Read Review Newsletter Fall 2026

People, Programs and the Stories that Connect Them

Table of Contents

• From the Director
• She Came as A Guest. She Came Back to Welcome Others
• Ten Students, one trip to Cuba, and the idea behind the Center
• Carrying the work forward: honoring Ken Kushner and Linda Robertson
• In memory of Dr. Raj Aggarwal
• Looking Ahead: Preparing for the Read Center’s 40th Anniversary (2027)
• “A home away from home”: four questions for Ozi
• Two programs, many points of connection
• Fulbright pre-academic training
• In Nigeria: 30 faculty, four days, and a plan to take home
• The institute team
• Your story belongs in the 40th
• Closing

Ten students, one trip to Cuba, and the idea behind the Center

By Peter Oyewole |  Edited for length from Peter’s article

Gerald H. Read. Series 2: Photographs- 1960s-2000s. University Photographs Collection. Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives.

While still a student, Gerald Howard Read led 10 university students on a study tour to Cuba. He kept going for the rest of his career. Long before the Center bearing his name opened in 1987, Read was organizing international study tours and reciprocal visits because he believed that meeting people, entering their schools and communities, and listening to their experiences could change how educators understood the world.

Read was born in Akron in 1913 and came to Kent State in 1932 to study history, Spanish, and education. Cuba stayed with him: it shaped both his master’s thesis and his doctoral dissertation at The Ohio State University. After teaching Spanish and serving as a junior high school principal, he joined Kent State in 1943 and became a professor of comparative education in 1948.The Daily Kent Stater, May 13, 1959: Read’s colleagues name him the university’s most distinguished faculty member. Series 2: Photographs- 1960s-2000s. University Photographs Collection. Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives.

His reach went well beyond Kent. With fellow educator William Brickman, Read helped organize international seminars for educators and helped found what became the Comparative and International Education Society. He served as its first secretary treasurer and edited early issues of its newsletter. He also contributed to Kappa Delta Pi and to the early development of what became the World Council of Comparative Education Societies, authored or co-authored more than 55 publications, received Kent State’s first President’s Medal in 1969, and later received a Fulbright award to Ecuador. 

The Daily Kent Stater, May 13, 1959: Read’s colleagues name him the university’s most distinguished faculty member. Series 2: Photographs- 1960s-2000s. University Photographs Collection. Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives.

Figures attributed to his obituary suggest that more than 10,000 people joined the study tours he helped organize and that several hundred international scholars came to the United States through his efforts. Many were educators who brought their experiences home to students and colleagues. His legacy also lives in less visible acts of generosity. He and his wife, Victoria, supported scholarships and international education, and colleagues recalled the personal help he gave to graduate students and others involved in his programs.

The Read Endowment established the Center in 1987. Nearly 40 years later, the destinations, tools, and programs have changed. Read’s guiding idea has not: people learn more deeply about the world when they have the chance to learn with one another.

Carrying the work forward: honoring Ken Cushner and Linda Robertson

Gerald Read gave the Center its name and its purpose. The directors who followed turned that purpose into four decades of programs, partnerships, and friendships. As we approach our 40th year, we honor two of them.

Ken Cushner

Ken Cushner has spent more than 40 years traveling and learning with students and teachers on all seven continents. He joined Kent State in 1987, the year the Center opened, and stayed until 2015, serving as a professor, as associate dean, as executive director of international affairs, and as a director of the Read Center. He twice directed the Consortium for Overseas Student Teaching, which places future teachers in classrooms abroad, held Fulbright awards to Poland and Sweden, and is the author or co-author of nine books, including Human Diversity in Education, a textbook now in its 11th edition.

Much of Ken’s recent teaching has happened at sea. He has sailed six times with Semester at Sea, first as director of its Teachers at Sea program in the summers of 2010 and 2011, then as intercultural specialist and later director of Global Studies on voyages in 2017, 2019, 2022, and 2024. He wrote a handbook for post-port reflection that later teaching teams have adopted, and he serves as an advisory committee member to the Semester at Sea board.

A founding fellow and past president of the International Academy for Intercultural Research, Ken received the Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025. Since retiring from Kent State in 2015, he and his wife, Hyla, have brought the world into Ohio classrooms, where they are known as the “Global Grandparents,” and Ken continues to support teachers at the Orkeeswa School, a Maasai community school in northern Tanzania.

Read more about Ken: A Lifetime of Intercultural Learning (Semester at Sea)

Linda Robertson came to Kent State after 25 years as a public school teacher and administrator. She earned her Ph.D. in higher education administration here and stayed for a 20-year career at the Read Center, which she went on to direct. Through Fulbright and other programs, she brought teachers and visiting professors from around the world to Kent, and those visitors carried global understanding into area schools and the wider community.

Linda was principal investigator of the U.S. Department of State’s International Leaders in Education Program for all 13 years it ran, and she was a founder of the Tigris Euphrates Initiative of Cooperation. Kent State recognized her with the Daniel Mahony Award for Social Responsibility in 2016. Her name continues in the Center’s work through the Dr. Linda Robertson Innovation Fund, which supports climate action and sustainable practices in international initiatives, research, and education abroad.

If you worked, studied, or traveled with Ken or Linda, we would love to hear your story and see your photos as part of the anniversary. We are also gathering memories of two people from the Center’s earliest years: Marion Korllos, Gerald Read’s longtime colleague, and J. Arch Phillips Jr., a founding member of the Center.

In memory of Dr. Raj Aggarwal

The Read Center lost a generous friend this summer with the passing of Dr. Raj Aggarwal.

Raj established the Aggarwal Blackburn visiting scholar endowment at the Center to honor two mothers: his own and his wife’s. The program that carries their names, Pushpa V. Aggarwal and Minta L. Blackburn, has brought more than 50 visiting scholars to the Center to work alongside our students, colleagues, and program participants.

His gift is still at work. This summer’s Aggarwal Blackburn Scholar, Professor Oğuzhan Yılmaz, is featured in the story that follows. Each scholar who comes to Kent through the program carries Raj’s generosity, and the memory of the two women it honors, a little further.

We are grateful for all that Raj gave the Center, and we extend our deepest sympathy to his family.

Looking Ahead: Preparing for the Read Center’s 40th Anniversary (2027)

As we look toward the future, we are also excited to share that the Read Center is beginning preparations for a major milestone: our 40th Anniversary in 2027.

Over the past four decades, the Read Center has served as a hub for international engagement at Kent State—supporting global partnerships, exchange programs, faculty

development, student opportunities, and intercultural learning experiences that have shaped generations of educators and leaders.

In the coming year, we will be working to identify meaningful ways to celebrate this legacy, honor our alumni and partners, and highlight the remarkable impact of international education across Kent State and beyond. We look forward to sharing more as planning continues—and we welcome ideas from our community as we prepare to celebrate this important anniversary.

“A home away from home”: four questions for Ozi

Professor Oğuzhan Yılmaz, known to us as Ozi, joined the Center this summer as a visiting Aggarwal Blackburn Scholar. A professor and vice dean at Erzincan Binali Yıldırım University in Türkiye, he studies children’s literature and Turkish education. While he was here he worked with both summer programs and collaborated with Amanda on conference proposals. We asked him about the visit and what comes next.

Oğuzhan Yılmaz at the Kent State University gateway this summer.

Q  What is one moment from your time at Kent that has stayed with you?

What stayed with me most was the feeling of being welcomed from the very beginning. The Global Education Department made Kent feel like a home away from home through their kindness, hospitality, and constant support. The conversations in Moulton Hall, shared activities, and informal moments with colleagues made me feel that I was not simply a visiting scholar, but genuinely part of the Kent State community.

Q  You worked with English language educators and incoming Fulbright students. What did the two groups teach you?

The two summer cohorts were one of the most special parts of my time at Kent. Meeting teachers from different parts of the world, listening to their stories, and sharing ideas with them reminded me how much we can learn from one another. Despite coming from very different contexts, we shared many of the same hopes for our students. I left those conversations with new ideas, new friendships, and a wider perspective. 

The Fulbright pre-academic cohort at the freshly painted Rock on Front Campus this summer.

Q  Your research looks at the challenges children face in stories. What question in that work interests you most right now?

The question I keep returning to is: Whose stories become visible, and whose remain absent? My current research focuses particularly on migration-themed children’s literature. Although more books about migration are being published, greater visibility does not necessarily mean greater diversity. I am interested in whose migration experiences, identities, languages, and perspectives are represented—and which ones remain outside the story.

Q  Where would you like the conference proposals and our collaboration to take us next?

I hope the conference proposals are only the beginning of a longer collaboration. What started during my summer at Kent has already developed into shared research questions and new ideas. I would love to see this grow into conference presentations, strong publications, and future projects connecting our different academic and cultural contexts—and, most importantly, continuing the friendships and intellectual exchange that began at Kent.

Two programs, many points of connection

KSU Exchange: Integrating Innovative and Emerging Technologies into the English Language Classroom  |  June 11 to 25

Approximately 25 English language educators came to Kent to explore innovative and emerging technologies for English language teaching. Sessions on campus, visits with schools and community partners, micro teaching, and action planning gave them ways to test ideas and adapt them for their own classrooms. A Friendship Family dinner and time in Northeast Ohio made the exchange personal as well as professional. The program was supported by FHI 360 and the U.S. Department of State’s Office of English Language Programs.

Fulbright pre-academic training |  July 11 to August 8

Thirty incoming Fulbright students spent four weeks at Kent preparing for graduate study in the United States. The program combined 42 hours of academic English with leadership seminars, campus and community experiences, and preparation for their destination institutions. It was administered with the Institute of International Education.

In Nigeria: 30 faculty, four days, and a plan to take home

In October the Read Center’s work travels to Tai Solarin Federal University of Education (TASFUED) in Nigeria for the Faculty Innovation Institute, a program for early career faculty. Thirty participants, the top applicants, met online for a virtual opening on October 15 and then gathered in person from October 27 to 30.

The institute was built around doing. Each participant developed a Faculty Innovation Plan, an idea or project of their own to carry forward. Amanda co-facilitated with three Nigerian colleagues, Dr. Kayode Adewale (Kent State Fulbright TEA Alumni), Professor Caroline Emeka-Ogbonna (Kent State Fulbright Scholar Alumni), and Olalekan Adeeko, who took turns leading each day. Her own sessions focused on grants and international collaboration. Read Center intern Sadiq Mahmoud, a master’s student in Kent State’s higher education program, worked with the team on the institute. The team also worked with TASFUED’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Samuel Oladipo, and Professor Adefunke O. Ekine, Director of the university’s Directorate of Research and External Relations.

The institute team

The work did not end on the last day. Participants are now in a 60-Day Sprint to put their plans into motion, and we look forward to sharing what they build.

Gerald Read spent his career bringing educators together across borders to learn from one another. Nearly 40 years after the Center opened, that is still how we work.

Teaching Without Borders: from pilot to microcredential

This spring, Teaching Without Borders brought together 24 Kent State preservice teachers and 24 educators from other countries to plan and teach lessons together. The experience gave participants a chance to compare classroom contexts, work through ideas with an international partner, and reflect on their teaching.

Teaching Without Borders is now a microcredential. Participants will build practical skills in international collaboration while working toward a lesson they can use in their future classrooms. We’ll share dates, eligibility, and application details for the next cohort soon.

Your story belongs in the 40th

Our team is in the archives, gathering photographs and memories as we prepare to celebrate the Center’s 40th year. The archives only go so far. What we most want to know is what happened after an exchange or partnership ended. Did a classroom practice change? Did a friendship continue? Did a visit lead to a new project?

If you have a memory, a photograph or a person we should recognize, please submit it through our anniversary form. A few sentences is plenty. We will share more about the anniversary gathering as plans are confirmed.

Closing

As always, we are grateful for the faculty, partners, alumni, and supporters who make this work possible. The Read Center remains committed to expanding global learning opportunities, strengthening intercultural understanding, and building impactful partnerships that benefit Kent State and communities around the world.

We look forward to a vibrant summer of international activity on campus and beyond—and we welcome your ideas, collaborations, and continued engagement.

With appreciation, 

M. Amanda Johnson, Ph.D. 
Director, Gerald H. Read Center for International and Intercultural Education 
Kent State University