Meet the 2025 SPS Outstanding Chapter Advisor and New SPS President: Ron Kumon

As a longtime chapter advisor, zone councilor, and advocate for student leadership, incoming SPS President Ron Kumon knows that engagement and participation are at the heart of a successful student-led organization. Among his goals in his new position, Kumon plans to foster a culture of interactivity between the network of more than 800 SPS chapters and the SPS Office.

“We want to work on ways to improve how we hear from chapters around the country and to make sure that we’re being inclusive to everyone who’s interested in physics and astronomy,” he says.

Currently an associate professor of physics at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan, Kumon earned his BS in physics and mathematics from Michigan State University and a PhD in physics from the University of Texas at Austin.

“I was interested in physics even as a kid,” he says. Kumon’s father was an electrical engineer and amateur radio operator, and though he initially had an interest in engineering (and became a licensed amateur radio operator himself), Kumon eventually gravitated toward physics and his research area of applied biomedical imaging.

At Kettering, Kumon has served as advisor to award-winning chapters for the past 14 years and has seen firsthand both the impact that chapters can make on students and the surrounding community, and the challenges that student organizations face. These include funding and the cyclical disruptions that can be the result of regular student turnover—or extraordinary events like the COVID-19 pandemic. “It can be hard to jump-start things once they’ve gone into a lull,” he says.

As an advisor Kumon has come to believe that structure, continuity, and strong student leadership are key to maintaining an effective chapter. To ensure success, he advocates putting helpful practices in place, such as establishing meeting schedules at the beginning of the academic year, planning activities that have worked in the past while being open to new ideas, and keeping abreast of logistics and funding. “Making sure that those things stay in place allows chapters to do what they do best—engage other students,” he says.

As SPS president, Kumon wants to improve how chapters communicate their activities and successes with the SPS Office—and to make it easier for more chapters to do so.

Some SPS chapters are very active, “but we just don’t hear from them, and we’d like to know what they’re doing,” he says. “Our publications, the SPS Congress, and zone meetings are all great ways to continue doing what we do, but there are several things we want to improve upon.” These include reaching out to more chapters directly and perhaps finding new ways for chapters to report their activities, achievements, and learnings.

Kumon believes departments and faculty play an important role in student engagement and that more can be done to provide camaraderie and esprit de corps among physics majors—which in turn may lead to improved retention. That’s because some of the challenges Kumon recognizes are those faced by the physics and astronomy disciplines as a whole.

“We need to make efforts to reach those chapters that may be in departments under threat and say, ‘Look, this has value,’” he says. “SPS can help you maintain students and recruit students into these majors. That’s one place that SPS can come into play in a real, concrete way.”

Another possibility for maintaining a healthy pipeline of physics majors, Kumon says, is to begin with high school students, making efforts to spark their interest in the field before they reach the university level.

In the meantime, Kumon urges SPS chapters to take advantage of the many resources offered by the SPS Office, including a new website, awards, scholarships, and science outreach catalyst kits (SOCKs). He also recommends that members attend annual zone meetings and get to know their zone councilors, who can act as liaisons for students and help them access available resources.

“We want people to know that the National Office is here to serve chapters and chapter advisors,” he says. “It’s really important that the students make sure to reach out.”

The SPS Outstanding Chapter Advisor Award is the most prestigious award given by SPS, bestowed annually on the basis of the leadership, student leadership development, support, and encouragement the advisor has provided to the chapter. For his leadership and guidance of the SPS chapters at Kettering University, Ron Kumon is the recipient of 2024–25 SPS Outstanding Chapter Advisor Award.