ºÚÁÏÍø

ºÚÁÏÍø President Todd Diacon recently notified 23 Kent State staff members that they are the 2020 recipients of the President’s Award of Distinction. The award was created as a recognition program to reward staff members who have demonstrated outstanding achievements, service, leadership and dedication to Kent State in advancing the university’s strategic priorities and core values.

Despite the economic impact of COVID-19, alumni, friends, faculty and staff came together to raise $2.2 million to support more than 2,300 students.

Dane Paris, a junior biology pre-med student in ºÚÁÏÍø’s Honors College, has already left his mark at Kent State despite facing challenges along the way. His outstanding leadership has not gone unnoticed, and he credits the support he has gotten through Kent State for his growth and successes. 

The ºÚÁÏÍø Board of Trustees ratified the university’s Fiscal Year 2020 Efficiency Report and Master Recommendations report, which showed an effectiveness and efficiency savings for Fiscal Year 2020 of $31,286,881. The savings is $6.2 million more than originally estimated.

A year before Timothy Griffin graduated from ºÚÁÏÍø at Tuscarawas in 2017 with an Associate of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering Technology degree and a certificate in computer-aided design for manufacturing, a single phone call would launch his career and have him designing life-saving firetrucks before he graduated.

ºÚÁÏÍø has announced the recipients of the 2020 Outstanding Research and Scholarship Awards (ORSA). Sponsored by the University Research Council and the Division of Research and Sponsored Programs, this award honors Kent State’s exceptional researchers and scholars.

ºÚÁÏÍø has announced the recipients of the New Faculty Outstanding Research and Scholarship Award. These awards recognize the hard work and dedication of faculty who have been at Kent State for 10 years or less and are sponsored by the University Research Council.

Kent State President Todd Diacon and others express their appreciation for the hard-working employees who have pulled together to keep our campuses operating throughout the pandemic.

ºÚÁÏÍø is marking the promotions and tenure of 135 faculty members during the 2019-2020 academic year.

ºÚÁÏÍø has inducted 53 employees into its 20-Year Club Service Awards Program for 2020.

Jonathan V. Selinger, professor and Ohio Eminent Scholar in ºÚÁÏÍø’s Department of Physics, in the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Advanced Materials and Liquid Crystal Institute, has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

Kent State alumna 1st Lt. Ashley White-Stump is featured along with other American heroes in the new National Museum of the United States Army, which just recently opened in Virginia.

Since March, COVID-19 has become a widespread topic of conversation. Finding ways to explain what this virus is, how one can treat it and how to slow the spread of the virus are just a few commonly asked questions with few clear answers. Xiaozhen Mou, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, and her research team recently received funding for their hard work as part of Ohio’s statewide collective effort to discover traces of COVID-19 virus particles in wastewater.

Kent State’s Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA Kent) Chapter, along with two School of Media and Journalism (MDJ) alumnae, earned national recognition at the 2020 PRSSA Annual International Conference. Public relations alumna Jill Golden, won the highest individual award, the National Gold Key award, and alumna Carrie Kandes, APR, earned the Teahan Professional Adviser award.

Kent State will recognize the accomplishments of its Fall Class of 2020 graduates with a virtual commencement recognition ceremony. Students, faculty, staff, parents and friends are invited to tune into the virtual ceremony on Saturday, Dec. 19, at 11 a.m.

While it's no secret that many college students drink alcohol, how COVID-19 affected these behaviors and patterns is the focus of recent research published in the journal Addictive Behaviors by the collaboration of William Lechner from the Department of Psychological Sciences and Deric Kenne from the College of Public Health. The pair sought to study the effects that a major stressor such as the pandemic could have on addictive behaviors and how vulnerabilities such as anxiety and depression played a part in the coping process of college students. 

In preparation for honoring the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Kent State’s Martin Luther King Jr. Planning Committee is requesting that university divisions, departments and student organizations submit programming, activities and events (scheduled Jan. 25-Jan. 31, 2021) to the MLK Events Calendar by Friday, Dec. 4, 2020.

Through multiple organizations and collaborations on and off campus, ºÚÁÏÍø ended 2019 as a more sustainable campus. Those who contributed to sustainable efforts worked hard to reduce the university’s carbon footprint leading to the university being honored as a finalist for the 2020 Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Campus Sustainability Achievement Award  along with the 2019 Keep Ohio Beautiful award for Colleges and Universities.

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, MMPI, is a standardized psychometric test that was first published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1943 and quickly became the gold standard for assessing psychopathology. ºÚÁÏÍø has played a key role throughout the history of this test and a Kent State faculty member led the revision for the recently published and updated 2020 MMPI-3. 

A policy of municipal takeover was implemented to help relieve Flint, Michigan, of financial and political hardships in response to the water crisis. Ashley Nickels, associate professor in the Department of Political Science, extensively researched Flint's municipal takeover for seven years, earning her three awards for her work.