Under this program, MSJ will expand its graduate program in education in partnership with the Cincinnati Public School District to offer a master's degree program in special education with a multicultural focus, called Teacher Education Apprenticeship Master's program in Multicultural Special Education. Course work will be combined with apprenticeship in CPS to prepare intervention specialists to serve school-age children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds with mild to moderate special-education needs.

Cincinnati State receives grant renewals

CLIFTON - Cincinnati State Technical and Community College received two renewals of federal grants totaling $464,181 for the school year.

The college received $260,181 to continue its Upward Bound program, in which Cincinnati Public Schools students learn about math and science careers. Mentors, tutors, scientists and engineers also work with students on their skills in English, math and science. About 50 students from Withrow University High School, the Zoo Academy and the East End Community Heritage School participate.

A $204,000 grant continues funding the Educational Opportunity Center at the college, which helps low-income Hamilton County residents further their education. The targeted neighborhoods include Avondale, Evanston, Over-the-Rhine, Mount Auburn, Walnut Hills, West End, East End, East Price Hill, Lower Price Hill and Winton Hills.

Professor visits Miami with film on 9/11, fear

OXFORD - Sut Jhally, a filmmaker, author and professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, will present "Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of an American Empire" at 4 p.m. Thursday in 128 Pearson at Miami University. His multimedia presentation will examine how, in a state of fear, citizens are vulnerable to manipulation by politicians and sensationalist media. It is free to the public.

Jhally founded the Media Education Foundation and is the Donald C. Faber Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence of Miami's honors & scholars program. He uses film to popularize media criticism, producing more than a dozen films dealing with issues from commercialism and popular culture to gender and war.

Mount Vernon opens Cincinnati campus

Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell is the guest speaker at Mount Vernon Nazarene University's grand opening of its Cincinnati-region campus 10 a.m.-noon Friday.

Its new "campus" is the top floor of the eight-story Spectrum Office Tower, at the Interstate 75-Sharon Road exit. Mount Vernon is a Christian college for traditional and adult students. Its 2,392 students take classes on its 400-acre campus in Mount Vernon, and at regional and satellite locations in Columbus, Lima and Newark, Ohio.

The college offers an associate of arts in general studies, bachelor of business administration, master of arts in education, and master of science in management programs.

Classes begin in January.

Thomas More hosts Appalachian author

CRESTVIEW HILLS - Appalachian coal-camp culture is the subject of Denise Giardina's novels and writings. Giardina will read and reflect on her work 7 p.m. Monday at Thomas More College.

Born in 1951 in a small coal-mining camp in Bluefield, W.Va., Giardina now lives near Charleston and teaches at West Virginia State College. In 2000, she ran for governor of West Virginia as the Mountain Party candidate.

Her talk begins at 7 p.m. at Steigerwald Hall - Holbrook Student Center.

E-mail damos@enquirer.com