Editorial: That is the personification of science in Ohio, done with duty and sincerity, always looking for ward with humility and grace.

Mckee, Jeffrey K.

Ohio is a wonderful home for science. I grew up in Ohio and was educated in this great state from k-16, including my years at Miami University. Ohio is where my fascination with science was born and nurtured. That love of striving toward greater knowledge of the natural world never died, and never will.

Recently I got a notification that a letter I had written to what was then the Ohio Historical Society, now the Ohio History Connection, had been digitized and archived. I was 17 years old when I wrote that letter to Martha Potter Otto, then associate curator of archaeology. She responded with replies (done back then before computers and the internet) on a typewriter, with prospective encouragement for my hopeful career. That is the personification of science in Ohio, done with duty and sincerity, always looking forward with humility and grace.

So Ohio gave me my start as a scientist. I went on to live overseas to do paleoanthropology in fossil-rich South Africa. The excavations I led there became a large part of my academic career, and the foundation for the bulk of my research publications, both descriptive and theoretical. Yet upon returning home, I wanted to both give back and pay forward to my own academic origins. Once back in Ohio, taking a position at the Ohio State University, I committed to promoting science in Ohio. This included not only my own fields of study, but all of science, at all levels of education.

My associations with The Ohio Academy of Science have been long-running, and quite privileged. Everything from State Science Day to working with the Ohio Board of Education through OAS has been part of my life-blood. Through Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, we created with OAS the "Science of Evolution" award--the first of its kind in the USA--for high-school students in Ohio, and a precedent others have followed.

Every year at State Science Day and other OAS-sponsored events, I learn that Ohio science rocks! While editing The Ohio Journal of Science, I've seen a wealth of expertise throughout the state and beyond. My successor at editor, and my predecessor as the same, is the venerable Lynn Elfner, who shaped The Ohio Academy of Science for decades. We are in good hands.

Thank you, Ohio scientists, for allowing me the privilege of being editor of this journal for so many years. I can imagine no greater honor.

By DR. JEFFREY K. MCKEE Editor, The Ohio Journal of Science

Dr. Jeffrey K. McKee is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at The Ohio State University. He holds degrees from Miami University of Ohio and Washington University, St. Touis, Missouri. Dr. McKee is a physical anthropologist conducting research on hominin evolution and paleoecology. He has directed excavations at the early hominin sites of Taung and Makapansgat, and has published on fossils from other South African sites as well. His current interests focus on computer modeling and simulation of evolutionary and fossilization processes, toward an understanding of the pace and causes of human evolution in an ecological context.