Fall 2019

Youngstown State University – a Magazine for Alumni and Friends, is published twice annually for YSU alumni, faculty and staff by the YSU Office of Marketing & Communications.

Home Sweet Home

One of the first sights that greets visitors who enter Buechner (pronounced “Beat-ner”) Hall is a collection of spindles that extends to the ceiling, one of its many historical charms. The private female residence hall that is home to 72 women may be one of the best kept secrets on campus, so Y Magazine asked Gail Keaty, 1975, a former Buechner resident who has worked there in various roles for 44 years, for a tour. Read more

Excellence Through Education

Even before the Mahoning Valley took a manufacturing hit last year, YSU was working on ways to provide more research and educational opportunities for its students; spur workforce development in the community; foster cross-collaborative interdisciplinary projects between STEM, business, healthcare, the arts and other fields; and stimulate the regional economy. Read more

WYSU at 50

Speaking for the YSU Board of Trustees and President Albert Pugsley on the very first broadcast of 88.5 WYSU-FM, which occurred on Oct. 23, 1969, at 10 a.m., William Coffield, YSU vice president for Academic Affairs, promised that WYSU would bring to the community, “carefully selected educational programs, with specific attention to classical music.” Read more

Goodbye Spring

After a year of searching for the right artist to illustrate a children’s book, a chance encounter in Bliss Hall led to the discovery of Justine Mitcham, a YSU senior from Poland majoring in Interdisciplinary Art. But Patrick O’Leary, associate professor of Human Ecology, didn’t meet Mitcham at first. It was her artwork, created from layered paper, that caught his eye as he walked past a display case in Bliss Hall, home to YSU’s Cliffe College of Creative Arts and Communication. He knew right away this was the style he had been seeking for his book, Goodbye, Spring! Read more

Featured

Provost to alumni: "We have a foundation for greatness"

YSU’s new provost has a message for the university’s 104,000-plus alumni—we want you back. “I’d like to see our alumni more engaged at the university, more involved in service projects, more connected to our students,” said Brien Smith, who became YSU’s chief academic officer earlier this year.
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8 ÷ 2 (2+2) = ?

YSU Mathematics Professor Anita O’Mellan was a kindergartener in Danville, Ill., when she decided she wanted to be a teacher. (Well, except for a brief time when she thought it’d be cool to be a truck driver like in the hit TV show of the time, “B.J. and the Bear,” about a trucker and his chimpanzee. But we digress...) It was in the fourth grade that she honed in on math, when her teacher told her that she could make up her own numbers for math problems and solve them. Read more

That’s amore!

When Alyssa Falcone walked on the YSU campus, you have to think Helga Ives was smiling from the great beyond.

An award-winning teacher and researcher of Italian language, literature and culture, Falcone came to YSU this summer as the inaugural Ives Visiting Professor in the Humanities, a first-of-its-kind faculty position for YSU, endowed by the late David and Helga Ives. Read more

Psych Prof Writes Love Letter to Her Alma Mater

“I wanted to write my love letter to YSU describing how special the experience continues to be in my professional life,” said Sarah Kollat, who graduated from YSU in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. Read more

Readership grows

It’s not the kind of headline most Americans are used to reading given the challenges facing today’s newspaper industry.

Yet at a time when local newspapers are reducing publication days or moving towards online only distribution, The Villages Daily Sun tells a different story under the leadership of alumnus Adam Rogers, 2010, BA, Telecommunication Studies. Read more

Collaboration is key

It was clear from the time she graduated from YSU with a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science in 1989, at age 17, and an MS in Mathematics at age 18, that Eunice Santos was going places. Now a few months into her role as dean of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Santos looks back fondly at how her YSU roots formed the foundation for her future. Read more

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