eInside Briefs

Paul DiCorleto Named New Vice President for Research and Sponsored Programs at Kent State

Cleveland Clinic veteran to lead university’s research division

Kent State University has named Paul E.
DiCorleto, Ph.D., as its new vice president
for research and sponsored programs.
DiCorleto comes to Kent State from
Cleveland Clinic.

(Photo credit: Cleveland Clinic)

Following a national search, Kent State University has selected Paul E. DiCorleto, Ph.D., as its new vice president for research and sponsored programs. DiCorleto comes to Kent State from Cleveland Clinic, where he has served as Sherwin-Page Chair of the Lerner Research Institute since 2002, and from Case Western Reserve University, where he has served as chair of the Department of Molecular Medicine in the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine since 2003. He joins Kent State on Aug. 17.

Under the direction of the vice president for research and sponsored programs, Kent State’s Division of Research and Sponsored Programs helps faculty and staff secure external funding to support their research and instructional and public service projects. Recognizing the importance of this role, the new vice president for research and sponsored programs will be made a cabinet-level position, with DiCorleto reporting directly to Kent State President Beverly Warren. Previously, the vice president for research and sponsored programs reported to the provost.

“We are delighted that someone of Paul’s caliber and distinction is joining our leadership team,” Warren says. “He will make an immediate impact in advancing our current areas of excellence in research and will be instrumental in the design and implementation of a vision that positions Kent State as a strong national contributor to new knowledge and understanding in the areas of research, scholarship and innovation.”

Increasing Kent State’s global competitiveness in research and scholarship is one of the university’s strategic priorities that Warren has outlined. Warren looks to the new vice president for research and sponsored programs to enhance Kent State’s research strengths, such as stress disorders and trauma psychology, learning and mental recall, liquid crystals, human evolution and fresh water research, while seeking new frontiers of success.

“I’m excited to join the Kent State team to help bolster existing research programs and position Kent State as a leading research university,” DiCorleto says. “I envision a nationally recognized research mission that attracts high-quality researchers and students and encourages philanthropic contributions and partnerships.”

DiCorleto succeeds Grant McGimpsey, Ph.D., who announced last August that he had chosen to return to a faculty position after having served as vice president for research and sponsored programs since August 2011. McGimpsey agreed to remain in the position until a successor is in place.

A long-serving employee of Cleveland Clinic, DiCorleto has an excellent track record of securing federal funding for his own research and for institutional programs. In 2013, he was awarded more than $10 million from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop the National Center for Advanced Innovations-Cleveland Clinic, one of only three nationally funded centers designed to expedite the commercialization of laboratory innovations, bringing research from the lab bench to the bedside.

DiCorleto joined the world-renowned academic medical center in 1981 as a project scientist in its Department of Cardiovascular Research. He also has served as staff in the Department of Cell Biology, vice chair of the Lerner Research Institute, associate chief of staff and chair of the Department of Cell Biology. DiCorleto has served on numerous Cleveland Clinic committees, including chair of the Lerner Research Institute Leadership Committee, chair of the Research Strategic Council, and as a member of the Board of Governors and Board of Trustees, Council of Institute Chairs, Capital Review Committee, Cleveland Clinic Innovations Commercialization Council and Industrial Advisory Board, and the Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center Commercialization Advisory Board and Board of Directors.

DiCorleto also has served as adjunct faculty for both Cleveland State University’s Department of Biology and Department of Chemistry and as professor in Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine’s Department of Physiology and Biophysics. An award-winning scholar and invited lecturer, DiCorleto has authored or co-authored more than 120 articles, papers and book chapters. His research has focused on the role of the endothelium in maintaining healthy blood vessels and in inflammatory diseases such as atherosclerosis.

DiCorleto has chaired multiple NIH and American Heart Association review panels, as well as several national conferences on research into heart and vascular disease. He has served as president of the North American Vascular Biology Organization, and he is currently a member of its Scientific Advisory Board. He also serves as a member of the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Advisory Panel on Research and was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. DiCorleto has served as a consultant and board member of multiple companies.

A native of Hartford, Connecticut, DiCorleto earned his Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cornell University. After receiving his doctoral degree, he served as a senior fellow of the American Heart Association of Washington and National Institutes of Health postdoctoral trainee in the University of Washington’s Department of Pathology.

DiCorleto is married with two children and three grandchildren and lives in Gates Mills, Ohio.

For more information about research at Kent State, visit www.kent.edu/research.

Kent State University Press Wins 2015 PROSE Award

The Kent State University Press received a 2015 PROSE Award in the Single Volume – Humanities and Social Sciences category for Wearable Prints, 1760-1860: History, Materials, and Mechanics by Susan W. Greene. Sponsored by the Association of American Publishers, the PROSE Awards annually recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals and electronic content in more than 40 categories.

Wearable Prints surveys the history of wearable printed fabrics, which reaches back into the earliest days of the discovery of selectively patterned cloth with a focus on the Industrial Revolution. Greene brings together evidence from period publications and manuscripts, extant period garments and quilts, and scholarship on 18th- and 19th-century chemistry and technology, including more than 1,600 full-color images and a plentiful array of textile samples.

“Author and costume historian Susan Greene spent many years researching, writing and collecting the more than 1,600 images for her masterful and comprehensive history,” says Will Underwood, director of the Kent State University Press. “There is no other book quite like it.”

Greene is a collector, museum consultant and independent scholar. Her collection of late 18th- and 19th-century clothing now resides at the Genesee Country Village and Museum in Mumford, New York. She is the author of Textiles for Early Victorian Clothing and has written several entries in Valerie Steele’s Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion and Carol Kammen’s Encyclopedia of Local History.

The PROSE Awards began in 1976. Each year, publishers and authors, judged by peer publishers, librarians and medical professionals, are recognized at the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., for their commitment to pioneering works of research and for contributing to the conception, production and design of landmark works in their fields.

“Kent State University Press is immensely proud to have published Wearable Prints,” Underwood says. “We are delighted that the Association of American Publishers has honored the book with this distinguished award.”

For more information about the Kent State University Press, visit www.kentstateuniversitypress.com.

WKSU’s Jeff St. Clair Receives Regional Edward R. Murrow Award

WKSU reporter/producer Jeff St. Clair
was recognized with a Regional Edward
R. Murrow Award for Sports Reporting
by the Radio-Television-Digital News
Association.

WKSU reporter/producer Jeff St. Clair has been recognized by the Radio-Television-Digital News Association (RTDNA) with a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Sports Reporting. WKSU competes in the Large Market division against public and commercial radio stations in major cities in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. St. Clair’s entry now moves on automatically to the national RTDNA contest where it will compete with other first-place winners from large-market radio stations across the country.

St. Clair’s winning report focused on new research being done on the rise of serious knee injuries in young female athletes and the connection between injuries and the lack of gender-specific training. The story was part of his ongoing "Exploradio" series that investigates science, technology, medical research and innovation in Northeast Ohio.

Girls are up to 10 times more likely than boys to suffer knee injuries in sports like soccer and basketball. Researchers in Akron have discovered that genetic differences help explain the disparity. The genders have variations in the structure of their ligaments, leading them to react differently to movement and stress. But, St. Clair learned that a lack of proper sports training is also partly to blame. Anatomy and  physics play a factor in how the female leg hits the ground, and girls can learn to better work with their physiology when trainers prepare them with a tailored skill set.

RTDNA is the world’s largest professional organization devoted exclusively to electronic journalism. The Murrow Awards recognize the best work produced by radio, television and online news organizations around the world and have honored outstanding achievement since 1971. For work created in 2014, RTDNA received more than 4,200 entries, setting an all-time record for the third year in a row.

WKSU is an award-winning public radio station and service of Kent State University that broadcasts to 22 counties in Northeast Ohio from the station’s primary signal at 89.7. WKSU content also can be heard over WKRW 89.3 (Wooster), WKRJ 91.5 (Dover/New Philadelphia), WKSV 89.1 (Thompson), WNRK 90.7 (Norwalk) and W239AZ 95.7 (Ashland). The station adds WKSU-2 Folk Alley, WKSU-3 The Classical Channel and WKSU-4 The News Channel over HD Radio and as streaming audio at www.wksu.org.

Kent State's Gianna Commito to Receive 2015 Cleveland Arts Prize

Pictured is Gianna Commito's art,
"Swain," 2014, casein and marble dust
ground on panel, 30 x 24 inches
(76.2 x 61 cm).

Kent State University's Gianna Commito, an associate professor who teaches painting in the School of Art, has been named the recipient of a 2015 Cleveland Arts Prize. Commito will be presented with one of two Emerging Artist Awards at this year’s ceremony, to be held at the Cleveland Museum of Art at 6 p.m. on Thursday, June 25. The award carries a cash prize of $10,000.

First awarded in 1961, the Cleveland Arts Prize is “the oldest of its kind in the United States” and “a testament to the standard of excellence and quality of artists in Northeast Ohio,” according to the organization's website. Tickets to the 55th Annual Awards Event are available at several price levels and may be purchased online at http://clevelandartsprize.org.

The Cleveland Arts Prize comes amidst a typically busy year for Commito. In January and February, she had her second solo show with the Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York, which was reviewed enthusiastically in the New York Times by Roberta Smith.

“The effect is of looking into a broken kaleidoscope, its elements askew in a shallow space,” Smith wrote of the exhibition. “And each painting seems to have a different spatial conundrum, a different array of entrances and blockages, which is no mean trick.”

Commito also has had recent exhibitions at William Busta Gallery, Shaheen Modern and Contemporary, and MOCA in Cleveland; the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina; Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts; and the Drawing Center, the National Academy Museum, Taxter & Spengemann, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, and Wallspace in New York. She is represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery and lives and paints in Kent.

Richard Myers, Professor Emeritus of the Kent State School of Art, won the Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

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.

Faces, Places and Spaces of Research

Many faculty members at Kent State University are involved in various types of research both on and off campus. We would like to feature photos in e-Inside of the diverse locations where you conduct research – it could be in a clean room or in a dirty lake.

Share photos and brief descriptions of all the various places where you and your students conduct research by sending an email to einside@kent.edu by July 7. Please use the subject line: Faces of Research. Submissions will be considered for publication in upcoming issues of e-Inside.