By Sue Kiesewetter
Enquirer contributor

Susan Tave Zelman

TRENTON - Seventeen-year-old Stacey Brown is in love with music, obsessed with history and intrigued by applied chemistry.

That's why the Edgewood High School senior is planning a double major - music and education - when she enters college next fall.

She is doing exactly what a bevy of panelists - including Susan Tave Zelman, Ohio's superintendent of public education - advised Tuesday at the school's first-ever career fair, which was dubbed Direction to Success.

"If you truly love what you're doing, you'll work hard," Zelman told the students. "Every morning I wake up thanking God for the opportunity to do something I love.''

Brown picked up her application to Miami University's Middletown campus at the fair while talking about her plans for the future.

"In case Plan 1 fails, I have others to back me up," Brown said.

District officials said they moved the fair from January to coincide with Zelman's daylong visit to this northern Butler County district of 3,368 students. She is the first state superintendent to visit the district in 13 years, when Franklin Walter visited.

While at the high school, Zelman recorded a message to students during a digital video course, observed a debate via a distance learning closed-circuit hookup, and saw how students make up credit hours through Internet-delivered, state model curriculum designed by teachers.

13 visits scheduled

She spent the afternoon at Bloomfield Elementary School's preschool program and visited with second-graders and their grandparents at Seven Mile Elementary School

Zelman's visit to Edgewood is one of 13 she has scheduled during the second half of the school year. She selects districts to visit from proposals submitted and bases her decision on several factors, including interesting, unique or successful programs.

She will spend today in the Talawanda schools, where she will look at literacy programs, learn about the district's partnership with Miami University, talk about components of Talawanda High School's "High Schools That Work" program and visit Marshall Elementary School's broadcast club before meeting with the community at 3 p.m. at the Elms Holiday Inn Hotel.

E-mail suek@infionline.net