Letters to the editor

Show appreciation for your favorite teachers

To all students of Kent State:

The College of Arts and Sciences has annually since the 1970s, through its Student Advisory Council, been involved in a process of choosing three distinguished teachers to be recognized for their outstanding teaching. These students alone decide who the recipients will be. No one else from the faculty, staff or administration is ever involved in this process.

I am inviting the entire student community to consider nominating an Arts and Sciences professor you have had who has touched and inspired you to achieve your potential in their courses and has contributed to your desire to keep learning and growing as a result of your interaction with this professor.

The deadline for these nominations is 5 p.m. Friday. You can go online to our Web site at http://as.kent.edu to submit your nomination, or you can come to the college office (105 Bowman) and complete a nomination on paper, or you might find a blank nomination form on the doors or walls of various departments on the campus that can be filled out and returned to us.

The departments in our college are: anthropology, biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, English, geography, geology, history, justice studies, mathematics, modern and classical language studies, Pan-African studies, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology and sociology.

Every one of you has taken some of these courses during your college career at Kent State because these courses are at the foundation of the liberal arts education you know as your Liberal Education Requirements or LERs. These courses, coupled with your respective majors throughout the university’s eight campus-system, will enable you to become those critical and creative thinkers that are needed to be our future leaders, communicators and citizens who will demonstrate the advanced learning you are receiving here.

Your professors are the reasons that you are becoming prepared for your future role and responsibility in our society. This is your opportunity to recognize the ones who have made a difference in your life and your academic growth. I encourage you to take the time to acknowledge them and nominate them for the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Teacher Award for 2008.

E. Timothy Moore

Associate dean of advising

and undergraduate student affairs

City of Kent: Shovel sidewalks

Dear editor,

By most measures, the university did a great job dealing with last weekend’s snow storm. The city’s response, however, was less than stellar in at least one important area. As one of the many students who walk to class from off-campus, I can attest that the city did not make any effort whatsoever to clear the sidewalks. A few conscientious residents and business owners shoveled in front of their respective buildings, but that does little good when the clean areas are blockaded by a waist-high wall of dirty road snow. It’s no wonder that downtown Kent is littered with empty retail space. Business and economics majors take note: The free market will not shovel the snow – that’s what taxes are for. And to Kent City Hall: Get it together and recognize the needs of your community. Make an effort to coordinate a plan that incorporates taxes, merchant cooperation and local residents. Here’s a real quick idea: Local businesses contribute to a fund that supplements and expands city plowing operations. All it takes is one or two guys and a riding mower with a plow on the front. This is common practice in lots of successful downtown/neighborhood economies (think Coventry in Cleveland Heights or maybe even downtown Hudson). At least take care of the sidewalk on the two busiest streets in town – Main and Water – so that pedestrians don’t have to stare down death while walking in the road. It would be very much appreciated by all of us daily walkers, and it would be another important step toward revitalizing the downtown economy.

Erin J. Bell

Student in the School of Library and Information Science