Morrow-Jones Named Associate Provost, Women's Policy Initiatives

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Hazel Morrow-Jones, professor of city and regional planning and formerly the college’s associate dean for graduate and professional education, has been named associate provost for Women’s Policy Initiatives and director of The Women’s Place. (Photo by Jo McCulty)By Katelyn Vitek

Hazel Morrow-Jones knows the best solution is often found with a fresh perspective.

As professor of city and regional planning and the college’s associate dean for graduate and professional education, she offered that vision to undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty members.

Beginning Jan. 1, Morrow-Jones will have a different perspective of her own, having been named the university's associate provost for Women’s Policy Initiatives and director of The Women’s Place.

"I am excited about the possibility of new challenges and opportunities in my new role," Morrow-Jones says. "I am particularly anxious to have the chance to 'pay forward' for all of the support that I have received, not just from The Women’s Place, but from all those women who have gone before me and whose work has made my career possible.

"President Gee has often said that he wants Ohio State to be one of the best places in the nation to work. Policies and programs that make the university a good place for women to work make it a good place for everyone," Morrow-Jones notes. "The Women's Place’s commitment to fostering the best in the university community helps to create the conditions that will allow everyone -- faculty, staff and students -- to do their best, most creative work. I am excited to have the opportunity to continue the work that previous directors Judy Fountain and Deb Ballam started."

In her associate dean position at the College of Engineering, Morrow-Jones has worked with the college executive committee, the graduate studies committee chairs and the Graduate School on a variety of important activities during her period as associate dean, including the doctoral program reviews, development of the Masters of Global Engineering Leadership program, graduate fellowships, graduate recruitment and international relations.

Her interest in international relations and global learning is perhaps most evident in the Knowlton School of Architecture’s Dresden Exchange Program, in which Ohio State students travel to Germany, and, in turn, students from the Technical University of Dresden come to the United States. For more than 10 years, Morrow-Jones, who will retain her professorship at Knowlton, and two colleagues have coordinated the program.

“The goal of the study abroad and exchange program is to give students the experience of being in a foreign place and working with foreign peers, because it opens their eyes so thoroughly to their own situation,” says Morrow-Jones. “It just makes them so much more aware that they start looking at everything in a slightly different way.”

The students aren’t just visiting; they work together to address similar city and regional planning problems.

“Planning is about planning solutions. The more you think outside the box, the better that solution is going to be, simply because you know you chose it for good reasons,” Morrow-Jones says.

Morrow-Jones wants students to realize that the way things are done in America is not the same as in other countries and is not even necessarily best-suited for other cultures.

Morrow-Jones remembers one example of misunderstanding when a German student questioned the use of school buses in the United States. When she told him the buses’ purpose, he could only ask, “That’s all they do?” From his perspective, the buses could be used for more than just the twice-a-day transport of students.

This shows what the Dresden program is all about: seeing problems and their solutions in a new and at times different light. The program was founded in 1998 from a series of events that Morrow-Jones can only describe as “serendipity.”

Ken Pearlman, the city and regional planning section head at the time, introduced her to German professor Bernard Mueller, who was visiting Knowlton. A year after their conversation, Mueller contacted Morrow-Jones with some interesting information: He had put her name on a grant proposal for an exchange program that attracted funding from the Huntington Bank in Columbus and the Dresdner Bank in Dresden. In the end, both banks funded the Knowlton/Technical University of Dresden exchange program for six years.

Knowlton students have come back from Germany with new insights and new friends. Morrow-Jones also has made lifelong friends with her German colleagues. She recounts one night when Mueller, a West German, and professor Olaf Schmidt, an East German, were discussing the fall of the Berlin Wall while they visited in Schmidt’s Schrebergarten, a community, urban garden where individuals or families rent plots.

“I never thought I would be behind the Iron Curtain; he (Schmidt) never thought he would have an American in his Schrebergarten,” Morrow-Jones says. “In Germany, being invited to someone’s Schrebergarten is very special, as this is one of the most private family pleasures.”

The Dresden exchange program is a perfect illustration of one of Morrow-Jones’ greatest goals: “What I’ve spent my time and career doing is trying to help people, usually students, but in later years faculty and staff, to accomplish the things they want to accomplish.”

Morrow-Jones became associate dean for graduate and professional education in the College of Engineering in January 2006 and served in this position while also maintaining her appointment as professor in City and Regional Planning at the Knowlton School of Architecture.

College Interim Dean Gregory N. Washington has begun a search to fill the college associate dean position Morrow-Jones is vacating. Nominations are due Jan. 11 to Washington.

Katelyn Vitek is a student communications assistant for the College of Engineering.