College of Arts & Sciences

Study examines the relationship between hazing severity and group solidarity in an anonymous U.S. fraternity.

Kent State University’s newest anthropologist, Assistant Professor Aldo Cimino, Ph.D., has made it his life’s work to understand the causes and consequences of hazing, including the possible generation of solidarity. He and his co-author recently published an article on this question in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. 

Kent State Uses Geospatial Technology to Map Violence

Principal Investigator Cameron C. Lee, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Geography (within the College of Arts and Sciences) at Kent State University, was recently awarded a three-year, $387,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office and its Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections Program (MAPP). The project is titled “Excess Heat and Excess Cold Factors: Establishing a unified duration-intensity metric for monitoring hazardous temperature conditions in North America”.

Angela Neal-Barnett, Ph.D., professor in Kent State University’s Department of Psychological Sciences, developed and launched the Spirit of Motherhood Program.

Infant mortality rates in Northeast Ohio are three to five times higher for Black babies than white babies, an alarming statistic that is an issue across the country but particularly prevalent in this part of the state. A new $100,000 grant from the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation will support innovative work being undertaken at Kent State, an elite research university with the esteemed R1 designation, to address this important issue.

Image of professor Fouad and a student working in the lab

Farid Fouad, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Kent State East Liverpool, was awarded a three-year, $74,954 research grant as part of a subaward on a larger grant that his collaborators at Cleveland State University received. 

Euros

Congratulations to Political Science Professor Mark K. Cassell, Ph.D., who recently published an article and was interviewed by Mitteilungen, a publication focused on Germany’s banking system. The article discusses the central role of the publicly-held savings banks during economic and social crises including the refugee crisis in 2015 and the current Covid pandemic among other topics.

Grass after first frost

Many wonder if climate change is the reason we’ve had 'weather whiplash' or day-to-day dramatic changes from hot to cold or cold to hot. As a climate scientist, Cameron Lee, assistant professor in the Department of Geography in the College of Arts and Sciences at Kent State, gets asked this question a lot. Looking beyond just the average temperatures and statistical means, he decided to take a more analytical look at weather whiplash and add to a growing body of climate change literature examining temperature variability trends.

An aspen woodland/sagebrush shrubland ecotone. Photo by Tim Assal

Timothy Assal, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Geography, was awarded a grant as a co-principal investigator on a multi-institutional project, “Vulnerability of lower-ecotone aspen forests to altered fire regimes and climate dynamics in the northern Great Basin” (a three-year $299,842 total award with $89,600 going to Kent State), which is funded by the Northwest Climate Adaption Science Center. This collaboration includes the United States Geological Survey in Boise, Idaho, Utah State University, and the United States Bureau of Land Management.

Merrill Hall

The Kent State University Board of Trustees recently welcomed four new trustees to serve the university including Haley Crews, a graduate student in the College of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Sociology. She was appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine to a two-year term as the graduate student trustee.  

Students at the Black Lives Matter protest on campus.

Kent State has established a new school within its College of Arts and Sciences focused on the social sciences and humanities. The School of Multidisciplinary Social Sciences & Humanities will provide an academic home for innovative approaches to complex questions.