Innovative extradisciplinary seminar course asks students to study through song.

By their very nature, Ohio Northern University’s Extradisciplinary Seminar (EXDS) courses push students beyond their academic comfort zone, forcing them outside their major and placing emphasis on the process by which they learn, rather than the content they are being taught. Because they are required to enroll in these courses, students have their critical-thinking skills challenged and, perhaps, even learn a new way of learning.

No EXDS course takes this concept more to heart than “Beyond Les Misérables: Global Issues in the Modern French Musical.” Apart from the novel approach of using musical theatre to study global issues like poverty, immigration and oppression, this course asks that students share their newfound knowledge with classmates through song.

As in singing.

In class.

In front of everyone.

Dr. Thomas Finn, professor of French and Spanish, incorporates what he calls “sung defenses” into his course to combine students’ analytical and creative talents. He asks students to rewrite the lyrics to a song from a musical they are studying to provide a justification or defense of a particular character’s actions or as commentary on any of the musical’s core themes. They then perform the piece in class a cappella to the tune of the song.

“I want the students to be active participants rather than passive observers,” says Finn. “The sung defenses really do that in a fun and interesting way.”

This semester, the course was structured around four French musicals: “Les Miserablés,” “Notre Dame de Paris,” “Ali Baba” and “The Ten Commandments.” Students were required to perform sung defenses for each show. Students also had exams, an oral presentation and a final research paper. Finn credits the sung defenses with jumpstarting the students’ interest in the subject matter.

“The sung defenses are the beginning of the analysis for students to start looking at these shows. Then it just blossoms out into the oral presentations and final papers,” he says.

From a teaching perspective, the sung defense proved to be an effective learning method. But that didn’t automatically make it a popular one with students.

“Most of them have taken to it very, very well — even the ones who were afraid of it at first. They seem to appreciate the creative part, and they’ve done very creative things. They seem to like it,” says Finn.

“It was horrible ... no, not really. It was nerve-wracking, but it was also fun,” says pharmacy major Ashley Dodge, who had the unenviable task of being first. “My secret was to incorporate humor into my song so that people laughed with me instead of at me.”

The class quickly discovered that many of their fears of ridicule were unfounded. After all, they were all in the same proverbial boat. But many, if not all, of the students expressed some level of fear or apprehension, whether it be singing or expressing their ideas through their lyrics.

“I was worried people were going to judge the way I interpreted my character. It was interesting to see how other people interpreted the same ones. There are aspects to characters that I didn’t realize until I heard other students’ songs,” says pharmacy major Allie Dolan.

Jason Luthman, a mechanical engineering major, describes the supportive nature of the class as almost a band-of-brothers/sisters-type scenario where the students supported one another because they knew they were going to need support in return. Like Dodge, Luthman relied on humor to make his first sung defense easier.

Scroll for more photos

“I actually sang my first song as Cosette, the 12-year-old girl from Les Miserablés. It broke the ice and made it a little less intimidating for me to be a little girl for a day, I suppose,” he says.

Even with light-hearted, humorous lyrics, Luthman still provided an insightful defense of the character of Cosette. He used his sung defense to ask aloud why Cosette has such a small role in the musical when she is literally the face of the musical and instrumental to the plot.

Other students looked at archetypal characters, such as heroes and villains, and sought to provide a deeper understanding of them than is offered in the limited span of a musical production.

“I tend to do my character defenses on the less popular characters in the musical, because I think they are more interesting,” says Brittany Holland, a communication arts/public relations double major. “It’s clear we aren’t supposed to like them, but I like to explore why we shouldn’t like them.”

Of all the aspects of this class the students enjoyed, many feel that the best part is that the course stayed true to the idea behind the extradisciplinary seminar courses, namely that students are taught something they aren’t already familiar with in a way that stimulates them to think critically about what they are learning.

“I like that the University has EXDS courses, but the emphasis needs to be placed on the creativity of students like this one does. I learned something new in this class. I’d never sung much before, and I’d never researched the meaning of French musicals. It was a very different experience and a very cool one. It was the class I looked forward to each week,” says Luthman.

To be sure, the sung defenses are a big reason why many students felt that this course was so effective. In comparing it to other, more traditional assignments in the course, the sung defenses stood out.

“Even today, I think people were kind of zoning out during the oral presentations because everyone talks about the same thing,” says Dodge. “But the sung defenses are just so interesting, that you really want to hear what everyone does. They are quick and to-the-point and give you the opportunity to say what you want to say in a cool way that people actually pay attention to.”

Finn understands that attempting something like the sung defenses as a mandatory class assignment is asking a lot of his students, and he wouldn’t have done it had he not believed they were willing and able to do it.

“I think Northern attracts students who are multitalented and open to new ideas. I’ve got some pharmacy students and mechanical engineering students who have really had some good tunes. It says a lot for the students. Their willingness to get up there for one, because that is not easy to do,” he says.

And he would know. Not one to ask his students to do something he himself would not, Finn performed the first sung defense to show them what he expected. He did the last one, too, as a thank you to the students who made this class the one he looked forward to each week as well.

Undergraduate commencement information and schedule of events

Ohio Northern University will celebrate its 2013 undergraduate commencement ceremony in the ONU Sports Center on Sunday, May 12, 2013, at 2 p.m.

The Ohio Northern University community — students, faculty, staff, and trustees — extends congratulations and best wishes to the 2013 graduates. We hope the commencement activities and ceremonies will be a prominent part of the celebration of your accomplishments in this very important part of your life. We want to do all that we can to make the commencement weekend an enjoyable and memorable one for you. We welcome to the campus the families and friends who will share this significant occasion with you.

Speaker

Robert Manning, Mars Exploration Program chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., will be the guest speaker at ONU’s undergraduate commencement ceremony. Since 2004, Manning has been responsible for ensuring the success of current and future missions to Mars. In early 2008, he was named the chief engineer for the Mars Science Laboratory mission that successfully landed the rover Curiosity on the Martian surface in August 2012. Prior to these roles, Manning led the spacecraft systems engineering team for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project, which landed the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity on the surface of Mars in early 2004.

Senior electrical engineering major Courtney Hetrick will be the student speaker.

Honorary Degrees

Along with Manning, ONU will award honorary degrees at the ceremony to Oscar J. and Judith D. (Jacobs) Mifsud. Together, the Mifsuds established the Mifsud Family Foundation, which provides a focus on health, education and welfare of children and families. The two also established the Oscar J. and Judith D. Mifsud Endowment at Ohio Northern University, ONU’s Pay It Forward program, and the Ohio Northern Senior Send Off program.

Request to Guests

Commencement is a ceremonial occasion to honor graduates for their accomplishments. Guests are requested to refrain from any action that will detract from the dignity and pleasure of the occasion for all who attend.

Guests should be at the convocation center by 1 p.m. and in their seats by 1:30 p.m. They are requested to remain in their seats throughout the ceremony except when photographs are taken of a graduating student. Those with impairments or those who may not be able to remain in their seats throughout the ceremony should contact an usher for special seating upon entering the Field House.

Photographs

As the student receives his or her diploma, a photograph will be taken by a professional photographer and mailed to the graduate by the University. For those wishing to do so, there will be a reserved and marked area to the left of the stage to take photographs during the ceremony. Photographers are requested to use this area only, to come to the area about 20 names before the graduating student they wish to photograph, and to return to their seats immediately after the photograph is taken. Photographs may be taken on the platform following the convocation for those wishing to do so.

Housing

• The Inn at Ohio Northern University
  Overnight accommodations for guests of graduating students are available at The Inn at Ohio Northern University. The Inn is situated at the heart of the campus with easy access to McIntosh Center and the Sports Center. There are more than 70 deluxe guestrooms featuring one king-size or two queen-size beds. Reservations for commencement weekend can be made by calling The Inn directly at its toll-free number: 866-713-4513.

• On Campus
  Housing for guests of graduating students will be provided on campus in University residence halls. Some students will remain in the residence halls through commencement. Accommodations will be available beginning at noon, Friday, May 10. Room costs will be $30 per person each night.
  
  On-campus housing is being offered as a convenience to families and to provide accommodations at a lower cost than is commercially available in most cases. The rooms will have been recently vacated by students. They have two single beds that are comfortable and convenient. Occupants share a common bath.
  
  Guests desiring to stay in campus housing should return a reservation form to the Commencement Office, with payment for the accommodations requested. Special arrangements for housing needs can be made by writing to the Director of Residence Life or calling 419-772-2430 or 419-772-2431.

McIntosh Center Hours

• Desk
  Friday, May 10    8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
  Saturday, May 11    8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
  Sunday, May 12   7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

• Bookstore
  Friday, May 10    9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
  Saturday, May 11    10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
  Sunday, May 12    10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Meals on Campus

• Northern on Main (Main Street adjacent to campus)
  Saturday 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
  Sunday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

• McIntosh Center Dining Room
  Saturday:
  Graduation Dinner 5:30 p.m.
  Adult $17
  Child, 10 & under $8
  
  Sunday:
  Continental Breakfast $7 7:30-9 a.m.
  Child, 10 & under $3.50
  Brunch Buffet 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
  Adult $15
  Child, 10 & under $7.50 (Children 3 & under free)

The dining room will be open Friday for regular meal hours. Graduating students may take their meals at the dining room without charge, as guests of the University, during commencement weekend. Students with meal contracts may use their l.D. cards. Students without meal contracts may sign in the Dining Room for their meals.

Reservations for the Graduation Banquet should be made in advance. Tickets are required and should be obtained beforehand from the Commencement Office, telephone 419-772-2030.

Tickets for parents and others for the Brunch Buffet will be on sale at the door of the Dining Room beginning at 10 a.m., Sunday, May 12.
All prices include Ohio Sales Tax.

Accommodations for Those With Special Needs

Parking for persons with special needs will be provided on the north side of the Sports Center. Special seating will be provided for those with physical impairments. Please contact an usher for assistance if needed.

Nursing Care for Commencement

A nurse will be available on Sunday, May 12, from 12:30-4:30 p.m., in the training room of the Sports Center. Ushers are available for assistance.

Parking for Commencement

Parking will be available in lots on the north side of the Sports Center and to the north of Meyer Hall as well as in perimeter parking lots. These areas may be reached by West Lincoln Avenue. Security personnel will be available for assistance.

Courtesy vans will provide transportation from McIntosh Center and perimeter parking lots to the Sports Center beginning at noon on Sunday, May 12.

Babysitting for Commencement

Babysitting and nursery services for pre-school children of guests will be provided from 12:30-4:30 p.m., May 12, in the Sports Center.

Inclement Weather Schedule

In case of inclement weather, all activities will take place as scheduled.

Streaming Video

View streaming video of the event.

April is occupational therapy month. Grace Weybrecht, BS ’09, talks about her bid to become Dr. Weybrecht.

Of the many preprofessional programs offered at Ohio Northern University, preoccupational therapy is perhaps the least understood. Judging by its name, one might suspect that it involves work-place safety or job counseling.

In truth, the “occupation” in occupational therapy applies the broadest definition: that which chiefly engages one’s time. Occupational therapists rehabilitate people who are injured or otherwise impaired so that they are able to participate in any activity that has meaning and purpose in their lives. From adults who want to drive a car, dress themselves or prepare a meal, to children who need help holding a pencil or playing with other kids, occupational therapists need to be able to do it all.

ONU offers a preprofessional program in occupational therapy through the Department of Biological and Allied Health Sciences. It prepares students for entry into post-baccalaureate programs in physical occupational therapy and boasts a 100 percent acceptance rate into graduate programs since 1998.

Grace Weybrecht, BS ’09, is pursuing her doctorate in occupational therapy at the University of Toledo, where ONU has an early acceptance agreement. She knew from her sophomore year of high school that she wanted to be an occupational therapist and decided that the undergraduate education from Ohio Northern was vital to achieving her goal.

“I liked the comprehensiveness of Ohio Northern. I remember my tour of campus and meeting with faculty and seeing the lab spaces,” she says. “I could see that everything was in place to provide me with a good science base.”

As she prepares to graduate this spring, Weybrecht looks forward to practicing and the specialization into one of two areas that this will involve. Though she appreciates how broad her field is in its ability to help those in need, she also considers this sheer breadth to be the greatest challenge for OT students. It is common for practicing OTs to specialize into a narrow area, such as hand injuries, driving rehabilitation or pediatrics, to name just a few.

“I would like to work with adults who have experienced neurological trauma either through car accidents, stroke or other trauma,” says Weybrecht.

She is particularly interested in working with military veterans and has completed a six-month clinical residency at the VA hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich., and a skilled nursing facility in Holland, Ohio. Her graduate research is a meta-analysis comparing occupationally embedded movement to rote movement in terms of motor performance outcomes. She is currently completing her capstone semester, a 16-week independent study in which she is advocating within an international Christian organization for local churches to increase both environmental and programming accessibility for older adults.

“Occupational therapists often help older adults be successful and safe in their home environments. I am taking it a step further by helping older adults be successful and safe in their church environments, which I hope will increase their religious and community participation and, by extension, their quality of life.” she says.

Occupational therapy is often confused with physical therapy. The two fields are similar in that they both work with people to improve some aspect of their lives. The key difference is the scope of this improvement. Whereas physical therapists rehabilitate the underlying motor skills (strength, balance, coordination) required to physically complete a task, an occupational therapist works to match the person to his or her environment so that he or she can function in daily life and regain independence.

“I remember one gentleman I worked with who had suffered a middle cerebral artery stroke and, as a result, had some shakiness in his hands. His nurses were afraid to allow him to shave himself, but he really wanted to do that basic task on his own,” says Weybrecht. “I assessed him on his different skill levels, and I knew that he had the ability to do it. So I worked with him on it, and he was just ecstatic that he was able to shave himself.”

Occupational therapists have two basic approaches to helping their clients/patients — change the person or change the environment. Sometimes a person needs to get stronger to complete a task, or change his or her perspective on what constitutes success. In other cases, an amputation for example, an occupational therapist must change the environment to make up for the patient’s loss of a limb. Occupational therapists will often employ a combination of the two, relying on their expertise to develop a suitable plan of care.

“If you want to do OT correctly, you have to empathize with your client and try to understand what they are going through,” says Weybrecht. “Whether it’s a new injury or a developmental disability they’ve had since birth, you have to be able to put yourself in their shoes in order to make recommendations and develop a course of therapy that will be meaningful to them.

When Henry Solomon Lehr founded Ohio Northern University, he did so with a vision of blending professional and liberal arts education. He wanted to train students in their particular vocations while educating them in the humanities so they could better apply the skills they had obtained. For more than 140 years, Northern’s graduates have entered the work force well rounded and primed for successful careers.

In a way, the same is true of occupational therapy. It is an incredibly broad field that brings together scientific understanding with a humanity all its own.




 

New alumni-funded scholarship helps students pursue their dreams in pricey Washington, D.C.

As the epicenter of the political world, Washington, D.C., has culture and beauty and many educational and professional opportunities. It is a town rich in many things. College students, however, are often not, at least in the monetary sense. And while it is worth the price of admission, our nation’s capital is very expensive. Two Ohio Northern University criminal justice majors, LeAnne Clark and Haley Wershbale, didn’t let that stop them from pursuing their dreams of a summer internship among the cherry blossoms. They didn’t need to.

Thanks to the generosity of ONU alumni Cheryl McCain Mason, BA ’86, ACIT ’10, and Brett Mason, BSEE ’86, ONU students who are accepted into internship programs in the Washington, D.C., area no longer need to worry about how they are going to survive while there. The Capital Leadership Award they created assists students in the colleges of Arts & Sciences and Engineering with a $1,000 scholarship to help with accrued expenses during internship and co-operative experiences.

Clark and Wershbale are the first recipients of The Capital Leadership Award, and both held internships facilitated by The Washington Center. Clark interned at the Metropolitan Police Department in the Forensic Science Service Division for 12 weeks, where she completed more than 300 hours with Metro PD. Wershbale also accepted her placement with Metro PD, working in the Human Resources Division at central command.

“One of the reasons I chose ONU was because of the good relationship the school has with The Washington Center,” says Wershbale. “I wanted to go to D.C. for my internship because I love the city, and I knew I wanted to intern at the Metropolitan Police Department.

Clark hopes to use her daily experience working with crime scene technicians to further her graduate studies in forensic psychology.

“My internship gave me experience that I can use in the future. If I have to analyze crime scene photos, I’ll know what to look for because I got to see the real thing,” says Clark.

Over the course of her internship, Clark and other ONU students with The Washington Center joined the Masons at their home for an ONU alumni picnic, where the students networked with ONU alumni in D.C. and northern Virginia. The ONU alumni network is prominent all over the U.S. but is growing particularly fast in the greater D.C. area, jokingly known as “Potomac Fever” according to Dr. Rob Alexander, chair of the Department of History, Politics and Justice, and liaison to The Washington Center.

While her time in D.C. was rewarding, Clark encountered the high cost of living as an ever-present factor of her daily life in the capital. Her biggest expense? Transportation. With a daily commute to work and without a personal car, public transportation fees added up quickly over the 12-week period.

“Sometimes, I had to take cab rides to my place of work, which would be $15-$20 a day,” she says.

It’s certainly understandable that many students would be unable to have an internship in D.C. — and thereby miss out on potential opportunities — without financial support.

“I think I knew that I was going to need more money than I had budgeted out, but when you get down there, it’s a shock. Because you know it’s going to be expensive; you’re in a city. Food is not that cheap, and transportation is all on your own,” says Clark.

As their time at Northern winds down, the experiences and opportunities that Wershbale and Clark received during their respective internships in Washington, D.C., cannot be understated as driving factors in their futures.

Wershbale is currently applying to become a police officer with the very police department she interned with, the Metro P.D.

"Without my internship opportunity and the financial assistance I received from the Capital Leadership Award, I would not have gotten all the valuable information and connections that helped shape my decision to apply to MPD,” she says.

As for Clark, her internship taught her much about her chose field of forensic psychology, but it also taught her about the power and importance of giving back.

“Knowing that ONU alums gave me this opportunity, it definitely makes me want to give back once I get established. Just to have that real relationship with alumni is great because when you enter college, you always hear about how alumni provide financial support or will help you network,” she says. “But it’s not until you are actually touched by them, that you actually see it in person, do you realize that ONU’s alumni relationship with the students is actually stronger than what you thought it was.

“Our alumni are pretty awesome.”

—Steve Saunier
Senior, history major
Centerburg, Ohio

As Ohio Northern University celebrates Founder's Day, professor of history Dr. John Lomax looks back at the man who put Northern on the map.
 

There’s this guy, Rick Steves, who does travel shows on PBS. It seems that he, as a person who likes to travel and doesn’t seem to care about getting home very often or anytime soon, has the best job in the world. Steves has yet to meet a stranger, no matter how strange the setting or the people, or at least that’s how it appears on TV. In a recent interview, he was asked, “What is the first thing to do before traveling to a new place?” He responded, to study the history of the place and its people.

I am an historian, and so naturally Steves’ response resonated with me, but I think that his advice would have made sense to Henry Solomon Lehr as well. Dr. Lehr’s approach to education was intensely practical. He wanted to send into the world graduates who were prepared to engage successfully with the people and problems that they encountered. You might imagine – falsely – that such a pragmatic outlook would lend itself to a tight emphasis on the acquisition of readily applicable skills, the sort of emphasis with which we are all familiar. After all, what else do the online and shopping mall colleges and universities have to offer their students except the promise of immediate and lucrative employment?  And what’s wrong with that, anyway? The world is a hard place, a fact with which Lehr was intimately familiar, and it does not treat kindly those who have nothing to offer to the market.

We see Lehr’s consciousness of this non-negotiable imperative in his ongoing stress on what he called practical education. We would call it professional education. Northern started as a normal college, a training school for teachers. Lehr quickly added other professional programs in engineering, law, and pharmacy. The university has since added programs in business, technology, criminal justice, public relations, laboratory sciences, graphic arts, forensic biology, and nursing. Soon we may have a program in public health and who knows what else? All of these professional programs are in keeping with our founder’s determination that the graduates of his university be equipped with practical skills to offer the marketplace when they left his care. And all of them require “book learning.” We are not born knowing how to write a brief, evaluate drug interactions, design a publicity campaign, operate a production facility at maximum efficiency or plan a sewage system. We need education – lots of it – to perform such tasks.

However, it was Lehr’s genius that he also understood the importance of context. None of these professions operates in a vacuum. All of them function within a cultural setting. Look at the Keystone Pipeline. At a certain level, it is simply a technological problem, one that engineers are trained to solve. It is also an issue, however, in the original sense of the term:  a point of controversy. To engage successfully in such controversies, it is necessary to take into account the natural setting, to be sure, but also the social, economic and political landscape. Energy production and distribution work within a human context.

Dr. Lehr was deeply conscious of the absolute necessity of training his students not just in practical skills but also in the classics, or what we would call the liberal arts. To know how to do something useful was not enough. You have to be able to read and respond effectively to the lay of the land in order to practice your professional skills. As a practical matter, you need the liberal arts. While the capacity to learn these arts may be inborn, to learn humane letters requires formal education as surely as it is required to develop professional skills.

The liberal arts are, as Lehr knew full well, the liberating arts, the skills that we as free persons need in order to negotiate the landscape of life successfully. Without a clear sense of the human dimensions of every issue, we cannot participate actively in the decisions that shape outcomes. We fail to see the fuller context within which people make decisions. We read opposition as stupidity, which is almost always a mistake.

During the construction of the Dicke College of Business Administration, the village closed University Avenue between Main Street and Gilbert Street. The university put in a sidewalk on what functions as the main east-west axis of the campus. At the intersection of that sidewalk and the sidewalk that runs in front of Dukes, Lehr, Hill, and Dicke, it built a round flower garden, I suppose to break up the visual lines and provide a place to push snow in the winter. In about 2005 I began to see a statue of Henry Solomon Lehr in that flower garden. Lehr and his vision for the university had been percolating around in my mind for a number of years, and it occurred to me that we needed a concrete – or, more accurately, bronze – expression of that vision in the form of an image of our founder. I approached Dr. Baker, who agreed. He found the money to pay for it and appointed a committee to make it happen. That committee consisted of Bill Robinson, Toby Baker, Brit Rowe, Jim Kennedy and myself.

We hired a talented sculptor, Tad McKillop, to realize in bronze the image of our founder. In October 2007, at Homecoming, the statue of Henry Solomon Lehr was dedicated to the music of a brass band under the direction of Charles Bates, which played Civil War era tunes, and a salute from a color guard that wore the same blue suit that Dr. Lehr carried so proudly from 1861 to 1865. The statue stands at the very head of the university that Lehr founded on principals that are as true now as they were then.

The Lehr statue serves as the focal point for the front of campus. More important, it is visible – even tactile – reminder of the vision of Dr. Lehr, of a university that tends to the difficult, yet critical, business of turning out graduates who are ready to work or to pursue further education, equipped not just with technical skills but also clothed in the arts that allow us to negotiate the human landscape within which we must all operate. To have the one without the other would be, at best, half an education.

For Lehr, the road to Ada led through the apocalyptic horrors of northern Virginia and central Tennessee, the bitter fruits of an intractable conflict that could not and cannot be understood solely in objective terms. Henry Solomon Lehr founded a school to educate educators, and ultimately every student who would benefit from his insistence on an education that prepared them for a complex and unforgiving world, in which what you know must include not only what you can do, but also how well you understand the human factors that shape and limit everything that we do. Fortunately, Dr. Lehr understood full well that our inborn ignorance is a condition that education can cure, education in the fullest, most practical sense, an education that acknowledges and addresses the whole problem. I think that all of us as children of Ohio Northern University would agree, with Dr. Lehr, that anything less would be stupid.

John Phillip Lomax is Professor of History at Ohio Northern University, where he is in his 25th year of service. He teaches Western Civilization and World Civilizations, as well as courses on the ancient world, medieval Europe, the Renaissance and the Reformation, legal history, and military history. His research focuses on intersection between law and politics in the high Middle Ages. Lomax is a native of Omaha, Nebraska. He received his B.A. from Nebraska Wesleyan University, M.A. from the University of Chicago, and Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. He follows NCAA basketball closely until the Bluejays of Creighton and the Jayhawks of Kansas are ousted from the tournament.