Joan (Eschenbach) Ohl's appointment as commissioner of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration on Children, Youth and Families comes as the crowning achievement in a life of public service.

Ohl, CHEP '68, now heads a $19 billion federal agency with a staff of 175 that oversees the welfare of millions of U.S. families in need.

"I never thought I'd have the opportunity to affect policy that would impact so many," Ohl, who administers federal child welfare, child-care, Head Start and family and youth services programs, says.

One of the policies that Ohl is especially excited to be a part of is President George W. Bush's Early Childhood Education Initiative, "Good Start, Grow Smart," that calls for strengthening Head Start and improving and coordinating all early childhood development programs.

"We have to develop and implement literacy strategies that can be incorporated into early childhood programs," she says. The strategies will encompass increased training of personnel, meeting the Congressional mandate that 50 percent of Head Start teachers have degrees by the end of 2003, aligning preschool standards with the K-12 standards and devising a method of determining outcomes for early childhood programs, including Head Start.

"We've been collecting data on kids who have gone through Head Start, but more data on program effectiveness is always helpful," she says. "Head Start is a $6.5 billion program, and we need to know that the program is meeting the intended outcomes for children and families."

One of the goals of the Bush administration is to strengthen child and family programs so that the children who are touched by these services show a marked improvement in their futures, Ohl says. With her strong accountability management style, she says she is certain that her agency and its programs will make a difference.

She's also determined to see federal programs make a difference in the lives of older children in the child welfare and foster care systems, both under her agency.

"There are 565,000 children in foster care in the U.S., and we need to look at the processes of each system and see what we can do better," Ohl says.

"In 2001, in response to a Congressional mandate, the agency began child and family service reviews, looking in depth at each state's child welfare system and the outcomes for children and families. They looked for systemic problems that might limit effectiveness and then worked with each state to develop a plan to address any deficiencies," she says.

Elements of Ohl's life story read like a road map to the position she now holds.

She was reared in Lewes, Del., by parents who expected their three daughters to achieve, to celebrate diversity and culture--all cultures--and to respect public service. "My parents believed you ought to leave the world a better place than when you entered it," she says.

When Ohl came to the University in 1964, her intention was to teach. "Education was strongly valued in my house by both my mother and father, and I had some wonderful teachers and a strong interest in science," she says.

She graduated in three years, but, by then, found herself pulled toward a different career.

"Dean [of Women] Bessie Collins was my role model and, after knowing her, I decided to go into education administration rather than teaching," Ohl says.

"She was a wonderful woman. I got to know her through the Association of Women Students. She had such energy and vitality. When you met her and she smiled at you, you felt that you were important. She also was a very compassionate person."

At Delaware, Ohl worked as a resident assistant, and at the State University of New York at Buffalo, she completed her master's degree in two years while holding down a full-time job as head resident and supervising a 600-student residence hall.

In 1969, Ohl won a newly created position as director of women's housing at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. "I discovered that I'm good at building or refocusing a job," she says." If you have to change the culture of a program, I can communicate how to do that. I've spent most of my career not having a predecessor."

In the 1970s and early '80s, she held increasingly responsible positions at the University of Arkansas and Pennsylvania State and Fairleigh Dickinson universities, eventually becoming vice president of the Independent College Fund of New Jersey, a cooperative effort by business and academic leaders to raise money for New Jersey's 16 private institutions of higher education. Ohl, who was developing considerable skills as a team builder, strategic planner and budget manager, realized that she was good at motivating people, from employees to corporate sponsors.

She had been there for a year when her husband, Ronald, was appointed president of Salem College--now Salem International University in West Virginia. As the wife of a university president, Ohl came in contact with West Virginia's civic and corporate leaders.

One of them, C. E. "Jim" Compton, CEO and founder of Five-J Energy Inc. and Grafton Coal Co., asked her to help him establish programs that would bring the public and private sectors together to improve the health of West Virginians.

"We were to try it for a year and if, after a year, he wasn't happy or I wasn't happy, we would go our separate ways," she says. They worked together for nine years.

Once again, as Compton's consultant, Ohl was starting from square one. She established a relationship with West Virginia University School of Medicine that led to a funded chair in nutrition research. Working with the Compton professor, Ohl helped design the West Virginia Healthy Schools Program, a pilot health-education project in three elementary schools with 1,550 students and 200 faculty and staff members.

The program focused on food service, healthy choices, physical education, walking trails, a health education curriculum, cholesterol screenings and a fitness profile. Parents had to give permission for their children to participate in the screenings and the children themselves had to agree to participate. The long-term goal was a comprehensive health education/nutrition program that would become an integral part of the curriculum for kindergarten through sixth grade in the West Virginia public school system, and then it would be expanded through junior high and high school.

The West Virginia Healthy Schools Program's success was recognized and honored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and the American Medical Association.

In 1997, when newly elected Gov. Cecil H. Underwood was forming his cabinet, he chose Ohl to direct the largest public agency in the state. She was appointed secretary of the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources with an annual budget of $2.3 billion and 5,300 employees.

During the four years that she served in that post, she says the agency stopped running a deficit, the employee turnover rate declined and morale improved. Under her administration, the budget for public health programs increased by 50 percent (the first public health increase in 10 years), the number and quality of child-care providers within the state increased and improvements in West Virginia's food stamp and foster care programs brought the state into federal compliance. West Virginia moved from disallowances and penalties to high performance bonuses and enhanced funding.

She also had West Virginia's child welfare tracking system updated and completed, so that the adoption and foster care reports that trace children in the system were fully computerized. She did the same for the state's child support enforcement system. And, the mandates of three court orders were met and dismissed.

The West Virginia Healthy Schools Programs and her strong management and performance record brought her to the attention of the Bush Administration, Ohl says.

When she took the oath of office Feb. 6, 2003, she says she was already hard at work learning all she could about the agency, its people, its resources and mission and was able to jump right into the job. For Ohl, it is all about the children.

--Barbara Garrison