ASHTABULA, OHIO  – Targeted at widening students’ educational opportunities in preparing them for a career in occupational therapy, the Kent State University at Ashtabula Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA) Technology program recently announced the creation of a hybrid model, combining online learning with more convenient on-campus laboratory sessions. The new model will launch in Summer 2020. “There is an unfulfilled need for hybrid options for students,” said OTA Program Director Julie Mirabell, MS, OT/L.  “There are a lot of (OTA) programs, but ours will be the first to prov...

The recent death of one of the remaining members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II has a Kent State University associate professor recalling the vital role the female pilots played during the war. “World War II was a total war,” said Associate Professor Molly Merryman, Ph.D., the author of “Clipped Wings: The Rise and Fall of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of World War II.” “And what that meant was that all men, women, children, citizens needed to have a war role,” Merryman told The Washington Post in the obituary for Dorothy Olsen, 103, of University Place, O...

Note: Gretchen Hoak is a former television reporter/anchor and current assistant professor of journalism in Kent State University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Her research survey, “Are We Teaching Trauma?”,  focused on how universities prepare young journalists for the trauma they may endure in covering violence. Kent State Today asked Hoak to share her thoughts on the impact the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton will have on the reporters assigned to cover these events.  “It’s awful, y’all. Barely hanging on. Our newsroom is command central.”There is a Face...

The Kent State University Wick Poetry Center’s “Traveling Stanzas” project, part of its effort to facilitate a global conversation that enhances person to person communication, arrives at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration this fall. On Nov. 10, KSU will host a reception for the exhibit, Sisters in Liberty: From Florence, Italy to New York, New York, created by the Opera di Santa Croce in Florence in collaboration with faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences who have pioneered unique visualization technologies and KSU’s Design Innovation Initiative. The Wick Poetry Center...

Kent State alumna Shannon Gardiner, BSN ’09, RN, CCRN, always knew she wanted to help people, but also longed for a career that would provide flexibility along the way. After a few years working in Akron Children’s Hospital’s pediatric Intensive Care Unit, followed by some time as a traveling nurse, a Google search for volunteer opportunities led her to Mercy Ships, who own and operate the largest non-governmental hospital ship in the world. A native of Champion, Ohio, who now resides in Florida, Gardiner returned home from her third volunteer experience aboard the Africa Mercy in A...