eInside Briefs

Deadline Extended to Sept. 17 for President's Excellence Award Nominations

Nominations are currently being accepted for the second annual President's Excellence Award.  The award recognizes Kent State University staff who have demonstrated exceptional performance in advancing one of the goals of the university's excellence agenda during the previous fiscal year (July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010).

Full-time classified and unclassified employees at all campuses who have been employed by the university for a minimum of one year and are in good standing with the university are eligible to be nominated.  Past recipients are not eligible for a minimum of two years following their award and faculty are not eligible.

The nomination deadline for the 2010 awards has been extended to Sept. 17. The award recipients will be announced in December and each recipient will receive a $1,000 cash award.

Details on the award criteria and the nomination form are available on the President's website. Nominations may be submitted by faculty, staff or students.

For more information, contact Carla Wyckoff at 330-672-5857 or cwyckof1@kent.edu.

Professor Receives Grant to Address Northeast Ohio's Nursing Shortage

Dr. Susan Taft, associate professor and director of graduate management programs in Kent State University's College of Nursing, has been awarded a two-year, $410,000 grant from the Partners Investing in Nursing's Future (PIN) program, led by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the Northwest Health Foundations (NWHF). Funding is provided by four foundations, adding the Cleveland Foundation, which matches the $200,000 award from RWJF and NWHF, and the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation. Partners Investing in Nursing's Future is a national initiative to find innovative ways to create an appropriately-sized nursing workforce. The grant is one of nine selected from an original pool of 43 proposals.

Susan Taft

Taft's project is designed to address Northeast Ohio's nursing shortage by expanding the number of nurse educators, the primary bottleneck limiting nursing school admissions. In addition to Kent State's College of Nursing, three Northeast Ohio partner schools join the initiative: The University of Akron's College of Nursing, Cleveland State University's Department of Nursing, and Ursuline College's Breen School of Nursing. The program aims to build teaching capacity by expanding the numbers of nursing faculty in Northeast Ohio.

Through funding provided in 2009 by the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation, Taft piloted an innovative solution to the bottleneck that has occurred as a result of limited numbers of full-time nursing faculty: developing a new and untapped pool of nurses as part-time online educators. Participants are identified as "non-traditional nurse educators" or NTNEs: masters-prepared nurses working outside of academia who would welcome the opportunity to teach part-time. They include nurses working in clinical roles, engaged in family responsibilities, retired or approaching retirement, and/or physically disabled. They will be prepared through a graduate course, Methods of Online Education, developed by Taft with assistance from Kent State University at Salem faculty members Janeen Kotsch and Karen Zapko. The course aims to produce online teaching competence in a short time, inexpensively and for focused teaching-only roles. Graduates successfully completing the course will be available to supplement regular nursing faculty in non-clinical courses in colleges of nursing, thereby increasing the number of nursing faculty and directly impacting the number of qualified nursing students who could be admitted and educated at colleges of nursing.

Ultimately, the project aims to work with a growing number of partner schools of nursing, starting first in Northeast Ohio and expanding to state and national partnerships. The Online Nursing Education for Non-traditional Faculty program is designed in six distinct phases, with Phases 1 and 2 already completed, and Phases 3 and 4 supported by the Partners Investing in Nursing's Future grant.

For more information about Kent State's College of Nursing, visit www.kent.edu/nursing.

About Partners In Nursing's Future (PIN)

Partners Investing in Nursing's Future has provided support to local foundations for five years, discovering models that work and can be replicated nationally. The program provides assistance to local and regional philanthropies to develop strategies in their communities for creating and sustaining a viable nursing workforce. Partners Investing in Nursing's Future has invested $12 million in these efforts nationwide. During the program's first four years, 88 foundation partners in 32 states established more than 300 local partnerships among nursing organizations, private and public funders, and workforce development boards to address the nursing and nurse faculty shortage. Nearly 100 private philanthropic organizations in 37 states are now involved. This is the final year of the Partners Investing in Nursing's Future program. For more information about Partners Investing in Nursing's Future, visit www.partnersinnursing.org.

WKSU-FM Adds Here and Now Weekdays at Noon

WKSU-FM recently launched the news magazine Here and Now, an hour-long program produced by WBUR-FM in Boston and hosted by veteran journalist Robin Young. The fast-paced program features a broad-range of topics from public policy, foreign affairs and technology to food, culture and the arts. Reports from the WKSU-FM newsroom will also be part of the Monday through Friday broadcasts. 

Other recent program changes on WKSU-FM include the addition of The Regina Brett Show on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. and WKSU-FM's Other Voices, offering hour-long audio documentaries on Thursdays at 7 p.m. The full lineup can be found online at www.WKSU.org/programs/schedule.

WKSU-FM General Manager Al Bartholet says, "Airing Here and Now over the noon hour means that breaking news won't have to wait until All Things Considered begins at 4 p.m. Young's program is produced with the curious, intelligent and information-hungry public radio audience in mind. Plus, an additional news hour means more opportunities for the WKSU-FM news staff to present stories on arts and culture to Northeast Ohio listeners."

Robin Young brings more than 25 years of broadcast experience to her Here and Now hosting duties. Along with her work as a television correspondent for the Discovery Channel, CBS and ABC, she had an on-going role as substitute host and correspondent for The Today Show on NBC. Young is also a Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker.

The WKSU-FM website is www.wksu.org.

Kent State University at Stark presents the 2010 - 11 Featured Speakers Series

For more than 15 years, Kent State University at Stark has been exposing the students and community members to a wide range of topics and issues that shape our society through the popular Featured Speakers Series. Join us for the 2010-11 season as we welcome humanitarian Jan Egeland; financial guru Liz Pulliam Weston; legendary rock drummer Max Weinberg and green energy entrepreneur Jerome Ringo.

Each program will begin at 7:30 p.m. in The University Center's Timken Great Hall.

All lectures are free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on the date listed with each speaker. No phone reservations will be taken. Tickets will be limited to four per person. The building will open at 6:45 p.m. prior to each event.

On Thursday, Sept. 30, 2010, Jan Egeland will present "A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity."

Humanitarian Jan Egeland began his extensive service to the United Nations in 1990 with his appointment as state secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His initiation of the emergency preparedness system provided more than 2,000 humanitarian workers to international organizations. He later served as the secretary-general's special advisor on Colombia prior to becoming under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator. In 2006, he was appointed as special advisor to the secretary-general for conflict prevention and resolution. Currently, Egeland is director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and a professor at the University of Stavanger. Author of A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity, he has received numerous awards for his humanitarian efforts and work with peace processes and conflict resolution. Tickets for the Jan Egeland event will be available, beginning on Monday, Sept. 13, at the Main Hall Information Desk.

Liz Pulliam Weston will present "Keep it Stupidly Simple: Why Money isn't Rocket Science" on Monday, Oct. 25, 2010.
Liz Pulliam Weston, the Internet's most widely read personal finance columnist and award-winning, nationally syndicated finance expert, makes the most complex money topics understandable to the average reader. She regularly writes an online column for MSN Money and authors the question-and-answer column Money Talk, which appears in newspapers throughout the country. Weston is the author of the best-selling book Your Credit Score: How to Fix, Protect and Improve the 3-Digit Number that Shapes Your Financial Future. She appears regularly on numerous television and radio programs, including NPR's Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered, American Public Media's Marketplace Money and The Today Show. Tickets for the Liz Pulliam Weston event will be available, beginning on Monday, Oct. 4, at the Main Hall Information Desk.

Enjoy "An Evening with Max Weinberg" on Monday, Feb. 28, 2011.
Max Weinberg is one of the most visible and recorded drummers of the late 20th century. As the long-time drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and director of the featured band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, he has performed for millions of fans around the world, at presidential inaugural galas, the Grammy Awards and the 1995 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dedication. Having performed with some of music's biggest names, he played on both the first (Born in the U.S.A. by Springsteen) and second (Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf) best-selling albums in rock history. Weinberg's Kent State Stark appearance will include a performance with a select group of the campus's student musicians. Tickets for the Max Weinberg event will be available, beginning on Monday, Feb. 7, at the Main Hall Information Desk. 

Join us for Jerome Ringo's presentation of "The Green Economy and a Clean Energy Future" on Thursday, April 14, 2011.
Jerome Ringo's 20 years of experience working in Louisiana's petrochemical industry, including drilling and offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico, compelled him to educate communities on how to stop chemical discharge in their neighborhoods through environmental activism. A member of Green Group and Newsweek's Environment and Leadership Council, he is a passionate advocate for alternative clean-energy sources and energy-efficient technology and jobs, in addition to expanding minority participation in green businesses. Ringo became the first African American to head a major conservation organization when he was elected to chair the National Wildlife Federation board of directors. He also served as president of the Apollo Alliance, an organization dedicated to freeing America of foreign oil dependency. Tickets for the Jerome Ringo event will be available beginning on Monday, March 28, at the Main Hall Information Desk. 

For additional information about the 2010-11 Featured Speakers Series, visit www.stark.kent.edu/about/events/featuredspeakers or contact Cynthia Williams at 330-244-3262 or cdwillia@kent.edu.

Employee Motor Vehicle Operator License Checks Coming Soon

Departments who have employees driving university vehicles should expect to receive a memo by Sept. 15, explaining the university's policy requiring driver's license checks of all university employees who drive a university owned or leased vehicle. 

A form used to collect the drivers information will be attached to the memo.  This form will need to be completed by the department and returned to the Department of Police Services so a proper license check can be done. 

If a department has individuals that drive university-owned or leased vehicles and does not receive this memo in campus mail by the above date, please call 330-672-3070 and request a form. 

You can also retrieve this information from the Department of Police Services website at www.kent.edu/police.

Kent State University at Stark Announces Auditions for Fall Production

Kent State University at Stark Theatre announces open auditions for the season's fall theatrical production, Dating is Tough To Do and Funny, Too! The show consists of a group of zany contemporary one-act comedies (Courting 101, Single and Proud, Tangled Web and A Chance Meeting) that explore the search for romance.

Auditions will be held from 7 - 9:30 p.m. on Sept.13 and 14 in the theatre of the Fine Arts Building.

Auditions are open to everyone, including students and community members. Roles are available for men and women in a variety of ages. Those auditioning have the choice of working from sides (selected scene excerpts) or they may perform a prepared monologue. The director will also choose sides for people and scene partners.

The production will be performed on Nov. 5-7 and 12-14 in the Kent State Stark Theatre. Rehearsals will commence shortly after casting is completed and will usually occur approximately five evenings a week until opening.

Scripts (and audition sides or scene excerpts used for the auditions) are available for perusal for periods up to 24 hours from the secretary (330-244-5151) of the Fine Arts Building, Monday through Friday during business hours (8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.). Audition appointments are recommended, but not required. Scripts and audition sides will also be available in the reserve area of the Kent State Stark library.

For more information, contact Brian Newberg, newly appointed theatre director at Kent State Stark, at bnewberg@kent.edu or 330-244-3352.