The sentiments from my previous blog post still ring true: Standout leaders make sacrifices for those in need. We’ve seen the same positive guidance come from our local leadership.

A recent example of exceptional leadership within EHE is illustrated by the Whole in One golf camp led by Kelly Trent and Jae Westfall.

Whole in One, a unique camp designed for young children with autism, was created to introduce young people to a sport that would allow them to use their talents and excel. It was made possible through the work of many volunteers, some from the college and several others from local high schools, along with a comprehensive team of professionals. This all-inclusive team included a professional golfer and specialists in adaptive physical education, speech pathology and logistics.

A week ago, the 2016 Whole in One golf camp came to a close.

I applaud each and every one of the camp’s team members for their vision, dedication, perseverance and service to others. They are role models for all of us to stand up for inclusivity.

I hope many more in our college will seize similar opportunities. Efforts to make life better for others inevitably makes life better for the broader community as well as for ourselves.

Is there anything more important now?

It’s been one of the hardest weeks that America has faced in a long time. There are no words for the multiple tragedies that have fallen hard on the heels of one another.

I can only find comfort now in the good I see come from these difficult times.

While we’ve seen terrible sadness, we’ve also seen positive initiatives this past week, such as a scholarship fund for the children of Alton Sterling and a support fund for the victims of the Dallas shooting. This aid has come from our northern reaches to our southern borders.

While others shrink, leaders step up and they make sacrifices for the sake of others. Good leaders make sure no one is left out and no one is forgotten.

Thank you to all who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to support the families of those who are no longer with us.

I just finished reading, “The Other Wes Moore,” by Wes Moore. It’s the Buckeye Book Community selection for this year’s incoming class. The book tells the story of two African-American boys with the same name growing up in more or less the same place at the same time.

The twist: One ends up in jail and the other ends up enormously accomplished.

The book gives us a clear picture of Baltimore or more specifically, West Baltimore. I learned a lot from it. The thing that hit me the hardest was the level of violence that 7- to 10-year-old boys routinely face. It’s worth thinking about as we read the news every day. The statistics that Moore gives are compelling. Seeping underneath it all is the vice grip of poverty.

The reviewers heaped this book with praise and it should spark a lot of conversation this new school year, but I’ll be candid with you. I was spoiled by reading “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace” a few months ago. That book is beautifully written by an accomplished writer. It is also complete and reflective.

The author of “The Other Wes Moore” tells the story of the other Wes Moore better than he tells his own. The book is patchy; a lot of pieces about the author’s life are left out.

The lucky thing is that Wes Moore, the author, will be visiting campus this fall, so we can ask him as many questions as we need to fill in the blanks. I’d like to hear more about his thinking too. For example, while he praises his mother and other women in his life, he doesn’t reflect on the quality of their lives or motives or how to make those lives any better. Didn’t both mothers try as hard and love as much? What is it about context that makes a difference?

Moore’s book gives us perspective on the urban African American boy’s chance of success in today’s culture.

Students and colleagues, as you read this book, please share your opinion of it with me.

Have you seen the movies “The Perfect Storm” or “Restrepo”?

Sebastian Junger wrote them both. Now he has a new book, “Tribe, On Homecoming and Belonging.” It presents a new interpretation about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and why our soldiers are coming home with it at a greater rate than ever before.

His book resonated with me for two reasons.

First, I have a cousin who served as a Green Beret in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. He has Multiple Sclerosis now due, he thinks, to the effects of Agent Orange, an herbicide that he was exposed to during that war. When the first Gulf War happened, though, he longed to go. His eyes still light up at the mere thought of it, not because he wants to kill, but because he wants to be with his troop, his group, his tribe again.

The second reason, “Tribe” resonates with me is because it reminds me of a book written by a friend of mine, Mike Mazarr. In “Unmodern Men in the Modern World,” Mazarr talks about the soothing, sheltering solidarity of communal life as a reason why young men who otherwise feel ineffectual or purposeless, join ISIS.

Junger turns that same illuminating insight onto us. His purpose is to help us understand the true value of social solidarity and sacrifice, something our troops find in the trenches but do not find at home. “Tribe” is short, punchy and persuasive. It honors our veterans in a very different way. It is also a searing critique of our modern society.

The message is simple: It’s not too late. We can still change what Junger says needs changing.

The news about the mass shooting in Orlando earlier this month was horrifying. It’s an event that nearly everyone finds impossible to have imagined. Now, its reality is very hard to integrate into our psyches.

Jeremy West

That, in part, is why I am so proud of our EHE team who walked and worked the Columbus Pride Festival and Parade last weekend.

I especially want to call out EHE graduate student Jeremy West for recognition. Currently a master’s student in the Family and Consumer Sciences Education program, Jeremy single handedly organized an impressive showing not only for our college but also for EHE’s Phi Upsilon Omicron honorary.

The parade is over. The cause is not.

 
It is extremely important for all of us in EHE to stand up for the civil rights of all human beings, all of the time. Social justice is just two words on the lips of many; let us make sure that we live and work as socially just individuals every day. I mourn for the LGBTQ community and am sensitive to bigotry perpetrated against all of our marginalized communities.

I invite everyone to join me in stamping out hatred, intolerance and discrimination. As educators, we simply must. We are the role models, the teachers, the researchers and professionals most engaged with our broad community.

Let us join Jeremy and “walk the walk.”

Poetry is almost religion for me.

I read some nearly every night. So, when I read about Ohio’s first poet laureate (who is also a radiologist) in the May 2016 issue of Columbus Monthly, I had to go out and buy Amit Majmudar’s book, Dothead.

I am so glad I did.

I read Dothead three times through. Every poem contains a surprise, an energy and imagery unique unto itself, a satisfying aha or hah! at the end.

This little book of 100 pages and 64 poems is diversity personified. It is a cultural tour by one who has felt the questions, hurts and challenges of everyday discrimination, one who reified these into meditations on the ironies and beauties of everyday life, and who has finally melded the myths and insights of religions he was and was not born into to create new meanings for things you never thought possible.

I shall remember his “Crocodile Porn” with a smile, his musings on Michelangelo “In a Gallery” with a sharp intake of air, his ode to heme iron in FE through the line, “this iron oar of the Ferryman” with envy.

Consider this line, “How much salt must a lover sweat to earn his sugar?”

Read it and see.

Every other year for the past ten years, I have served as the lead trainer at the Mid-Career Academic Leadership Institute sponsored by the Dannon Institute. Every time I teach it, I love it even more.

Targeted at food and nutrition professionals, this four-day intensive training program was created to provide an opportunity for participants to determine if a leadership role in their field might just be a perfect fit .

I give event participants these four solid reasons to invest in leadership courses:

Four reasons leadership courses are necessary

1. Because leadership is a good thing and it’s in short supply.

2. Because leaders are not born; they are made. [attributed to Vince Lombardi]

3. Because leadership is central to the success of any organization.

4. And finally, because leadership is not the same in academe as it is in business.

Leadership is no different than most any other kind of human activity. It is informed and improved by learning. In academe, we don’t have the time or space to stumble through our challenges. We need effective actors to act now.

Whatever any of us might have done to become a successful and accomplished academic or professor will not be the same skills needed for us to become a good leader. Most of our academic leaders today have learned by trial and error.

Yet, experience alone is a hard and often costly taskmaster. It might not even produce half of what is needed.

Instruction, coaching, reading, role modeling, reflecting and observing are skills learned through leadership courses that can save time, pain and failure.

Educational workshops or seminars on leadership are key because they can provide the help that you need to build a support system, leverage your own and others’ experiences, give you a jump start, and soften the hard knocks.

I encourage you all to join me in participating in as many leadership opportunities as you can to develop your own skill set. 

A friend of mine gave me the recent best seller “When Breath Becomes Air,” written by Paul Kalanithi.

It is not a summer beach read unless you like to cry at the beach.

 
Also, I can’t say that there is anything in this book to reflect on that directly relates to EHE either. For that reason, I write about this book for its sad beauty.

It is the true tale of a man dying; a beautiful and talented man who teaches us, in many ways, how to live. Paul reflects on King Lear, Occam’s Razor, and Greek tragedy, on the meaning of life, and science, and love. He reminds us that, “This is not the end. Or even the beginning of the end. This is just the end of the beginning.”

Read it and weep, but also read and treasure it for the treasure it holds within. Perhaps the best time to read it is this Memorial Day, which traditionally honors veterans.

Paul Kalanithi is not a veteran, but his memoir may help those of us who visit a cemetery or reflect on cherished memories this weekend.

I wish you and your families the best this Memorial Day.

My monthly book review celebrates a book by one of our own “family members,” Ashley Perez. She is the wife of Arnulfo Perez, assistant professor in EHE’s Department of Teaching and Learning.

Out of Darkness is an award-winning young adult book, for those who are 12- to 18-years old, about a small town in east Texas during the 1930s.

Perez is obviously intimate with the geography and peoples of east Texas. Her use of language, describing the seasons and transitions of time, is beautiful. The themes of this book, however, are very adult. Those themes include murder, rape, incest, disaster, love, loss and prejudice. There’s a mean girl, a mean man, and mean sentiments.

If the book were a movie, and it probably should be, then I would rate it R. The important overriding theme, however, is the “R” of racism.

 
Perez’ achievement is creating a cast of characters, black, white, and Mexican, who the reader can’t help but care deeply about. She paints a searing picture of what those relationships led to in those days.

Alongside all this is the story of the single greatest school disaster in American history: the New London School explosion, which killed 295 students and teachers.  

 
The account is eye opening, sobering and deep.

Out of Darkness is a well-crafted book. Perez is obviously a very talented writer, able to tell a story simultaneously from multiple perspectives.

I recommend you read it before you share it with your children and then talk to them about it.

There’s a lot to learn and talk about.

I attended a Polytechnic State College (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, to be specific), so what I say next might surprise you.

I had a broad and liberal education. I took physics and fiction, history, philosophy, and economics. Some of these were my all-time favorite courses even though I was a biology major. I regret that I did not take a poetry course.

Because of this, I wince when I hear that people say statements such as, “All higher education needs to do is focus on technical/career preparation for the job,” at the expense of a liberal education. I am puzzled when all the pundits claim our graduates will have seven or eight different jobs in the future, jobs that we don’t even know how to currently describe!

America’s education worked in the past precisely because it was not as narrowly-defined, prescriptive and technical as either the European or Asian models. America’s education allowed our students to explore, to try ideas (and majors) out, to reason, to sample many different subjects, to conceive and to create. There are many things within higher education that we should change and/or refresh, but losing a liberal education is not one of them.

There is so much we want our college graduates to know and do, such as:

• How to find and access knowledge (of course!)
• How to learn
• How to analyze data
• How to reason
• How to make a scientific argument
• How to recognize the interconnectivity of life and the world we live in
• How to compare and contrast belief sets
• How to experiment
• How to communicate
• How to understand our own and others’ motives and choices, and finally,
• How to live with a curious, open-ended attitude in a world of complexity with enough intellectual, emotional and hands-on skills to navigate it, come what may.

A narrow, job-training focus won’t provide our graduates with what they need to know to succeed.

Let us not become limited and limiting in an age when all of human knowledge is accessible and the future is limitless. Let’s preserve a broad general education. Update it. Focus on problem-solving and integration, but keep it.

Our democracy and national well-being depends upon it. So do we all.