By Stephen M. Gavazzi, Ph.D.

The Latest News, Views, and Announcements

What’s New at CHRR

As we navigate the evolving federal and state funding landscape that was referenced in my email to all CHRR staff members on August 1st, I want to take a moment to reflect on the strength and resilience that together define our workplace. I can say in earnest that these challenges have sparked renewed energy and creativity across our many team members.

The CHRR Leadership Team remains deeply committed to securing new opportunities. We’re actively pursuing promising leads and engaging in conversations that we believe will help us emerge from this moment stronger and more focused than ever. What’s most inspiring is the way our team continues to show up—with dedication, collaboration, and care for one another. These qualities are the heartbeat of CHRR, and they give us every reason to be hopeful. In the coming weeks, we’ll continue to share updates and invite open dialogue. Please know that both Brittany Poast and I are available to talk as needed. Let’s keep leaning into our work, lifting each other up, and embracing the opportunities that change can bring. The future is ours to shape—and I’m confident we’ll do so with purpose and pride.

What’s most inspiring is the way our team continues to show up—with dedication, collaboration, and care for one another. These qualities are the heartbeat of CHRR, and they give us every reason to be hopeful. In the coming weeks, we’ll continue to share updates and invite open dialogue. Please know that both Brittany Poast and I are available to talk as needed. Let’s keep leaning into our work, lifting each other up, and embracing the opportunities that change can bring. The future is ours to shape—and I’m confident we’ll do so with purpose and pride.

CHRR's Leadership Team

The CHRR Leadership Team is pleased to host our next virtual town hall session on Wednesday August 27th from 11am to 12 noon, this time with a focus on digital accessibility.

I would invite everyone to participate in this session which, among other things, will allow you to meet the Digital Accessibility Coordinators for the College of Arts and Sciences. They will be reviewing the basics of digital accessibility and will demonstrate these principles by checking and fixing a sample syllabus in Microsoft Word. They will also discuss the upcoming “Title II deadline”

BONUS: Staff are welcome to leave at noon or remain for the extended Q&A session from 12:00 to 12:30 p.m. to dive deeper into specific topics.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about digital accessibility you’d like them to answer, please send them to asc-accessibility@osu.edu and mention you are with CHRR.

CHRR Team Member Celebrations

As I discovered last year, there are no current CHRR team members who celebrate their work anniversaries in August. Hence, this is the month where I get to thank everyone at CHRR for all their hard work and dedication to our mission. THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!
 

Things You Might Want to Know

NLSY79 and NLSY97 Updates

The NLSY79 Round 31 came out of the field at the end of July with a completion rate of nearly 74%, a great result for a longitudinal survey with this longevity! The NLS team will begin work on data processing and variable construction as soon as work on the NLSY97 Round 21 is complete (look out for an announcement in November). Our deliverable date for the NLSY79 Round 31 public use file is September 2026. The NLS team is also working towards the NLSY97 Round 22 fielding, which will run through summer 2026.

New Position for Sungjin Lee at SDSU Imperial Valley

Sungjin Lee, one of the recent postdoctoral students who worked on various projects associated with the Ohio Longitudinal Data Archive (OLDA) and the Ohio Educational Research Center (OERC), has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Public Administration on the Imperial Valley campus of San Diego State University. Congratulations, Dr. Lee!
 

Higher Education Study Places a Spotlight on Rural Issues

Both Open Campus and The Daily Yonder provided coverage of some of the new findings coming out of the Higher Education study conducted by CHRR and researchers from Ohio State’s Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society. Under the banner “Are Rural Extensions Being Underutilized?”, the article discusses how rural extension programs could be expanded beyond agriculture to help universities balance the provision of services to both rural and urban communities. The need for such efforts springs from the survey’s findings that American citizens are increasingly convinced that public universities should be balanced in serving both urban and rural needs.

This Higher Education project used the American Population Panel (APP) to collect data, and is one of the first longitudinal studies conducted explicitly to assess consistency and changes in public sentiment over time among APP panelists.