Warren celebrates KSU, ‘imagines’ future in first State of the University address
By Richie Mulhall & Ian Klein
Full text of the State of the University Address
Full video of the State of the University Address
With a scratchy voice but a warm smile, Warren highlighted and celebrated Kent State’s success stories throughout the past year and revealed her hopeful plans for the future during her State of the University address last Thursday.
Warren, who was appointed KSU’s new president in July, delivered her first State of the University address Nov. 19 in the Kent Student Center Kiva as Kent State faculty, staff, students and members of the community gathered to hear Warren’s address, which was themed “Celebrating Today, Imagining Tomorrow.”
Provost Todd Diacon began the event by introducing senior football standout Jordan Italiano, who was recently named College Football’s Smartest Player by NFL.com. Italiano welcomed the crowd and introduced Warren to the podium.
Warren, who apologized for her noticeably hoarse voice after fighting a recent bout of laryngitis, began her first State of the University address by thanking the Kent State students, faculty and staff in attendance.
She began her speech by she discussing the “trying times” in higher education, such as the rising cost of a college degree, increasing challenges to teaching faced by faculty members and compounding struggles of staff members to find a voice in the community.
Warren said she understands these real challenges and perceptions, and said the path to becoming a better university derives directly from students and faculty and starts right here on Kent State’s campus.
“I want everyone in this community to know that you do matter,” Warren said.
Warren spent the first part of her address discussing and reviewing a lengthy list of Kent State’s wide range of accomplishments and celebrations over the last year, including many accolades of the university and its members. Warren underscored students, faculty, programs and university-affiliated groups who made these major accomplishments.
Warren also highlighted successes the university should take pride in, such as shattering student-enrollment and retention records, elevating the academic quality of this year’s freshmen class, posting a student-athletes record-high 3.189 cumulative GPA celebrating the 45th anniversary of May 4, opening new facilities such as the Aeronautics and Technology Building and David and Peggy Edmonds Baseball and Softball Training Facility and making it possible for 948 students to travel to 60 countries in 2015 as part of Kent State’s Education Abroad program.
Warren said the success stories she shared were just small samples of the positive direction toward which Kent State is headed since she assumed last fall.
KSU celebrations (words taken directly from Warren’s speech):
- Professor of Physics Declan Keane and Professor of Chemical Physics Jonathan Selinger were named fellows of the American Physical Society for their exceptional contributions to physics. How exceptional? Fellowship in the society is limited to no more than one-half of 1 percent of its members.
- Associate Professor of Economics Lockwood Reynolds was ranked among the top 100 economists worldwidewhose first publication was five or fewer years ago.
- Last year, the National Endowment for the Humanities funded three projects in Ohio. Our Institute for Applied Linguistics was the only university recipient. The grant brought college teachers here from across the nation to learn how literature in translation can build cross-cultural understanding. The program was led by Institute Director Françoise Massardier-Kenney and Professor of Modern and Classical Language Studies Brian Baer.
- Dean of the College of the Arts John Crawford-Spinelli was elected president of the International Council of Fine Arts Deans.
- A panel of fashion-world icons chose fashion major Jay Lewis to display his modern, fairy tale design at JCPenney’s flagship store in Manhattan.
- The Public Relations Society of America inducted Associate Professor of Public Relations Michele Ewing into its elite College of Fellows. She advises Kent State’s chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America, which was named America’s most Outstanding Chapter.
- Professors of psychology Joel Hughes and David Fresco received a $3.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. They will explore stress management through meditation and other strategies that could reduce the reliance on medication to treat high blood pressure.
- Professor of Nursing Mary Lou Ferranto is director of the B.S.N. Program at Kent State Salem. During spring break, she and two of her students — Sheila Daniels and Mathew Duck — traveled to Haiti’s most remote villages. They provided medical care to more than 1,000 individuals.
- Associate Dean Isaac Richmond Nettey, in the College of Applied Engineering, Sustainability and Technology, received the University Aviation Association’s William A. Wheatley Award. The award recognizes his outstanding contributions to aerospace education.
- WKSU reporters M.L. Schultze and Amanda Rabinowitz — and student intern Lyndsey Schley — received first-place awards from the National Federation of Press Women for feature stories and special programming.
- Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Alfreda Brown was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.
- Robin Bonatesta, a double major in fashion and computer science, was one of 58 students nationwide to be named a University Innovation Fellow by the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation. The honor allowed her to explore ways to spark campus change.
- Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Min-Ho Kim received more than $1.8 million from the National Institutes of Health. The grant supports his development of a nanotechnology-based means of treating chronic wounds.
- And the Kent Clarks, a student a capella group, filled us with pride when they were invited to perform at the White House for President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.
“Literally thousands of you expressed your views during the Listening Tour, One University Commission, Be Bold campaign and the Strategic Visioning initiative,” Warren said. “As a result, our community will begin 2016 with a clear vision—a shared vision—of who we are, where we are headed and most importantly, why. I really do think that our mission statement that we’ve created together does an outstanding job of expressing our institutional ‘why,’”
Halfway through her speech, Warren recommitted the university’s efforts to the strategic vision , which is “to be a community of change agents whose collective commitment to learning sparks epic thinking, meaningful voice, and invaluable outcomes to better our society.”
Warren made it clear that the university as a whole should make it a point to know how students want to make a difference in the world after college and what Kent State can do to fulfill that purpose.
“I think we must be the academic equivalent of Match.com, doing everything we can to help our students find their purpose and marry it to a professional passion because we know that’s when true success and fulfillment occur,” Warren said.
Warren said Kent State, a learning community that aims to “make a profound, real-world difference,” wishes to educate young minds to learn with the goal of changing the world. However, Warren said she feels the diminishing value of higher education in society today continues to be “dissected, debated and doubted.”
From there Warren addressed concerns among many that the rising cost of college is becoming too expensive and the powers that be in higher education are out of touch with the world.
Although college, in essence, is designed and structured with the goal of preparing students for careers and finding a job in the marketplace, Warren said the value of higher education extends much further beyond job preparation for “lifelong learners.”
“I want to assure everyone who is choosing a major, it still makes the most sense to find your unique why and follow your passion,” Warren said. “It’s fine to think about a career in terms of earning potential, but it’s my belief it’s a lost opportunity to make that the sole basis for choosing a major.”
Warren said her passion, for example, is helping students find and follow their passion.
“I believe higher education helps students become what sociologist Tim Clydesdale calls the ‘purposeful graduate,’” Warren said. “His book of the same name shows the powerful benefits that result when we provide a college experience that is based more on a calling than a career path.”
Warren stressed that narrowing students’ range when determining a major is not condusive to all the academic opportunities available to them. She wants the institution to pinpoint what aspect of the field “ignites” students’ passion.
Through multiple anecdotes of Kent State students pursuing and achieving their passions, such as Andrew Konya, a Kent State student who created the app “reMesh,” and Rachel McClain, first generation college student and nursing major who plans to join the Peace Corps after graduation, Warren demonstrated her point that students can be successful when they work toward a meaningful future by pursuing their passion.
“When the traditional work of career preparation is inspired with a sense of working toward really a higher purpose – a purpose beyond salary and status,” Warren said. “Yet the results often do include the former and the latter.”
Warren said she wants to make it her goal to encourage students not to just settle on a major, but to identify specifically what they wish to do in their respective field of study.
She expressed the university’s new vision, stating her “desire to be a community that comes together to create new knowledge, meaningful change and purposeful graduates that will better our society.”
“Purposeful graduates find lifelong joy in meaningful and productive lives that they lead after graduation,” Warren said. “So what could be better than that?”
Warren’s message of fostering “purposeful graduates” was the turning point of her speech, as Warren shifted her focus to the future, divulging her plans to change Kent State, which include driving retention and graduation rates up.
She even promised to dance on Risman Plaza when the school reaches the goal of an 85-percent first-year retention rate and a 65-percent, six-year graduation rate, a feat Warren thinks will be reached by the end of the year.
“And you’ve heard me challenge our community to double our research funding and to quadruple our endowment,” Warren said. “There are truly laudable goals. They are goals that we are going to strive and try to reach.
Warren didn’t offer any concrete plans for implementing any of her goals, but instead focusing more on presenting all the ways the university could improve.
To conclude her State of the University Address, Warren dared those in attendance to dream about how the community might “create a bold, brilliant and illuminating future we have envisioned together.”
Warren asked the audience to imagine that nationwide and worldwide, people think of Kent State in conversations about “academic excellence, innovation and leadership.”
Since day one, Warren has emphasized globally rebranding Kent State University so that the northeast Ohio school well-known in this area of the country can become renowned not only in this small sliver of the country, but also on a larger, more national scale.
“Imagine that the world knows what we know – that Kent State is among the best of American research universities that focus on the distinctive balance and blend of teaching, research and creative excellence, and that we are home to outstanding faculty who are as committed to teaching and learning as they are to discovery,” Warren said.
Warren then called on faculty members to come together in their own respective learning communities to devote their combined efforts to “explore the best ideas for meaningful courses and classroom experiences.”
“Imagine that our students –this is going to be cool – in their freshman year declaring a mission as well as a major,” Warren said. “As part of choosing a major, we would ask them to articulate what is the impact that you want to make on this world and what are you interested in doing when you leave here.”
Warren assured the audience the Kent State has already established itself as a “shining exemplar” of the best higher education has to offer, and promised to continue improve a growing, expanding university.
“Truly imagine a re-imagined undergraduate education at Kent State University, one that is led by our outstanding faculty on every Kent State campus – scholars who are devoted to teaching and learning, as well as research, and those scholars who really know the best there is to offer in classroom experiences, co-curricular experiences and what truly makes that purposeful graduate,” Warren said.
KSU faculty, staff protest for new, fair contracts
While Warren delivered her speech inside the Kiva, outside the Kiva, tenured KSU faculty and staff held a peaceful protest to voice their opinions regarding a contractual dispute with administration.
Members of the the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which is the academic labor union represented at Kent State, protested outside with picket signs and informational flyers before Warren gave her State of the University address.
“We usually have been able to negotiate fairly and get decent contracts, but this year the fact is that administration just decided not to not negotiate, and they are set on a contract for us that we don’t think is fair” KSU psychology professor and protester Josefina Grau said. “We’re trying to pressure them to at least negotiate with us for a fair contract.”
The protest was held in response to halted contract negotiations between the university and union, according to a recent report on KentWired. The Stater reported in September that contract negotiations between the university and the Kent State chapter of the professors’ union were stalled due to both sides being unable to reach an agreement. Now members are deliberating taking an online vote to potentially authorize a strike.
“We hope we don’t get to [a strike], but they need to understand that we’re serious, and if that means we need to go to strike, we need to go to strike,” Grau said.
The AAUP-KSU and university were involved in negotiating a working contract, and according to several members of the union, a fair deal has yet to be reached. Both sides are too far apart, as the university representatives will not agree to the union’s terms the union is asking for.
Liz Smith-Pryor, a KSU history professor, said she finds the administration’s unwillingness to budge on issues of salary and insurance “disturbing.”
“I believe unfortunately that the university’s administration doesn’t respect the people who day after day go to the classroom, work hard with students, grade papers and exams and contribute a lot to the university’s mission,” she said.
If a new collective bargaining between faculty and the university cannot be reached, more than 800 tenure-track faculty members could voluntarily partake in strike.
It is unclear what a faculty strike would look like, as university spokesman Eric Mansfield said the university cannot comment on the progress of contract negotiations.
It’s important to note, though, that shared sentiment among many faculty, staff and students was that Warren was perceived to be more receptive to the community’s needs and concerns than former President Lester Lefton, but in Smith-Pryor’s view, Warren has failed to live up to expectations.
“At the time she was hired, there seemed to be this sense that the relationship between the administration and faculty had been pretty difficult under President Lefton and that she was a breath of fresh of fresh air,” she said. “Unfortunately – and I don’t know really know why – I would have to say she has not been. In terms of her stance toward faculty, I have not been impressed.”