Joy is stitched into everything Leah Thompkins creates – by design.  The Kent State University fashion design major and costume design minor describes her personal style as “anything that six-year-old me would think is really cool.” Her playful perspective comes to life through her work: a jacket that tells the story of two cats meeting over the phone to a skirt designed to look like apple slices and a children’s collection based on an original story, complete with matching plush animals.  ...

Devan Shimoyama is a visual artist based in Pittsburgh, P.A. and the 2026 Curlee Raven Holton and Raven Print Editions Fellow at Kent State University. Working primarily in painting and sculpture, his mixed-media pieces often explore depictions of the queer Black male form, the politics of queer culture and his own personal narratives. The Kent State School of Art Collections and Galleries are pleased to welcome Shimoyama's work in an exhibition on view in the CVA Gallery, located at 325 Terrace Drive, Kent, Ohio, from Oct. 20 through Nov. 20, 2026. Shimoyama will also deliver an artist l...

Kendall Myers has spent the past several years studying creatures that are easy to overlook. At only about 3 millimeters long, ambrosia beetles are tiny enough to fit on the tip of a finger. Myers, however, discovered that these invasive insects possess a remarkable tool for doing significant damage to hardwood trees with mandibles containing unusually high concentrations of metals that help them bore into wood. That research has now earned Myers national recognition. Myers, a recent Kent State University at Stark graduate, was named a 2026 Portz Scholar by the National Collegia...

  Kent State University undergraduate student, Hannah Fender and graduate student , Katelyn McClure, along with their research mentor, Dr. Phillip Hamrick, recently published a paper in the Journal of Cognition and Development demonstrating that development of language abilities in early childhood (9-50 months) is predicted by episodic memory abilities. Congratulations to the MALL lab!  ...

The Kent State University Board of Trustees will hold its next regular business meeting at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 23, in Room 247 at the Design Innovation (DI) Hub, located at 400 Janik Drive on the Kent Campus. The Board will consider the recommendations of the standing committees, proposed personnel actions and new business. Trustees will retire into executive session to consider specific topics as provided under Ohio’s “Sunshine Law.” The roll call vote for this session will occur at 8 a.m. in public in Room 247 at the DI Hub.A limited number of seats open to the public/...