Kettering University

Welcome to the Kettering University Parents' Association

Mission Statement

The purposes of the organization shall be to provide a forum of communication between parents of Kettering University students and the University; to foster goodwill between the university, parents, students and the community; to assist the University and students in enhancing the students’ life while on campus.

What's New

Student Health Insurance Waiver Period is here! - The Health Insurance Waiver period for students began on Friday, May 8. The Maksin Group, verifies coverage through their online system. The deadline for verification is July 31. Read about the Health Insurance Verification Procedure.

Kettering University Parents' Association

• All parents of currently-enrolled undergraduate Kettering University students are members of the Kettering University Parents’ Association. If you’d like to volunteer to help, please contact the Parents Association President. Parent volunteers are an important part of Family Day and Orientation.
• The Parents Association meetings coincide with the August and November Family Days. These meetings are used to introduce the association officers, and new parents to the association and its functions.
• The elected association officers include a President, A & B-section Vice Presidents, Secretary and Treasurer. These officers form the Parents Advisory Board (PAB) along with selected volunteers and committee heads and are responsible for organizing all association activities including Family Day, Orientation, Homecoming and other events as requested. The Advisory Board usually meets four times a year.
• Kettering University Parents’ Advisory Board upcoming meetings are:
• Saturday, April 18, 2009 10:30 a.m. - Open Association Board Meeting
  To teleconference into the Parents' Association Meeting, dial 1.888.904.9570. The meeting number is 8493196.
• Saturday, January 16, 2010 10:30 a.m. - Open Association Board Meeting

Call Deborah Stewart 800.955.4464 ext. 9679 or Eva White 800.955.4464 ext. 9872 for meeting times.

Family Days for 2009/2010:

• A-Section August 15, 2009
• B-Section November 7, 2009

Family invitations/information for future events will be mailed to parents' addresses first week of their students' term. Don't forget to register 10 days before the event. Pre-registration is required. Next year’s event dates will be finalized during the January board meeting.

Orientation Days 2009/2010:

• A-Section July 9, 2009
• B-Section October 1, 2009

Please contact Keith Kaniut, Julie Blalock, Robert Clark, or Sue Rieger if you are interested in helping on these days.  

From the Association president..

This space highlights current issues and meetings as well as upcoming events, decisions, and volunteer “opportunities”.

Keith Kaniut

April 22, 2009
Welcome back to the B-section students and their parents. Just a quick note before the latest news: Due to incompetence, I neglected to send in a perfectly good Web Update for February and only discovered my omission when preparing to send this latest update. For this reason I am forced to offer my resignation effective immediately to avoid further scandal.

OK – That was a joke. It’s true that I “officially” resigned at the April board meeting, but it wasn’t due to the missed web update. (I know you’re relieved to hear that.) I’ve made my imminent departure more official in order to make way for your next Board president and any new board members – to help move the process along so that the new board members can be ready to go by July when A-section begins its next semester. I’m leaving because my son graduates next term. It’s time to turn over the awesome power of the Presidency! 

During the April 18 Board Meeting Betsy Homsher (Assoc. Provost) offered to help us run the upcoming election for board members through the Blackboard on-line application so that more parents could participate. I’m quite excited about this (as you can tell by my picture) and look forward to trying out the process. This is one of the directions we decided to take the association almost four years ago when I joined the Parents Association board. We wanted to make more information available electronically to encourage greater participation and keep parents better informed about our activities and important events and news. Like many new things it has been an incomplete success but we’ve learned a lot along the way. Today we can review issues through Blackboard and with this next election, we’ll be able to vote for board members without having to be physically present at Kettering. This opens up the participation to non-local parents, something we’ve been hoping to do for some time now.

So if you’ve ever wanted to participate as a volunteer or board member, contact me or one of the other board members. If you wish to stand for one of the board positions send us your name and a short paragraph telling which position you’re interested in and why. We’ll post those on this web site and on the Blackboard Parents Association page.

You’re probably wondering how everyone will be able to logon to Blackboard. We’re going to create a “Guest” logon that will be good for one week, the week we’re voting. We’ll put the logon information here on this page plus send it by email to those who’ve given us their email addresses. During that week (The actual date is TBD but we’re hoping for some time in June.) you’ll be able to log on, review the candidates and vote. After that week, the Guest logon will expire. It will be pretty slick if it works as advertised.

Now for the rest of the news…

Our April board meeting was well-attended by the University, including the Associate Provost (Betsy Homsher), Deb Stewart (our Treasurer and Liaison), and Mr. Jack Stock from the University Advancement Department (money raising and promotion of the university). Mr. Stock gave a half-hour presentation based on one that Dr. Liberty uses during his travels around the country. Read the meeting minutes for more details but a couple interesting things he reported were that undergraduate admissions are up 20%, graduate admissions is up almost 9%. Also, financial aid for new students (especially scholarships) has also increased. New students may receive almost twice the money per term as students who started four years ago. That’s good news for underclassmen.

Mr. Stock also talked about various initiatives they are pursuing with the city of Flint to help the city transition from being primarily a Manufacturing town, towards more of a college town. We also talked about Kettering’s location as an “urban university”, and the opportunities and concerns this presents. 

He also talked about new infrastructure and buildings – a new Science and Technology Center; a new freeway exit off I-69 from Hammerberg road that will provide direct access to the university with new road that will cross directly over the river to the campus from the light at the corner of Corunna, Court and Pershing Roads. 

A topic that did not come up was the question of whether the university had been discussing options for students who’d lost their co-op jobs and who were worried about getting enough co-op terms to graduate. I forwarded that question to Associate Provost Homsher and will publish her reply as soon as I receive it. 

Regarding Association funding: Julie Blalock found a new lower-cost source for the Gold Cards. We’ve ordered 500 of these cards for next year. 

My own job may take me out of state in the near future making it more difficult to participate. I guess I’ll find out how well the “electronic” participation works. We can work these bugs out together.

Finally, if you think of anything that would have been helpful to a new parent that we could have done, please let me know via the email link below.

Addendum to April 22 remarks.

May 11, 2009:  

Over this past weekend I received permission from Frank Hribar, Kettering’s vice president for Enrollment Services, to share with you his response to my note asking about the university’s plans to help our students obtain and keep co-op jobs in the current economy. He also kindly included the university’s communiqué with the Board of Trustees from the March 12 meeting which you may read here.

From: Frank Hribar [mailto:fhribar@kettering.edu]
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 12:02 PM
To: Keith Kaniut
Subject: RE: Co-op Job losses

Keith:

Thank you for the message. With respect to the University’s plan for dealing with loss of co-op jobs, the Office of Cooperative Education and Career Services has deployed an Employer Development Plan (a one-page illustration is attached) and is in the midst of carrying out that plan with several on-ground activities. As you are keenly aware, we have little influence on the economic and business decisions facing our corporate partners; yet, we continue to work with them and strategize ways to reduce layoffs among them. In most cases, our employers are attempting to retain current students at all costs; and, then suspend opportunities for new students. That’s been our greatest difficulty.

We have expanded our on-campus options for students in need of co-op jobs and we are considering additional, institutional options for assuring students an alternative if jobs continue to be reduced. As a side note, we have shaved two percent off of our internal “unemployment rate” within the month of April. Students have become a bit less selective in their quest for a full-time co-op and we are gaining traction in areas we haven’t traditionally been entrenched in, such as health care, defense, retail supply chain & logistics, and chemical manufacturing.

The second attachment is a communiqué to our Board of Trustees from the March 12, 2009 meeting. It outlines some of the activities we have employed in order to assist us in reducing the number of students without a co-op job. I hope this information is helpful. Please know the best recommendation for anyone concerned about co-op jobs is to consult the respective Co-op Manager. If you need additional information or clarification, please do not hesitate to contact me at your earliest convenience.

Frank

Frank J. Hribar
Vice President for Enrollment Services
Kettering University

I have already sent this information to those parents who gave us their email addresses. If you are not already on our email contact list, send your email address to me or one of the other board members. We’ll add you to the list so you can receive this information first!

Cordially,

Keith M. Kaniut
President, Parents’ Association

Contact Info:
Ph - (248) 755-4141; Email - (kkaniut@tir.com)