Commissioners Sign Support for KSU Program
Geauga County Commissioners voted 2-1 to approve a letter supporting a proposed applied studies program at Kent State University – Geauga Sept. 4, with Commissioner Carolyn Brakey the dissenting vote.
Geauga County Commissioners voted 2-1 to approve a letter supporting a proposed applied studies program at Kent State University – Geauga Sept. 4, with Commissioner Carolyn Brakey the dissenting vote.
“This program has not been approved, it’s still in the draft and proposal stage,” said Susan Emens, KSU associate dean of the College Applied and Technical Studies. “We’ve not gone through all of our internal approvals yet at the university. But, one of the things that is helpful as we’re doing that is to have the support of the communities, which we serve at our regional campuses for a degree such as this.”
The university is proposing a reduced-credit bachelor’s degree program, with 90 credit hours rather than the usual 120, she said.
As a bachelor of applied studies, the degree would not be the same as a bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degree, she explained.
“It would allow students to complete full-time in three years, versus the traditional four-year degree,” she said.
Brakey asked why the college is pursuing this rather than something like a master’s degree program.
“Our college — the college of applied technical studies — our degrees are offered through the regional campuses of Kent State (University),” Emens said. “So … we do certificates, we do associate degrees, we have a few select bachelor’s degrees.”
The reduced-credit program would serve certain niches of students, she said.
“This type of degree would serve a population of learners, where … if they’re working for a company, for instance, and they want to pursue their degree to a leadership degree to advance in their career paths, this would be very helpful. As well as learners looking to get into this kind of leadership role in their companies,” she said.
While Brakey found it hard to sign off on the support letter, citing a lack of information about the program and the letter’s specific phrasing, her fellow commissioners disagreed.
“I’m fine with preparing a support letter for this program, something to lift up a little bit from a regular college degree, to up it a little bit. I think it’s fine,” Commissioner Jim Dvorak said.
Commissioner Ralph Spidalieri asked what areas of education the degree would cover.
It would cover areas of study similar to a traditional bachelor’s degree and include KSU’s general education foundation and upper division requirements, Emens said.
“What we’ve kind of eliminated is a lot of extra electives in there. And then the core of it will be an organizational leadership type coursework,” she said, adding the program would be offered mostly or fully online.
“Sometimes, change is good, right? If that sounds like something you guys are exploring, I would support it to try to get it looked at and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work,” Spidalieri said. “But, at least you tried, right?”
The motion to sign the letter of support passed with Spidalieri and Dvorak voting in favor of it.
In other business, commissioners passed a resolution approving an agreement for services between the Geauga County Automatic Data Processing board and Middlefield Township following a major cyber incident with the township.
The incident is one of several this year, with Burton Township also deciding to contract with ADP following an email breach in April.
“(Middlefield) had a very serious cyber breach about two weeks ago,” said ADP Deputy Chief Administrator Frank Antenucci, noting the situation is ongoing and he had to be careful what he said publicly about it.
“It’s one that we’ve never seen before,” he said. “It was actually really impressive.”
The township contacted them right away and ADP began to advise them, Antenucci said, adding the township’s network cannot be used moving forward.
Brakey asked what services ADP was expecting to provide.
“Based on the level of breach we saw, it would be everything in the IT environment,” Antenucci replied, noting the township’s current IT environment is minimal.
At current time, the only townships not under ADP’s agreement are Chester, Munson and Troy, he said, adding they have had discussions with Troy.
Per emails provided by Antenucci, the Middlefield incident involved a phishing campaign directed at local government contacts.
The old Middlefield Township email domain was indefinitely blocked by the ADP network due to the severity of the attack, and ADP completed an emergency migration to a new email domain.
