Education roundup: Mount Union to include course materials in tuition, announces Regula awards

ALLIANCE – University of Mount Union has partnered with Barnes & Noble College on the Raider Ready program. The initiative addresses equitable access and affordability across all courses at Mount Union by bundling the cost of course materials into tuition, ensuring undergraduate students have all their materials for the semester available on or before the first day of class.

Raider Ready provides all required textbooks, lab manuals, access codes, and digital textbook versions to students included as part of their tuition and will be launched for the 2022-23 academic year, beginning in the 2022 fall semester.

Raider Ready also fully supports faculty choice. Faculty members can choose the materials that are best suited for their teaching, regardless of publisher or format.

Learn more about the Raider Ready program at mountunion.edu/books.

Mount Union names awards
for Ralph and Mary Regula

ALLIANCE – The University of Mount Union's Regula Center for Public Service and Civic Engagement has announced two new awards that recognize contributions from Stark County individuals: the Ralph Regula Award for Public Service and the Mary Regula Award for Community Service.

The Ralph Regula Award for Public Service recognizes a person who exemplifies the ideals of the late Ralph Regula, who spent his career as a public servant. It will be given annually to a person employed in the public sector in Stark County who is dedicated to their career and works for the betterment of Stark County consistently.

The Mary Regula Award for Community Service will be given annually to a person in Stark County who volunteers his or her time to improve the lives of others, much like Mary's commitment to the legacy of first ladies, improving the lives of those in Stark County and serving others.

Nominations can be submitted through forms found at mountunion.edu/regula-center and will be accepted until Jan. 7. The award winners will be recognized at the Regula Center annual meeting to be held March 1 at the Alliance Country Club.

Malone University alumnus, faculty publish article about migraines

CANTON – Malone University alumnus Camden Baucke, with Lauren S. Seifert, Ph.D., professor of psychology, and Kara Kaelber, Ph.D., professor of counseling, have published an article in the internationally recognized journal PLOS ONE.

Released on Nov. 29, “Health co-inquiry in migraine: Online participation and stakeholder experiences before and during the COVID-19 pandemic“ reports major themes linked to internet posts by migraine stakeholders.

“Our goal was to shed light on the experiences of migraineurs before – and now, during the pandemic,” said Seifert.

The authors received funding from the National Science Foundation through a grant to Malone University for technological advancements in research. The NSF grant enabled the construction of an app that can crawl the Internet and provide information about narratives on websites.

Baucke, Seifert, and Kaelber used two methods of analysis to look at people’s posts online and found that the prevailing themes were related to telling personal stories, finding and giving help and information, hawking products and services, and disseminating misinformation. The authors hope to contribute the ongoing dialog about chronic migraine, one of the most common causes of disability worldwide.

Stark State College among
top colleges for online learning

JACKSON TWP. – Stark State College has been named among America’s Best Online Learning Schools for 2022.

The college’s online learning program, eStarkState, was included in Newsweek’s ranking of 150 outstanding online college and university programs, a list that includes prestigious two- and four-year schools across the nation.

Stark State offers nationally accredited online degrees, certificates and courses. For a complete listing, see www.starkstate.edu/estarkstate.

The rankings are based on an online survey among U.S. residents who have used online learning services to obtain an academic degree or acquire knowledge and skills for professional or personal development. The top lists were created through an elaborate process that carefully reviewed participants' responses as well as the final selection of institutions in each list.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, as of 2019, the latest year for which figures are available, 79% of U.S. colleges offered either standalone courses or entire degree programs online. That figure included about 96% of all public two and four-year colleges. As of 2018, the Department estimated, about 7 million college students were taking some or all of their classes online. The pandemic has only added to the growth of online education. By one recent estimate, the number of students enrolled exclusively in online programs had jumped 93% from 2019 to 2020.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Education roundup: Mount Union tuition to include course materials