Ashland University: Where the Accent is on the Individual

For more than 140 years, Ashland University has been home to individuals striving for academic, professional and spiritual growth at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. While it still maintains its historic focus on rigorous academic pursuits, Ashland students also are encouraged to develop critical thinking, leadership and professional skills and consider not only career paths, but life callings. Ashland University is proud of its long heritage, with over 50,000 alumni across the globe working and serving their communities both locally and worldwide. Higher education institutions must be flexible to take on the challenges and opportunities of a constantly changing world. Ashland University has done this with continued innovation in campus facilities, programs and the opportunities it offers students. Last year, the University broke ground on the 125,000-suqare-foot Niss Athletic Center, a state-of-the-art facility that will service not only AU’s outstanding Division II athletics, but its music programs and the greater Ashland community as well. Also in the last year, Ashland University has expanded its service to its student veterans, opening the Jack Liebert Military and Veterans Center – a place where the veterans can receive help processing paperwork, spend time with other student veterans and study and relax in an atmosphere created specifically for them. In the last several years, Ashland has substantially upgraded its beautiful 140-acre campus to include new academic buildings and a recreation and sport sciences center. The $15.5 million Dwight Schar College of Nursing and Health Sciences opened just a few years ago and is now home to the University’s new Physician Assistant program, as well as a nationally recognized Simulation Center where nursing and PA students encounter realistic patient responses and outcomes that are vital to their learning experience. Ashland University is one of only a few schools in North America to offer an undergraduate degree in Toxicology, opening students up for careers in medicine, drug development, forensics and environmental science, as well as professional health programs like medical school. Ashland University also offers an academic concentration in Medical Laboratory Science that allows students in the biology program to complete a fourth year at Cleveland Clinic’s School of Medical Laboratory Science and become eligible for certification as a medical laboratory scientist. Ashland’s highly regarded Dauch College of Business & Economics is known not only for its student led Eagle Investment Group, but also for its MBA program, which routinely appears on the lists of the nation’s best. Ashland University’s international MBA takes students across the globe to meet executives and thought leaders and gives them a chance to experience business as it is done outside the USA. The Schar College of Education has given some of the region’s best teachers their start and its undergraduate elementary teacher preparation program has been named among the top in the country for contributing to greater teacher diversity by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit research and policy organization. Ashland’s program is among only 21 percent of the 1,256 NCTQ evaluated across the country and among only eight programs in Ohio to be recognized in a new NCTQ report for enrolling a cohort of future teachers that is both more racially diverse than the current teacher workforce in their state and reflects the racial diversity of their local community. In every case, the one-on-one relationships with faculty, the challenging and innovative academic programs and collective sense of community are only a few of the reasons students cite for coming to, and staying at, Ashland University. And the fact that Ashland University has been ranked among the top colleges and universities in the country by several organizations shows the University is doing this very well. At Ashland University, the accent is truly on you, the student. The University has created a unique personalized and transformative learning experience, where students graduate not only well-prepared for careers, but as well-rounded global citizens ready to make a difference and lead in their personal and professional lives. At AU, students are taught how to think, not what to think. To request more information and apply, please visit ashland.edu.