CENTER FOR WORKING-CLASS STUDIES Foundation awards grant to YSU program

The grant brings prestige to the university, officials said.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Dr. John Russo said it all started with some "chutzpah."
What it is today is the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University -- the first program in the country devoted to issues of class in society, and one that serves as a model for programs both nationally and internationally.
The latest feather in the center's cap is obtaining a three-year $350,000 grant from the Ford Foundation in New York. The center also had received a 2000-2003 Ford Foundation grant of $225,000; it expires in December.
Word of the new grant came last month. University officials were slated to announce it publicly today.
Officials had waited anxiously for final word because the foundation receives 20,000 to 30,000 applications each year and saw the shaky economy downsize its endowment from $14 billion to about $9 billion over the past year, Russo said. The YSU business professor serves as co-coordinator of the center with Dr. Sherry Linkon, a YSU English professor.
Influential center
"It is a benefit to the university in many ways," Linkon said. "It's not ... the money, it's the prestige. It allows us to put YSU on the national and international map of colleges and universities."
Linkon said one thing that helped guarantee the grant was the number of others who have used the center as a model.
Another critical factor was that the center is making an impact and showing that class issues do matter, she added.
"It's also about connecting the study of working-class life to the lives of working-class people," Linkon said. "How do we take things we've learned and make sure they don't just stay in the academy, that they get to the community?"
Before coming to YSU, Linkon had completed a dissertation on 19th-century women writers to earn her doctorate in American studies from the University of Minnesota. When finished, she hoped the research would reach 10 or so people.
But, over the next five years, her focus changed. She came to YSU and learned about her students. As she taught, she realized that class issues shaped their lives, and the Youngstown area, as much as gender or race.
'Serving the community'
"To do academic work that actually makes a difference in people's lives ... what a privilege to have your work matter," she said. "What we do is not just an academic enterprise; it is a way of serving the community."
Since the center opened in 1995, it has helped bring recognition to Youngstown by hosting conferences that draw people from several states and nations.
Linkon and Russo co-authored the book "Steeltown U.S.A.," which went through three hard-cover printings in one year and was released in paperback six months early.
As for Russo, it was years ago that he worked in an auto plant in Lansing, Mich., but he always carried with him an interest in working-class issues.
Why?
"I don't like the way working people are treated," Russo said. "Part of this project has been to make visible and to validate the lives of working-class people."
In the 1990s, Russo's enthusiasm intersected with a group of young people with various backgrounds and $8,000 in university funding, and the Center for Working-Class Studies was born.
"It took a lot of chutzpah to say we're going to start a whole new field of inquiry here at Youngstown State," he said.
viviano@vindy.com