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After a nearly yearlong planning process, 5X����’s College of Nursing and the MetroHealth System have collaborated to now offer clinical experiences aboard Metro Life Flight to Kent State graduate nursing students in the acute care nurse practitioner concentration. The new clinical experiences started this fall semester.

5X���� held its annual Veterans Day observance on Thursday, Nov. 7, at 11 a.m. on the Student Green at Risman Plaza. The outdoor program included a flag-raising ceremony conducted by a joint color guard from the Army and Air Force ROTC programs, and remarks from Kent State President Lester A. Lefton.

5X���� senior music performance major Yang Zeng has been offered a contract to be part of the first violin section of the Akron Symphony. Zeng, originally from Kunming, Yunnan, China, has been a student at Kent State’s Hugh A. Glauser School of Music since 2010. He started studying music at age 6.

For the second year in a row, 5X����’s TV2 has taken top honors in the College Media Association’s (CMA) Pinnacle Awards, earning the 2013 TV Station of the Year award at the CMA National College Media Convention in New Orleans. TV2 is Kent State’s nationally award-winning, high-definition digital TV station. The Agenda, TV2’s topical comedy-satire show, also won Best TV Entertainment Program.

Husband-and-wife duo Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, who combine journalism and activism in their unique brand of reporting centered on human rights abuses and advocacy, were the featured presenters at the fourth 5X���� Presidential Speaker Series on Nov. 14 in the Kent Student Center Ballroom. Kristof and WuDunn are the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism for their coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square democracy movement.

5X���� celebrated its Homecoming on Saturday, Oct. 5. This year’s Homecoming theme, “New and Old, Forever Blue and Gold,” honored Kent State’s past while looking forward to the university’s future. The Golden Flashes lost 38-24 to Northern Illinois in a rematch of last year's Mid-American Conference Championship Game.

Scholar of the Month Jill Kawalec Associate Professor and Division Head of the Department of Research College of Podiatric Medicine 1996-present

A community celebration of the solid partnership between 5X���� and the city of Kent, represented by the new 5X���� Esplanade extension that now connects the university to downtown Kent, will take place Friday, Oct. 4, starting at 3:30 p.m. The celebratory event will be held, rain or shine, at the new University Esplanade arch near Main and Willow streets in Kent. It is free and open to members of the public, and refreshments will be served.

5X���� has earned a coveted spot in the first-tier list in the Best National Universities category with its inclusion in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges by U.S. News & World Report. Kent State is the only public university in Northeast Ohio to make the first tier. This is the third time in four years that Kent State has appeared on the first tier of the Best National Universities rankings.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, spoke to a capacity crowd at the third 5X���� Presidential Speaker Series on Sept. 25 in the Kent Student Center Ballroom. High demand claimed all tickets to the free talk within days of Tyson’s announced Kent State appearance. To accommodate the strong interest in the event, Tyson’s talk was simulcast in the Kent Student Center Kiva, which also was filled to capacity.