OHIO High-tech learning helps in flattening Appalachia's world

Many agree that improving education is the key to the region's future.
PORTSMOUTH, Ohio (AP) -- In a small classroom near the Ohio River, students are getting ready to take on the world outside Appalachia.
"I've been playing a lot of Korean games lately. I can do better than any games I see online," said Benjamin Walsh, 20, who is learning how to create and develop video games for a future career. "If they want to compete with us, let 'em."
Some 100 students at Shawnee State University are on their way to earning degrees, focused on either engineering or graphics, that will qualify them to join the burgeoning game and simulation industry that goes far beyond entertainment to include "serious" games for military, aviation, medical and other educational and training uses.
The high-tech skills students here are learning, with potential to jump from college into high-paying, high-demand jobs, is one of the brightest signs of significant, if slow, progress in what nearly everyone agrees is the key to Appalachia's future -- improving education.
"The steel mill's gone and it's not coming back," said Greg Lyons, an assistant professor who was teaching students to create digital humanoid characters and how to make them move. "I think the only future we have is something like this."
Slow to be accepted
That realization has been slow to seep in for many in a region where education has not traditionally been a priority for most families. Country singer Dwight Yoakam described in his song "Route 23," about the highway that winds north from Appalachia, how hopes for success were to be found by taking 23 "to the jobs that lay waiting in those cities' factories."
But Ohio's industrial economy has been in decline for years, and much of the region's coal industry cut back or shut down. Iron furnaces and other major factories that once drove this river town's economy along Route 23 shut down two or more decades ago.
The college-going rate for Appalachian Ohio high school graduates has been estimated at 30 percent, less than half the national average, and the percentage of Appalachian Ohio adults with four-year college degrees is about 12 percent, half the national average.
"We're not going to fuel the knowledge economy with those [college] rates," said University of Cincinnati President Nancy Zimpher, a regional native from Gallipolis.
Many of the region's schools have been hindered by funding problems, outdated facilities and inability to attract enough teachers because of those conditions and low pay. And some schools face a technology gap in a largely rural, mountainous region where high-speed Internet is spotty.
Reasons behind numbers
Those who have studied the region's education needs say finances, lack of self-confidence, and lack of family role models for college have contributed to the low college enrollments and graduation rates.
"We've been under tremendous pressure in rural education," said Brenda Haas, a longtime Lawrence County educator who heads the Ohio Appalachian Center for Higher Education, based at Shawnee State. "We still have a mind-set that we're hardworking people, and we should be able to have good jobs.
"But now, only education will take them to those jobs," Haas said. "I think the realization is there that something is going to have to change, and that change is going to have to be education."
The center, a partnership of state colleges, K-12 schools and other public and private groups, was established in 1993 to help the region start catching up in education. Working with individual school districts, the center helps stoke interest in college with college-prep study, visits to work sites and campuses, and regular information meetings for pupils and parents.
In one early success, Newcomerstown High School in Tuscarawas County saw its college-attending rate jump from 28 percent to 72 percent in three years.
West Virginia followed Ohio's example in 1998 with a similar center, and other states in the region have developed related models.
Universities join in
Universities are also increasingly working together on cooperative programs adapted for the region's needs, including a new effort to increase college access that Zimpher said Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky University and other colleges, public and private, are developing.
Ohio University's second-year president, Roderick McDavis, has pledged to make Appalachia a priority.
"This is our home. We have a unique region of America," said McDavis, who's also been an educator in Arkansas, Florida and Virginia. "There are serious problems that have not been addressed as they should. We as a university have intellectual capital we can invest to help solve some of these problems."
The university, which also has four branch campuses in the region, in March created an Office for University Outreach, to improve education, economic development and health in Appalachia. The university offers special regional scholarships and partners in literacy programs and a variety of other areas.
At the school's Voinovich Center, staff and students have worked with more than 700 businesses, helping them get started or grow. The university has started an Integrated Master of Business Administration program in which all students work on regional business efforts.
Projects have ranged from helping the city of Wellston develop a downtown revitalization plan, to advising a car stereo business owner how to expand into home entertainment, to helping a farmer start a tilapia fish farm. Students have also helped businesses obtain millions in loans, investments and venture capital.
Along the way, said student Laura Calvetta of Cleveland, students are not only getting important practical experience, but learning about a region they knew little about and making a contribution to it.