the mural) up, but I did contribute a little bit,” Sizer said. “It was fun to just watch the process more than anything.”

Boyd said she is happy with how the mural turned out and wants to thank everyone who contributed.

One of her favorite aspects of the mural is its symbolism.

“He (Fragua) based it loosely on indigenous bead work,” Boyd said. “The metaphor for each bead is that each piece stands alone but comes together to make something beautiful and united as a whole.”

LeaderShapers share in Ham-Will

Using posters, pictures, and quotes, several students displayed what they learned at the national LeaderShape conference on Tuesday and Thursday in the Hamilton-Williams Campus Center.

Starting the summer of 2012, Ohio Wesleyan has sent several student delegates each year to the intensive, week-long LeaderShape conference to explore how to “lead with integrity” and discover who they want to be.

Sophomore Rachel Morley applied to be part of LeaderShape after hearing about it through the OWU Daily.

“To me, LeaderShape means a complete lack of sleep and amazing people, and going way outside of my comfort zone to figure out what I want in life and how I’m going to get it,” Morley said.

Junior Meghan Finke said each delegate who attended the conference this year created a poster describing his or her experience and what was learned.

“Each of us came up with a vision of how we’d like to see the world involving an issue we’re passionate about,” Finke said. “For instance, my vision is ‘I’d like to see a world where people with mental illness thrive with community support, understanding, and respect while living without stigma.’”

Finke said it was “powerful” to meet so many passionate, involved college students from across the country and she now feels more confident in her leadership abilities.

“The most important thing that I learned from LeaderShape is how all the different personality types of leaders lead, as well as how I go about leading,” said sophomore Leslie Alton. “This is important because I now know how to better work with others to achieve a goal with limited problems and best outcomes.”

There is also a LeaderShape fellow position, currently held by junior Hannah Henderson, that involves coordinating the application, selection, and registration processes for LeaderShape at OWU.

“Upperclassmen leaders on campus are asked to recommend younger students they think would be a good fit for the conference,” Henderson said. “The application is then sent out to those students, but also advertised in several ways to the whole student body. It is an online application that becomes available in February.”

Racking up miles, merits

headshot_2_Sotos — Freshman John Sotos. Photo: battlingbishops.com

Freshman garners Division III newcomer honors

Ohio Wesleyan cross country team, led by sophomore John Sotos, finished 13^th out of 43 teams at the All-Ohio Intercollegiate Cross Country Championship on October 3^rd.

Sotos finished 27^th overall and received Division III Newcomer of the Year for his efforts on the course.

The Transcript: What does it mean to you receiving the award for D3 newcomer of the year?

Sotos: Receiving the Division III Newcomer award was a pretty special award to receive. To me, it’s just a reminder of all the miles I have put in and how it’s starting to pay off.

The Transcript: How was the All-Ohio Intercollegiate Cross Country Championship for you individually and as a team?

Sotos: Individually the All-Ohio race went pretty well. I ran a personal record and ran my own race and didn’t let the fast pace from the gun get to my head. More importantly, as a team, this race shows how dangerous of a team we can be if all of the runners click on the same day, especially our number 3, 4, and 5 runners (Nathan Madonich, Kevin Ford, Landon Erb), who are without a doubt the three most dedicated guys on the team, are ready to drop some pretty fast times.

The Transcript: How did everyone feel after finishing 13th out of 43 teams?

Sotos: Everyone was pretty thrilled to finish 13th in the state of ohio, especially because the race contained some outstanding competition from the Division I and II schools in addition to the Division III schools. We were right in the mix with the other Division III schools in our region, and look forward to beating those teams later in the season.

The Transcript: How do you as an individual continue to improve after so much success already?

Sotos: The success only hungers me for more. My favorite kind of success isn’t from the individual standpoint, but rather the success of a team and taking this team to new heights, and this OWU cross country team has a lot coming in the near future.

Coach aims for another NCAC title

headshot_2_Watts,_Tom-2012_72 — Head football coach Tom Watts. Photo: battlingbishops.com

Ohio Wesleyan’s football team has a great shot at regaining the NCAC crown with four games remaining and a record of 3-2 in the conference. We were able to go inside the huddle during a Q&A session with Coach Tom Watts.

The Transcript: How will you guys bounce back after the defeat against Wabash?

Watts: We will find out Saturday verse DePauw. We have had a great week of preparation and are excited to go back out and compete.

The Transcript: Which aspect of the team’s game do you look to improve in the last four games of the season?

Watts: We need to get better in all three phases of the game: offense, defense, and special teams. We have great kids who are working hard. We need to pay attention to the fine details that help you win a four quarter game.

The Transcript: What does the team have to do to compete for the NCAC title?

Watts: We need to control what we can control and not worry or pay attention to anything else. Our motto is “Win The Day,” and that is our focus everyday.

Transparency on Student Housing Master Plan appreciated

Something happened Tuesday that hadn’t happened to me before — Rock Jones made an appointment with me.

Well, not with me personally, but with Ohio Wesleyan’s Small Living Unit community. Jones, Student Affairs vice president Craig Ullom and Residential Life director Wendy Piper hosted an open forum to talk with SLU residents about the Student Housing Master Plan and how it will affect our homes.

He didn’t have a lot of new information for us, other than that the university has raised enough money so far to build two new SLUs (about $1.5 million). A lot is still up in the air, including what the houses themselves will look like and how many each will hold.

But what felt significant for me about Tuesday’s forum was the fact that it was an arena for students to talk directly to key decision-making administrators created by those administrators.

What I was expecting to be a fancy slideshow with some time for questions at the end turned out to be a dialogue between SLU residents and the president about what SLUs mean to us, to the university and what we want for the future. There was even a consensus that SLUs are inimitable communities that enrich their members and the campus community as a whole.

This seems rare for OWU. In my time here I’ve found administrators are happy to engage in dialogue with students, but it is usually the students who must initiate that dialogue for it to happen. When administrators make an appointment with us, it usually involves a fancy slideshow.

I’ve seen a bit change in that this year. Nancy Bihl Rutkowski, assistant director for Student Involvement, initiated a conversation between us about OWU’s over-involvement problem, and now we’re working on creating a focus group about last spring’s engagement survey. And while their answer was nothing close to what we wanted, the Board of Trustees at least acknowledged The Transcript’s demands for greater transparency.

Tuesday’s forum signified to me that OWU’s administrators are getting the message — when students are stakeholders in big university decisions, we want to be part of the conversation.

Will the Student Housing Master Plan be ideal for the SLUs? Almost certainly not. As a SLU resident and ResLife employee I know houses have been so neglected over the years that some are now borderline uninhabitable. And the university’s fundraising efforts apparently have some limitations that mean we won’t get houses comparable to what we have now. A lot of this is out of current administrators’ control, but it is still regrettable and frustrating for SLU residents past and present.

The fact that I will one day come back to visit the House of Peace and Justice, my home at OWU, and will have to go somewhere that’s not the Perkins House makes me sad. I’m sure all the other soon-to-be SLU alumni feel similarly about their own houses.

But I am glad the channels of communication between the SLU community and the administration are open so that the SLUs’ new homes will be the best they can possibly be for their future residents — and for the alumni who will inevitably come crash on the couch.

Students design local artist’s new exhibition

A new art exhibit in Beeghly Library titled “Waterscapes: Transforming the Landscape” showcases several photographs of nature captured by Columbus-based photographer Rick Buchanan.

According to Buchanan’s artist statement, he is drawn to photographing water because it is always moving and changing the landscape. The photographs in the display were taken over the course of the past nine years in the United States, Canada and Taiwan.

“They represent water in its many forms and illustrate how water changes, influences and beautifies the landscapes of our world,” Buchanan wrote.

Buchanan is a commercial and portrait photographer with a studio in downtown Columbus who “enjoys working alone in nature” and travels regularly to capture “the natural world and the not-so-natural world.”

The students in Mr. Justin Kronewetter’s gallery management class were tasked with choosing, framing and hanging the photographs, and had the opportunity to talk with the artist beforehand.

“Meeting Mr. Buchanan was a pleasure,” freshman Cameron Stemler said. “We discussed many of his photographs and were able to get a chance to learn where these photographs were captured.”

Sophomore Leia Miza is also in Kronewetter’s class and said Buchanan gave them a stack of his photographs so they could chose which ones would be displayed.

“He suggested a few himself and agreed with our decisions for the exhibition,” Miza said. “It’s very important to meet the artist beforehand and see his point of view of his work.”

Library Director Cathi Cardwell said she appreciates the relationship OWU’s libraries have with the Ross Art Museum and all the exhibits it curates for Gallery 2001.

“ The exhibits add visual interest to Beeghly and draw the OWU community and Delaware community members into our space,” Cardwell said. “Waterscapes is a wonderful example of the way the exhibits tie into events or campus initiatives, like the Sagan National Colloquium. I always look forward to what’s coming next–it’s always different.”

The exhibit began on October 13 and will run until December 18. The photographs are located on the wall beside the front desk on the first floor of Beeghly Library.

Buchanan will also be giving a public artist talk in the Bayley Room in Beeghly Library on October 24 at 7:30 p.m.

To see more of Buchanan’s photography, go to rickbuchananphotography.com.

Packed like sardines: Athletes makes gym relocation work despite small space

The weight room located in Edwards Gym had been moved to a basement level garage in Hamilton Williams Campus Center due to construction, but coaches say they’ve made the most of the switch.

When construction for the Simpson-Querrey Fitness Center began this summer many of the rooms and offices in Edwards were closed off, including the weight room.

“We made the best situation out of a bad situation,” said Tom Watts, the head football coach.

The weight room needed to be moved because some demolition had to occur to install new plumbing, according to Peter Schantz, the director of physical plant for Buildings and Grounds.

The garage in HWCC seemed to be the only workable location that had enough space for the majority of the equipment to be transferred over. The space was originally used for snow equipment and salt storage Schantz said.

The Mailroom and dining services still have access to the area as well. Most of the equipment is in the center of the space and along one wall. The other side of the room is separated by fencing and is a storage area for the Mailroom and Chartwell’s.

“The important thing to remember is that this is a temporary renovation until we get back into the full swing of things,” said Seth McGuffin, track and field assistant coach. “One of the things I love about Ohio Wesleyan is that we were all able to come together as a group and make sure we could move forward with this and not put anybody out.”

Both coaches said there has been no problem coordinating with different teams on when the space is available, even though it is half the size of original room in Edwards.

Because of the smaller size not all of the equipment was moved over, such as the cardio machines, said McGuffin. Instead, they often use the machines already in the Belt Fitness Center located in Welch Hall.

Watts said everything will be moved back into Edwards after the renovations are complete. The weight room had just been redone in August 2012 due to a donation by Bob and Barbara Morrill.

Literary magazine starts online offshoot

Night Owl.2 — Night Owl consulting editor and OWU director of creative writing Robert Olmstead. Photo: owu.edu

The Night Owl is an online-only literary publication started at Ohio Wesleyan and serves as a place “where fellow lovers of reading and writing can converge,” said managing editor Elizabeth Riggio ’14.

The publication is a way to maintain connections with OWU writers after they graduate, said professor of creative writing and Night Owl consulting editor Robert Olmstead.

“Professor Caplan and I have always talked about ways to better keep up with our poets and writers as they move on from OWU,” Olmstead said. “The idea of a very simple online literary journal seemed appropriate, a place for those people to gather.”

He said the Night Owl “quietly debuted” on May 1, 2014, and so far the response has been overwhelming. Submissions to the publication have come from all over the world. Many of the Night Owl’s writers and reviewers are OWU alumni, reaching as far back as ’99, but many are not even academics.

“We have a college administrator from Wisconsin, a baseball umpire from Oregon, a painting contractor from Florida, a medical writer from Idaho, a fitness instructor from Pennsylvania,” Olmstead said.

He said the Night Owl has a strong presence with publishers, receiving literature for review almost every day. These works are fiction, poetry, history, biography and culture.

All the books assigned for review are first read by Olmstead, and then he chooses each book’s reviewer based on who he thinks would most enjoy reading it.

“Over the last ten years, book reviews have really dried up, so we are doing a small part in filling that need,” Olmstead said. “There’s something about getting your hands on a book six months or a year before it is published. Book writers are the first onto the truth, followed by journals, newspapers and television in that order. You’d think it might be the other way around, but it isn’t. The slowest is first.”

Riggio said she became involved with the Night Owl at Olmstead’s request, and as managing editor she reviews and edits submissions, as well as manages the website.

Riggio, who is currently teaching in South Korea, has recently begun an “occasional contribution” called Dispatches.

“These Dispatches are a type of travel writing, similar to a blog, about my experiences and reflections in South Korea,” Riggio said. “We would like for the Dispatches to be a section of the Night Owl in which people can submit from anywhere in the world.”

She said she posts weekly, depending on submissions, and dedicates about five or six hours a week to the publication.

“To me, the spirit of the Night Owl permeates my daily life and so it feels less like a project with set hours and more like a constant process as a writer, thinker, and editor—one that I truly enjoy,” Riggio said.

She said it has been a privilege to learn from the writers who submit to the Night Owl and from Olmstead, a professor and writer she admires and respects.

Senior Marta Del Cid is an IT assistant for Information Services and handles the technical side of the Night Owl website, supporting Riggio and Olmstead with website issues and design layout questions. Riggio said Del Cid has been “extremely instrumental” in the process of setting up the site.

“I would recommend students visit the site,” Del Cid said. “It truly has been a pleasure working alongside Elizabeth (Riggio) and Mr. Olmstead to create a strong website for literary work.”

Newest submissions appear at the top of the website and there are no advertisements, comment sections, or bright colors.

“Night Owl is about focusing on the art of the written word without the unnecessary and distracting bells and whistles,” Riggio said. “You will be hard-pressed to find a publication like this.”

To access the Night Owl, go to nightowl.owu.edu.