“Celebrate what you want to see more of.” (Thomas J. Peters)

Hello everyone,

A short time ago, a memo went out to our OSU Mansfield community announcing the First Annual OSU Mansfield Campus Day of Celebration, to held on June 10, 2011. There are three parts to this inaugural event for staff and faculty, including an informal lunch, an afternoon award and recognition ceremony, and an evening reception. My hope is that it will become a tradition on our campus, one that celebrates all of our accomplishments over the past academic year.

In discussing previous end of the year events, I had come to find out that there were some significant issues that seemed to produce certain barriers to full participation by staff and faculty alike. These issues included – but were not limited to – the location, timing, and cost of these events. Hence, I made some decisions in consultation with staff and faculty (largely through our Executive Committee) that would allow us to take these sorts of issues off the table. For starters, there are three events throughout the day, allowing individuals the maximum likelihood of being able to attend at least one event. As well, two of the three events are being held on campus, eliminating travel requirements. Further, these events will be free to staff and faculty members, removing the cost barrier.

At the same time, I also caught wind of some concerns that any amount of money spent on a celebratory event could be seen as jeopardizing someone’s employment on our campus. We are facing a very significant budget shortfall, and my office has pledged to cut jobs only as a last resort. However, the fact of the matter is that we still face some unknowns, so I wanted to make sure everyone understood that the financial support for these events would be coming from my discretionary fund. This fund has been maintained through private donations, and hence in no way threatens the depletion of general revenue dollars that are used to employ all of us.

It’s probably fairly easy to tell that I felt very strongly about not only maintaining but actually increasing our campus community’s ability to celebrate the accomplishments and milestones of our staff and faculty members. Why, you might ask? Among other things, in almost every book and article that has been written about highly functional organizations, you will find some mention of the need to commemorate the successes, skills, and talents of its members. And this is just as true in bad economic times as in good ones.

I see our own organization as quickly moving toward a situation in which all of the right things are in place to move from good to great. But how quickly will we make that transition? One significant piece of evidence regarding the degree of progress that we are making will revolve around the amount of campus member participation we see at such celebratory events. So, here’s to hoping that I see all of you at these events! And in the meantime, as always please take the time to enjoy the weekend with family and friends!

Steve Gavazzi

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

While I do not want to get too far ahead of things, I wanted to let everyone know that there are some fairly exciting conversations beginning to happen on our campus around service learning. What exactly is service learning, some of you might ask. According to the OSU Service Learning Initiative website (http://service-learning.osu.edu), service learning “is a form of experiential education characterized by student participation in an organized service activity that is connected to specific learning outcomes, meets identified community needs, and provides structured time for student reflection and connection of the service experience to learning.”

There have been a number of service learning initiatives on the OSU Mansfield campus in years past. One such recent example is the “Mission Possible” project that Terri Bucci headed up in order to provide reading and math tutoring assistance to the Culliver Reading Center here in Mansfield.  With other campus partners on this project that included Kris Moloney and Ed Wachtel, students who were involved in coursework (taught in both the Math and Ed T&L programs) became participants in this very worthwhile service learning project.

What’s new about the most recent conversations is that they revolve around taking our service learning opportunities to another level through linkages to an expanded set of four-year degrees offered on our campus, and possibly to student housing as well. Think for a moment how the student experience at the OSU Mansfield campus might look if we had curricula that offered active involvement with youth, families, schools, and communities throughout Richland County. Now ponder how that experience might be shaped by courses that met general education requirements while concurrently meeting vital community needs. And finally, imagine that those students participating in such programming might have the opportunity to “live” the connection between their educational pursuits and their life aspirations while residing in the very community they are serving.

Are any of these ideas etched in stone right now? Not at all… in fact, it’s more like sketches on a cocktail napkin. However, you will be asked to participate in conversations about these ideas in the days and weeks ahead. And I especially will want to hear from anyone who has been involved (or would be interested in future involvement) in service learning efforts. In the meantime, speaking of cocktail napkins, please take the time to enjoy the weekend with family and friends!

Steve Gavazzi

“Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.” (Harvey MacKay)

This is the fifteenth week of the calendar, which means I have been the Dean and Director of The Ohio State University at Mansfield campus for over 100 days now. The first 100 days has a certain symbolic significance, perhaps especially so for U.S. Presidents. From Franklin Delano Roosevelt through Barak Obama, this period of time has been considered as a benchmark by which to measure early success.

When I first took this job, I was given a book entitled “The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels.” Honestly, I had to laugh. The President of the United States gets 100 days, but I only get 90? Now, you might be thinking that being the President is a lot tougher than being the Dean and Director, right? I would challenge that notion on at least one front. For instance, the President can print more money whenever he needs it, and I cannot. Imagine how different our current budget scenario would be if I could!

All kidding aside (that really was an attempt at a joke, so do not send me letters about balanced federal budgets!), I am sensitive to the need for some studied reflection about how successful my first 100 days have been. From where I sit, the victories during this period of time have been built around two words that I had mentioned in my very first “Dean’s List” communication to the campus: transparency and dialogue. From the feedback I have received to date, you know more than you ever have about the role of Dean more specifically, and more about how this campus works in general. And according to what I see and hear, you also are talking more about our campus and its workings. Not just to each other, but also to me (and with me) as well. At least, that’s what I hope you are experiencing. And if you aren’t, then my continued travels around the campus for smaller group discussions will be the perfect time to talk about those areas that you do not see enough progress being made.

I also am very aware of how quickly time has been passing as of late. My tenure on the Mansfield campus so far has felt like a whirlwind of activities, and because it has “flown by” I must be having fun, right? Truly, I continue to feel blessed and privileged to have been given the opportunity to work with all of you. My wish is for all of you to be in the position of feeling similarly fortunate as you wind up this work week. Know that I am wishing all the best for this campus, and please take the time to enjoy the weekend with family and friends!

Steve Gavazzi

“Do not judge someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes.” (American Proverb).

This past Tuesday the OSU Mansfield campus hosted “One Day without Shoes.” This event was designed to raise awareness about how difficult life without shoes is – something that many children and families experience on a daily basis throughout the world – as well as helping communities gain more of a sense of the breadth and depth of this problem (www.onedaywithoutshoes.com).

Our students – and more specifically the Scarlet and Gray student organization – were responsible for organizing and enlisting the participation of other fellow students (including representation from both the OSU-M and North Central State College campuses), as well as faculty and staff. Special commendation goes to Scarlet and Gray’s Sam Hanshaw, David Yoder, and Cody Moistner for their work on this event, and thanks as well go to Sam Hanshaw for first presenting the idea to this group. I would be remiss if I did not indicate additional thanks to Lauren Hiltner, Sarah Galat, and Shari Petersen for their leadership efforts on this project.

All told, about 100 people (the vast majority of whom were students) participated in this inaugural event. These numbers are all the more impressive because it was very cold that day. In fact, the temperature was hovering around the freezing mark, and we had snowflakes falling for at least half of the time we were out walking the campus. I was there, leading the walk, so I can attest to the rather uncomfortable conditions that confronted our group. In fact, I could not feel the soles of my feet for at least an hour after we had returned inside. And yet, there was so much genuine warmth and camaraderie that seemed to radiate from the group, so much so that the numbness in my feet hardly seemed to matter.

Yes, we raised awareness of a very important cause. And at the same time, I believe that we elevated our consciousness of the significant positive power that comes from acting as a group. Our actions spoke very loudly that day, not only about the injustices surrounding children and families without appropriate footwear, but also about the compassionate nature of our campus. Please take the time to make a donation of gently used footwear from now until April 15th in the bins that have been made available across campus. And in the meantime, please take the time to enjoy the weekend with family and friends!

Steve Gavazzi

"Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance." (Kofi Annan)

This week I had the distinct honor of introducing our campus to Hazel Morrow-Jones, Associate Provost for Women's Policy Initiatives and the Director of The Women's Place (TWP), and Jennifer Beard, Assistant Director of TWP. I must confess to having a soft spot in my heart for TWP, and it is one of the primary reasons for my being on the OSU Mansfield campus. The President’s and Provost’s Leadership Institute – an 18 month long leadership training that provided me with the principal knowledge base for taking on my past and present administrative positions – was founded in large part through the efforts of Dr. Deb Ballam, the original director of TWP. And it was Deb Ballam who had urged me most strongly to apply for the position of Dean and Director of this campus. So if you like what I have been doing these past 13 weeks, think happy thoughts about TWP. And if you think that my hiring was a colossal mistake, then blame Deb and not Hazel and Jennifer!

The mission of TWP, according to their founding document, is to serve “as a catalyst for institutional change” and “to expand opportunities for women's growth, leadership and power in an inclusive, supportive, and safe university environment consistent with the goals of the Academic and Diversity Plans.” While this sounds decidedly like a set of women’s issues, they most emphatically are not. They are everyone’s issues, and they extend way beyond the confines of our campus. That’s why I used the words of Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the UN, at the beginning of this communication.

While the importance of gender equality for our university and our community is paramount, this in fact is not the only reason that I had invited these representatives of TWP to our campus today. Significantly, I believe that the initial work on cultural transformation here at OSU Mansfield – you may remember this as the “unfreezing activities” that were presented to our campus community a while back – can be sustained and elaborated on through activities being undertaken by TWP.

This comes at a most opportune time for our campus. In the midst of the budget issues that we will be facing in the weeks and months ahead, we also will be challenged to develop a renewed sense of exactly who we are as a regional campus community. As part of my office’s response to this, I have asked Cathy Stimpert and Donna Hight to serve as our campus liaisons to TWP. I am confident that both of these senior staff members will faithfully and capably help shape and guide our campus connections to TWP. As well, I have invited members of the Mansfield Staff Advisory Committee (MSAC) – and I was pleased to have MSAC representatives Cindi Thompson and Rick Stewart on hand during the TWP presentation over the common hour this past Tuesday – to begin the process of figuring out how linkages to TWP also would benefit MSAC goals and aspirations.

I invite all of you to talk with Cathy, Cindi, Donna, Rick, and each other as we build and sustain these important connections with our TWP colleagues. In the meantime, please take the time to enjoy the weekend with family and friends!

Steve Gavazzi