#engaged learning

Frank Burgett, a 1965 electrical engineering graduate, was part of the first group of cooperative education students selected to work at the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, later renamed the Johnson Space Center (JSC), in 1962. He would be hired by JSC as an electrical engineer in 1965 and would make major contributions to the development of life support systems and space suits for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. This included providing real time mission support testing on the improvised life support system developed for Apollo 13 astronauts. He retired from JSC in 2003.

Frank DeMarinis, chair of the biology department at Fenn College, was selected to serve as deputy scientific attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Rome in 1960. During his two-year tenure he assisted in coordinating international biology research related to space flight and served as a scientific expert to NASA in their efforts to develop global support among U.S. allies for space flight activities. This included accompanying Vice President Lyndon Johnson, then chair of U.S. Space Operations, during meetings with Italian government officials in 1961.

Frank C. DiLuzio, a 1938 civil engineering graduate, played a central role in developing U.S. space policy during the 1960s. He served as staff director of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Aeronautical and Space Science from 1963 to 1965. In that role he managed legislative oversight and budget operations related to NASA and the U.S. Space Program. He was also appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to serve on the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel in 1968.

Annie Easley, a 1977 graduate in mathematics, served as a mathematician and computer engineer at NASA Lewis Research Center from 1958–1999. She made major contributions to the development of the Centaur upper stage rocket, which has been a major component of NASA launch vehicles, including Apollo 11, since the 1960s. Her life and career at NASA were chronicled in the best-selling book Hidden Figures.

Gordon Kautz, a 1941 mechanical engineering graduate, served as the assistant director of NASA’s Project Ranger from 1961 to 1965. The Ranger program consisted of a series of unmanned space missions to the moon by the United States. The effort obtained the first close-up images of the lunar surface and helped lay the groundwork for Apollo 11’s successful landing.

Albert M. Lord was a senior researcher at Lewis Research Center before serving as an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Fenn College from 1956 to 1960. At both institutions he conducted research that assisted in the development of jet engine and rocket technology, and helped advance education in rocket science and engineering. This included partnering with Lewis Research Center to form the first student chapter of the American Rocket Society in the state of Ohio at Fenn College in 1957. A former student of Lord’s, Bill Latto, who served for a decade as an engineer with NASA upon graduation, created the Albert Lord Endowed Scholarship in the CSU Washkewicz College of Engineering in his honor.

William Lund, a 1955 electrical engineering graduate, played a key role in the development of the guidance systems for the Apollo 11 Space Craft. He served as an engineer for many years with Raytheon Co. and was a member of their Apollo program design team.

Burt Rosenbaum was a senior researcher at NASA’s Lewis Research Center from 1945-73 and an instructor in mathematics at Fenn College as part of the collaboration between the two institutions. His statistics research contributed to the successful flight of Apollo 11 and led to him being honored with the Apollo Achievement Award.

CSU: Can you tell us a little bit about your background as a writer and editor?

Ryberg-Webster: This is the first book that I have written/edited. I am working on a sole author book about historic preservation in Cleveland in the 1970s, so this was in some ways a learning experience for me in terms of editing a book. I think working with Rosie and the contributors to the book, many of who are colleagues here at Levin or former Ph.D. students, really made it an easy process. The staff at our publisher, University of Pittsburgh Press, were also terrific.

Tighe: I have edited a book before called The Affordable Housing Reader. That was a collection of already published work that we were pulling together, so it entailed seeking permission from journals rather than engaging directly with contributors, so this was something completely different. Like Stephanie said earlier - our colleagues and publisher were terrific and the whole process was fairly straightforward. I keep on telling Stephanie that we were very lucky because writing a book usually does not run this smoothly. I am also working on a sole author book right now. Mine is about suburbanization and racial segregation. I do feel better prepared for that project now that I have completed this book.

CSU: What is the main goal of the book?

Ryberg-Webster: The goal with the book was to bring attention to urban policy issues that are important to cities like Cleveland. In previous studies of legacy cities, there has been a heavy emphasis on Detroit and significantly less attention on cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo. We really wanted to harness the knowledge, energy and research that is going on around Cleveland and these other legacy cities.

Tighe: People in Cleveland are tired of being called “the Mistake on the Lake.” People have a lot of preconceptions about Cleveland, or Pittsburgh or Buffalo, and how they were “better before.” However these communities are still very important urban centers in this country. It almost seems like people forget that people still live in cities like Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo. This is the reason we decided to use the term “legacy cities” instead of “shrinking cities” or “rustbelt cities,” because those terms have negative connotations. We chose “legacy” because it better fits the reality of how these cities work and operate.

CSU: Why did you decide to collaborate on the book?

Ryberg-Webster: This project came about a couple of years ago at the encouragement of then interim dean Robert Gleeson. He was trying to spur new collaborative projects and faculty partnerships and we were intrigued by the idea of combining our research. Rosie covers social, race and class issues in cities, while I am focused more on the built environment in communities and how these environments are planned and maintained. Together, we cover a significant amount of what makes cities “tick.” I think that is why we work so well together and why this has been a good pairing.

Tighe: One of my first visits to Cleveland, was to attend a conference on historic preservation in legacy cities that Stephanie had organized. That was really the start of our conversations about the national and local perception of Cleveland and how people talk and think about the city. This book, particularly the introduction and conclusion which we co-wrote, is really the culmination of those conversations and the joint research that followed. It is really amazing and exiting to see all of our ideas, as well as the work of so many other researchers, come together in this book.

CSU: What type of support did you receive for the project?

Tighe: We received funding over three years from the Levin College Women’s Fund, which made it possible for us to spend two summers really dedicated to working on this book which we are really grateful for and that helped us a lot.

CSU: Is Cleveland experiencing a population decline?

Ryberg-Webster: Technically yes, the city of Cleveland’s population has declined every decade since the 1950s. The population of Cuyahoga County has declined every decade from 1980, which means that we are in a region that is stagnating. However, there are multiple neighborhoods in Cleveland where population has begun to grow, including Downtown, Ohio City and University Circle. These are bright spots that we need to enhance, while continuing to support the areas where there are still challenges.

Tighe: Our book says legacy cities, but in a lot of ways what we are talking about are things that have to do with regional equity. Looking at the entire city and its relationship to its suburbs, to the county as a whole, how they operate, what the funding environment is, who makes decisions, who is left out of decisions. All of these issues that we look at in this book are about Cleveland, but they are also about Cuyahoga County, Shaker, Cleveland Heights, Lakewood, Parma, etc. The history of Cleveland and its suburbs are both fascinating and terrible, we are still struggling with these “legacies” of this today.

CSU: Do you think this will change anytime in the future?

Ryberg-Webster: The answer to that question is very uncertain. I think there are things happening in our world globally that will potentially cause disruptions. If we did a population forecast today for Cleveland, it would go down because it has been going down. However, if you would have done this for Cleveland in the 1940s it would have gone way up because of what had happened in the previous decade. So we really can’t predict. I think there are parts of Cleveland that will continue to improve and I hope that this will not be at the expense of people of color, or people of low socioeconomic means who have lived in Cleveland through the worst of times.

Tighe: The trend is that neighborhoods that are whiter and wealthier are going to continue to do well, and neighborhoods that are blacker and poorer will continue to do poorly unless there is a change in how we approach things like the tax abatement and public school funding. Still, even with those types of reforms, there is only so much a city can do, especially a city that is constrained in resources. We do not have the money to invest in the neighborhoods that need it the most and we are allowing the private sector to choose where they want to invest and not where we need them to invest.

Ryberg-Webster: Solutions in the future will take creative thinking and leaders who are willing to take some risks and be innovative. The city and county have limited resources to spur drastic change. Federal and State policies encourage white flight and urban decline and decades of declining federal funding have exacerbated the difficult position of legacy cities.

Tighe: We tried to make the book very accessible, though. During the process, we thought about how we might use the book in the classroom, as well how we might shape new undergraduate and graduate courses where we explore these themes.

CSU: Are you hosting any events tied to the book being published?

“I think the topic of local media decline and the decline of local coverage over time is resonating with people,” Rubado says. “I think it’s a topic that people can identify with and that is relevant.”

While Rubado has a Ph.D. in political science and now teaches in CSU’s Urban Studies Department, her undergraduate degree is in magazine journalism. She spent several years working as a newspaper reporter for The Syracuse Post-Standard, which served as part of the inspiration behind her research.

Jennings and Rubado hatched the idea of studying the connection between newspaper staffing and local politics in spring 2016 at a happy hour in Philadelphia, where they worked together at Temple University. They began collecting data later that fall.

“It’s a story echoed everywhere,” Rubado says regarding the decline of newspapers. “People want quality coverage, they want to know what’s going on, but they don’t have time to go do these things themselves—that’s why there are local journalism jobs.”

Rubado stresses that she doesn’t want her research to appear as if it is blaming journalists for low-quality reporting.

“There are lots of high-quality journalists doing really great reporting in Cleveland and most U.S. cities, but when there are fewer of them, you can’t possibly be getting as much as you were getting before,” Rubado explains.

“I don’t feel like it’s some call for newspapers to do better,” she continues. “I don’t think they’re neglecting coverage of local policy and politics. I think they’re just experiencing revenue shortfall and are trying to keep things afloat in a rapidly changing and technologically changing environment.”

Rubado and Jennings’ study was published early April in Urban Affairs Review. According to Rubado, this is an ongoing stream of research that she and Jennings ultimately hope to turn into a book.

Funded by a Knight Foundation grant, this summer, they are going to be interviewing reporters to see if their personal stories match the findings from the published study.

The team hopes to perform content analysis of news articles over time in order to assess how exactly political reporting has changed with the decline of reporters. They also want to begin examining specific smaller-scale elections, such as school board, city council or municipal court elections.

“We are expecting to see an even more dramatic relationship between this [newspaper staff] decline and people’s engagement with these elections,” Rubado says regarding researching various small-scale elections.  

Rubado is also continuously working on her other research that studies how and why local governments work together, and the conditions under which local governments in “shrinking regions” like the Cleveland area are most likely to contribute toward regional goals.

With all of the media attention Rubado and Jennings’s research has been receiving, Rubado hopes that her findings will help spread awareness of the issue to the general public.

“I can't imagine a more appropriate home for this stunning piece, which celebrates our great city and was created by lifelong Cleveland artists and entirely funded by donations from Clevelanders,” says William Barrow, head of special collections at the Michael Schwartz Library. “The Cleveland Memory Project is dedicated to preserving our shared history and there could be no better ‘welcome sign’ than this mural.”

Drawn by illustrator Gary Dumm and colored by his wife Laura Dumm, “Love Letter to Cleveland,” depicts many of Cleveland’s most famous landmarks, including the West Side Market, the “Free Stamp” and the Guardians of Traffic Statues. It also celebrates a number of prominent Cleveland and national personalities such as John D. Rockefeller, Jesse Owens, Harvey Pekar, Eliot Ness, and Ghoulardi.

Completed in 2013, “Love Letter to Cleveland” was originally installed on the side of the Orange Blossom Press building in Ohio City, steps away from the West Side Market. When the mural succumbed after several years to Cleveland weather, the artists began a search for a new home. Barrow connected with the Dumms and proposed the library as a new location, and a GoFundMe campaign was completed to finance the reprint. The installation date coincided with the Dumm’s 48th wedding anniversary, making the occasion even more special.

Barrow plans to use the mural as a teaching and engagement tool for CSU students and the general public. The publicity generated by the mural’s installation at CSU – a story will air later this week on WEWS News – will also help expand knowledge of the Cleveland Memory project and the resources it makes available to communities, historians and the general public.

I, like many around the world, was horrified by apartheid and the incarceration of Nelson Mandela and his colleagues on Robben Island. I was moved to tears when Mandela and other African National Congress leaders were released in 1990. I reveled in unfolding democratic experiments such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was empaneled to address the torture and executions carried out during the apartheid years, as well as the election of Mandela as the first popularly elected president of a new multiracial South Africa!

When I visited the country in 2005, South Africans had settled into nation building and the attendant challenges — though heavily tinged with optimism toward the future. I enjoyed the richness and beauty of the people and land. I was not blind to the contradictions of a nation with a growing economy juxtaposed with intense rural and urban poverty. I left with the hope that South Africans would use their collective strength, wisdom and national treasure to build a bright future for all. As is the case with democracies, the reality of unforeseen economic and political turbulence can often get in the way of straightforward progress.

I don’t believe I had preconceived ideas of what South Africa would look like to an outsider in 2018. The hustle and bustle of the people certainly remained. Many people from surrounding countries migrate there to look for work, and one can feel a palpable tension in how those looking for economic opportunity are viewed and treated. Interesting from a policy and planning perspective is that downtown Johannesburg, with its tall sky scrapers, has been effectively abandoned and taken over by migrant squatters.

Our group spent a great deal of time at the University of Witswaterand, interacting with faculty and students in the College of Architecture and the Built Environment. What a treat! The faculty helped us understand the economic and political challenges facing this amazing nation and the bright, world-class students convinced us they are up to taking on these challenges. Note: The university has a great faculty and staff commissary, but Elements (the restaurant on the CSU campus) still rules!

Despite great poverty, South Africa is slowly growing a black middle class that is buying goods and services at a pace unimaginable a short 30 years ago. We visited retail shopping centers that would be the envy of any American suburb and saw a diverse range of shoppers. Again, however, this must be viewed through a lens of great underlying poverty and income inequality.

We also visited Mandela’s home in Johannesburg and left our written respects on stones outside the compound. Professors Simons and Dickinson held up the CSU standard!

On the fifth day of the trip, we stopped at the Apartheid Museum and the current exhibit featuring Mandela. It was a very powerful experience and prompted a question: Mandela is everywhere – on currency, public art, in the streets – befitting given his sacrifice and service to the nation. I wonder what Mandela would have made of this attention? I suspect he would have been bemused and quick to deflect attention to his colleagues — the men and women, known and unknown, who sacrificed for South Africa.

Talk about adaptive reuse: We visited Chaf-Ponzi, a shabeen (essentially a bar, but in the past defined as an “illicit” club) built around a decommissioned cooling tower in Soweto. We found an authentic food and entertainment experience that draws tourists and locals alike. I learned that Soweto is a complicated community. It is at once extremely poor but also a community of middle-class strivers, all living in close proximity.

On reflection, my trip to South Africa was an amazing reconnection with a dynamic society. The trip also allowed me to see this society through the eyes of our students and colleagues. They asked the right questions and were not afraid to engage fully with a society different from their own. This is the true value of the study abroad experience—one that none of us will soon forget.