{"id":33769,"date":"2014-10-09T10:02:22","date_gmt":"2014-10-09T14:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=33769"},"modified":"2020-02-20T09:17:10","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T14:17:10","slug":"martial-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2014\/10\/09\/martial-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Martial plan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Giovanna<\/a>

In addition to teaching sociology at Wright State\u2019s Lake Campus, Giovanna Follo, a third-degree black belt, offers self-defense classes for students.<\/p><\/div>\n

She has a soft spot for students. But don\u2019t call Giovanna Follo soft.<\/p>\n

The assistant sociology professor at Wright State University\u2019s Lake Campus<\/a> is a third-degree black belt, so accomplished in the martial arts that she is considered a sensei, a teacher.<\/p>\n

And Follo is sharing her hard-won knowledge and skills with the students she passes on the way to class by teaching self-defense classes at the campus YMCA.<\/p>\n

Specifically, she teaches Commando Krav Maga, a self-defense system developed from the Israeli military, and a variety of martial arts that features techniques designed to disarm and elude attackers. Follo decided to teach the techniques after she got tired of hearing about college students around the country being assaulted on campuses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are things that can at least give you a better chance,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Classes are a ballet of strenuous physical activity. Choke holds are broken. Plastic guns and plastic knives are separated from the attackers.<\/p>\n

Student Victoria Jobe, a psychology major from Dayton, is taking the class because she is living away from home on her own and wants to be able to protect herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Follo teaches you that it doesn\u2019t matter how big the other person is or weighs; you don\u2019t have to be a big person to defeat a big person,\u201d said Jobe.<\/p>\n

Joey Schulte, a master\u2019s degree business major from Wilmington, Ohio, said he was amazed at the simplicity of Commando Krav Maga.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust after six classes, if someone were to choke me I would automatically go into exactly what we\u2019ve been practicing and be able to extricate myself from the situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Giovanna<\/a>

Follo has studied several different types of karate, teaches Commando Krav Maga and plans to write a book on women in martial arts.<\/p><\/div>\n

When Follo is not teaching self-defense, she is teaching sociology classes<\/a> \u2014 everything from the Sociology of Death and Dying to the Sociology of Food. She says sociology is a career that revolves around the \u201cbest of everything\u201d and enables people to see things through a \u201csociological lens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re going into business and doing marketing, you have to know what the trends are,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you\u2019re going into medicine, cultural competency is huge. How do you figure people out? Sociology is every day and you can\u2019t let go of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follo grew up in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, across the river from Detroit. Her parents immigrated to Canada from small towns near Naples, Italy, in the mid-1960s. Her father was a bricklayer.<\/p>\n

Follo attended the Chatham Collegiate Institute, a public high school known for its strong scholastics. She was a self-described \u201cTV-holic\u201d who watched serious talk shows such as \u201cDonohue\u201d to the more frivolous.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was that person who on Saturday night at 11 p.m. was watching all of those Chinese-dubbed kung fu movies,\u201d she said. \u201cI loved them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

During her first year of college at Western University in London, Ontario, a friend invited Follo to a martial arts class.<\/p>\n

\u201cI lifted weights all through high school, but I never quite found that sport niche,\u201d she said. \u201cHowever, when I went to martial arts, it was really just me. I remember being a white belt and going to a tournament and winning. This was something I could do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follo studied several different types of karate and would barrel through her opponents. Her passion for the sport even colored her studies. Her undergraduate thesis topic was women in martial arts.<\/p>\n

Then she began piling up sociology degrees \u2014 a bachelor\u2019s from Western, a master\u2019s from the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, and a Ph.D. from Wayne State University in Detroit. Next there were teaching jobs at what is now the University of North Georgia and at Emporia State University in Kansas.<\/p>\n

Follo joined the faculty at Wright State in the fall of 2013.<\/p>\n

Her class on the sociology of food touches on issues such as food security, genetically modified food and poor people\u2019s accessibility to healthy food. End-of-life pain management and quality of life are addressed in her death and dying class.<\/p>\n

Follo, who lives in Fort Wayne, Ind., with her husband and two sons, ages 4 and 2, is working on a book about teaching sociology with visual media.<\/p>\n

\u201cWright State gives me a lot of leeway in terms of research,\u201d she said. \u201cIt allows me to think outside of the box.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follo also intends to write a book about women in martial arts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you give women self-defense, when you give women martial art they can rely on, they now can release themselves from this victim role and be their own protector,\u201d she said. \u201cThey can really have that self-confidence and empowerment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In addition to teaching sociology at Wright State\u2019s Lake Campus, Giovanna Follo, a third-degree black belt, offers self-defense classes for students. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":33771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,2023,711,4300,725,731,715],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-faculty","category-faculty-staff","category-faculty-profile","category-home-news-sidebar","category-lake-campus","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33769"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82617,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33769\/revisions\/82617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}