Wills Gymnasium

The Ohio State Normal College at Kent is a historic district in Kent, Ohio, United States. It consists of the five original buildings on the main campus of Kent State University, with the first, Merrill Hall, opening in 1913 and the last, Moulton Hall, opening in 1917. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The name of the district comes from the working name of what would later be named the Kent State Normal School in 1911 and ultimately Kent State University by 1935.

The Kent State University College of Public Health was established in 2009. It is one of only two colleges of public health in Ohio, and it is the first school in the state to offer a Bachelor of Science in Public Health. Its goal is to train students to meet the current and projected shortage of public health professionals across the nation. The College of Public Health is built on the Academic Health Department model which fosters collaboration between schools and local public health agencies to combine academic scholarship and public health practice.

The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre and the Kent State massacre) resulted in the killing of four and wounding of nine unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard, on the Kent State University campus. The shootings took place on May 4, 1970, during a rally opposing the expanding involvement of the Vietnam War into Cambodia by United States military forces as well as protesting the National Guard presence on campus. Twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired about 67 rounds over 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis. Students Allison Krause, 19, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20, and Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, died on the scene, while William Knox Schroeder, 19, was pronounced dead at Robinson Memorial Hospital in nearby Ravenna shortly afterward.Krause and Miller were among the more than 300 students who gathered to protest the expansion of the Cambodian campaign, which President Richard Nixon had announced in an April 30 television address. Scheuer and Schroeder were in the crowd of several hundred others who had been observing the proceedings more than 300 feet (91 m) from the firing line; like most observers, they watched the protest during a break between their classes.The shootings triggered immediate and massive outrage on campuses around the country. It increased participation in the student strike that began on May 1. Ultimately, more than 4 million students participated in organized walk-outs at hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools. The shootings and the strike affected public opinion at an already socially contentious time over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.

Allison Beth Krause ( ; April 23, 1951 – May 4, 1970) was an American honor student at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, when she was killed by soldiers of the Ohio Army National Guard in the Kent State shootings, while protesting against the invasion of Cambodia and the presence of the National Guard on the Kent State campus. National Guardsmen opened fire on a group of unarmed students, killing four of them, at an average distance of about 345 ft (106 m). Krause was shot in the left side of her chest at about 330 feet (101 m). A subsequent autopsy found that a single rifle bullet entered and exited her upper left arm, and then entered the left side of her chest, fragmenting on impact and causing massive internal trauma. She died from her wounds later the same day.

Jeffrey Glenn Miller (March 28, 1950 – May 4, 1970) was an American student at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, who was killed by the Ohio Army National Guard in the Kent State shootings. He had been protesting against the invasion of Cambodia and the presence of the National Guard on the Kent State campus. National Guardsmen opened fire on a group of unarmed students, killing Miller and three others.

Sandra Lee "Sandy" Scheuer (; August 11, 1949 – May 4, 1970) was a student at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, when she was killed by Ohio National Guardsmen in the Kent State shootings.

The Memorial Athletic and Convocation Center, often referred to as the MAC Center and the MACC, is a multi-purpose arena on the campus of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, United States. The building is primarily used as an athletic venue that is home to five Kent State Golden Flashes varsity athletic teams, including the men's basketball and women's basketball teams. The arena also hosts women's volleyball, women's gymnastics, and wrestling as well as commencement exercises, speakers, and concerts throughout the year. The building houses the offices of the Kent State Athletic Department and the coaches of each of the university's varsity athletic teams. The MAC Center opened in 1950 as the "Men's Physical Education Building" to replace Wills Gymnasium as the home of the men's basketball, wrestling, and men's swimming programs and men's physical education department. From 1956 to 1991, it was known as Memorial Gymnasium in honor of Kent State students who died in World War I and World War II. It was expanded in 1977 and underwent a major renovation between 1990 and 1992. Since 1992, the arena seating capacity has been listed at 6,327 in the basketball configuration. The MAC Center is a regular site for the Mid-American Conference championship meets for both wrestling and women's gymnastics and a past host of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) events. As of 2010, the building is the 19th-oldest arena in NCAA Division I college basketball and oldest in the Mid-American Conference.

Memorial Stadium was a multi-purpose stadium in Kent, Ohio, United States, on the campus of Kent State University. Its primary use was as the home field for the Kent State Golden Flashes football team and also served as the home venue for the KSU men's track and field team. The football and track teams had already been playing on the site since 1941, but with temporary bleachers for seating. The permanent grandstand built and dedicated in 1950, which also included a press box, was the first phase of the stadium, and was later followed by a duplicate grandstand on the opposite side of the field in 1954. Initial plans called for the seating to eventually surround the field, though these plans were largely never realized. During the 1960s, additional bleacher seats were added separate from the two main grandstands on all sides of the field, and brought seating capacity to approximately 20,000 by 1965. Campus developments in the 1960s and the need to keep the stadium on par with other facilities in the Mid-American Conference, however, led university officials to recommend building a new stadium on a different site rather than continue to expand Memorial Stadium. The stadium was displaced to make way for a new 12-story library and student center complex, originally known as the University Center, built in the late 1960s and early 1970s adjacent to the stadium site. The main seating areas of Memorial Stadium were dismantled in early 1969 and reassembled at the site of the new stadium in a different configuration. Today, the site of Memorial Stadium is largely occupied by the visitor parking lot for the Kent Student Center while the original grandstand of Memorial Stadium is still used as the north end zone at Dix Stadium.

Kent State University (KSU) is a public research university in Kent, Ohio, United States. The university includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio located in Ashtabula, Burton, East Liverpool, Jackson Township, New Philadelphia, Salem, and Warren, along with additional regional and international facilities in Cleveland, Independence, and Twinsburg, Ohio; New York City; and Florence, Italy. The university was established in 1910 as a normal school. The first classes were held in 1912 at various locations and in temporary buildings in Kent and the first buildings of the original campus opened the following year. Since that time the university has grown to include many additional baccalaureate and graduate programs of study in the arts and sciences, research opportunities, as well as over 1,000 acres (405 ha) and 119 buildings on the Kent campus. During the late 1960s and early 1970s the university was known internationally for its student activism in opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, due mainly to the Kent State shootings in 1970. As of 2022, Kent State was the third-largest university in Ohio with an enrollment of over 34,000 students in the eight-campus system and over 25,000 students at the main campus in Kent. Kent State offers over 300 degree programs, among them 250 baccalaureate, 40 associate, 50 master's, and 23 doctoral programs of study, which include such notable programs as nursing, business, history, library science, aeronautics, journalism, architecture, fashion design and the Liquid Crystal Institute. It is classified by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education among "R1: Doctoral Universities – very high research activity".

The Kent City School District is a public school district based in Kent, Ohio, United States. It serves approximately 3,100 students living in Kent, Franklin Township, Brady Lake, and Sugar Bush Knolls, as well as a small portion of southern Streetsboro. The district has seven schools including four elementary schools housing kindergarten through fifth grade with preschool housed at one elementary school; Stanton Middle School for grades 6–8; and Theodore Roosevelt High School, which houses grades 9–12. The superintendent is Tom Larkin, who began his tenure August 1, 2023. Larkin previously served as assistant superintendent and has been with the district since 1996.

Kent is a former station for the Erie Railroad in Kent, Ohio, on the Erie main line (Kent Division) between Chicago and Jersey City. Along the main line, the next station west towards Chicago’s Dearborn Station was Tallmadge, while east towards Jersey City’s Pavonia Terminal was Ravenna. The station was located 615.9 miles (991.2 km) from Pavonia Terminal and 382.6 miles (615.7 km) from Dearborn Station. The city of Kent was the headquarters of the Kent Division, with car shops and a large yard maintained just south of the station until 1930. About one mile (1.6 km) north of the station were the Erie Railroad's Breakneck Yards, which operated into the 1960s. The station, located in Kent's downtown area overlooking the Cuyahoga River, dates to 1864, one year after the opening of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad through Kent in 1863, while the depot, described as being in the Tuscan Revival style, opened in 1875. Kent station consisted of two platform extending along the outside of each of the two tracks south from West Main Street to Stow Street. The depot was toward the northern end of the platforms on Franklin Avenue. Kent station closed in 1970 and the depot was nearly demolished in the 1970s. Its potential demise was one of the main catalysts in establishing the Kent Historical Society in 1971, who purchased the depot in 1975 and later restored and renovated it for use as a restaurant and office space.

The former Glenn H. Brown Liquid Crystal Institute (LCI) at Kent State University is now renamed the Advanced Materials and Liquid Crystal Institute. The AMLCI is a center of study for liquid crystal technology and education, blending basic and applied research on liquid crystals. This approach has resulted in technological advances and new applications such as display tablets, optical shutters, variable transmission windows, projection display devices, and flexible displays. Established in 1965, the institute is now directed by Dr. Torsten Hegmann and is housed at KSU's Liquid Crystal and Materials Sciences building, completed in 1996. The LCI is home to the Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program, which offers masters and Ph.D. studies in the physics and chemistry of liquid crystals and their applications. The program is open to incoming students with degrees in physics, chemistry, engineering, and materials science.