Roads Scholars Day highlights Near East Side landmarks

Roads Scholars Day highlights Near East Side landmarks

Stops included Ohio State wellness, community extension centers

During the fall 2024 Roads Scholars Day on Friday, The Ohio State University highlighted partnerships with organizations on the Near East Side of Columbus. Presented by the Office of Outreach and Engagement, the semiannual seminar takes faculty, administrators and community partners through a region of Ohio to discuss current and future collaboration.

"Our purpose is to explore the Near East Side. To get to see great institutions, great facilities like this," Jason Reece, Ohio State's vice provost for urban research and community engagement, said during the first stop at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center Healthy Community Center.

Located at 1600 E. Long St. on the former site of the Columbus Metropolitan Library's Martin Luther King branch, the center opened this spring and offers an array of wellness activities free of charge to the community.

After the library moved to its current location at 1467 E. Long St. in 2018, Ohio State acquired the building and conducted extensive conversations with stakeholders to assess the community's needs, said Javonte McDonald, director of the Healthy Community Center.

"Every space, everything that you see in here, all of the things that we do all came to fruition through those conversations that we had for the community members," McDonald said. "We are focused on nutrition and cooking, wellness, community engagement, sustainability and wellness."

After visiting the center's teaching kitchen, exercise studio and community garden, Roads Scholars attendees participated in an information session about programs designed to increase residents' access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Julialynne Walker conducted a tour of Near East Side landmarks and spoke about her work with the Bronzeville Urban Growers. The organization is a network of area residents who maintain urban gardens at various sites in the community, which was once known as Bronzeville and is now the King-Lincoln District.

Walker said the Bronzeville Urban Growers work with a variety of organizations to provide space for urban gardens, including Ohio State's Healthy Community Center and African American and African Studies Community Extension Center, as well as faith-based organizations.

"Part of what we're doing with food security is working closely with churches," Walker said. "They have been community centers, but they're all dealing with aging populations. … Almost all of them have land [to accommodate urban gardens]."

The next stop was the Lincoln Theatre, 769 E. Long St. Lincoln's Executive Director Suzan Bradford and Program Director Quianna Simpson, who are adjunct dance professors at Ohio State, led participants on a tour of the historic venue.

The theater originally opened in 1928 as a venue to serve Columbus' Black community. The venue closed in 1974 as highway construction divided the area, causing numerous establishments to close.

Thanks to a partnership led by then-Mayor Michael Coleman, the city of Columbus and community organizations, the Lincoln Theatre reopened in 2009 after a multimillion-dollar renovation.

The Lincoln maintains partnerships with Ohio State to promote the arts throughout the region, Bradford said.

"We sit in a very innovative and creative space that changes the community and changes the world," she said. "We know art can do that."

Roads Scholars Day concluded at the African American and African Studies Community Extension Center, 905 Mt. Vernon Ave. The center celebrated a grand reopening this March after a nearly $2 million renovation.

The renovation reconfigured the building to provide additional classroom space and updated technology, said Monica Stigler, the center's program manager.

"We are encouraging professors to come and teach classes here. If their work somehow intersects with the community or engaged scholarship, we invite them, not only from our department or our college but throughout the university, to teach here," she said.

"We also have partnerships with the Fisher College of Business and other departments within our own college, which is Arts and Sciences. We're happy to announce that in the spring of this academic year, we will start to have classes back at the CEC for students to take."

In addition to serving as an extension of Ohio State's Columbus campus, the center is a community gathering place, hosting events such as the recent Columbus Women and Girls' Festand providing meeting spaces and research materials that are accessible to all, Stigler said.

"We also have partnerships with community members, activists, organizations, not only in this community, but throughout central Ohio," she said. "We work most closely with our partners here on the Near East Side. There's a lot of synergy."

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