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Kent is surrounded by opportunities for community engagement— just ask School of Art alumna Francisca Ugalde Zapico. She graduated from �������� with her B.F.A. in Painting in 2005 and earned her M.A. in Arts Administration from The University of Akron. She currently works as a curator at the Institute for Human Science and Culture at the Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology at The University of Akron. Fran was born in Chile and relocated via Colombia and Puerto Rico to Ohio in 1999 and currently lives in Merriman Valley, Akron. Fran has been in...

�������� at Ashtabula associate professor Bryan Jones, Ph.D., was recently named one of ten finalists for the University’s most prestigious teaching honor, the Distinguished Teaching Award.  The award is sponsored annually by the Kent State Alumni Association and is presented to three full-time faculty members demonstrate extraordinary teaching in the classroom and the devotion to touching the lives of students. Jones has taught psychology courses on the Ashtabula Campus since 2010. “I’m honored and humbled by the nomination,” Jones said. “I think we’ve all tried to del...

Aileen LeRoy has always been passionate about language, feeling, “It’s a mystery, a science, and an art all in one.” As a junior Honors College student majoring in Teaching English as a Second Language with an Italian studies minor, much of Aileen’s college education has been focused on language studies. In addition to her major coursework, Aileen is planning to complete a Senior Honors Thesis with a linguistic focus. Currently in her thesis preparation semester, Aileen is completing initial research for her project of making a constructed language. A constructed language is “an arti...

The aroma of fresh espresso from Cafe Havelka and historical streets of downtown Vienna, Austria, have become oddly familiar to Theodore Albrecht, who has spent over 20 summers there retracing the footsteps of the famous Austrian-German composer Ludwig van Beethoven.  Albrecht is a professor of musicology in the Hugh A. Glauser School of Music at ��������. This dedicated Beethoven scholar has conducted all of Beethoven’s nine symphonies throughout his career and has studied the famous composer for years.  In 1996, Albrecht was diligently working on his original proje...

Sierra Duncan has been passionate about conservation since she first began volunteering at the Akron Zoo when she was fifteen years old. Now, a junior Honors College student with double-majors in psychology and environmental studies, as well as double-minors in anthropology and park management, Sierra’s passion for conservation is central to her Senior Honors Thesis. Sierra is currently in her thesis preparation semester, collecting research with the goal of submitting a formal thesis proposal and research question by the end of the semester. Though in the thesis preparation semester, Sierra a...

Alexandra Euwema is a third-year honors student from Springfield, Virginia, majoring in zoology. From early in her college career, Alexandra has wanted to earn a master’s degree in wildlife conservation, and this goal was a major inspiration for her Senior Honors Thesis topic. Alexandra is in her first semester of her thesis hours, using the research she completed in her preparation semester to conduct her thesis experiment and answer her research question. Focused on predation and scents in wildlife, Alexandra will be testing whether “an animal actually recognizes a predator scent as a threat...

Supporting our Asian and Asian American community members is especially needed right now. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, many of us have experienced major changes in our lives, we have experienced added stress and/or anxiety, some have lost their job or have had their work hours reduced, we have felt isolation, we have had loved ones who became ill or became ill ourselves, and some of us have lost loved ones to this disease. But with the rise in hate crimes and other incidents of anti-Asian bigotry toward the Asian and Asian American community in our country, our Asian and...

Hate has no home at ��������. Hate has no home in the College of the Arts. The College of the Arts condemns the ongoing incidents of hate, racism, xenophobia, and violence against the Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander community. In the past year, there were more than 3,800 hate incidents against persons of Asian descent in the United States and on Tuesday, eight people, including six Asian women, were murdered in the Atlanta metro area. This bigotry and violence must stop. As stated in a message from �������� president Todd Diacon, “we stand in soli...