Nonprofit work beckons SOAN students

Meg Edwards

Transcript correspondent

mmedward@owu.edu

Sociology and anthropology students needn’t fear a lack of meaningful work after they leave Ohio Wesleyan, the non-profit field offers many opportunities.

That message was delivered Wednesday in Elliott Hall by the Department of Sociology-Anthropology (SOAN), which hosted a lunch for students interested in nonprofit work.

The event featured guest panelists Mel Corroto, executive director of Andrew’s House and Kerri Robe, the assistant program manager for OWU’s Service Learning office. The panel was moderated by Sally Leber, the director of OWU Service Learning.

Andrew’s House, 39 West Winter St., is the former home of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. After the fraternity left in 1993, the neighboring St. Peter’s Episcopal church purchased the property.

Now, Andrew’s House is “COhatch before COhatch was COhatch” for nonprofits, in the words of Leber, describing a network of community workspaces. The community center is home to seven nonprofits and also hosts its own programs, such as legal clinics and cooking classes, and features a large mural that depicts Paul Dean, OWU’s associate professor of sociology.

Corroto and Robe each described their very different paths to working at nonprofits. Corroto graduated with a degree in English literature, but found her way into the business world working for Borders Books.

Running a small nonprofit is a lot like running a business, Corroto said.

“I have to wear many hats,” she said, adding the most important part is “fundraising, fundraising, fundraising.”

Robe said she planned on becoming a nurse from an early age, but she struggled with science courses in college and realized that “really, I just wanted to help people.”

She said she worked in direct service for several years before moving into prevention and now helps coordinate programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters and other mentorships between OWU students and Delaware schools.

Her advice for students looking to get into nonprofit work: “relationships, relationships, relationships.”

Many nonprofits are within walking distance or a short drive from campus that are constantly looking for volunteers, Robe said. Making connections in the community and building those relationships early can help students find work after graduation.

Leber drew attention to the high rate of burnout among nonprofit workers, and the stress of constant fundraising.Robe said that self-care was important.

“It’s really important to have these reflection times … so I can be the best person for these people [in need].”

Leber said it is important for anyone doing service to see it as a mutual exchange, rather than a one-way act of charity.

“I haven’t done any act of service where I haven’t learned more from the other person than I’ve given,” she said.

Senior Makaila Weir, who is on the SOAN student board, said the board decided to organize the event to educate students on opportunities after college, as many students had expressed an interest in nonprofit work.

She said she enjoyed hearing about the different tracks Robe and Corotto took to arrive in nonprofits.

“You hear about the burnout,” Weir said, and added that she is glad to hear that they are still passionate about their work so far into their careers.

The event was catered by an Ohio Wesleyan SOAN student, junior Courtney Owens, who recently started her own catering company, The O’s Catering.

Mary T. Howard, Recipient of the Adam Poe Medal

Mary was born in Columbus, Ohio. She graduated from St. Mary of the Springs Academy and later earned a B.A. in sociology from St. Mary of the Springs College, but not before studying nursing for two years at Georgetown University.

Mary married shortly after graduation and moved to Lansing, Michigan, where she worked as a psychiatric social worker for a year, and where she and her husband, Tom, started the first half-way house in Michigan for deinsititualized mentally ill men. Over a two-year period, they supported 36 men in finding work and housing in the community.

In 1970, Mary earned her master’s degree in anthropology from Michigan State University, after which she and her husband left to conduct research in East Africa. While in Tanzania from 1970 to 1975, Mary participated in a number of year-long research projects as a member of the public health program in the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, including a follow-up study of families whose children were malnourished. In Tanzania, she gave birth to her first son, Matthew. Her younger son, Christopher, was born in Kisumu, Kenya.

Upon her return to Michigan and after a divorce, Mary took a job as a live-in house manager and later case manager in a group home for 16 mentally disabled adults. She reentered graduate school in 1978 and received her doctorate in anthropology in 1980. Her dissertation, “Kwashiorkor on Kilimanjaro: The Social Management of Childhood Malnutrition,” later became her 1997 Routledge publication, Hunger and Shame: Poverty and Child Malnutrition on Mt Kilimanjaro.

In 1985, after spending a year in Bolivia with her sons and her anthropologist brother, Mary returned to Ohio and began teaching at Ohio Wesleyan. She was hired into a joint position, directing Women’s Studies while also being half-time in Sociology and Anthropology. As director of Women’s Studies, she oversaw the first campus climate survey for women students, which contributed to the development of OWU’s sexual harassment policy.

In 1989, Mary became a full-time faculty member of the SOAN department, where she taught a wide range of courses including cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, demography, Perspectives on Africa, self and society, feminist theory, Queer Lives in World Cultures, Amish and Appalachian Peoples and Cultures, applied sociology and anthropology, and ethnographic and documentary film and filmmaking.

Mary’s efforts have left their mark on Ohio Wesleyan and OWU students in numerous ways. In 1995, she began discussions with Butler A. Jones to develop a speaker’s series to honor him as OWU’s first African American faculty member. For most of its 26 years, Mary oversaw the Butler A. Jones Lecture Series on Race and Society, identifying and/or inviting speakers and getting co-sponsors from around campus. Her documentary filmmaking course, co-taught with Chuck Della Lana, director of the Media Center, has led to over 75 student documentary films and 15 student film festivals. Mary initiated a program to teach the Sociology and Anthropology capstone course at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, integrating OWU students and inmates into the weekly class. She co-taught this course with John Durst for three years.

Long before the advent of travel-learning courses, Mary exposed students to other peoples and cultures. From 1987 to 1992, she accompanied students on trips to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Over the years, Mary has accompanied OWU students on trips to Mexico, China, Tanzania, Kenya, India, Bolivia, Peru, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

In addition to her publications in East Africa, she has published in The American Anthropologist, Social Science and Medicine, Adult Residential Care Journal, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly. She also has created and produced three documentary films on poverty and homelessness in Columbus Ohio – Cloud People, Outreach, and Swept Out – and several promotional films for The Open Shelter.

For her teaching and activism at OWU, Mary has been awarded numerous well-deserved recognitions, including the Sherwood Dodge Shankland Award for the Encouragement of Teachers, the Andrew Anderson Campus Community and Conscious Award, the first (2007) President’s Commission on Racial and Cultural Diversity Award, and the 2014 President’s Commission on Racial and Cultural Diversity Award.

Mary will retire to a home on 32 acres north of Granville and will spend time with her son, Matthew, and his family in New York and with her son, Christopher, and his family in Guatemala.

Theodore F. Cohen, Recipient of the Adam Poe Medal

Theodore Cohen was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1956, where he lived for the first 20 years of his life. After graduating from Franklin Roosevelt High School in 1973, he enrolled at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where on the second day of classes he met his first wife, Susan Jablin. After flirting briefly with majors in English and psychology, Ted took a sociology class and found himself fascinated. He went on to major in sociology and minor in psychology, and found his special interest in family sociology. A week after graduating from Brooklyn College, on Father’s Day 1977, he and Susan were married. They would spend 25 years together until Susan passed away in 2003.

While at Brooklyn College, Ted took a Social Theory course from Sidney Aronson and recalls deciding then that he wanted to teach sociology professionally. In 1977, he entered the Ph.D. program at Boston University, where his sociological interest in family broadened to incorporate sociology of gender, especially sociology of men and masculinity. His dissertation, which led to a number of publications and presentations, was an interview study of Boston-area men’s experiences of marriage, fatherhood, and employment. In later research (with John Durst), he would extend these interests, looking more closely at gender and family as experienced by a sample of role-reversed and opposite-shift couples in central Ohio.

While in graduate school, Ted gained considerable teaching experience and found teaching to be his true passion. Through most of graduate school, he taught introductory, family, and gender courses at B.U., while gaining additional teaching experience at a number of Boston-area schools, including Northeastern University and Clark University.

Ted was hired at Ohio Wesleyan in 1984 for what was originally to be a two-year term position as he completed his doctorate. Within weeks of completing his dissertation, his son, Danny, was born in July 1985. Less than three years later, in March 1988, daughter, Allison, was born. Both Dan and Allie eventually enrolled at Ohio Wesleyan, majored in, and graduated with degrees in Sociology and Anthropology.

With his position converted to tenure track, Ted was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1986. He was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and then to full Professor in 1995. In 1990, Ted was awarded the Sherwood Dodge-Shankland Award for the Encouragement of Teachers.

For most of the period between 1984 and 2001, Susan also was working professionally at Ohio Wesleyan as an archivist and curator of the archives of the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church. In 2003, Susan passed away after a 14-month struggle with a brain tumor. In 2004, Ted received an unpaid three-year leave and moved to New Jersey to be nearer to family and to Julie, whom he married in October 2005. He taught for two years at Rowan University in Glassboro and returned to OWU in 2007, with Julie and her three children, Daniel, Molly, and Brett Pfister.

Throughout his career, Ted typically taught introductory sociology and research methods, along with three popular electives, The Family, Gender in Contemporary Society, and Crime and Deviance. He also supervised numerous independent studies, internships, directed readings, and departmental honors projects. In addition, he involved numerous students in roles related to his teaching and research. At different times, he had student-assistants involved in transcribing, interviewing, and analyzing interview data, seeking and compiling permissions for his edited masculinity volume, or acting as teaching assistants in research methods. He published the work of two students and four OWU colleagues among the 41 articles and chapters in his edited volume, Men and Masculinity: A Text Reader. He also featured the work of two other students as a box feature in the 13th edition of his textbook, The Marriage and Family Experience.

Ted served on a number of faculty committees over the years and chaired the Department of Sociology and Anthropology on multiple occasions. He also coached youth baseball for many years in Delaware (with Jim Peoples) and later Dublin. In retirement, Ted looks forward to whatever life has in store. Initially, he and Julie will live in New Jersey, where he intends to teach part-time, continue to write, travel, and enjoy time with friends and family.

Nine faculty retire from OWU

Ted Cohen, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology (SOAN), retired at the May commencement ceremony.

Cohen, who was hired in 1984, estimated he had taught roughly 6,000 to 7,000 students during his time at OWU.

“I wish I had an accurate count,” Cohen said.

Senior Alyssa Acevedo described him as a passionate professor, which made is easy for her to learn from him.

“He also helped me with one of my internships and he was my apprentice teacher who also advised me throughout that time and really helped me find the career that I really want to go into,” Acevedo said.

Not only did Cohen teach at the institution, but his wife and two children are also familiar with the campus.

Cohen’s son, Dante Santino (’09) and daughter Allison Cohen (’10) both majored in sociology and anthropology at the university. Allison Cohen took three classes with him, Cohen said.

Cohen’s late wife, Susan, worked as an archivist and curator of the United Methodist
collection for roughly 20 years, he said.

Cohen described the SOAN department as a “very stable family,” because he had been working with people in the department ever since he started.

Cohen will miss his colleagues and his students after retirement.

Alper Yalçinkaya, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, worked with Cohen since his arrival to the institution in 2010. Cohen was the first person Yalçinkaya met at OWU.

“He made it extremely easy for me to feel happy at this institution,” Yalçinkaya said.

“It’s been a wonderfully fulfilling place to be,” Cohen said. “And very supportive place
to be.”

After retirement, Cohen plans to move to New Jersey. He will also teach part-time at The College of New Jersey and to teach online summer school course for OWU. He also plans on working on a new edition of his textbook, The Marriage and Family Experience: Intimate Relationships in a Changing Society.

Also, retiring at the 2019 commencement were: Mary T. Howard, a 35-year professor of Sociology-Anthropology; Gerald Goldstein, a 36-year professor of botany and microbiology; Alan Zaring, a 29-year professor of computer science; John Gatz, a 44-year professor of zoology; Lynette Carpenter, a 30-year professor of English and film studies: Amy McClure, a 40-year professor of education; Paul Kostyu, a 20-year associate professor of journalism; and instructor Tom Burns, a 21-year instructor of English.