eInside Events

World-Renowned Photographer Visits Kent State for First Presidential Speaker Series, March 29

World-renowned photographer Trey Ratcliff,
owner of the number one travel photography
blog in the world, will speak at Kent State on
March 29 during the first Kent State Presidential
Speaker Series.

Kent State University will hold its first Presidential Speaker Series on March 29 at the University Auditorium in Cartwright Hall at 7 p.m. featuring world-renowned photographer Trey Ratcliff. Cartwright Hall is located at 650 Hilltop Drive. The event is free and open to the public.

Ratcliff will present “The Future of Digital Arts and the Internet,” kicking off the new speaker series initiated by Kent State President Lester A. Lefton. Ratcliff will discuss the current state of digital art on the Internet, timely issues that affect artists, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and what schools and universities can do to help prepare the next generation of artists.

Ratcliff runs the number one travel photography blog in the world at www.StuckinCustoms.com, which receives more than half a million monthly page views. His photos also have accumulated more than 50 million views on social media sites Flickr and SmugMug.

Ratcliff has been described as a pioneer of High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, which involves using multiple exposures and tone-mapping the result to recreate a myriad of actual light levels captured in the scene. He had the first ever HDR photograph to hang in the Smithsonian and has been featured on a variety of television networks, including ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and the BBC. His bestselling book, A World in HDR, sold out on Amazon in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

“It is indeed a privilege to host one of the world’s finest photographers,” says Lefton, who has a passion for photography. “Trey is well-known for his exploration and development of digital photography techniques, and his photographs are works of art. This event will enable the Kent State community to see the world through Trey’s creative eye, and also explore and experience the evolution of digital art.”

Ratcliff grew up blind in one eye, and this changed the way he experiences and visually maps the world. Combined with his degree in computer science and math, his experiences have helped him to develop a processing method that offers a depth of visualization ranges.

A book signing, dessert reception and meet-and-greet that is open to the public will take place from 8:15 to 8:45 p.m. in the third floor lobby outside the auditorium.

The Kent State Presidential Speaker Series seeks to bring high-profile, world-renowned experts to Kent State for serious, thought-provoking discussions and conversations. The new program will enhance the engagement of the world beyond Kent State’s campuses, which is one of the university’s strategic goals.

For more information about Kent State University’s Presidential Speaker Series, visit www.kent.edu/pss.

Spring 2012 Michael D. Solomon Entrepreneurship Speaker Series Set for April 10

Nick Friedman, president and co-founder of College Hunks Hauling Junk, will speak about his journey to success at the Kent Student Center Kiva on Tuesday, April 10, at 6:30 p.m., during the spring 2012 Michael D. Solomon Entrepreneurship Speaker Series. A reception with Friedman will be held in Room 204 of the Kent Student Center following his presentation. The event is free and open to the public.

The Michael D. Solomon Entrepreneurship Speaker Series, supported by Kent State alumnus Michael D. Solomon, brings experienced entrepreneurs on campus every semester to share their insights and give advice to students. The speaker series is organized by Kent State’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation.

College Hunks Hauling Junk is the largest and fastest growing US-based junk removal services for residential and commercial properties. The company was recently ranked 156 on the INC 500 list of Fastest Growing U.S. Companies, and has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, FOX News and Oprah. Friedman was named a Top 30 Entrepreneur in America Under 30 by Inc. Magazine and is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award finalist. He also was named on the same list as Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, as one of the 30 Most Influential CEO’s Under 30 by www.under30ceo.com.

Friedman appeared on CNBC’s The BIG Idea with Donny Deutsche, Fox Business News and ABC’s reality-based show, Shark Tank. He has been interviewed by Entrepreneur and Fortune magazines, as well as The Wall Street Journal, for his expertise on franchising, branding and young entrepreneurship.

Recently, Friedman co-authored his first book with his business partner, Omar Soliman. The book, Effortless Entrepreneur: Work Smart, Play Hard, Make Millions, aims to motivate aspiring entrepreneurs with his entertaining approach to business.

For more information and to register for the event, visit www.kent.edu/cebi/2012-michael-solomon-speaker-series.cfm.

New Student Space at Kent State Debuts; Features Mural By Award-Winning Comic Strip Artists

Event coincides with 40th anniversary of Funky Winkerbean comic that debuted March 27, 1972

Award-winning comic strip artists and Kent State alumni
Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers designed this wall mural for
the new student lounge The Nest. The mural depicts the
life and experiences of a student at Kent State – from
campus move-in to graduation.

Popular comic strip artists Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers will be at Kent State University on Tuesday, March 27, from noon to 2 p.m. for the official opening of the new student lounge area The Nest in the Kent Student Center. Batiuk, creator of the Funky Winkerbean comic strip, collaborates with Ayers on Crankshaft.

Batiuk and Ayers, both Kent State alumni, designed a wall mural that will be officially unveiled at the event. The grand opening of The Nest, which falls on the 40th anniversary to the day when Funky Winkerbean debuted, is free and open to the public.

The reception with Batiuk and Ayers will feature a signing of Batiuk’s new book, The Complete Funky Winkerbean, which is the first in a multi-volume series celebrating the 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking comic strip. The book, which is published by Black Squirrel Books – an imprint of Kent State University Press, contains an autobiographical introduction by Batiuk that shares his early attempts at cartooning, discusses his teaching career and explains the genesis of Funky. Copies of the new book will be available for purchase at the event, and there will be giveaways and Funky trivia along with refreshments.

The new student space, formerly called the Music Listening Center, is an initiative of Kent State’s Center for Student Involvement, which helps to foster student engagement through leadership, civic, cultural and involvement opportunities. The Nest is located on the second floor of the Kent Student Center and will debut to Kent State students as they return from spring break.

The mural designed by Batiuk and Ayers was installed by Riot Creative Imaging in Cleveland and captures the life and experiences of a student at Kent State – from campus move-in to graduation.

The pair started work on the project in January, and just wrapped things up a couple of weeks ago. “Chuck did the heavy lifting as far as the work on the mural,” Batiuk says. “It’s going to look good.”

New furniture for The Nest was provided by Kent State’s Division for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs and the Center for Student Involvement.

For more information about Kent State’s Center for Student Involvement, visit www.kent.edu/csi.

For more information about Batiuk’s book, visit www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2011/complete-funky-winkerbean-vol-1/.

The Kent State Downtown Gallery Presents One Artist’s Journey Through Time

Artist Tom Hubbard has spent nearly 12 years getting to know his father who died at war decades ago

The Kent State University School of Art’s Downtown Gallery presents Semper Fidelis: How I Met My Father, a collection of ceramics, mixed media and photography from Tom Hubbard’s journey to learn about his father, a U.S. Marine killed in Vietnam in 1966. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, will take place from Wednesday, March 28 to Saturday, May 12. A reception is scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 29. The gallery is located at 141 East Main St., in Kent.

“Semper Fidelis is not a political statement about the war but rather a quest for understanding, a statement of personal loss and how the effects of war resonate through multiple generations,” says Hubbard in his artist statement.

The intertwined histories of Kent State University and Hubbard’s story of personal loss make this a powerful pairing of the exhibition and the venue. This exhibition has been programmed for the Downtown Gallery to coincide with the 42nd anniversary of May 4, 1970.

“This exhibition is the result of nearly two years of research on the war, interviews with the men my father served with, and five weeks of travel through Vietnam, where based on my research, I retraced my father's tour of duty,” Hubbard says.

Kevin Adams, associate professor of history at Kent State University, will formally open the exhibition with a brief discussion on war, memory and placing the work in greater historical context.

The mission of the School of Art’s Downtown Gallery is to provide a public venue for the diverse forms of visual art produced by the students, faculty and alumni of the School of Art, to provide a place where the School of Art and the community may interact, and to highlight excellent regional and national artists whose work educates and stimulates our students and our community at large. For more information about the School of Art’s Downtown Gallery, call 330-676-1549.

Wick Poetry Center Hosts Award-Winning Poet Yusef Komunyakaa

Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center
will host Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef
Komunyakaa on Thursday, March 29, in
Ritchie Hall.

Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center will host Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa on Thursday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 214 of Ritchie Hall on the Kent Campus. Kent State University Libraries and the Department of Pan-African Studies will co-sponsor the event. This reading is free and open to the public

Komunyakaa is the author of numerous books of poems, including The Chameleon Couch, Warhorses, Taboo and Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. Komunyakaa is the recipient of many awards and prizes, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the William Faulkner Prize. He served as a chancellor for the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005, and is currently professor and distinguished senior poet at New York University.

More information about the center’s readings is available at www.kent.edu/wick or by calling the Wick Poetry Center at 330-672-2067.

Kent State University at Stark to Host Memory Champion and Author Joshua Foer

Freelance science journalist and author
Joshua Foer will speak at Kent State Stark
on April 17, which rounds off its 2011-2012
Featured Speaker Series.

Kent State University at Stark will close the 2011-12 season of its popular Featured Speakers Series with Joshua Foer’s presentation of Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. The event will be held on Tuesday, April 17, at 7:30 p.m. in the Timken Great Hall, located in The University Center at Kent State Stark, 6000 Frank Ave. NW, in Jackson Township.

Tickets are required for this free Featured Speakers Series lecture. Tickets may be obtained by visiting the Kent State Stark Information Desk in Main Hall, beginning Monday, March 26, at 8 a.m., while supplies last. A limit of four tickets will be distributed per person. Phone reservations will not be accepted.

Named “One of the 10 People Who Could Change the World” by The New Statesman, freelance science journalist Foer attended the United States Memory Championship to report on the quirky subculture of competition memorizers. By interviewing competitors, he learned that it was possible for the average person to greatly enhance their memory through age-old techniques. Intrigued, he trained intensively and entered the competition the next year, emerging as the 2006 U.S. Memory Champion. Foer’s unlikely journey into the world of mnemonic skill is chronicled in his 2011 bestselling book, Moonwalking with Einstein. For audiences, he details the science and history of memorization, sharing how each of us can overcome personal limitations by using ancient techniques to unlock the brain’s potential.

For more information about Kent State Stark’s Featured Speakers Series, contact Cynthia Williams at 330-244-3262 or cdwillia@kent.edu or visit www.stark.kent.edu/about/events/featuredspeakers.

Kent State School of Art Presents MFA Thesis Show, March 27-30

Graduate student Tabitha Ott uses fine
metal and found materials to create this
piece that functions not only as a form of
jewelry, but also as a toy or plaything to
interact with.

Kent State’s School of Art presents its 2011/2012 MFA Thesis Show from March 27-30, in the School of Art Gallery on 325 Terrace Dr. at the Kent Campus. Gallery hours are from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. A reception will take place on Friday, March 30, from 5 to 8 p.m.

Featured this year are works of graduate student artists Joanna Donchatz, Quinn Hulings, Tabitha Ott and Brian Sarama.

For more information about the School of Art Galleries, visit http://dept.kent.edu/art/galleries/.

Learn About the Big Bang, Dark Matter, Unseen Dimensions and Universes on March 28

Yale Professor of Physics John W. Harris will deliver a
lecture titled, “An Odyssey Through Our Universe – From
the Big Bang and Unknown Dark Forces to Unseen Dimensions
and Universes,” at the University Auditorium in Cartwright Hall
on March 28.The lecture is intended for a non-technical audience.

The Division of Research and Sponsored Programs and the Department of Physics at Kent State will host a public lecture by Yale Professor of Physics John W. Harris. Attendance is free and open to the public.

The public lecture, “An Odyssey Through Our Universe – From the Big Bang and Unknown Dark Forces to Unseen Dimensions and Universes,” will be held in the University Auditorium in Cartwright Hall on March 28 starting at 7 p.m.

A reception will be held in the auditorium lobby at 6:30 p.m. This event is being held in conjunction with the Outstanding Research and Scholarship Award ceremony, which begins at 5:30 p.m. and will also be held in the lobby just outside of the University Auditorium in Cartwright Hall.

The lecture is intended for a non-technical audience, so children and adults of all ages are encouraged to attend.

“I invite you to take a pedestrian’s guided tour through the genesis of our universe!” Harris wrote in an abstract for the lecture.

Harris further explains, “From the Big Bang through initial faster-than-light Inflation of the Universe, watch the universal force of nature split into four forces. Travel through a hot Quark Soup into the regime of particles, atoms and molecules, then to galaxies, solar systems and planets. Along the way, learn “not to exceed the cosmic speed limit” and “to avoid conflicts of cosmic proportions. In this lecture I will discuss issues that constitute some of the most intriguing mysteries and marvels remaining in modern-day physics, including gravity, black holes, quantum mechanics, string theory, dark matter and the Higgs particle,” he says.

Harris’s research interests focus on understanding the behavior of nuclear, hadronic and partonic matter at high energy densities. Such energy densities are predicted to have existed a few microseconds after the Big Bang and are expected in collisions of heavy nuclei at ultrarelativistic energies. Formation, discovery and determination of properties of the QGP is the primary purpose of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven Laboratory on Long Island in New York, and at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

Harris was involved in the original proposal to initiate a nucleus-nucleus experimental program at CERN to search for a possible QGP phase transition, and has been an active member in the planning, conceptual design, construction, data acquisition and physics of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus experiments NA35 and NA49 at CERN, and the STAR (Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC) experiment at Brookhaven. He was the founding spokesperson for STAR from 1991 until 2002. In addition to his work on STAR, he is currently focusing his research effort on the ALICE experiment at the LHC at CERN and is National Coordinator for the ALICE-USA Collaboration.

To learn more about this public lecture, visit www.kent.edu/research/johnharrispubliclecture.cfm.

For more information, contact Jim Maxwell at jmaxwel2@kent.edu.

2012 McGruder Lecture and Awards Luncheon Takes Place March 26

Cleveland’s Plain Dealer editor named 2012 McGruder Award for Media Diversity winner; WOIO reporter earns Diversity in Media Distinguished Leadership Award

Debra Adams Simmons, editor of The
Plain Dealer in Cleveland and 2012 winner
of the Robert G. McGruder Award for Diversity,
will be honored at Kent State on March 26.

Kent State’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication will honor Debra Adams Simmons, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and 2012 winner of the Robert G. McGruder Award for Diversity, at an awards luncheon and lecture on Monday, March 26, on the Kent Campus. The award, from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, recognizes the accomplishments of media professionals who encourage diversity in the field of journalism.

Lydia Esparra, an Emmy-winning anchor with WOIO 19 Action News, will also be recognized at the annual McGruder luncheon as the 2012 Diversity in Media Distinguished Leadership Award winner.

The lecture and luncheon is co-sponsored by Kent State’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Event Schedule:

McGruder Lecture
11 a.m., Monday, March 26
Kent Student Center Kiva
(Free and open to the public)

Awards Luncheon
12:15 p.m., Monday, March 26
Kent Student Center, Rm. 306
Featuring Kent State President Lester A. Lefton; Alfreda Brown, Ph.D., vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion; and Stan Wearden, Ph.D., dean of the College of Communication and Information
(By invitation only)

The late Robert G. McGruder was a 1963 graduate of Kent State and a foundational local figure for diversity in journalism. He was the first black editor of the Daily Kent Stater and first black reporter at The Plain Dealer. McGruder marked several other firsts in his career, becoming the first black president of the Associated Press Managing Editors group and the first black editor of the Detroit Free Press, in 1995 and 1996. McGruder was a strong proponent for diversity in and out of the newsroom.

For more information about the Robert G. McGruder Award or event, contact Eugene Shelton, assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, at eshelto1@kent.edu. To RSVP for the event, contact Darlene Contrucci at 330-672-2623. For more information about Kent State's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, visit http://jmc.kent.edu.

Click here to see profiles of this year’s awardees.

Kent State University at Stark Theatre presents Anton in Show Business

Kent State University at Stark Theatre will present Anton in Show Business by Jane Martin on April 6, 7, 12, 13 and 14 at 8 p.m., and on April 15 at 2:30 p.m., in the Kent State Stark Theatre, 6000 Frank Ave. NW, in Jackson Township. American Sign Language interpretation will be provided for the performance on April 15 at 2:30 p.m. Opening night is Scholarship Night, with proceeds benefitting Kent State Stark music and theatre students.

As three actresses of wildly varied backgrounds pursue their dream of performing in a San Antonio production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, they take a tumble down the rabbit hole and into the strange wonderland of theatre. This satirical, backstage comedy conveys the joys, pains and absurdities of “putting on a play,” while poking hilarious fun at American culture. Viewer discretion is advised due to some sexual content.

Ticket prices are $10 for adults and $7 for non-Kent State students, children under 17 and senior citizens. All Kent State students are admitted free with a current student ID.

Tickets may be obtained beginning March 26. Reserve tickets online at www.stark.kent.edu/theatre or call the Kent State Stark Theatre Box Office at 330-244-3348, Mondays through Fridays from 1 to 5 p.m.

Directing Anton in Show Business is Kent State Stark Assistant Professor of Theatre and Theatre Director Brian Newberg. Louis Williams is the scenic and lighting designer, Susan Blurton is the costume designer and Ron Jarvis is the sound designer.