“I constantly felt like I was walking on eggshells.” At the age of 16, Rhylee Shepherd, found herself in an abusive relationship with a teenage boy who attended another high school.  He called her terrible names and told her that no one would ever love her. He tried to separate Shepherd from her family by convincing her that they were trying to control her. And he restricted her phone use unless Shepherd was talking to him. Once he even held her hostage in his truck for hours and told her how much she had ruined his life. Shepherd was afraid to leave him. “The abuse wa...

Kent State University partnered with Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City for an international, cross-cultural exchange for students to study how sustainable gardening projects aid immigrant populations.  The program enabled 11 Kent State students from the Stark and Kent campuses to spend their spring break in Mexico, and a group of 11 students from Universidad Panamericana (UP) to spend a week in Northeast Ohio in June, working at Shanti Community Farms in Akron’s North Hill neighborhood, which is home to large groups of immigrants.  Sarah Schmidt, assistant director of Gl...

Co-PIs Dr. Michael Strickland (Professor and Chair, Physics), Dr. Qiang Guan (Assistant Professor, Computer Science), and Dr. Barry Dunietz (Associate Professor, Chemistry) have received a $500k grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a quantum computing (QC) training program at Kent State University.   The grant addresses a critical need in the US to develop a skilled workforce in quantum computing.  With the funding, Drs. Strickland, Guan, and Dunietz will construct a project-oriented training program to assist scientists and students in the development of q...

Kent State University's Undergraduate Student Government (USG), the student organization responsible for being the direct line of communication to the administration to make students’ voices heard, was honored with the 2022 Student Government of the Year Award from the Conference on Student Government Associations (COSGA). Kent State won the award in its first year attending the national conference, the largest gathering of university student governments in the nation. When selecting Kent State as the winner, COSGA staff noted as particularly impressive USG's achievemen...