The Ohio State University

2007 Seed Grants

Give Me Five: A Community Approach to Childhood Wellness

Give Me Five is a multipronged approach to prevent childhood obesity through education, nutrition, and physical activity. In Fall 2007, 60 first grade classrooms in Allen County will have the opportunity to participate in the Cell portable planetarium. During this 30 minute program young children become a type of food, enter the planetarium through the esophagus, and discover what happens to food in a cell. All teachers who agree to participate in Give Me Five will also agree to participate in 3- to 6-week healthy choice challenges over the academic year. Participating classes will be given both nutrition and physical activity options and must choose between both categories to receive incentives. OSU students will be involved in implementation through service learning. See http://www.lima.ohio-state.edu/academics/Outreach/GiveMeFive.htm.

This grant was submitted by Lynn Sametz, Director, Education Outreach, OSU Lima; Nancy Recker, Associate Professor, OSU Extension; Mark Light, Extension Educator, OSU Extension; Niki Nestor McNeely, Assistant Professor, OSU Extension; Dawn Wingate, Program Coordinator, OSU Lima; Sara Newman, Research Aide, OSU Lima

Choice Food Pantry Development: Enhancing Nutrition Education

A choice food pantry is organized like a grocery store where families walk through the pantry and choose food rather than have food handed to them in a box or bag. In Ohio, many choice food pantries are organized according to color coded “Mypyramid” food groups and provide nutrition education workshops during pantry hours. The seed grant will allow us to continue the process of holistically integrating nutrition education within choice pantry development. Project goals include using social marketing techniques to develop a series of DVDs/videos that will effectively target the diversity of choice pantry clientele, promote key nutrition messages, and serve as an orientation to choice pantries. Choice pantry volunteers will receive nutrition and diversity training to be able to reinforce key nutritional messages.

This grant was submitted by Dan Remley, Extension Educator Family and Consumer Sciences Community Development, OSU Extension, Butler County; Hugo Melgar-Quinonez, Assistant Professor, Human Nutrition, College of Education and Human Ecology; Maria Carmen Lambea, Program Director, OSU Extension; Ana Claudia Zubieta, Program Director, OSU Extension; Chris Taylor, Assistant Professor, School of Allied Medical Professions; Julie Dalzell, Assistant Professor, OSU Extension, Butler County; Lutheran Social Services of Central Ohio; F.E.E.D. (Feed, Educate, Empower, and Distribute)

Workforce Needs Assessment for Ohio's Emerging Biobased Polymer Industries

Ohio’s strengths in agriculture and the polymer industry, which ranks first in the nation by employment, is a strategic advantage for the development of new technologies in biobased polymers, which include plastics and advanced materials from agricultural feedstocks. As the polymer industry transitions from petrochemicals to biobased materials, new skill sets will be required. A steering committee of OSU faculty (OSU Extension, Engineering, Biochemistry, Education, and ATI) and industry leaders will bring together an expert panel (polymer and agricultural professionals) to determine the skills/competencies that students will need to develop for promising careers in biobased polymers. The panel will accomplish this through a Workforce Needs Assessment workshop(s) using a curriculum development (DACUM) process. The steering committee will then process the recommendations and determine their relevance to graduate, undergraduate (four-year baccalaureate and two-year technical), and K-12 students and educators as well as industry/private sector audiences.

This grant was submitted by Dennis Hall, Assistant Director, Ohio BioProducts Innovation Center; Robert Norton, Senior Research Specialist, Center on Education and Training for Employment, College of Education and Human Ecology; Peng George Wang, Professor, College of Biological Sciences/College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Ann Christy, Associate Professor, College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences; Jose Castro, Professor, College of Engineering; Ken Martin, Assistant Director, OSU Extension; David Boulay, Senior Research Associate, OARDC Piketon; Carol Warkentein, Ohio Soybean Council; Allen Zimmerman, Professor, Agricultural Technical Institute; Rich Markham, PolymerOhio

Communities throughout Ohio (and nationwide) are struggling to maintain a vital economic mix in their central business districts. Recognizing that business clusters can be a key ingredient to local economic development, many communities would like to achieve the right mix of downtown businesses that can attract people and create a vibrant center; such a center can become a focal point for a community’s progress toward sustainable development. However, identifying the right mix for a particular community is elusive. A variety of applied community economics research has been conducted by personnel from Extension, AED Economics, and others at OSU to help local communities better understand their central business districts. However, these efforts tend to focus on individual communities in isolation and thus do not provide communities with a needed perspective of a much broader context. Meaningful economic revitalization of such central business districts requires comprehensive action strategies informed by local applied research, which this grant has facilitated.

The grant team has established a baseline from which to measure success of community economic development efforts via use of primary and secondary data on the economic, demographic and geographic characteristics of small and medium-sized incorporated places located within Ohio and surrounding states. They have investigated the community-level variables and processes that are correlated with central business district economic success and provided local community leaders with a better understanding of their central business districts. The grant team also engaged local leaders in Van Wert, Ohio in an applied research project that enabled the development and/or assessment of comprehensive action strategies designed to strengthen their CBD retail and service mix. This project was used to develop an outreach program to be piloted with communities in fall 2008, and fully released in 2009. The team has fostered improved working relationships among faculty from CEHE, Knowlton School of Architecture, Extension, and AED Economics. Plans for scholarly outputs have been discussed with project team members in a variety of venues appropriate to their academic affiliation. The research findings and resulting outreach program were presented to county commissioners in Ohio (OSU Extension’s Commissioner Days), and Extension professionals nationwide (2008 Galaxy Conference) with other presentations planned for the future. See http://www-agecon.ag.ohio-state.edu/programs/ComRegEcon/cbd.htm for the current status of this program.

This grant was submitted by Greg Davis, Extension Specialist, OSU Extension; Nancy Bowen-Ellzey, Extension Educator, OSU Extension; Jill Clark, Systems Developer/Engineer, College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences; Maria Manta Conroy, Assistant Professor, Knowlton School of Architecture; Elena Irwin, Associate Professor, College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences; Leslie Stoel, Associate Professor, College of Education and Human Ecology

A County Model for College Access

The OSU CARES Grant to the Economic Access Initiative focuses on developing a rural county model for increased college access among students otherwise not likely to attend college. The model will target middle school students through their teachers who will provide one-on-one additional counseling as a supplement to their discussions with each child. The goal is to reach 40 students in the pilot year. Hardin County was chosen because it has a low college-going rate and a low percentage of college graduates. The program draws on expertise within the College of Education and Human Ecology, Hardin County Extension, the OSU Extension Center in Wooster, the Ohio College Assistance Network, and Know How to Go, the national public service campaign targeted to low income students.

Now titled the “Hardin County Academic Promise Program,” initial efforts included calling together a community-based steering committee, holding focus groups with a larger group of community leaders and educators, and meeting to test the curriculum outline. Spring meetings will be held at the three high schools in the county, bringing middle school teachers together to disseminate the curriculum and receive feedback about the feasibility of an email-based model to send time appropriate messages to teachers for use with the students they identify. Assessment will include following the students through their middle school class choices to high school class choices and college enrollment. Outcomes to date include additional interest in access issues among community leaders, greater awareness among teachers about specific misunderstanding low income families hold about the college-going process, and dissemination of materials to assist in conveying messages about going to college from backgrounds of limited financial means.

This grant was submitted by Tally Hart, Senior Advisor, Economic Access Initiative, Office of Academic Affairs; Bill Grunkemeyer, Assistant Professor, OSU Extension; Kenneth Lafontaine, Assistant Professor, OSU Extension; Barbara Ludwig, Associate Dean, College of Education and Human Ecology

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