In the southwest corner of South Dakota, on the Nebraska border and at the southern end of the Badlands, sits the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It is home to the Ogalala Lakota Nation. This fall, faculty and students from the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program at Kent State Salem traveled to the reservation in what has become an almost annual excursion. The COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to the trips over the last three years, which made this return visit quite significant for members of the group. Leading the way was Lorene Martin, program coordinator for the BSN program on the S...

Before he graduated in December 2022, digital media production alumnus Sam Teyssier had already racked up some impressive credits: He’d worked on television shows including “American Rust” and “A League of Their Own,” as well as Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award winner “Cha Cha Real Smooth.” These experiences — which he began seeking out in his hometown of Pittsburgh during the summer of 2021 — have prepared him for post-graduation life. Teyssier, ‘22, first joined sets as an extra so he could make connections for the roles he was trying to get: COVID safety assistant, ...

Dear Members of the Kent State University Community, Our return from winter break has offered many positive opportunities to reconnect with one another across all of our campuses. I hope you are recharged for a strong semester ahead. I’m writing to share with you that some acts of vandalism were recently discovered on our Kent Campus, and that the damage included defacement of public art installations and a restroom, in part, with the use of racist words. We have no way of knowing when these incidents occurred. What we do know is that vandalism, particularly when it involves hateful a...

It was another day in Zone 5 of Kent State’s maintenance detail, and maintenance facilities worker Beth Smerchansky pushed a cart loaded with a tool bag and a wet/dry vacuum to a job in the Kent Student Center.  Smerchansky, of Ravenna, normally performs general maintenance work in the student center, the Warren Student Recreation and Wellness Center, DeWeese Health Center and the Ice Arena.  But what was different that day was that Smerchansky performed skilled duties that she has been learning in a training program that is changing the trajectory of her career and that o...

When Junior Giovanni Santiago's parents said they weren't comfortable sending him all the way to Ohio from Puerto Rico, he needed an advocate to step forward in order to continue his college basketball dreams.  His brother, Luis, answered the call.  ...

The combination of passing on a love of Earth science while acting as a mentor for students is a perfect match for Eric Taylor, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Kent State University at Stark.  “People say once you start doing what you love for work, you tend to not love it anymore,” Taylor said. “But that hasn’t happened for me. There’s plenty of reasons to be happy at work, and my students make it worthwhile.”  Teaching gives Taylor a chance to inspire his students to appreciate the Earth as much as he does. “Earth’s rocks, minerals and fos...

Kent State University senior Torrance Gaskins looks out her window every day to a view of the snow-covered mountaintops of the French Alps. A resident of Ravenna, Ohio, Gaskins, 21, has lived at home throughout her college career and commuted to the Kent Campus. So when the opportunity to study abroad presented itself, she was a little nervous having her first away-from-home experience in a student housing apartment at the Université Savoie Mont Blanc in Chambéry in southeastern France. “It’s my first semester abroad and it’s been kind of a plunge into the deep end,” she said. A...