Tagged: ODI Scholars

Nashville is the home of country music, but the nearly two dozen ODI Scholars and international students who traveled there over Spring Break found much more. During the five-day trip, hosted by the OIA Global Engagement department and ODI CRISP unit, students explored the connections between Nashville’s entertainment industry and social justice, delved into the city’s history, and connected with local industry professionals.

As an aspiring counselor, Aalissia Thomas plans to spend the rest of her life helping others navigate challenges—a dream she will be one step closer to achieving when she accepts her diploma this May. However, Thomas says she never would have accomplished this milestone if the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) had not supported her through difficulties of her own.

Hamidou Sy always knew he wanted to be a civil engineer, even before he understood what engineering was. As a child growing up in Mauritania in West Africa, Sy saw the impact of a lack of engineering firsthand.

“Whenever we would travel from province to province, state to state, we would see terrible accidents on the roadway. We would see bad infrastructure, inadequate water resources,” Sy recalled. “That was a call to action for me.”

When Luis Mercado walks across the Schottenstein Center stage to get his diploma this December, it will be the final steps in a journey he worried he might never finish.

Mercado came to The Ohio State University as a first-year student in 2018, drawn by the support and opportunities provided by the Young Scholars Program (YSP), which he joined as a sixth grader growing up in South Lorain. That support took on a whole new meaning three years later, however, when Mercado received life-changing news: cancer.

Telling her classmates to "trade fear for hope," the first Black woman to get a doctorate in dance studies from The Ohio State University spoke at the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) graduation ceremony on Dec. 14.

"I hope we will lead with love and create beyond our most wildest dreams," Alesondra "Alex" Christmas told her fellow graduates and their friends and family piled into the Ohio Union's Great Hall Meeting Room. "Let your hopes be fierce and unwavering."

While many of The Ohio State University's 45,000 undergraduate students embody the Buckeye spirit, few represent the Ohio State student body quite like Madison Mason. A fourth-year Morrill Scholar, Mason spent the past year serving as Vice President of Undergraduate Student Government (USG), achieving numerous victories for the student body, including more access to mental health services.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?' " Honoring the words of Dr. King, on January 15, 2024, Jermain L. Pettis '04 announced the launch of The Jermain L. Pettis Scholarship Fund at The Ohio State University.

In his LinkedIn post announcing the scholarship, Pettis said, “The power to enact meaningful change lies at the intersection of education and opportunity.”

A crowd of nearly 200 company representatives and as many as 500 students registered to put their best foot forward for the ODI Diversity Career Fair.

The career fair ran from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, October 17 at Ohio Stadium with a Diversity Networking Mixer at the Blackwell Hotel kicking things off in the morning with 33 companies.

Earlier this August, ten ODI Scholars presented their Student Experiences in Entrepreneurial Development (SEED) Program individual lab research as well as gave entrepreneurial pitches based on those lab research projects.

Geoff Green takes a $5 bill out of his pocket. He wads it up, stomps on it, crumbles it up and punts it dramatically off the auditorium stage toward the audience of middle schoolers gathered for an assembly at the Columbus City Preparatory School for Boys.

"Life is going to step on us, crush us, crinkle us, and kick us," said Green, a 2017 neuroscience graduate and current PhD candidate, as he hands off the mutilated Abe Lincoln to a young man down front. "But you know what? We don't lose our value."