eInside Briefs

Kent State Announces Farris Family Innovation Award Recipients

Elizabeth Herndon, Ph.D., assistant
professor in the Department of Geology,
has been awarded the Farris Family
Innovation Award.

Two Kent State University faculty members, Elizabeth Herndon, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Geology, and Anthony Tosi, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, have been awarded the Farris Family Innovation Award to support their research. The Farris Family Innovation Award rewards faculty members who combine scholarship of teaching, discovery and application in new and effective ways.

Todd Diacon, Kent State’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, recommended Herndon and Tosi for the award, and was approved by Kent State President Beverly Warren. Applications for the award are reviewed by the University Research Council.

Award recipients receive $8,000 for up to three years while they continue their projects and remain untenured faculty members. The funds from the grant covers expenses in undergraduate research, graduate student stipends, equipment expenses and travel associated with faculty projects.

Herndon received the award for her research project, “Impact of Vegetation on Metal Release from Soils Developed on Coal Mine Waste.”  

“I’m honored to be selected for the Farris Family Innovation Award, and I appreciate the support given to early-career faculty such as myself to pursue cutting-edge research,” Herndon says. “These generous funds will enable me to continue research on the geochemistry of human-perturbed landscapes and impacts on water resources.”

Herndon’s research explores the interactions between minerals, water and biota that shape the “Critical Zone,” the thin surface of the Earth’s crust that extends from groundwater to vegetation canopy and supports life. She will study how ecosystems can enhance or mitigate leaching of harmful metals from mine waste into surface water.

“This research is especially pertinent in Ohio, where centuries of mining operations have left a legacy of mine waste that poses an ongoing hazard to ecosystem health and water quality,” she says.

Anthony Tosi, Ph.D., assistant
professor in the Department of
Anthropology, has been awarded the
Farris Family Innovation Award.

Tosi received the award for his research project, “The Molecular Signature of Sperm Competition: A Case Study in Macaque Monkeys.”

“I’m very happy to receive this award,” Tosi says. “It not only provides the funds for a stand-alone project but, more importantly, allows collection of preliminary data for larger NSF and NIH grant applications.”  
 
Tosi will examine the differences in sperm genes between two species of macaque monkey. These monkeys occasionally hybridize, and the Y-chromosome (where many sperm genes are located) of one species has crossed deeply into populations of the other. Female macaques have multiple partners per breeding season, leading to intense sperm competition among the males, he says.  

Tosi hopes to discover what genes play the most significant role for “better” sperm and what factors make them better, which could lead to the development of new medical techniques for treating male infertility.

“The answers to these questions become the launchpad for studies in evolution, anthropology and biomedical science,” he says.  

Click here for more information about the criteria for the Farris Family Innovation Award.

For more information about Kent State’s Department of Geology, visit www.kent.edu/geology.

For more information about Kent State’s Department of Anthropology, visit www.kent.edu/anthropology.

Kent State Graduate Student Wins Silver Award From Materials Research Society

Anshul Sharma, a graduate student in
Kent State University’s Chemical Physics
Interdisciplinary Program in the College of
Arts and Sciences, was awarded the
Silver Graduate Student Award at the
Materials Research Society’s 2015 Spring
Meeting in San Francisco, California.

Anshul Sharma, a graduate student in Kent State University’s Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program in the College of Arts and Sciences, was awarded the Silver Graduate Student Award at the Materials Research Society’s 2015 Spring Meeting in San Francisco, California. She was recognized for her presentation on “Visualizing Gold Nanoparticle Chirality via Nematic Liquid Crystals.”

According to the Materials Research Society, “the awards are intended to honor and encourage graduate students whose academic achievements and current materials research display a high order of excellence and distinction.” The Materials Research Society “seeks to recognize students of exceptional ability who show promise for future substantial achievement in materials research.”

Sharma, who relocated to Kent State’s Liquid Crystal Institute® in early 2012 from Canada, is currently co-supervised by Elda Hegmann, Ph.D., and Torsten Hegmann, Ph.D., both professors in the Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program. Originally from India, Sharma earned her bachelor’s degree in science from Government P.G. College Solan, Himachal Pradesh, India, and her master’s degree in chemistry from the National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab, India. She then worked as a project associate at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, for 18 months before joining Torsten Hegmann’s lab as a Ph.D. student at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. When he moved to Kent State, Sharma also decided to move to Kent State to continue working with him.

“My move to Kent State to continue working for Drs. Hegmann is one of the best decisions I’ve made,” Sharma says. “I greatly appreciate their mentoring. I believe every graduate student is a hard worker, but it’s the right mentoring that makes the difference in shaping his or her career. Both my advisors have given me the necessary training that will prepare me to work in any university or research lab. It was this training that made me stand among top students from Ivy League universities and win this prestigious award.”

Sharma plans to graduate with her doctorate in the fall and hopes to work as a postdoctoral researcher at a national lab or university. Ultimately, she hopes to become a faculty member at a university. 

For more information about the Materials Research Society’s Graduate Student Awards, visit www.mrs.org/spring-2015-gsa-talk-sessions.

For more information about Kent State’s Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program, visit www.lcinet.kent.edu/cpip.

Celebrating College Teaching Conference Extends Deadline for Proposals

The University Teaching Council welcomes proposals from any Kent State University faculty members or graduate teaching assistants who are interested presenting at the 22nd annual Celebrating College Teaching Conference this fall. The deadline for submissions has been extended to July 30, 2015. To learn more, visit www.kent.edu/utc or http://bit.ly/UTCCProposals.

The University Teaching Council’s annual conference, which will take place on Oct. 22 and 23 focuses on the four pillars of a Kent State undergraduate curriculum — knowledge, insight, responsibility and engagement. All conference events are free and open to all those who teach or support teaching at Kent State. Instructors are urged to plan their course syllabi so they may attend.

For more information about the conference, contact Kim Peer at 330-672-0231 or kpeer@kent.edu.

Common Reading Program Seeks Discussion Leaders

This year’s Kent State University
Common Reading book is The Terrorist’s
Son by Zak Ebrahim.

The Common Reading Program is currently seeking 200 faculty, staff, alumni and community members to facilitate book discussions during Destination Kent State: Welcome Weekend. The Common Reading program will involve a one-hour discussion on Friday, Aug. 28, from 2-3 p.m. Prior to the discussion, leaders will be provided with a copy of the book, offered a training session and given discussion materials. There will be several training sessions that will be held throughout the summer for new and returning discussion leaders.

2015 Kent State Common Reading Book Announced

The Kent State University’s Common Reading Committee and the Office of Student Success Programs is pleased to announce the selection of this year’s Kent State Common Reading book, The Terrorist’s Son, by Zak Ebrahim.

Ebrahim was only seven years old when, on Nov. 5, 1990, his father, El-Sayyid Nosair, shot and killed the leader of the Jewish Defense League. While in prison, Nosair helped plan the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. In one of his infamous video messages, Osama bin Laden urged the world to "Remember El-Sayyid Nosair."

For Ebrahim, a childhood amid terrorism was all he knew. After his father’s incarceration, his family moved more than 20 times, haunted by and persecuted for the crimes of his father. Though his radicalized father and uncles modeled fanatical beliefs, the hateful ideas never resonated with the shy, awkward boy. The older he grew, the more fully Ebrahim grasped the horrific depths of his father’s acts. The more he understood, the more he resolved to dedicate his life to promoting peace.

In his book, Ebrahim traces his remarkable journey to escape his father’s terrible legacy. Crisscrossing the eastern United States, from Pittsburgh to Memphis, from a mosque in Jersey City to the Busch Gardens theme park in Tampa, The Terrorist’s Son is the story of a boy inculcated in dogma and hate — a boy presumed to follow in his father’s footsteps — and the man who chose a different path.

About the Author

Ebrahim was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on March 24, 1983, the son of an Egyptian industrial engineer and an American school teacher.

In 2013, Ebrahim participated in TED’s talent search in New York City and was selected to speak at the main conference, TED2014, in Vancouver, British Columbia. His TED talk was released on Sept. 9, 2014, in conjunction with the publication of his TED book, The Terrorist’s Son: A Story of Choice, and has been viewed more than 2 million times. In the book, as in his speeches, Ebrahim traces his remarkable journey to escape his father’s terrible legacy, coming to realize that the only way to overcome the challenges of his past would be to help others understand that hatred only produces more hate, but belief in nonviolence heals. Those cycles of violence, no matter how old, do not have to continue forever.

Common Reading Objectives

The Common Reading Program is designed to welcome and connect incoming students to the Kent State academic community. The goal of the program is that reading the book will provide common ground for new students to share with their peers. The objectives of the program are:

• To help students get acclimated to the academic life of the university.
• To provide students with an understanding of the university values, principles and standards.
• To build and maintain relationships that foster success with peers, faculty, staff, administrators and community members.
  

All new students will discuss the book with faculty, staff or community members on Aug. 28 from 2-3 p.m. during Destination Kent State: Welcome Weekend. The program, as a whole, will build a supportive and encouraging atmosphere that will ease the transition to university life. The book is available for purchase at the Kent State University Bookstore.

Facilitator Registration

Faculty, staff, alumni and community members interested in serving as discussion leaders should visit  www.kent.edu/success/reading and click on the facilitator registration page (in red toward the center of the page) for the electronic sign-up. Please be prepared to provide your contact information and training time preference.

WKSU Wins 10 OAPME Awards for Work Created In 2014

In a Columbus ceremony that took place recently, WKSU was honored with 10 OAPME Awards from the Ohio Associated Press Media Editors, including the top award for General Excellence (an award presented to the large market radio station with the best showing in the competition). The event celebrated the best journalism in Ohio. It is the third year that contests for print and broadcast reporting were combined.

Station journalists earned the top prizes for Best Reporter in Ohio. Tim Rudell took home first place for work that included ongoing reports on fracking in Northeast Ohio, the Ebola connection in Northeast Ohio, increased heroin deaths throughout the area, the high risk of landslides regionally, rare snow leopards born at the Akron Zoo, and many other timely topics. Rudell spends much of his time working from the station’s Canton news bureau in the Cultural Center for the Arts or at the downtown Akron studios at the corner of Market and Main Streets. The judges said, “A great compilation of the reporter’s depth and ability to tell both shorter and more in-depth stories in a clear and concise way. The reporter obviously knows what works and what doesn’t and knows how to tell a wide variety of stories.”

M.L. Schultze, who is WKSU’s Web editor, as well as a full-time reporter, came in second for Best Reporter. The judges said, “Excellent work by a reporter who can make sense of facts and present them in an understandable way. Great job.”

WKSU also swept the awards for Best Breaking News Coverage. Kevin Niedermier, who is stationed in WKSU’s Cleveland Bureau in WKYC’s studios, topped the list with a short but informative report on the announcement granting Cleveland the 2016 Republican National Convention. Right behind him in second place was Kabir Bhatia providing an optimistic spin on United Airlines’ choice to pull its hub at Cleveland Hopkins Airport.

Amanda Rabinowitz took home her second consecutive first-place award for her work as local anchor for NPR’s Morning Edition. Rabinowitz has been a reporter, host and producer at WKSU since 2007. She also received first-place honors for her series Heroin: Big Trouble in a Small Town, which told personal stories of people in Dover and New Philadelphia who have been touched by the growing heroin epidemic in rural Ohio. The judges said, “Robust coverage on air and online on a heavy topic. Excellent series.”

Rabinowitz took home a second-place OAPME Award for Extraordinary Coverage of a Scheduled Event for her reporting on Gay Games 9.

The efforts of the newsroom and other staff were recognized with the first-place award for Best Digital Presence. Chuck Poulton, director of IT and Engineering, led WKSU’s digital charge including the WKSU.org website; Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr pages; and Android and iPhone mobile apps. In 2014, WKSU used its digital footprint to add background and more engaging information to stories like Akron’s Ebola scare, LeBron James’ return to Northeast Ohio, special news series (like Rabinowitz’s coverage of the Gay Games and Vivian Goodman’s Quick Bites features), regional arts activities, station events and more.

Jeff St. Clair picked up a second-place OAPME Award for Best Use of Sound for a tour of a recently updated Timken Steel factory floor. The judges said, “Excellent placement of natural sound and soundbites that, combined, help the listener visualize this place. Terrific storytelling through sound.”

The Associated Press is a not-for-profit news cooperative representing 1,400 daily newspapers and 5,000 broadcast stations in the United States. Members of AP include 127 broadcast stations in Ohio. Twenty-five broadcasters submitted 323 entries in the contest, which featured news, sports and weather reporting, as well as features, documentaries and photography from 2014.

For more information about WKSU, visit www.wksu.org.

Send Us Your Summer Vacation Photos

It is summer vacation season again, and e-Inside wants to feature some of your best vacation or staycation photos.

Submit your favorite vacation or staycation photos and a brief description to einside@kent.edu by Tuesday, July 21, and depending on the number of entries that we receive, they might be featured in e-Inside. Please use "Summer Vacation Photos" as your email subject line.

Click on the links below to see submissions from last year:

Summer Vacation Photos I
Summer Vacation Photos II
Summer Vacation Photos III