Eight Northeast Colleges Partner to Help College Dropouts Continue Their Education

Eight Northeast Ohio community colleges and four-year public universities have partnered for the Ohio College Comeback Compact, an initiative to create a pathway for college students who left school without a degree and owe money to their former college to settle the debt and continue their education.

The compact includes Cleveland State University, Cuyahoga Community College, Lakeland Community College, Lorain County Community College, Kent State University, Stark State College, the University of Akron, and Youngstown State University (YSU).

Beginning in August, the compact will contact approximately 15,000 students to come back to any public college in the region, even if they owe money and their transcript is being held because of it, YSU said. Eligible students who previously attended one of the eight institutions can register for classes at any of these colleges and universities. As students make progress toward a degree or certificate, they can get up to $5,000 in debt owed to their former college or university forgiven.

The compact is affiliated with the College Comeback Initiative of the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE). Two nonprofits, Ithaka S+R and College Now Greater Cleveland, are helping to coordinate the compact while three foundations are providing philanthropic support.

“The Ohio Department of Higher Education is committed to working with the outstanding public colleges and universities in Northeast Ohio to make the Ohio College Comeback Compact a success,” said ODHE Chancellor Randy Gardner, in a statement. “Ohio companies need educated workers, and that need is growing with the unprecedented number of multinational companies moving to our state. The goal of the Ohio College Comeback Compact is to encourage adults to return to college to finish degrees so they can advance their careers in our growing economy.”

This program is open to eligible students who previously attended any of the eight participating institutions, have been out of college at least a year, maintained a 2.0 cumulative GPA before they left, and owe the institution $5,000 or less. To learn more about the program and to check eligibility, visit the compact’s website at www.ohiocollegecomeback.org.

UC Names Leader of New Computer Science Department

The University of Cincinnati’s (UC) College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) named Justin Zhan as professor and head of the newly established Department of Computer Science, effective Tuesday, Aug. 16.

Zhan comes to UC from the University of Arkansas, where he was the Arkansas Research Alliance scholar and professor of data science, director of data science core in the Arkansas Integrative Metabolic Research Center, and adjunct professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the College of Medicine, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

“I am very excited to welcome Justin Zhan to UC as our new department head in computer science,” said John Weidner, dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science. “His multidisciplinary approach to big data analytics, artificial intelligence, health and medicine, and cybersecurity aligns very well with key research and educational initiatives at UC. His vision for the new computer science department is exactly what we need as we grow computing across the University of Cincinnati.”

The creation of a separate department for computer science reflects the aim of CEAS to become a leader in the rapidly growing field, the university said; a dedicated department offers more effective resource allocation and facilitates integration of computing concepts such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data across all CEAS majors.

With support from an alumnus and entrepreneur Jim Goetz and the JobsOhio initiative to develop in-demand talent, UC said it plans to double the size of computer science in both faculty and enrollment within the next 10 years. Computer science was previously housed in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, which is being renamed the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Zhan has published 250 articles in peer-reviewed journals and conferences and delivered 30 keynote speeches. He has been principal investigator or co-principal investigator for 60 projects, with funding from the Department of Defense (DoD), National Science Foundation, and National Institutes of Health. Recently, Zhan received a $1.25 million DoD grant to develop novel algorithms to enhance the efficiency of multimodal sensing and multilevel fusion data analytics.

“Professor Zhan’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is critical in the field of computer science, where the representation of women and underrepresented minority groups among faculty and students is unacceptably low,” Weidner said. “Dr. Zhan has been a valuable mentor to many junior faculty pursuing grants from the National Institutes of Health.”

Zhan taught at North Carolina A&T State University, a historically Black university, and University of Nevada Las Vegas, a minority-serving institution. Zhan has a doctoral degree in computer science from the University of Ottawa in Canada.