Ohio State nav bar

Chairman O'Kelly's News Brief

September 9, 2016

Chairman O'Kelly's News Brief

Morton

Lisa Goldstein, a junior Atmospheric Sciences major, will be presenting the daily weather briefing at the NWA Annual Meeting in Norfolk, VA. She was selected for this honor by the NWA based on our nomination. Thanks to Brooke Raake for facilitation.

Our faculty searches have been approved and search committees formed to circulate our ad and attract top quality applications. The physical job search committee is chaired by Bryan Mark, and the social geography search committee is chaired by Becky Mansfield. Thanks to all for their dedicated service.

Focus on Recent Graduate (1)

This week we are delighted to focus on Youngho Kim (PhD 2007) who completed a dissertation entitled “Surveillance modeling and ecological analysis of urban residential crime in Columbus Ohio” working with Morton O'Kelly. After a brief spell at UNC Charlotte, Youngho returned to Korea, where he has risen through the ranks at Korea University. Youngho is an Associate Professor, in the Department of Geography Education. Since 2015 he has been the Director, Institute for Future Land Analysis, Korea University. He also serves as Vice Dean, for the Graduate School of Education. Another reason to celebrate is that Youngho has recommended our new student Jinhyung Lee, who has just entered our PhD program following an MA in Korea. Jin is working with Harvey Miller. We really like it when the graduates of our graduates come back and set off on their own trail here.

Focus on Recent Graduates (2)

As a little change this week, I asked Diane Carducci for names of past students she would like to know about how they are doing these days. Two came to mind: Trevor Birkenholtz and Tim Hawthorne. Diane recalls these two guys for their excellent spirit and many contributions to the department.

Trevor Birkenholtz was a strong member of the emerging cluster in environment-society and received external competitive funds for his work, including a Fulbright-Hays Grant for his doctoral research in India. He worked initially with our colleague Paul Robbins prior to Paul's departure for the University of Arizona. Upon his return, Trevor completed a PhD in 2006 with Kevin Cox. The dissertation was entitled:  "The Politics of Groundwater Scarcity: Technology, Institutions and Governance in Rajasthani Irrigation." Following a stint at Rutgers Trevor is now an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana. His recent book: South Asian Development appeared earlier this year (Routledge).

Tim Hawthorne is a more recent graduate, completing his PhD in 2010, with M.-P. Kwan as adviser. His dissertation was entitled “A People-Centered GIS Analysis of Healthcare Accessibility and Quality-of-Care.”  Tim was a leader in setting up the service learning version of the cartography class and received multiple accolades for his work. Following a stint at Georgia State University where he was Assistant Professor and State Coordinator for the Georgia Geographic Alliance, Tim has recently accepted a new GIS tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Sociology at the University of Central Florida.

The service learning version of our cartography class continues, and will be taught by our new Senior Lecturer Emily Castellucci next semester. And, so the world continues to turn as my old friend Larry Brown would have added.

In other news

The first (and only) correct answer to the quiz question came last week from Brooke Raake, who of course is not a new member of the department, but rather an experienced person who knows where things are on campus. The question: where are the numbers on campus? The answer is that there is a large artistic installation behind Dreese Laboratory (or close to the bookstore). Like statues of numbers! As a useful fact that you can use: there is a good coffee shop down there too, called, you guessed it, Oxley’s by the Numbers.