Partnerships

Kent State University formed a number of new and expanded partnerships in key areas. The university has also made considerable investments in the infrastructure necessary to support new and expanded strategic, mutually beneficial partnerships and collaborations. Here are some highlights from 2003.

The Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, which houses the College of Architecture and Environmental Design’s graduate urban design program and the Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio in Cleveland, provides urban design services to communities throughout Northeast Ohio. Center staff work closely with community leaders to improve the quality of life in their communities, while the collaborative provides real-world, urban design experience for Kent State graduate students. The collaborative recently sponsored the Lakefront Challenge in which 38 teams of designers presented visions for Cleveland’s downtown lakefront to readers of the Plain Dealer. This challenge complemented the work of four internationally known designers who participated in a design charrette presented with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Kent State Ashtabula is a partner in bringing Ashtabula County its only television newscast. The Ashtabula County Newsnet broadcasts its daily news program on the Kent State Ashtabula Cable Channel, a win-win endeavor that offers opportunities for students to be trained in news and television productions.

In partnership with Continental Express Airline, the School of Technology’s aeronautics division, the largest aeronautics program in Ohio, launched the Pilot Training Bridge Program at the airline’s training center in Houston. The program provides sophomores who meet certain academic and flight criteria with classroom and flight instruction, including a summer internship at the training center, all tailored for employment with the regional airline. Students who complete the training and graduate from Kent State are guaranteed job interviews for available pilot positions. In 2004, Continental Express hired seven new graduates of the aeronautics program as first officers on jet aircraft serving domestic and international destinations.

The School of Technology’s Manufacturing Small Business Development Center received a Third Frontier Program grant from the Ohio Department of Development to place Kent State interns and faculty externs in high-tech industry assignments throughout Ohio. The first participants are working for White Rubber Corporation and for the NEOBeam Alliance Ltd., a cutting-edge collaboration between Kent State and Mercury Plastics Inc., a plastics manufacturing firm four miles from the Geauga Campus. The alliance provides experience with the sophisticated electron-beam and radiation-processing technologies used in the growing plastics industry.

In partnership with the Portage County Commissioners, Kent State will use a federal transportation-enhancement grant to build a pedestrian/bicycle bridge spanning State Route 261 near the Kent Campus. The bridge is part of the PORTAGE Hike and Bike Trail system, a cooperative effort of the cities of Kent and Ravenna, Franklin and Ravenna townships, the Portage County Commissioners, the Portage Park District and Kent State. When completed, the system will traverse Portage County on an east-west axis that follows the Ohio and Pennsylvania canal route, showcasing a diversity of community destinations including the Kent Campus and Kent’s historic downtown district.

The Office of Corporate and Community Services at Kent State Stark provides nondegree-seeking learners with education focused on building supervisory and management skills. For example, about 170 Stark County employees have completed a Certificate of Supervision and Management. The office has also formed partnerships with the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, the Gallup Organization, the Disney Company and Motorola University to make the companies’ exclusive training and consulting available to area professionals.

Through a partnership among the School of Family and Consumer Studies, the College of Continuing Studies and numerous academic units, Kent State’s Gerontology Center serves a broad senior population as it advances the field of gerontology. The center’s programs include the Senior Guest Student Program, which allows adults 60 and older (or 50 and retired) to attend classes free on a noncredit, space-available basis; Insight Lectures; Elderhostel; and the Cooperative Senior Volunteer Program, which provides on-campus volunteer opportunities that allow senior adults to use their professional skills or develop new skills.

Faculty members from Kent State’s College of Nursing are working with the Maternity Services Department of Mercy Medical Center in Canton to help the hospital’s doctors, nurses and social workers learn how to recognize and respond effectively to the signs of domestic violence. The Domestic Violence Education, Support and Institutional Change Program, which is funded by a grant from The Sisters of Charity Foundation and co-directed by nursing professors Drs. Greer Glazer and Claire Draucker, already has resulted in significant improvements in the health providers’ knowledge, attitudes and responses regarding domestic violence.

The Early Childhood Education program in Kent State’s College and Graduate School of Education brought together the university’s Child Development Center, the Kyungsung University Early Childhood Program in South Korea and Bahcesehir University Bursa K-12 Schools in Turkey to develop and offer a summer graduate course for early-childhood education students, graduate students, in-service teachers, school administrators and college faculty from the three nations. The three universities are continuing their collaboration by developing international student-teaching sites for Kent State early-childhood education majors.

Kent State’s Institute for the Study and Prevention of Violence is the research partner for Ohio’s Project Safe Neighborhoods Northern District. Project Safe Neighborhoods, the federal government’s gun-violence reduction strategy, uses collaborative problem-solving approaches to help stop gun violence among juveniles and adults in local communities. The institute works with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, county prosecutors and local and federal law-enforcement officials to conduct geo-spatial analyses that identify local concentrations of gun violence. Institute faculty and staff also work with the project team to develop effective intervention efforts and to assess the long-term effects of the Violent Fugitive Task Force, a collaboration of local and federal law enforcement agencies from the Northern District, which includes Akron, Cleveland, Toledo and Youngstown.

Kent State teams with five other Northeast Ohio public institutions to offer what has become the nation’s largest Master of Public Health degree program. The program, which admitted its first class in 1999 and recently received full, five-year accreditation from the Council on Education for Public Health, already is improving the diversity and quality of the region’s health departments; building a much-needed regional pool of well-educated, highly skilled public-health professionals; and preparing students for success in a high-demand, high-growth and highly rewarding field.

The university’s Trumbull Campus and Ajax TOCCO Magnethermic Inc. of Warren, Ohio, joined forces to create a Metal Casting Lab. The on-campus facility features an induction-melting furnace donated by Ajax TOCCO, a leading multinational corporation specializing in the design and manufacturing of induction-melting and heating equipment. Access to the new lab allows technology students to acquire state-of-the-industry skills in metal melting and casting technologies and, in turn, provides the skilled employees that are in high demand by the company.

A collaboration between the Tuscarawas Community-Improvement Corporation and Kent State Tuscarawas campus has far-reaching potential to boost the Tuscarawas Valley economy. The CIC and the city of New Philadelphia recently received $2.3 million in funding from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to construct a technology park and high-tech incubator that will be associated closely with the new $9.5 million Science and Advanced Technology Center at Kent State Tuscarawas. The initiative also received $800,000 from the Ohio Department of Development, $267,000 from the Ohio Governor’s Office of Appalachia and $1 million from the city of New Philadelphia. The Tuscarawas Regional Technology Park, which will be located adjacent to the campus on land donated by the county commissioners, is expected to provide 28 lots for private businesses and, in turn, about 600 jobs. It already is serving as a rural economic-development model for the nation.

Kent State and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Natural Areas and Preserves are partners in the Desktop Video Water Quality Monitoring Project. Under the program, the Division of Natural Areas and Preserves trains K-12 teachers to take water samples. During the school year, the teachers and their students visit local streams to learn about and sample organisms, record temperatures and use pH probes and sensors from the university’s high-tech SBC Ameritech Classroom to grade the streams’ quality. Students and teachers at the six different schools involved in the project are able to talk to each other, compare their findings and pose questions to Kent State biologists and experts from the Portage County Soil and Water Department via videoconferencing technology.

The work of the Family Child Learning Center to provide family-centered assessment and services for young children who may be at risk for developmental delays was honored with the 2004 Making a Difference Award for Group Human Services by the Summit County Social Services Advisory Board. Located near the Kent Campus in Tallmadge, Ohio, and operated jointly by Children’s Hospital Medical Center of Akron and Kent State’s School of Speech Pathology and Audiology and College and Graduate School of Education special-education unit, the center also is engaged in research and training in early intervention and family-centered services.

Researchers from Kent State’s Liquid Crystal Institute (LCI)/Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program recently began five research projects in collaboration with Samsung Electronics Ltd., the world’s leader in display technologies. Research conducted in LCI laboratories will address the newest developments in liquid crystal display technologies. At the same time, the collaboration is supporting graduate-student research in the field of liquid crystal displays through the Samsung Scholarship Program.

The Kent Campus is home to the Northeast Ohio Trade and Economic Consortium, an economic development partnership that promotes trade, business growth and economic opportunities for Northeast Ohio. In 2004, the Kent Campus also became the site for the consortium’s new regional International Trade Assistance Center, which provides free information, resources, referrals and counseling to new-to-export small businesses and expanded services such as market research. The center’s services are provided in partnership with the local Small Business Development Center, headquartered in Kent State’s College of Business Administration, area colleges and universities and regional chambers of commerce.

Three academic programs in the College and Graduate School of Education are now working in partnership with the College of the Bahamas to significantly increase graduate education on the islands. A second cohort of counselor educators and new cohorts in education administration and special education are currently completing Kent State master’s degrees.

The Department of Pan-African Studies’ collaborations with the Black Theatre Network and Stark County African American Museum and Cultural Center are among those relationships that open doors for students through internships and contacts with members of these important national and regional communities.

The Department of Pan-African Studies is developing strong linkages with university and research centers in West Africa. They have proposed an ECOWAS Learning Community to be housed in the department and available to all students who wish to study Africa and the African diaspora.