A tale of two campuses

While a top University of Akron officer was explaining  how the school was desperately trying to reverse its enrollment losses with initiatives short of a national military draft, rival Kent State University boasted  of continued growth.

KSU's latest numbers in the Beacon Journal reported a record high of  3,045 new enrollees for the spring semester, numbers that have grown for seven consecutive years.  Total population for the school's  seven regional campuses in 2015 was 41,005. The school  attributed some  of the good news to an increase in international students.

Meantime, Crain's Cleveland Business carried a less  positive picture  by Lawrence Burns, UA vice president of advancement,  that set out several channels for the school's efforts to recruit students - including having some of them urge their off-campus friends so set foot in a Zippy classroom.  The whole tone of the Burns article seemed to say,  "We're doing the best we can, folks".

Crain's article noted UA's enrollment  was down 600 from March a year ago.

One factor in the decline, Burns said, could be negative media reports from faculty, contributors, alums   and others  while  the campus turmoil  has grown since the arrival on campus of President Scott Scarborough in June 2014.

What Team Scarborough has yet to acknowledge is that  you can't  fix UA's image problems with feel-good public relations, trustee silence, nor students asking their friends to join as if it were a fraternity or sorority.

At KSU: A vision with a healthier outlook

November did produce a happier note  from a nearby university campus with Kent State President Beverly Warren's  asserted goal to  make her school "America's healthiest university".  She devoted a lot of her first State of the University speech  to her vision of a place where physical fitness counts.

For me it was a refreshing departure from the flood of defensive metrics that have  been pouring from the lips of the management team that's running the University of Akron these days.   Sorry, Ohio's Polytechnic University.  How could I have forgotten?

In case you missed the report in the Beacon Journal,   Warren's fitness landscape ranged from concerns about processed food,  to fuller exercise routines to  health insurance discounts for those who participate in the programs.

She also talked of encouraging students to have a positive mission in life that could lead, say,  a geology student working toward society's "access to clean water" and other "positive impacts on the environment".

I haven't heard much of that kind of talk from the upper reaches of higher education  of late.    But who would disagree that a learning experience must embrace  all of those who enter the outside world from the campus with a diploma in one hand as well as a grip by the other hand on the critical  issues we all face today.

So, thank you, President Warren.  There are some of us in these parts who needed that  lift from a titled educator.

Akron native Gary Pinkel heads off the field

Gary Pinkel, the Kenmore High School-KSU alum and one of college football's most successful coaches, is ending his distinguished gridiron career after the current season at the University of Missouri.  He announced his resignation following the  chaotic week at the school in which he defended the successful decision by black members of the Tigers football team  to boycott  this week's game   unless the school president resigned.

Pinkel, 63, has been treated for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and said he had been cleared by doctors to continue his long coaching  career.  Still, although the treatment would not interfere with his coaching job,  he said he wanted to spend more time with his family.

During his 15 years at Missouri, he was the winningest coach in that school's history.  (117-71) His teams went to bowls in ten of those years.    He was  equally successful as the coach at Toledo University.  In 1995,  the Rockets were undefeated  (one tie), and won the Las Vegas bowl.

He added to his laurels off the field when he stepped up to support his players in the racial  protests.

No better time to wind up a career than when you are ahead  - way ahead. During the game,  and otherwise.

From Ardi to today's knuckle-walkers

I'VE JUST finished reading National Geographic's report on the discovery in Ethiopia of Ardi, the pre-historic hominid who will be, um, around 4.4 million years old on her next birthday. The patient research by Owen Lovejoy, a comparative anatomist at Kent State University, contributed greatly to the findings of the dig that pushed back the evolutionary calendar for upright creatures another million or so years. Now, I wonder if we can spare a few moments for some devolutionary research to determine why so many politicians with wacky thoughts have regressed to walking around on their knuckles these days on their way to the November elections.