Conventional reading instruction methods leave some kids far behind. Newer methods and focusing on individual skill levels could reverse that trend, says one Ohio University educator.

Eugene Geist, associate professor in the College of Education & Human Services, is an expert on early childhood education. He uses a constructivist approach to education that he says would help children more than current methods, which he calls "skill and drill."

"Kids are so bright and intelligent naturally. We need to give them space and just take a step back." Geist says.

When it comes to learning, children learn better by finding the answers themselves. Traditional methods involving worksheets, timed tests and no collaboration are at the heart of an educational system that Geist sees as insufficient.

"We're trying to over-control the process so much," he said. "It's becoming skills-based, cut-and-dried, and segmented. If a child isn't doing well, people think they aren't intelligent, when really the school isn't accessing how that child learns."

Instead of pushing children at different reading levels and speeds - which may lead them to avoid reading altogether -  educators should support and work with each child individually, Geist added.

This approach is outlined in Geist's book: Children Are Born Mathematicians: Supporting Mathematical Development, Birth to Age 8. Though the textbook is about teaching math, the same teaching methods can apply to all topics.

"I hope my book helps educators realize that teaching is more than homework and tests," Geist says. "We need to build on the abilities that kids already have."

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview.

Now that children across the country have returned to school, parents and teachers alike may be noticing some children are having more difficulty learning and getting along with others than their fellow classmates.

Does it take Jimmy three hours to write five sentences?

How come Matthew stares at the floor and only murmurs when spoken to?

Why does Suzie forget a story even though she just heard it 20 minutes ago?

Why is Mackenzie always alone - on the playground or even at family gatherings?

For many parents, these scenarios are the overwhelming reality of their children's relationships, behaviors, school performance and home life. And as each school year progresses with harder work, it becomes a monumental task for some students to just keep up, let alone make and keep friends or get along with teachers and parents. Sadly, without help many such students drop out of school or have delinquency problems.

Steven Evans, professor of psychology at Ohio University and editor-in-chief of the multidisciplinary research journal School Mental Health, is finding answers. Evans studies the effectiveness of new methods in reducing the failure rate, disruptive behavior, and social impairment in middle school students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) – the largest study of its kind.

In the Challenging Horizons Program, Evans and a team of graduate students compare the effectiveness of using unconventional accommodations – such as an after school program, in-school counseling or special attention from teachers - versus conventional ones designed for those with disabilities. The latter, he says, can actually hurt children in their ability to learn.

Earlier this year, Evans received a $1.25 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for the study, and another $1.8 million Institute of Educational Sciences great for a large-scale project focusing on high school students with ADHD.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview

Susan Williams, assistant professor of anatomy, studies how the choice of food impacts the jaws and jaw muscles during evolution.

Working with alpacas and the Costa Rican howler monkey, Williams' research focuses on why and when the animals' jaws fused together like humans, rather than held together by ligaments, as seen in most mammals.

To accomplish this, she studies the strain on the jawbone during chewing.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview

Biologist Willem Roosenburg divides his time between Athens, home of Ohio University, and Maryland's Chesapeake Bay where he has tracked diamondback terrapin turtles for over 20 years.

A natural historian, Roosenburg studies the turtles over extended periods of time and how they adapt to changes in their environment – largely development of waterfront homes and heavy fishing.

Marking the turtles, Roosenburg returns each summer to update meticulous records of those he is tracking, hoping to find them again among the new ones. 

To date, he has documented over 10,000 terrapins from more than 30,000 he has caught and released.

Roosenburg works with the state of Maryland on preserving the terrapins and previously created a device for crab traps that would keep inadvertently trapped turtles from drowning.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview

Alycia Stigall, assistant professor of geological sciences, vividly remembers the moment she knew what she wanted to do with her life. Playing in a Cincinnati creek bed as a child, Stigall uncovered a handful of small, ribbed almost round shells similar to clams known as brachiopods. 

Growing up to become one of the country's leading brachiopod experts, Stigall uses the fossils as a model to study how different species  - fish to mammals - have adapted to environmental changes or were wiped out by invasive species, which can lead to extinctions. Her work with brachiopods provides a better understanding of invasive species and how currently endangered species may be saved.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview

Swimming 360 million years ago in what would later become Cleveland, Ohio would have been taking your life in your hands. 

Bob Carr, professor of biological sciences, would know – he is the only American expert on the Dunkleosteus, a fierce giant predator fish measuring over 20 feet long with a bite matched only by the T-Rex. 

Carr, whose research often takes him on Cleveland digs, says studies of the Dunkleosteus provide clues to today's sharks and other bony fish.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview

As the rise of online instruction continues, so does the temptation for students to cheat. According to an Ohio University study, many students have little holding them back from utilizing means of academic dishonesty with the absence of a physical instructor.

Ohio University - Zanesville psychology professor Mark Shatz and associate professor of psychology Frank LoSchiavo suggest that although honor codes - mutual trust contracts between students and professors to abide by ideal standards of academic integrity - can possibly reduce the amount of cheating, the same does not hold true for online classes.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview.

Soichi (pronounced Soy chee) Tanda, associate professor of biological sciences, studies fruit flies, a common decomposer, to develop possible treatments for leukemia and other cancers. 

The "virtual human beings," as he calls the flies, have remarkably similar genes to humans despite their miniscule size. 

In his lab, they are bred to carry traits similar to those found in humans with cancer so that questions may be answered that could lead to new treatment methods.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview.

If space is the final frontier, Sarah Wyatt, is its Green Thumb Award winner.

An associate professor of environmental and plant biology, Wyatt studies plant growth in zero-gravity atmospheres. A plant's internal system relies on gravity to tell the plant which way to grow. Wyatt wants to know what happens to plants without that external influence.

"Nobody looks at a seed, and says, 'which way is right-side up?'" Wyatt says. "That's because the seed, the plant, already has a mechanism to know which way's up. It responds to gravity. The plant's already hard-wired in its DNA to grow properly."

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview.

Matthew White uses the DNA double helix to study population genetics. Instead of comparing one organism with another, his work focuses on entire populations of species, most notably fish.

White has found that even as some species of fish have developed in shared areas, their developmental histories could be vastly different.

An associate professor of biological sciences and longtime fisherman, White took one of his childhood passions and turned it into a career.  He hopes that his research will contribute to society's understanding of biodiversity in Eastern North America, become a model from which predictions about other organisms can be made and assist state and federal agencies in making better decisions in stocking fish species within inland water sources.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview.

Associate Professor of geography Geoff Buckley explores human-environment interactions in an urban context focusing on issues of resource use, environmental justice, and urban sustainability.

He is also interested in the social and environmental impacts of coal mining as well as forest conservation. This past March, his second book, "America's Conservation Impulse: A Century of Saving Trees in the Old Line State," was published by the Center for American Places.

An edited volume (with Michele Morrone) entitled "Mountains of Injustice: Environmental and Social Justice in Appalachia," will be published by Ohio University Press in Fall 2011.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview.

The Appalachian Ohio region has never been thought of as an area capable of generating utility-scale electricity from wind energy, but findings from a groundbreaking project by one of Ohio University professor may soon dispel that notion.
 

Dr. Carole Womeldorf, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, along with a team of students, have created and implemented the Wind Energy Assessment Visualization (WEAV) project. The first of its kind in the region, WEAV is designed to measure wind energy data for two years at heights above large turbine blade tops and then use computer modeling to find the best wind resources across more than 2,000 square miles.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview.

From debates to billboards to television commercials - political candidates discredit each other in order to gain a following. Mark Alicke, professor of psychology, studies one of the oldest and most common practices in politics - blame.

Alicke has extensive research in the area of blame and responsibility and how one constructs their identity - another important aspect of building a career as a public figure.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview.

Nearly two decades ago, a handful of Ohio University researchers decided to take on the impossible - revive a southeastern Ohio creek considered beyond repair after years of poisonous coal mine runoff.

The Appalachian region of Southeastern Ohio is riddled with closed and abandoned coal mines. Though mining has long-since stopped, damage to the surrounding land continues to spread. The problem? Acid mine drainage. As with any holes, over time the mines have gradually filled with water. Iron sulfides – left over from the coal removal – reacts with the water, becoming sulfuric acid once the water is exposed to oxygen. This acid burns through metals such as iron, manganese, cadmium, zinc, copper, arsenic, and aluminum, creating a lethal concoction that once it reaches creeks and streams, turn it orange and killing nearly any living organism.

Ohio University environmentalists – through the George V. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs – determined there must be a way to restore a stream killed by acid mine drainage.

And they were right. On one creek alone, Ohio University's research and technical assistance has led to almost $11 million in mine land reclamation work, reducing sulfuric acid stream leaching by a staggering 5,500 pounds per day and reclaiming 23 miles of stream. The most marked success is the return of life – fish, bugs and microorganisms that are once again thriving in restored streams.

The university's unique watershed work has emerged as a model for other communities in Ohio with similar mine damage situations – largely due to the hard work and dedication of the university's faculty and researchers. The projects have sparked interesting collaborations as well, pulling in faculty and students from nearly every college, including engineering, environmental sciences and fine arts.

A Lifelong Passion

Natalie Kruse – A native of Athens and assistant professor of environmental studies, Kruse has worked passionately on stream reclamation since the tender age of 10. She started attending Ohio University classes at 11 and earned a civil engineering degree by her late teens. After obtaining a doctorate in hydrogeochemical engineering in England, Kruse returned to her alma mater, stepping into the role of her former mentor with the Voinovich School's Environmental Studies program.

Kruse now leads a team of researchers utilizing steel slag to reduce stream acidity – a material that performs 10 times better than that of limestone for leaching acid mine drainage. This process benefits not only the streams, but provides a method for steel companies to recycle the slag, which they consider a waste.

From acid mine drainage to a store near you?

The process for cleaning streams and creeks creates a large additional problem – waste. Giant mounds of it. But for Guy Riefler, assistant professor of civil engineering, that waste is turning into economic development and education opportunities for the community. Focusing initially on Sunday Creek – seven miles of a highly contaminated stream immune to traditional restoration materials – Riefler developed a system of cleaning the water by introducing limestone and hydrogen peroxide to attack the high acidity and iron levels.

The combination neutralizes the acid and solidifies the iron into a reddish-orange iron hydroxide sludge – which Riefler is turning into eco-friendly pigment powder for commercial paint.

Ask Riefler about the process and plans to build a pigment powder manufacturing facility that will service the water from multiple watersheds in the Appalachian mining region.

The solution to pollution is NOT dilution..?

Jennifer Bowman, environmental projects manager for The Voinovich School, was surprised to find that some streams in Southern Ohio become more acidic when it rains. Usually rain causes dilution, lowering a stream's acidity. Likewise, underground coal mines generally help by collecting the excess water and restricting acid leaching.

Bowman determined the acidity of Southeastern Ohio streams increases because there are more surface mines than deep mines in the area, totally debunking the saying "the solution to pollution is dilution."

Bowman helps manage the two solitary dosers in the state of Ohio - huge silos that drop basic solutions into streams to neutralize acid.

Bowman has more than 15 years of experience working to clean up local watersheds. Her work in Raccoon Creek is focused on Hewitt Fork, one of its tributaries. She is currently comparing how effective different treatment methods are in helping streams to recover.

History in the making

Ted Bernard, author and professor of environmental studies, has been documenting and writing about the watershed restoration projects from the program's inception.

Initially, the idea of turning the damage around and restoring water sources in mine ravaged areas, was considered by many as a hopeless effort. The severe damage to the water and surrounding ecosystems was simply far too damaged to be restored. But a handful of determined volunteers and scientists proved that with the right technology and a dedicated community, these streams could be resurrected.

"By 2008, the Monday Creek Restoration Project had become one of the premiere watershed projects in the Eastern Coal Lands," writes Bernard in his book, Hope and Hard Times.

In fact, since its inception, Monday Creek has become an inspiration and model for communities who want to clean up their own mine-ravaged backyards.

This is important not only for the environment, Bernard stresses in his book, but also because a successful effort by a financially impoverished community to bring its streams back to life can help instill pride, and counter the sense of helplessness that sometimes accompanies entrenched poverty.

Contact a media specialist to arrange an interview