Youngstown State University

Youngstown State University, founded in 1908, is an urban research university located in Youngstown, Ohio, United States. As of fall 2010, there were 15,194 students and a student-faculty ratio of 19:1. The fall 2010 enrollment figure is the highest since 1990, when the number of students on campus was 15,454. Records show that 11,803 of the students are undergraduates. Beyond its current student body, YSU claims more than 84,000 alumni.

History
The university's origins trace back to 1908, when the local branch of the YMCA established a school of law within the Youngstown Association School. In 1921, the school became known as the Youngstown Institute of Technology and offered its first evening courses. In 1928, a year after establishing the College of Arts and Sciences, the institute once again changed its name to Youngstown College. In 1955, Youngstown College was renamed as Youngstown University, an indication of the school's broadening curriculum.(note: A private for profit Youngstown College was formed in 1987 and had no affiliation with YSU. The college closed its doors in mid 2000 due to financial issues. )

On September 1, 1967, after becoming a public institution, Youngstown University became officially known as Youngstown State University. The following spring, YSU opened a Graduate School and College of Applied Science and Technology. In 1974, the College of Fine and Performing Arts was established.

Presidents

 * Dr. Howard W. Jones (1931–1966)
 * Dr. Albert L. Pugsley (1966–1973)
 * Dr. John J. Coffelt (1973–1984)
 * Dr. Neil D. Humphrey (1984–1992)
 * Dr. Leslie H. Cochran (1992–2000)
 * Dr. David C. Sweet (2000—2010)
 * Dr. Cynthia Anderson (2010—2013)

Statistics
As of fall 2010, the student body totaled 15,194. YSU has approximately 2,100 full and part-time employees, and 426 full-time faculty with 543 part-time faculty. 165 faculty members boast full-professor rank, with 79% of the instructors holding doctorates or terminal degrees. The university boasts a student to faculty ratio of 19:1.

Tuition for undergraduate students living in Ohio is $7,199, $7,399 for undergraduate students coming from western Pennsylvania (Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Crawford, Erie, Lawrence, Mercer, Venango, PA), $9,891 for undergraduate students from the regional service area (Chautauqua, NY; Armstrong, Clarion, Fayette, Forest, Greene, Indiana, Jefferson, Warren, Washington, and Westmoreland, PA; Brooke, Hancock, Marshall, and Ohio, WV), and $12,871 for all other out-of-state undergraduate students, including international students. Graduate tuition is $7,337/academic year for Ohio residents, while all other graduate students (including international students) pay just $150 per academic year ($8.34 per credit hour) in addition to the in-state tuition. Room and board cost an additional $7,600. YSU will often note that these tuitions are the lowest of any public university in Ohio. YSU is primarily a commuter school, with most students living at home or in residence off campus, but approximately 1,000 students live in residence halls on campus. Another 400 live in the University Courtyard apartment complexes just off campus. About 1.5% of the student body are international students from approximately 45 countries.

YSU is currently trying to get more students to live on campus, with initiatives such as mandatory on-campus housing for students in the Leslie H. Cochran University Scholars program, which is Youngstown State's full ride academic scholarship program. One of the goals for the university's centennial in 2008 is to have 20 percent of the student body living on campus.

There are over 500,000 volumes at the campus' William F. Maag Library, and participation in the OhioLINK program gives access to the collections of 84 other Ohio institutions. The Wilcox Curriculum Resource Center in Beeghly Hall complements the resources available at Maag.

YSU is participating in the Youngstown Early College program, through which students from the Youngstown City School District can take courses for college credit while in high school. The program is in its fifth year, and has approximately 290 students in the ninth through twelfth grades. Youngstown Early college has also had their first graduating class in Spring 2008. YSU is currently phasing out its affiliation with Youngstown Early College, with Eastern Gateway Community College taking over full operations away from YSU by 2013.

Campus
YSU lies on a 140 acre campus just north of downtown Youngstown. Although it is not located near any outstanding geographical features, that has not stopped Youngstown State's campus from being noted for its landscaping, which is dissimilar from that of many other urban universities. YSU's geographical center has a park-like atmosphere, featuring a rather-hilly terrain and a variety of trees and plant life, as well as tables and chairs that surround a campus fountain.

Most buildings on campus have been built within the last half-century, making them newer than most buildings in downtown Youngstown, where most buildings were constructed before the Great Depression.

Buildings
Jones Hall, often the building that welcomes people coming onto the YSU campus, is also one of the campus's oldest buildings, having been built in 1931, when YSU was known as Youngstown College. Its history as the "main building" of the campus continues today, as it is perhaps the best-known and most photographed building of the whole campus. The building was renamed Jones Hall in honor of the institutions first president, Dr. Howard Jones. Today, the building is used as mainly administrative office space.

The Rayen School of Engineering and Engineering Technology is housed in Moser Hall, completed in 1967. The university's geological and environmental sciences department shares the space, and also sponsor the Clarence R. Smith Mineral Museum. Science programs are housed in Ward-Beecher Science Hall.

The newer addition to YSU is the Andrews Wellness and Recreation Center. Completed in time for the fall 2005 semester, the Andrews Center gave YSU a complete gym facility, as well as a climbing wall and racquetball courts.

Bliss Hall, completed in 1977 and featuring two auditoriums, is the home of the College of Fine and Performing Arts, including the Departments of Art, Communication (including communication studies and telecommunication studies), Theater & Dance, and the Dana School of Music. Next door to Bliss Hall is the McDonough Museum of Art, YSU's University Art Museum and the Mahoning Valley's center for contemporary art. The Museum has regular changing exhibitions by regional, national and international artists and provides public access to the work of students, faculty and alumni from the Department of Art.

Beeghly Hall was completed in 1998 at a cost of $14 million. The Beeghly College of Education resides there, and it also hosts several programs open to the community, such as the Community Counseling Center. Beeghly, which is located away from the campus proper, is planned to be linked to the rest of the campus through a main pedestrian pathway, a plan that ran into trouble. Kilcawley Center is primarily a resource and community center on campus. It features reading and study rooms, computer labs, a copying center, YSU's bookstore, a variety of restaurants (including a Wendy's and Denny's), and many student-affairs offices. There are also many meeting and seminar rooms, which can be rented out for events by the community.

Williamson College of Business Administration is the newest building on campus. It was completed for Fall semester 2010. It houses all of the business classrooms and offices. It was previously housed in the Lincoln Building. The building itself has LEED standard, making it a green build. It was one of the most expensive additions to campus, with a large portion of the funding coming from donations. The building is off of Rayen Ave and was built to purposely connect downtown businesses to the college and to the campus core. Recently access to the building improved when the Hazel Street Extension opened creating access for vehicle and pedestrian traffic and better connecting the central business district to the university.

YSU has six housing facilities. Lyden House, completed in 1990, and Cafaro House residential honors facility, completed in 1995, can accommodate a combined 574 students. Christman Dining Commons, YSU's main residential dining hall, is located in the Anne K. Christman Campus Green between these buildings. Kilcawley House is attached to Kilcawley Center in the middle of campus. Wick House and Weller House, off Wick Avenue, also houses a small number of students in an apartment setting. The University Courtyard Apartments, on the east side of the campus (behind Bliss Hall), were built in 2004. These are commonly known as the Courtyards. They are actual apartments and are not affiliated with housing services at YSU, instead they are managed by an outside company, Ambling Leasing. Buechner Hall is an independently owned and operated women's residence hall located on Bryson Street and operated by the Beuchner Foundation. The Flats at Wick, also a privately owned and operated apartments were built and opened in Fall of 2010 on the corner of Madison Ave and Elm Street.

Other buildings on campus include:
 * Meshel Hall (Department of Computer Science and Information Systems)
 * Fedor Hall (housing student newspaper The Jambar, student magazine The Yo, student literary magazine The Penguin Review, the Rich Center for Autism, and the Youngstown Early College)
 * Cushwa Hall (College of Health and Human Services, WYSU-FM)
 * Lincoln Hall (Mathematics, part of STEM)
 * Phelps Building (Geography, Urban and Regional Studies)
 * Maag Library
 * Tod Hall (administrative offices)
 * DeBartolo Hall (College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, a.k.a. CLASS)
 * Sweeney Hall (Undergraduate Admissions)
 * the E.J. Salata Complex (maintenance services)
 * Clingan-Waddell Hall (YSU Police Department)
 * Alumni House (Alumni and Events Management and The YSU Foundation); the oldest building on campus

Current building projects include the Wick Pollock Inn located on Wick Avenue next to Bliss Hall.

Ward Beecher Planetarium
The university's planetarium, located in Ward Beecher Hall, opened in 1967 and was recently renovated. The $750,000 upgrade included new seats (145), a SciDome fulldome video projector from Spitz, Inc., as well as a Chronos star projector from GOTO. The star projector, which replicates the night sky onto the planetarium's 40 ft diameter dome, cost $489,000.

The planetarium is the location of the introductory astronomy courses at YSU, which registers almost 1,000 students every year. It has housed over 500,000 students, as well as 750,000 visitors as of 2007. Organized shows are available for groups during the week, and scheduled shows available Friday and Saturday evenings (with a show geared toward a younger crowd Saturday afternoons). All shows are free of charge. For a schedule, go to their website.

Academics
The University comprises the following colleges as of the Summer 2007 academic reorganization:
 * The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (a.k.a. CLASS)
 * The Beeghly College of Education
 * The College of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (a.k.a. STEM)
 * The College of Fine and Performing Arts
 * The Bitonte College of Health and Human Services
 * The Williamson College of Business Administration
 * The School of Graduate Studies

YSU offers doctoral degrees in educational leadership and physical therapy, as well as a doctorate in mathematics in cooperation with Rhodes University. Together with the University of Akron and Kent State University, YSU sponsors the Northeastern Ohio Universities College Of Medicine (NEOUCOM), a BS-MD program. YSU engineering students may pursue doctoral studies in cooperation with the University of Akron and Cleveland State University. In addition, YSU has 35 masters programs and over 100 undergraduate majors.

The Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University was deemed an "All-Steinway" school in 2004. The Dana School of Music is one of the oldest non-conservatory schools of music in the United States. It is housed in Bliss Hall. Additionally, the Youngstown State University Symphonic Wind Ensemble performed in March 2005 at New York City's Carnegie Hall. The ensemble's performance was highly praised, and they received a standing ovation.

Youngstown State University is also home to the Center for Working Class Studies and offers a Regional and American Studies program, which was the first of its kind in the United States. The school assisted the University of Chicago in developing a similar program. The center is operated by John Russo and Sherry Lee Linkon.

YSU is somewhat unique for a sizable university in that it utilizes only college professors and not graduate assistants in undergraduate instruction. This is because YSU has few doctoral programs and a relatively high standard teaching load (four courses per semester). In many colleges this size, graduate assistants teach courses to undergraduate students while full-time professors sometimes limit their direct involvement in undergraduate education to lecturing in large sections of introductory courses and supervising graduate assistants. .

About one-third of the classes, including all of the senior capstone courses for each major, utilize e-learning through Blackboard. Before using Blackboard, YSU utilized WebCT, which Blackboard acquired in 2006 but didn't convert to its own software until 2010, with YSU running both programs during the Spring 2010 semester. Both WebCT and Blackboard have been criticized by YSU students and professors.

Centers and Institutes
YSU operates several Centers of Excellence and designated research and economic development programs, including the Center for Transportation and Materials Engineering, the Center of Excellence in Materials Science and Engineering, the Center of Excellence in International Business, the Center for Applied Chemical Biology, the Institute for Applied Topology, and effective in 2012, the Natural Gas and Water Resources Institute.

Greek life
Youngstown State University is home to 10 fraternities and 7 sororities. They are:

Interfraternity Council


 * Alpha Phi Delta
 * Sigma Alpha Epsilon
 * Phi Kappa Tau
 * Sigma Tau Gamma
 * Sigma Chi
 * Tau Kappa Epsilon

Panhellenic Conference


 * Alpha Omicron Pi
 * Zeta Tau Alpha
 * Delta Zeta
 * Alpha Xi Delta

Pan-Hellenic Council

Fraternities:
 * Iota Phi Theta
 * Kappa Alpha Psi (suspended)
 * Omega Psi Phi

Sororities:
 * Alpha Kappa Alpha
 * Delta Sigma Theta
 * Zeta Phi Beta

Labor relations
Labor Unions are very active at YSU and include most non-administrative faculty and staff on campus. In August 2005, just before the start of the 2005–06 academic year, two of four campus unions were on strike. Following the conclusion of the strike, relations have remained strained, with some faculty and staff calling for resignation of YSU President David Sweet in May 2007. Others on campus thought some individuals on both sides were engaged in less than professional behaviors. Due to the animosity between the parties, a special committee was set up to examine labor relations. This committee recommended that the negotiations teams for all sides be replaced before the next round of contract negotiations. Subsequent to these recommendations the Vice President for Administration was replaced as well as the Executive Director of Human Resources.

Relations have improved since that time and are now typical of what one would expect of a unionized campus in a region that has always been at the center of US union activism.

Famous alumni

 * Tony Aiello, former National Football League player, Brooklyn Tigers and Detroit Lions
 * Cynthia Anderson, first female president of Youngstown State University
 * Thomas Bopp, astronomer; co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp
 * Al Campana, former National Football League running back, Chicago Bears
 * Billy Clapper, college basketball head coach, Penn State Altoona
 * Craig Cotton, former National Football League tight end, Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions
 * Mark Dailey, Canadian newscaster for Citytv
 * Bob Davie, former Notre Dame football coach, current ESPN commentator
 * Lorenzo Davis, former National Football League wide reviver, Pittsburgh Steelers
 * Pat DiCesare, entrepreneur and rock and roll promoter
 * Dave Dravecky, former Major League Baseball pitcher, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants
 * Sloko Gill, former National Football League center, Detroit Lions
 * Ralph Goldston, former National Football League running back, Philadelphia Eagles
 * John Goode, former National Football League tight end, Philadelphia Eagles and St. Louis Cardinals
 * Linda Gooden, executive vice president, Lockheed Martin (Ranked 33rd Most Powerful Businesswomen of 2010)
 * Brad Hennessey, former Major League Baseball pitcher, Baltimore Orioles and Houston Astros
 * Jermain Hopkins was a Captain of the YSU football team who was shot and killed defending teammates(has a scholarship in his name)(school hall of fame)
 * Philip Larmon, Arena Football Player 2005-2006, Co-Producer of "Magic Valley" an Official 2011 Tribeca Film Festival selection and "Ass Backwards".
 * Nanette Lepore, noted fashion designer
 * Evelyn G. Lowery, American Civil Rights Movement activist and leader; marched in the historic Selma to Montgomery March
 * Quentin Lowry, Former National Football League linebacker, Washington Redskins
 * Ron Jaworski, former National Football League quarterback, Philadelphia Eagles, color commentator for ESPN Monday Night Football
 * Tim Johnson, former National Football League linebacker, Baltimore Ravens and Oakland Raiders
 * Bobby Jones, former National Football League wide receiver, New York Jets and Cleveland Browns
 * Donald Jones, National Football League wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills
 * Nathaniel R. Jones, former judge U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
 * Sean Jones, jazz recording artist, lead trumpeter for Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra
 * Rich Kasunic, Pennsylvania State Senator
 * JJ Kincaid, afternoon DJ on Z100 WHTZ
 * Don Leshnock, Former Major League Baseball pitcher for the Detroit Tigers
 * Mark Mangino, college football head coach, formerly at the University of Kansas
 * Riyad Mansour, Permanent Representative to the United Nations from Palestine
 * Vince Marrow, former National Football League tight end, Buffalo Bills
 * Marcus Mason, professional football player, National Football League running back, Washington Redskins
 * Ed McGlasson, former National Football League center, New York Jets, Los Angeles Rams and New York Giants
 * Christopher Moriarty, Emmy winning television production engineer
 * Martin Moore, scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory known for his pioneering work on novel polymers
 * Ben Neill, composer, performer, inventor of the mutantrumpet
 * Ed O'Neill, actor, most famous as Al Bundy on Married With Children and Jay Pritchett on Modern Family.
 * Ron Parise, NASA astronaut, STS-35 and STS-37
 * Amit Patel, cardiothoracic surgeon and world pioneer of stem cell therapy for heart failure.
 * Frank Pokorny, former National Football League wide receiver, Pittsburgh Steelers
 * Carmen Policy, National Football League executive, San Francisco 49ers and Cleveland Browns
 * Milan Puskar, founder of Fortune 500 company Mylan Laboratories
 * Matt Quinn, former ABC News reporter
 * Ed Rosenthal, author and noted criminal defendant (did not graduate)
 * Brandian Ross, professional football player, National Football League cornerback, Green Bay Packers
 * Chris Sainato, Pennsylvania state representative
 * Cliff Stoudt, former National Football League quarterback, Pittsburgh Steelers, St. Louis Cardinals, Arizona Cardinals and Miami Dolphins
 * Russell Stuvaints, former National Football League defensive back, Pittsburgh Steelers
 * Justin Thomas, Major League Baseball relief pitcher
 * James Traficant, former US Congressman
 * Sonny Vaccaro, founder of ABCD Basketball Camp. Marketing executive for Nike, Reebok and Adidas
 * Jeff Wilkins, professional football player, record-setting NFL kicker of the St. Louis Rams
 * Jay Williams, currently appointed presidential cabinet position in the Office of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, by President Barack Obama, former mayor, city of Youngstown