Communication students create virtual walking tour from archives, alumni submissions
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hether it’s the memory of sledding down Scripps Amphitheater every winter or meeting a first love in Shively Dining Hall, memorable spots on Ohio University’s campus mean something different to every student, graduate, and faculty member. To preserve those memories, the students in Professor Roger Aden’s communications capstone are creating a virtual walking tour using information from the University’s archives and alumni submissions. Through the website Historypin.org, the senior-level communications students will pair photographs and documents from the Ohio University Archives with personal stories from alumni. The goal of the project is to produce a digital, self-guided walking tour that will allow users to virtually visit places on campus and scroll through pictures, information, and anecdotes about each place. As of mid-January, the project’s leaders had received more than 250 alumni submissions.
“The class is designed to help us understand how places on campus come together to help shape our own life stories.” —Professor Roger Aden, PHD
“We hang onto all of those special places because there’s something there that’s meaningful to us because of our lives, our identity, and who we are,” Aden said. “The class is designed to help us understand how places on campus come together to help shape our own life stories.” With help from the OHIO Alumni Association, Aden reached out to alumni for stories about their favorite spot on campus to link with historical information about each place.
Each student in Aden’s capstone course will be responsible for developing “pins” about a few notable spots on campus. Students will collect archival materials and story submissions that they believe best represent the history of each spot, and then piece the images and stories together on Historypin.org. The virtual walking tour will be available on Historypin.org by searching “Athens, Ohio.” They aim to complete the project by the end of spring semester. Aden said that he wants the students to graduate with a better understanding of how the memories made at OHIO will shape their life stories. “I’m pretty confident, based upon the archives and alumni submissions students have to work with, that they’ll produce something that will help tell the story of Ohio University from a historical perspective and highlight the emotional connections alumni have to this great place,” Aden said. —Kaitlyn Pacheco, BSJ '17
BOBCAT BONDS More than two dozen members from the Tau Kappa Epsilon Alpha-Beta Chapter Alumni Association met at the Ohio University Inn and Conference Center in December 2015 for a weekend event. The AB TKE Alumni Association was founded to reunite members and reactivate a chapter at OHIO. TKEs are pictured from left to right. FRONT ROW: Bill Wening, BSCE ’67; David Batley; Bob Zilai, BSED ’63; Bill Garrett, BSED ’63; Paul Hadorn, BSEE ’64, MS ’73; Denny Morris, AB ’66; and Don Britt, AB ’65. SECOND ROW: Scott Bowles; Jon Barber, AB ’70; Ed Passarelli, AB ’73; Rob Kincart; Pete Huggins, BSIT ’69; Art Stellar, BSED ’69, MED ’70, PHD ’73; Luther Jones, AB ’69; Brian Stephans; Don Falk, BSED ’73; and John McNeely, BSED ’73, who provided the photo and information. THIRD ROW: Bill Schindel, BBA ’69; Curtis Todt; Ron Piwkowski; Gary Hermann, BS ’72; Jim Newell, BBA ’70; Jim Mandrell, BBA ’71; Robert Peyton, BSJ ’72; Mark Hines, AB ’72; Jeff Mayer, BSED ’73; and Todd Farmer, senior director of alumni engagement at Tau Kappa Epsilon.
spring 2017
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