OHIO Making Headlines Spring 2024

New Hall of Fame Inductee

After a 2023 ballot nod, the College Football Hall of Fame gained its first Bobcat (opens in a new window) in 2024: former football coach Frank Solich (opens in a new window), who earned the status of “winningest coach in the history of the Mid-American Conference” in 2019 with his 111th win.

Solich left OHIO in 2021 with a 115-82 record, which trails only former head coach and stadium namesake Don Peden (opens in a new window), who had 121 wins from 1924-46. (He matched Peden’s namesake status in August 2022, when the Ohio University Board of Trustees approved naming the football field in Peden Stadium in his honor (opens in a new window).)

He’s also only the third person with ties to the state of Ohio to become a member of the Hall of Fame, joining Mark Dantonio, MED '82, the former defensive coordinator at Ohio State University and former coach at Michigan State, and Chris Ward, who played for OSU in the 1970s.

Top-Notch Shots

TIME magazine’s Top 100 photos of 2023 (opens in a new window) included three alumni: Michael Swensen, BSVC ’21, for photographing former President Donald Trump in East Palestine, Ohio (opens in a new window), after the February train derailment that caused a toxic chemical spill (Getty Images); Drew Angerer, BSVC ’12, for documenting the U.S. Congressional hearing on unidentified flying objects (opens in a new window) (Getty Images); and Madalyn “Maddie” McGarvey, BSVC ’12, for capturing a Trump rally in Erie, Pennsylvania (opens in a new window) (The New York Times).

“VisCom students and alumni create so much of what this country sees every day from around the world,” says Stan Alost (opens in a new window), a professor in the School of Visual Communication. “It gives me goosebumps to … know that we are contributing to keeping democracy alive through reporting with real images in an era of disinformation.”

Awards, Awards, Everywhere

Numerous OHIO groups recently have earned national recognition. Among them is Ohio University Regional Higher Education, which in January was awarded the Rural Schools Collaborative’s Catalyst Initiative Grant (opens in a new window). That funding will help expand the OHIO Rural Teacher Fellowship (opens in a new window) and junior fellowships in support of RHE’s mission to diversify the teaching workforce.

And last summer, the prestigious 2023 FBI National Academy Associates Science and Innovation Award (opens in a new window) went to John Born (opens in a new window) (Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service and Scripps College of Communication), Eric R. Williams (opens in a new window) and John Bowditch (opens in a new window) (both Scripps), for their virtual reality training experiences for police officers (opens in a new window) in Ohio. Staff from the Ohio University Police Department, Athens Police Department and Athens County Sheriff’s Office also contributed.