Ashland University News Center

AU in the News

Ashland University accounting students Tayler McPherran (senior) and Cameron Deal (junior) were featured on the Ohio Society of CPA's "The State of Business" podcast.

The two discussed how to make the most of a career fair experience, including how to prepare an elevator speech, what to wear, dealing with nerves and the value of following up afterward. They also highlighted some of the AU Career Services advice and services that have benefited them.

1/28/20 – AU students featured on OSCPA "State of Business" podcast

1/23/20 – Rosaire Ifedi speaks with WOSU about possible travel ban expansion Rosaire Ifedi, an associate professor of education at Ashland University and a Nigerian immigrant, was interviewed by WOSU for a story regarding whether President Trump will expand his travel ban to include Nigeria.

“Why? What’s the rationale for this?” asked Ifedi, who also chairs Ohio’s New Africans Immigrants Commission.

“Nigeria has been a friend with the United States, Nigeria is a partner with the United States in fighting terrorism and everything you can think of,” she said. “Nigerians who are in the United States are extremely useful and contributing members of society.”

Ifedi says she’s heard complaints from residents who see Nigeria being added to the list as a continued focus on African countries.

A growing number of native Nigerians have been moving to Central Ohio in recent years. Statewide, a 2018 report from the New Africans Immigrants Commission found about 4,000 native Nigerians living in Ohio.

1/23/20 – Education Professor Dr. Maria Sargent is featured expert in WalletHub Ohio city's ranking story AU Education Professor Dr. Maria Sargent was a featured expert in WalletHub's "2020 Best Places to Raise a Family in Ohio".

She said there is a connection between a child's development and a family's quality of life and the city in which they live. "But this influence is strongly impacted by the diversity represented by the state's families. That is why families must know their definition of 'quality of life' and the non-negotiable items that they feel their child/children need to develop. A rural location may represent quality perfectly for one family and be inadequate for a family who wants quick accessibility to museums or a major dance school," she said. "Once you factor in diversity, any location may be perfect for a wide population. A wise state will understand this difference and begin to market their locations in ways that make that geographic area attractive to the families who will value that type of lifestyle."

WalletHub's top three Ohio cities were (in order) Powell, Perrysburg and New Albany.

WalletHub is owned by Evolution Finance Inc. and is based in Washington, DC.

1/16/20 – Mark Hamilton offers KLIF observations on Astro's cheating scandal Associate Professor of Philosophy and sports ethics expert Dr. Mark Hamilton was interviewed by Dallas radio station KLIF for his take on the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal, which resulted in one-year suspensions for GM Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch, loss of draft picks in 2020 and 2021 and a $5 million fine. The GM and manager were subsequently fired by Astros owner Jim Crane.

Hamilton noted the differences between gamesmanship -- actions available to anyone and within the rules but still actions that might be morally questionable --- and cheating, actions which give a team an unfair advantage. The punishments for cheating, Hamilton said, must be stringent enough that others will find the actions are not worth the risk.

Hamilton's segment is at the 8:43 point in the news round-up.

1/13/20 – WKSU Exploradio segment features Chartier, PSA AU Associate Professor of Psychology Chris Chartier and his Psychological Science Accelerator were featured in an Exploradio segment on WKSU.

Chartier talked to reporter Jeff St. Clair about how the PSA came about in response to a growing crisis in psychological research where even big findings are difficult to verify.

“I’d say best estimates of how replicable our field is in terms of published findings is around 50 percent,” Chartier said. “So, we’re talking a coin flip.”

He says part of the problem is that researchers generally rely on subjects that are WEIRD, or "Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic societies.

"The issue," he said, "is that we draw global conclusions about human psychology from an extremely WEIRD subset of the global population.”

The solution, he says, is to include as much of humanity as possible in research studies.

1/02/20 – Amy Klinger featured in Wisconsin Public Radio segment on school security Keeping students safe at school requires much more than active shooter training and metal detectors. Ashland University Associate Professor of Educational Administration Dr. Amy Klinger, a school security expert who also is the Educators' School Safety Network director of programs, discussed the subject recently on Wisconsin Public Radio. Klinger advocated for a comprehensive approach to security in schools and for having a plan that addresses multiple scenarios and also is proactive in its approach to identifying and intervening with students who may be at risk for violent behavior.

12/13/19 – Christopher Chartier, PSA featured in National Public Radio story A story about the work of the Psychological Science Accelerator, which originated with Ashland University Associate Professor of Psychology Christopher Chartier, has been featured in the National Public Radio's website, under health news.

It specifically speaks to the findings of a PSA research project, one which studied facial perception. That first study included just shy of 11,500 participants from 41 countries. Each participant rated 120 photos of racially and ethnically diverse faces on one of 13 traits such as trustworthiness, aggressiveness, meanness, intelligence and attractiveness.

The study, in which several AU students also participated, is the first conducted through the PSA, a global network of more than 500 labs in more than 70 countries. The accelerator, which launched in 2017, aims to redo older psychology experiments but on a mass scale in several different settings. The effort is one of many targeting a problem that has plagued the discipline for years: the inability of psychologists to get consistent results across similar experiments, or the lack of reproducibility.

12/06/19 – AU Trustee Liebert Karl's generosity featured on WEWS-Channel 5 AU Trustee and alumna Debbie Liebert Karl came to Ashland on Friday, Dec. 6, to meet AU's 186 student veterans and provide each with a $200 gift card. Her generosity captured a bit of media attention, including WEWS-News Channel 5 in Cleveland (link attached). Her act of kindness also was covered by WMFD and appeared in Gannett newspapers including The Columbus Dispatch, The Ashland Times-Gazette and the (Wooster) Daily Record. She also was a featured story on the Ashland Source newssite.

11/21/19 – Amanda Klinger a featured expert in USA Today story about active shooter response in schools Amanda Klinger, a professional instructor in UA's Schar College of Education, was a featured expert in the USA Today story, "How to keep schools safe? We're focusing our time, energy and money on 'all the wrong things,' experts say".

In the story, Klinger -- who also serves as director of operations with the Educator's School Safety Network -- advocates for staff training and empowerment as a better tactic to confront school violence and offers the idea of preventative measures like threat assessment and management, along with improving school culture.

In the story, she is quoted as saying, “It’s a lot easier to stand at a school board meeting and say to all the concerned parents, ‘Look what we did. We have an SRO (resource officer). We have a metal detector. We have these intense door locks. That’s much more compelling than saying, ‘We have undertaken this difficult, nuanced, ephemeral process (that features training).’’’

11/20/19 – Christopher Chartier's PSA work is subject of Undark feature AU Associate Professor of Psychology Christopher Chartier was interviewed in Undark, an independent digital magazine exploring the intersection of science and society, about the Psychological Science Accelerator he founded and about the release of the PSA’s first-large scale study.

Undark, which is published with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation through its Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program in Cambridge, Mass., interviewed Chartier about both the recent study and the PSA’s future.

The magazine reported that “Although Chartier wants the accelerator studies to contribute valuable knowledge, his wider ambitions are much greater.”

“We hope that it kind of shifts the norms or kind of the expectations of psychological science,” he told the magazine, “towards these larger samples, more diverse samples, more rigorous methods, and preregistration,” among other things.