Contact:
Elizabeth Blevins, Director, Office of Communications
Office: (740) 351-3810; FAX: (740) 351-3179; Cell: (740) 464-4854
940 Second Street – Portsmouth, Ohio 45662
E-mail: eblevins@shawnee.edu 
Web site: www.shawnee.edu

            Dr. Helaine Daniels, a native of Portsmouth, is an international development specialist and professional trainer whose work has taken her around the world. She has traveled to 58 countries in Asia, Africa, South America, Europe, Central America, the Middle East and the Caribbean.
            Her work within the United States includes service to numerous non-profit organizations and several universities, as well as the private sector. She earned her doctorate at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. She has held directorships at Harvard University, Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University.
            Daniels began her professional career as a reporter for the Boston Globe newspaper. She has served as an adjunct professor in Social Policy at the Simmons School of Social Work in Boston and in the private sector, she has worked with Hewlett Packard and Mobil Oil. She has consulted for the United Nations, the World Bank, USAID, the International Foundation for Education and Self-Help, Africare, and numerous other international organizations.
            Daniels attended Washington Elementary School, McKinley Middle School and Portsmouth High School in Portsmouth, Ohio. While at PHS, she was inducted into the National Honor Society during her junior year and earned honorable mention in Latin on the National Merit Exam. She played the clarinet in both the marching band and the orchestra. She was a member of Tri-Hi-Y and participated in Youth in Government. She also worked as a student assistant in the office of the Dean of Students.
            Daniels will be speaking at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 8 in the Sodexo Ballroom at the University Center.
            Dr. Patrick Drumm, an associate professor of psychology at Ohio University–Lancaster, works with a chimpanzee using sign language at an animal park in Albion, Indiana. Having taught sign language to chimpanzees since the late 1970s, Drumm knew where every signing chimp was located in this country, and no signing chimp was known to be at the animal park in Albion. But after seeing Coby the chimp in Albion trying to communicate with park patrons, Drumm began to research the chimp’s past.
            Coby apparently had learned how to use sign language sometime in his life. Drumm was able to establish that the chimp lived with unidentified owners until he was five years old, and during his first few years with his original owners, Coby was apparently taught how to sign.
            Drumm will present his current research on his experiences with Coby, “The Wild Child of Albion, Indiana,” at 11 a.m. on Friday, April 9 in Clark Memorial Library’s Flohr Lecture Hall.
            The lectures are free and open to the public.