YSU President David C. Sweet won the 2009 Chief Executive Leadership Award from Region V of the Center for the Advancement and Support of Education. The award honors a chief executive for outstanding visionary leadership. See News Brief.

Below are a variety of items about upcoming events and other news notes on the campus of Youngstown State University:

• President Sweet wins CEO Leadership Award
• YSU names new head of human resources
• JP Morgan Chase Foundation grant benefits science, art initiatives
• YSU faculty/staff awards, presentations, publications
  

Calendar
Monday, Dec. 21, 11 a.m. YSU ladies hoopsters play Bowling Green in Beeghly Center.

Tuesday, Dec. 22, 7:05 p.m. YSU menÕs basketball team plays High Point in Beeghly Center.

Thursday and Friday, Dec. 24 and 25. University closed.

President Sweet wins CEO Leadership Award
David C. Sweet, president of Youngstown State University, has won the 2009 Chief Executive Leadership Award from Region V of the Center for the Advancement and Support of Education.

The award, which honors a president, chancellor, headmaster or system head for outstanding visionary leadership, was presented at the CASE annual conference in Chicago earlier this month.

CASE is an international association of education advancement officers, including alumni administrators, fundraisers, public relations managers, publications editors and government relations officers. Region V includes Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

In presenting the award, Barb Todd, chair of CASE V and executive director of internal campaigns at Illinois State University, cited Sweet's leadership in increasing enrollment, boosting minority enrollment, forging connections with the city of Youngstown and raising more than $50 million in the university's Centennial Capital Campaign as reasons for the award.

She also said that Sweet, who joined YSU in 2000, led campaigns to fund the Andrews Student Recreation and Wellness Center and the new Williamson College of Business Administration building, and he co–facilitated the development of the internationally acclaimed Youngstown 2010 comprehensive plan.

"In a time when the economy dominates the media channels, and many small communities are stagnant, this president has kept his eye on improving the surrounding community," Todd said.

"The legacy of a great president is the footprint that he/she leaves behind in the community. This leader will be remembered in the Youngstown area as an insightful and caring community partner."

Sweet was nominated for the award by George McCloud, YSU vice president for university advancement, with the support of Provost Ikram Khawaja and U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan.

"President Sweet's vision and leadership over the past decade have helped increase YSU's visibility and standing across the region and nation," McCloud said. "He is very deserving of this recognition."

Sweet was dean of the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University for 22 years before becoming YSU's sixth president on July 1, 2000. He will retire from YSU on June 30, 2010. The YSU Board of Trustees is conducting a search for his replacement.

YSU names new head of human resources

Kevin W. Reynolds, district director of Labor and Employee Relations at Cuyahoga Community College, has been appointed the new chief human resources officer at Youngstown State University. He begins his duties on Jan. 4.

"Kevin has extensive experience and success in all areas of human resources, especially labor and employee relations, and we look forward to him joining the YSU team and moving our HR efforts forward," said Gene Grilli, YSU vice president for finance and administration. 

Reynolds was hired after a 16–member committee reviewed dozens of applications in a nationwide search. Five finalists visited campus earlier this fall, meeting with students, faculty, staff and administrators, as well as members of the YSU Board of Trustees. 

At YSU, Reynolds will manage a staff of 17 employees and will be responsible for the executive leadership of the university's human resources functions, including recruitment and employment, compensation and benefits, employee and labor relations and implementation of training programs, employment policies and procedures. 

For the past five years, Reynolds has been in charge of planning, organizing and managing labor and employee relations activities and programs for more than 3,200 employees at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. In the position, Reynolds formulated labor and employee relations strategies, negotiated and administered collective bargaining agreements, coached managers in the consistent application of contracts and policies, and managed unemployment and workers' compensation claims.

Prior to joining CCC, Reynolds was human resources administrator for the City of Lakewood, Ohio, from 2000 to 2004. The city has more than 700 full– and part–time employees. Among other duties, Reynolds administered and negotiated seven collective bargaining agreements. From 1985 to 2000, Reynolds was a senior consultant/project manager with Clemans, Nelson & Associates Inc., providing a variety of human resources and labor relations consulting services to public and private sector employers. From 1976 to 1985, he was personnel and payroll officer for the Board of County Commissioners in Cuyahoga County.

Reynolds earned a bachelor of business administration degree from Kent State University in 1972, majoring in industrial relations. He also has taken graduate–level courses in human resources and labor relations at Cleveland State University and classes in computer applications and software at Lorain County Community College. 

He is past president of the Northern Ohio International Public Management Association for Human Resources. He also is a member of the National and Ohio Public Employer Labor Relations Association, the Cleveland Society for Human Resources Management, and the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. He also is a member of the executive board of the Northeast Ohio Chapter of the Labor and Employment Relations Association. He received the 2003 Central Region IPMA–HR/CPS International Training Conference Scholarship and the 2004 Ohio GovernorÕs Excellence in WorkersÕ Compensation Award.

JP Morgan Chase Foundation grant benefits science, art initiatives
The JP Morgan Chase Foundation has presented Youngstown State University with a $40,000 grant to support Students Motivated by the Arts and Learning the Three Sciences, two educational initiatives that benefit pupils in the Youngstown City Schools and other local districts.

"We are thankful, not only for this gift but for a series of gifts from Chase," said YSU President David C. Sweet, noting that the foundation has contributed more than $232,900 to the university since 1994. "If we are going to succeed in this Valley, and in this country, we have to start earlier to get kids motivated. These programs will help us to accomplish that."

Learning the Three Sciences, a partnership between YSU's Center for Urban and Regional Studies and the Youngstown city schools, will receive $25,000. The program, which is starting its second year, presents science in the context of daily living.

Holly Burnett–Hanley, coordinator, said the program will focus on fifth–grade students at P. Ross Berry Middle School on YoungstownÕs East Side, with a curriculum that demonstrates how science applies to music, art, technology, math and physical education. Participating teachers will be asked to help develop the curriculum and then to share the program with other educators in the district.

Students Motivated by the Arts, an arts education program presented by YSU's College of Fine and Performing Arts and the Beeghly College of Education, will get $15,000. The SMARTS Center, located in the Symphony Center in downtown Youngstown, provides free arts education to students in kindergarten through high school. Kelly Bancroft is SMARTS coordinator.

"At Chase, it's really about supporting the community," said Ted Walter, Chase president for the Akron/Canton/Youngstown region. "Programs like SMARTS and Learning the Three Sciences allow us to make a real impact with our investment."

YSU faculty/staff awards, presentations, publications
Bege Bowers, associate provost, Janice Elias, interim dean of the Bitonte College of Health and Human Services, and Sharon Stringer, assessment director, conducted two accreditation workshops on "Conducting a Self–Study in Turbulent and Changing Times" at the annual meeting of the Higher Learning Commission in Chicago. Their paper on the topic was also published in the conference proceedings.

Weiqing Ge, assistant professor, Physical Therapy, published a paper titled "Position Sensitivity of Feline Paraspinal Muscle Spindles to Vertebral Movement in the Lumbar Spine" in the Journal of Neurophysiology.

Deborah Mower, assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, presented a paper, titled "The DIT, Sentimentalism, and Moral Judgment," at the 10th International Conference on Ethics Across the Curriculum at Towson University. Mower also published an article titled "Teaching Ethics Via Sympathy" in the International Journal for Applied Philosophy, and presented an invited paper titled "Situationism and the Embeddedness Model of Confucian Virtue Ethics" at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association.

Ron Shaklee, professor, Geography, presented two papers at the 13th Symposium on the Natural History of the Bahamas held in San Salvador Island. The papers were titled "The Search for San Salvador, A Cartographic Odyssey," and "A Longitudinal Study of Entombed Beach Debris at San Salvador Island, The Bahamas." Shaklee was elected to serve as co–chair of the 14th Symposium on the Natural History of the Bahamas. He also published the monograph, "In Columbus'' Footsteps: Geography of San Salvador, The Bahamas, Second Edition." The manuscript was published by the Gerace Research Centre.

Xiangjia J. Min, assistant professor, Biological Sciences, presented a paper titled "Comparative Assessment of DNA Assemblers for Assembling Expressed Sequence Tags" at the 2009 Ohio Collaborative Conference on Bioinformatics conference. The paper was also published in the conference proceedings by IEEE Computer Society Press.  

Kin P. Moy, assistant professor, Electrical Engineering Technology, with electrical and computer engineering students Stephen Moy and Ed Burden, presented and published a paper titled "Comparisons for Analysis of Electrical Low Pass Filter Utilizing Multiple Computer Simulation Software Package" at the American Society for Engineering Education's North Central Conference.

Martin Abraham, dean of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, co–authored an article, titled "Deactivation due to sulfur poisoning and carbon deposition on Rh–Ni/Al2O3 catalyst during steam reforming of sulfur–doped n–hexadecane," that was published in the journal Applied Catalysis A. His co–author was Satish L. Lakhapatri from the University of Toledo.

Diane Barnes, associate professor, History, delivered a paper titled "The Revolution within the Man: The Intellectual Emancipation of Frederick Douglass," at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, held in Springfield, Ill.

Albert Sumell, assistant professor, Economics, published a paper, titled "The Determinants of Foreclosed Property Values: Evidence from Inner City Cleveland," in the Journal of Housing Research.