By John Stran
Professors from various regions of the United States and around the world have recently claimed Youngstown State University as their teaching grounds.
According to the YSU News Center, the fresh faculty come from areas including Iran, India and South Korea. Some of the classes they will be teaching include chemistry, sports science, engineering and communications.
They will be an addition to the roughly 900 member faculty currently on campus.
One of the new professors is Ronald Fields. In the English department, Fields teaches business writing and American literature.
Fields hails from Tennessee, but has lived in Akron for a little over a decade. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University followed by a master’s in American literature at the University of Akron.
Deepa Iyer was born and raised in India but has lived in Northeast Ohio for the last five years. Prior to becoming a YSU faculty member, she taught at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Her position at YSU is her first tenured position. Iyer said thus far, she enjoys the cultural diversity and global environment that YSU offers.
“There’s something to learn from every culture,” Iyer said. “Especially as the job market becomes more globalized.”
Ron Cole, public information officer at YSU, said the new additions will help compliment current faculty which he described as “one of the university’s greatest assets.”
“Our faculty, including this new group, comes to Youngstown and to YSU from all over the world,” Cole said. “It speaks to the quality of YSU that we are able to attract so many very highly-qualified scholars and teachers.”
Fields noticed this range in culture during the two days of orientation in mid-August saying there was only a handful of new faculty from this area.
But noticing the backgrounds of the different faculty and students was not what stuck out to Fields initially, rather it was the size of the student body.
“Enrollment is going up and at the same time, Youngstown’s population is decreasing,” he said. “So somebody is doing something right.”
According to YSU’s website, currently 12,756 students are enrolled. The 2018-2019 academic year had reportedly received the highest amount of applicants in the college’s history with 10,207.
Cole said the new faculty will contribute to help the growing student body to find success both in and out of the classroom.
Iyer said she wants to accomplish during her time at YSU is to turn this belief into fruition by building a smoother transition for students when beginning their preferred job saying that there’s often a gap between the two that’s sometimes difficult to overcome.
For Field’s, he said he hopes to continue to meet friendly faces in the English department and beyond. He said YSU is a place he could see himself retiring from.
The full list of new faculty can be found at https://ysu.edu/news/30-new-faculty-around-globe-join-ysu-2018-19-academic-year.
