April 27, 2012
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Campus Digest begins summer publication schedule

This issue of Campus Digest is the last one for the spring semester, and Digest begins its summer publication schedule – once a month in May, June and July. Summer publication dates are May 18, June 15 and July 20 with a deadline of one week before. There will be no special editions of Campus Digest. If you have announcements or events that you need to publicize between now and May 18, use Midweek instead (midweek@nku.edu, 75 words or fewer, and make sure the subject of the email has the word "Category:" in it).

Midweek's summer publication schedule – once a week Wednesdays only – begins May 9.

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Journalism workshop gives high-school students the informatics experience

Northern Kentucky University's state-of-the-art media and technology facility, Griffin Hall, will be home base to a weeklong program for area high-school students this summer.

The College of Informatics will host its fourth Journalism in the Digital Age Workshop June 18-22. Students in the workshop will experience hands-on media instruction and a mini-introduction into the world of higher education – all while having access to up-to-the-minute technology.

Digital natives will appreciate the high-tech elements of the workshop. Participants will learn to navigate cameras, microphones and keyboards under the direction of NKU's electronic media and journalism faculty, media professionals and NKU student mentors.

Workshop participants also will sample the curriculum from NKU's communication department classrooms and seek out interviews and scoops for a special digital news publication.

The workshop costs $100, which includes lunch on campus each day. Hours will be 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. June 18-21. A closing program, beginning at noon June 22 in Griffin Hall's George and Ellen Rieveschl Digitorium, will feature the work of the high-school participants.

The program also will highlight the final productions created by the NKU student mentors, who will document the week through multiple media.

Registration information is available at journalism.nku.edu/workshop. For more information, contact Michele Day, program director, at daymi@nku.edu or X-1921.

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Make the Book Connection: The Other Wes Moore

The Office of First-Year Programs and the Book Connection committee announced that the 2012 Book Connection selection is The Other Wes Moore (www.youtube.com//watch_popup?v=udQWOfALwj4), written by author, leader and youth advocate Wes Moore. More than 1,000 freshmen will read the book over the summer and fall semesters.

If you are teaching first-year courses in fall 2012, reserve your spot in the Book Connection faculty workshop being held May 18, noon-4 p.m. in FH 500. Complete this brief Surveymonkey form (www.surveymonkey.com/s/Y5WGZXS) by May 11 or message Sue Chenot (chenots@nku.edu) by May 11. Participants get a free copy of The Other Wes Moore.

Do you have prior engagements on May 18? Feel welcome to come after your events. We will be brainstorming teaching strategies in the second half of the workshop.

About The Other Wes Moore: "Two kids with the same name, living in the same city. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison for felony murder. Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation... Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a challenging and, at times, hostile world."

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Geoffrey S. Mearns named president of NKU

The Northern Kentucky University Board of Regents voted unanimously to name Geoffrey S. Mearns NKU's fifth president, effective August 1. Mearns will succeed Dr. James C. Votruba, who will retire July 31 after 15 years as NKU president.

"After a long and comprehensive national search, we feel we have found the best person in the nation to lead NKU," said Terry Mann, chair of the NKU Board of Regents. "The quality of our candidate pool and our finalists was indicative of this university's role on the national stage. Over the past 15 years, NKU has become the model of a major metropolitan university committed to academic excellence and regional stewardship. Still, our brightest days lie ahead of us, and Geoffrey Mearns is just the person to lead us there."

Mearns has served as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Cleveland State University since February 2010 and was dean and professor of law at Cleveland State's Cleveland-Marshall College of Law for four and a half years prior to that.

"I am excited by the opportunities that lie before us," Mearns said. "Northern Kentucky University is valued internally and externally as an outstanding academic institution that is an integral part of its community. There is a great deal of pride from the faculty, staff, students, alumni and the region about how far the university has come and where it is going."

As provost, Mearns oversees eight academic deans and five vice provosts. He supervises various academic support functions such as the library; student advising and student services; and faculty recruitment, retention, promotion and tenure. Cleveland State is a public university with more than 16,000 students.

An avid runner who competed at Yale University and qualified for the 1984 Olympic trials in the marathon, Mearns is no stranger to Greater Cincinnati. He said visiting NKU last week brought back fond memories of running the hills on both sides of the Ohio River when he attended Walnut Hills High School. He and wife, Jennifer, ran the bridges during their visit last week, and Mearns said he looks forward to spanning them regularly when he arrives.

"NKU's location in a major metropolitan region is one of its greatest assets," he said. "This region has so much to offer prospective students and faculty from around the commonwealth and across the country. Great things are happening in the region, and our whole family looks forward to our move to northern Kentucky."

President Votruba said Mearns will be a natural fit. "Geoff Mearns' values, professional experience and breadth of understanding of the role NKU plays in the lives of our students and our region make him ideally suited for this leadership role," Votruba said. "Under his leadership, I have no doubt that NKU will continue its momentum."

During his tenure as dean of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Mearns was actively engaged in fundraising for the college, helping to enhance its scholarship pool and overseeing an $8.8 million renovation of the law building. Under his leadership, alumni and private giving increased substantially, and the quality and diversity of the law school's class improved. He also oversaw continual improvement in the school's bar passage rates. At the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Mearns taught complex federal criminal investigations and prosecutions, criminal law and white collar crime. He previously taught at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law and New York Law School.

Prior to joining Cleveland State, Mearns was a practicing lawyer for more than 15 years, including serving as a federal prosecutor in the United States Department of Justice.

His record of community service includes serving on several judicial screening committees and serving as a trustee for several Cleveland agencies. He was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Science Community. Mearns has written numerous criminal justice articles.

Mearns earned a bachelor's degree in English from Yale University in 1981 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia in 1987. After graduating from law school, he clerked for the Hon. Boyce F. Martin, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Louisville.

He and Jennifer currently live in Shaker Heights, Ohio, with their five children.

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NKU joins First Lady and Dr. Biden to support veterans and military families

First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden have announced a commitment from nurses across the country eager to serve our veterans and military families as well as they have served us. In a broad, coordinated effort, more than 150 state and national nursing organizations and more than 500 nursing schools, including the Northern Kentucky University College of Health Professions, have committed to further educating our nation's three million nurses so they are prepared to meet the unique health needs of service members, veterans and their families.

Led by the American Nurses Association, American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, American Association of Colleges of Nursing and the National League for Nursing in coordination with the departments of veterans affairs and defense, nursing organizations and schools have committed to educating current and future nurses on how to recognize and care for veterans impacted by post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression and other combat-related issues in ways appropriate to each nurse's practice setting.

"Whether we're in a hospital, a doctor's office or a community health center, nurses are often the first people we see when we walk through the door," said Obama. "Because of their expertise, they are trusted to be the frontline of America's healthcare system. That's why Jill and I knew we could turn to America's nurses and nursing students to help our veterans and military families get the world-class care that they've earned. It's clear from today's announcement that the nursing community is well on its way to serving our men and women in uniform and their families."

"Nurses are at the center of providing lifesaving care in communities across the country – and their reach is particularly important because our veterans don't always seek care through the veterans affairs system," said Biden. "This commitment is essential to ensuring our returning service men and women receive the care they deserve."

Denise Robinson, dean of the College of Health Professions, said it is an honor to join the effort. "We are proud to show our support for providing a healthcare focus to veterans and military families for those impacted by post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries," she said. "At the College of Health Professions, I believe that this commitment will further demonstrate the high premium of care and commitment that our faculty and students devote to those in need."

The invisible wounds of war, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, have impacted approximately one in six of our troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq – more than 300,000 veterans. And since 2000, more than 44,000 of those troops have suffered at least a moderate-grade traumatic brain injury.

Veterans seeking care within the veterans affairs health system are often treated by healthcare professionals who have received extensive training in mental health issues. But the majority of veterans in the country seek care outside of the VA system – they usually visit their local hospital staffed by nurses and doctors in their communities. That's why this program will be so significant for our troops and their families. America's nurses are trusted partners in providing lifesaving and life-sustaining care in nearly every community and every setting where healthcare is delivered. They can make a dramatic and positive impact on the long-term health of hundreds of thousands of veterans. And they are eager to understand the needs of those who have served, to recognize the warning signs of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, or suicide, and to know where to send them for help.

Nursing leaders have also committed to disseminating effective models for care and to sharing the most up-to-date information on these conditions across academic and practice settings. By working to expand the body of clinical knowledge in this arena and by partnering with other healthcare providers and institutions, nursing leaders across the country will continue to advance high-quality treatment for these conditions in every community.

More than 500 nursing schools in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have committed by 2014 to:

• Educating America's future nurses to care for our nation's veterans, service members and their families facing post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression and other clinical issues.
• Enriching nursing education to ensure that current and future nurses are trained in the unique clinical challenges and best practices associated with caring for military service members, veterans and their families.
• Integrating content that addresses the unique health and wellness challenges of our nation's service members, veterans and their families into nursing curricula.
• Sharing teaching resources and applying best practices in the care of service members, veterans and their families.
• Growing the body of knowledge leading to improvements in healthcare and wellness for our service members, veterans and their families.
• Joining with others to further strengthen the supportive community of nurses, institutions and healthcare providers dedicated to improving the health of service members, veterans and their families.

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NKU report offers 101 examples of public engagement

What does public engagement look like in higher education?

At Northern Kentucky University, it looks like this: 50-plus service-learning courses per semester; thousands of volunteer hours by students each academic year; dozens of examples of applied research for community partners; a student philanthropy program that has distributed more than $500,000 to nonprofits; 35 centers and institutes that have public engagement built into their missions; a public lecture series; a regional policy forum; and a specific collaboration on P-12 initiatives in the community, including an intervention process for boosting high-school math skills for at-risk students. And the list goes on.

NKU has carefully and systematically constructed a commitment to public engagement into the university's mission, strategic plan and promotion/tenure guidelines. A newly released report, "Public Engagement: The Community is Our Classroom," profiles that commitment and includes 101 examples of public engagement at NKU.

"What distinguishes NKU is our treatment of public engagement as a core element of our academic mission," NKU President James Votruba writes in the report. "This means every college and every department is involved in this work. In addition, we have made sure that the campus is organizationally aligned to support public engagement work."

Both academic and co-curricular initiatives are among the 101 engagement examples in the publication. Here's a sample:

• Service is built into the curriculum for students seeking a doctoral degree in educational leadership. That's part of an NKU strategy to assure that public engagement is valued by graduates who have or will have classrooms of their own in our region's primary and secondary schools. How the graduate students meet the service requirement is where their creativity comes into play. One group of students partnered with a community agency, the Brighton Center, that serves inner-city families in Newport. The students created the Artistic Expression Program, a monthly event giving at-risk young adults an opportunity to express themselves through art.
• Professor Greg De Blasio's public relations class picks a client each semester and creates a PR plan. A recent client was Circus Mojo, a storefront school located in Ludlow, Ky. Former clown Paul Miller started the school to teach big-top skills while also teaching self-confidence and creativity to kids who would find their mojo through the circus arts. With a college degree in drama and a higher hilarity degree from clown college, Miller was plenty qualified to pass along the clowning arts. He was less qualified to design a PR strategy. Enter De Blasio's students, who found a little mojo of their own by applying classroom learning to a real-world challenge.
• On 100 acres owned by the Sisters of Divine Providence in Melbourne, Ky., NKU's biological sciences faculty and students are working with partners to turn a rare wetland into a living lab for ecological study. The St. Anne Wetlands Research and Education Center includes a 3,500-foot, self-guided trail complete with interpretive kiosks. The NKU team conducts research at the site and has designed teaching tools for P-12 and higher education, including a website. Other partners include NKU's Center for Applied Ecology, the Campbell County Conservation District, LaFarge Industries, the Boy Scouts, Thomas More College, Xavier University and the Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service.
• President Votruba is coauthor of Becoming an Engaged Campus: A Practical Guide for Institutionalizing Public Engagement, published last year by Jossey-Bass. He and his coauthors, NKU's provost Dr. Gail Wells and special projects director Dr. Carole Beere, are donating all proceeds to NKU's student philanthropy classes, which in turn invest the money in community nonprofits selected by the students in those classes. After a year on the market, the book had generated more than $1,400 for the classes.

To order a copy of "Public Engagement: The Community is Our Classroom," send an email to engage@nku.edu or call X-1448. Be sure to include a mailing address. To view the report online, visit civicengagement.nku.edu. You can also find additional examples of public engagement at NKU on the site's "news and events" page.

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NKU expands early assessment program in English

Northern Kentucky University has been awarded a $40,000 grant from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. The grant is part of Senate Bill 1, which encompasses planning and implementing a comprehensive process to revise Kentucky's common core content standards and related assessments.

Nancy Kersell, director of NKU's early assessment program in English, has been working with the program advisory board to expand services for bridging the gap between high-school standards and college expectations for student writing. The program's primary goal has been to enhance writing instruction to meet state mandates for improving the college readiness and eventual college success of northern Kentucky's high-school students.

"This grant will support our expansion of testing and professional development services to improve students' writing skills," said Kersell. "Through our collaboration with high-school English teachers and administrators, we are continuing to develop assessment tools for accelerated learning in literacy. Our program is designed to help prepare students to identify and refine the skills required for college-level writing or to identify the students who do not meet current statewide benchmarks."

Kersell will use the SB1 grant funds to sponsor professional development workshops for teachers on analyzing texts to improve literacy skills and effectively using technology in the classroom; to upload workshop content for online access by educators; and to provide diagnostic testing opportunities in writing for high schools.

"Under Professor Kersell's leadership, NKU is partnering with local school districts and their excellent high-school teachers to significantly improve college readiness in writing," said provost Gail Wells. "We are confident that our work together can increase the number of students who are prepared to succeed in college and achieve their dream of earning a college degree."

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NKU students elect sophomore Erik Pederson SGA president

Gumption. That's the one word Erik Pederson says his friends would probably use to describe him.

And when the 20-year-old Northern Kentucky University sophomore decided to run for student government president, they knew he'd approach it the way he does everything – full tilt. "When I decide I'm going to do something, I decide I'm going to do it to the best of my ability and I throw myself into it," he said. "And I follow through on everything that I say I will."

So Pederson joined fellow sophomore Allen Hornung, a computer information technology major from Louisville, in putting together what they call "A Plan for NKU: Taking NKU in the Right Direction." In online voting this week, NKU's student body elected Pederson and Hornung to be their voice. Pederson will assume the presidency, and Hornung the vice presidency, of NKU's Student Government Association this spring. Pederson will also serve on the NKU Board of Regents as student regent for the 2012-13 academic year.

A communication studies major from Union, Pederson is a 2010 Ryle High School graduate. He has served in SGA for two years – first as a senator and this year as executive vice president under President Dustin Robinson. He is actively involved in Alpha Phi Omega and Pi Kappa Alpha, where he has served as campus involvement chair. He also served as an orientation leader last summer.

He said despite the fact that he and Hornung are only sophomores, they are prepared for the challenges that lie before them. "I know I'm ready for this," he said. "Under the mentorship of Dustin and other administrators here at NKU, and with the senate and the executive board behind me, I know I'm ready." Among the biggest challenge they'll face, he said, is getting students more engaged. "There is a lot of apathy here," he said. "That was reflected at our presidential candidate forums and even with SGA voter turnout. There is a group of students who are very involved, but there are a lot who are apathetic."

Their "Plan for NKU" focuses on enhancing the student experience, continuing campus improvements and advocating for the university. The plan addresses a wide variety of specific issues such as NKU's meal plans; parking; campus beautification; student involvement in the planning of the university's Albright Health Center expansion; advocacy for the university in Frankfort and Washington, D.C.; pursuit of funding for a health innovations center; and college affordability.

Robinson said Pederson and Hornung are ready to lead. "Erik has been an incredibly dependable vice president," he said. "I am honored to have had the opportunity to work with him over the past year and will be proud to hand the gavel over to him at the end of the semester. He's going to do great things for the student body of NKU. I couldn't have done it without him. Beyond being vice president, he has been an amazing friend. NKU students are in good hands with Erik and Allen."

The rest of the executive cabinet elected this week includes Ali Hedges, secretary of student involvement; Victoria House, secretary of public relations; and David Trump, secretary of administration.

Twenty-five students were elected to the SGA Senate. They are: Diana Barrett, Nick Berra, Justin Bezold, Gavin Mitchell Bonar, Corbin Brown, Clayton Castle, Katie Cox, Brandi Cunningham, Corey Jay Foister, Michelle Forlenza, Dana Foster, Abby L. Gross, Jesse David Hockenberry, Tina (Christina) Hoesl, Ken Howard, Ashley Hyden, John Jose, Hannah Kolts, April Landry, Megan Murray, Brad Rogers, Dontez Smith, Chandler Taylor, Joshua Tunning, and Jesse Wynne.

Five students were elected to serve on the SGA Judicial Council. They are Joseph Cunningham, Mitchell Green, Kayla Justice, David Bonilla and Tristan Wolfe.

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