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Falcon Health Center taking shape

BGSU and Wood County Hospital (WCH) have signed an agreement for the creation of the Falcon Health Center, a new University health center that will be operated by the hospital and replace the present Student Health Services building on campus. The new facility will be located at the corner of East Wooster Street and South College Drive.

"We're pleased and excited about this partnership with Wood County Hospital and what it will mean for our students," said President Mary Ellen Mazey. "This new facility will enhance student health care, increase efficiency and benefit the broader community."

"Wood County Hospital takes care of many students and University staff in our hospital and clinics. Partnering with the University will help enhance campus-based service delivery and improve continuity of care," said WCH President Stan Korducki. "We look forward to having a 21st century facility to support care for the BGSU students, faculty and staff."

Wood County Hospital was selected through a competitive proposal process involving a number of University offices and constituencies, including BGSU students.

Construction is expected to begin this month with the goal of opening by the fall 2013 semester. Until then, the existing BGSU Student Health Services will continue to operate at its present location.

BGSU students provided input at every stage in the process. Project architects consulted with student focus groups and will use their feedback in designing the health center.

The facility is expected to be two stories high, around 21,000 square feet and will complement the campus buildings across Wooster Street as well as the surrounding residential neighborhood.

The first floor will have waiting and reception rooms, and business and consultation offices. Patient care functions include lab/blood draw, an X-ray room and holding area, changing room, pharmacy, approximately 16 exam rooms, procedure rooms, an IV area, wellness and patient education rooms, and a nurse station.

Parking for patients, visitors and staff is expected to be onsite and adjacent to the building.

All the services provided at the former BGSU Student Health Services will be provided at the Falcon Health Center.

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Active Learning Classroom demonstration - WTOL

Radhika Gajjala's Second Life avatar, rad Zabibha

Gajjala traces thread of the 'subaltern' in online worlds

After many years of studying the evolution of online worlds and the egalitarian space they were first predicted to create, Dr. Radhika Gajjala, School of Media and Communication, has identified subtle but definite hierarchies in cyberculture that both romanticize and stereotype historically marginalized populations.

In her latest book, "Cyberculture and the Subaltern: Weavings of the Virtual and the Real," published recently by Lexington Books, Gajjala and her co-authors investigate the complex relationships among the virtual and the real, first world and third world, the global and local, and the identities people stage online or are "assigned" by others.

"I'm implicitly challenging the notion that there can ever be a completely 'level playing field,'" Gajjala said. "It sounded like a good idea, but centuries of hierarchies and cultural capital create histories of knowing and not knowing that provide some people in the world with more social capital than others.

"I want to disrupt the binaries that imply that the virtual is not real," Gajjala said. "Reality is validated through social structure, and to much of the world's population cyberspace may simply not be relevant in their everyday lives, except perhaps as a way to market and sell their products outside of their local context."

Gajjala has conducted almost 10 years of ethnographic research observing handloom weavers in Indian villages and recently has begun studying handloom weavers and batik fabric hand dyers in Indonesia. She has been studying the ways in which their goods are marketed, including through social media and websites since the advent of online social media tools for selling handmade goods, while examining how that has or has not influenced their supply chains. She has also studied the development of microfinance from a local activity in India to a global one through online social media portals, noting the unstated shifts in responsibility for helping low-income populations from the corporate or governmental to the individual enabled by digital tools and wireless connections.

Well-intentioned people in a position to buy handmade goods are eager to have products that are made by "authentic" and "traditional" crafters. But what does that mean in our globalized world where many craft tools have been innovated and redesigned to cater to global/modern market demands? Can the handloom, as a form of technology, be expected to remain static? If business develops significantly, does that challenge the "authenticity" of its provenance even while aiding those who are producing it?

"There's this fascination with the subaltern - the black or brown person often depicted in traditional settings that no longer exist in our urban centers and who is a poor person," Glajjala said. "We first want to identify and define the 'authentic' subaltern and then we think we can go and empower this authentic subaltern."

This poses a dilemma for nonprofit organizations seeking to promote local goods in local markets and sustain local livelihoods and communities. As Gajjala points out, "Handloom production is the second largest livelihood in India and comes second to agriculture." She and her co-authors Anca Birzescu and Franklin Yartey examine microfinance in this context, while Gajjala also writes with nonprofit activists from India. Co-author Precious Yamaguchi and Yartey (both Ph.D. alumni who worked with Gajjala) have contributed chapters on the production of Kente cloth in Ghana and the globalization of its market.

The subtitle of the book is at once metaphorical and concrete. Gajjala epitomizes the melding of the online and offline, both in her personal and professional lives. An avid weaver and spinner, she participates in online interest groups such as Ravelry.com and etsy.com. She has an avatar in Second Life, rad Zabibha, who has a virtual business of selling sari fabric to other avatars - for real dollars - and with whom she has written a chapter of the book.

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