Archive for May, 2009
Another Mike Reid?
Turns out former Penn State quarterback Kerry Collins has a new hobby: writing country music.
Guess that’s what happens when you spend a lot of time in Nashville, where Collins is now playing for the Tennessee Titans.
He told The Associated Press recently that he’s been jotting ideas in a notebook for years, and that in 2007 he began to work with some established Nashville song writers, including Ed Hill, who co-wrote Tracy Lawrence’s “Find Out Who Your Friends Are,” and Billy Lawson, who wrote “I Left Something Turned On At Home” for Trace Adkins. Both songwriters say Collins — who majored in labor and industrial relations, hardly an artsy field — has some ability. Collins certainly has endured some life experiences that could translate to country songs.
That said, he’s got a steep climb to become the best football player/songwriter in Penn State history. That honor goes to Mike Reid, the 1969 Outland Trophy winner and a four-time All-Pro for the Cincinnati Bengals, who has written No. 1 country songs and branched out into classical music and musicals. Read this 2001 Sports Illustrated piece for a nice look at Reid’s musical accomplishments.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
1 comment May 29, 2009
The Best Alumni Magazines in the Country
Stanford Magazine, one of my favorites—and a gold medal winner this year
You may remember that two years ago we were named the top alumni magazine in the country—we won the “grand gold” from our national professional group, called the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, or CASE.
The grand gold is better known as the Sibley Award, and it’s what pretty much every alumni magazine editor dreams of winning someday.
Last year we won a gold, though not the Sibley—that went to the very fine Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. But we were very happy with our gold, happy to again be considered one of the best alumni magazines in the country.
This year? We didn’t win a danged thing.
(Well, not in the overall magazines category anyway. We did win two golds in CASE’s “Best Articles of the Year” category, but more about that another time.)
The Carleton College Voice, consistently one of the best alumni magazines in the country
CASE recently announced this year’s winners in College and University General Interest Magazines, as the category is called, and while we’re of course disappointed not to be among them, it’s very much a deserving bunch. I thought you might be interested in seeing what the really good alumni magazines across the nation are, in the eyes of this year’s judges.
Gold (one of these will get chosen next week to win the Sibley Award):
Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin
In Touch (King’s College London)
Princeton Alumni Weekly
Stanford Magazine
The alumni mag of the Fashion Institute of Technology is gorgeous.
Silver:
Hue (Fashion Institute of Technology)
Middlebury Magazine
Suffolk Alumni Magazine (Suffolk University)
Notre Dame Magazine
Bronze:
Carleton College Voice
Columbia Magazine (Columbia University)
Dartmouth Alumni Magazine
Duke Magazine
Pomona College Magazine
Smith Alumnae Magazine
We get a lot of these magazines at the office, and it’s hard to argue with the judges—these are great magazines. I love the Stanford and Carleton magazines especially—when they come in the mail, I drop what I’m doing to take a look, and inevitably there’s something in there that makes me say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” That often happens with the Kenyon, Dartmouth, and Middlebury magazines too. Notre Dame’s magazine is very thoughtful and writerly, while Hue is visually stunning; I’m glad to see that the judges appreciated both.
There are a few magazines on the list here that I’m not as familiar with, and that’s part of the value of the awards competition—we’ll contact the editors of those magazines and see if we can get on their mailing list (and offer to send them The Penn Stater in exchange). A few months from now, we’ll gain access to the judges’ reports, and that can be educational as well.
And, of course, there’s always next year….
Tina Hay, editor
1 comment May 29, 2009
Wanted: Memories of ‘Move-In Day’
Greg Grieco/Penn State Public Information
As Tina Hay mentioned in a blog a while ago, The Penn Stater is looking for alums’ memories of their first days as students. We’ve received a lot of interesting stories so far, but in case there are more out there, I thought I’d post a reminder. So if you’ve got a good tale about moving to any Penn State campus and getting used to college life, please share it with us. The stories should be 300 words or less, and please get them to us by June 8. (Earlier is better.)
You can e-mail submissions to pennstater@psu.edu, fax them to 814-863-5690, or snail-mail them to the Hintz Family Alumni Center, University Park, PA 16802. The best ones will appear in a future issue, probably September/October.
Chas Brua, contributing editor
Add comment May 29, 2009
Star Trek Director has Penn State Blood
A 1962 grad sent us a note the other day via the Alumni Association’s “Ask Alumni” page to call our attention to something I didn’t know: The director of the current blockbuster Star Trek movie is the son of two Penn Staters.
J.J. Abrams also directed the film Mission: Impossible III and was co-creator of the TV series Lost, for which he won a bunch of Emmy Awards. He’s part of a movie-and-TV family: His dad, Gerald Abrams ’61, is a Penn State Alumni Fellow and Distinguished Alumnus who has owned Cypress Point Productions for more than 30 years. Gerry has been executive producer of a number of TV programs and garnered a handful of Emmy nominations over the years. He’s also very active in the College of Communications. And J.J.’s mom, Carol Abrams ’63 (she was Carol Kelvin as an undergrad), is an independent producer who won a Peabody Award in 1994 for The Ernest Green Story, a film she produced for the Disney Channel.
Tina Hay, editor
Add comment May 29, 2009
They Came, They Sawed, They Conquered
Kate Barden ’98 and Bruce Cramer have made a career out of taking photos that offer quirky glimpses of their subjects. (Their photo of a Cape Breton fiddler half immersed in the North Atlantic was our cover image last July/August.)
Recently, Kate and Bruce have been documenting the art of chain-saw carvers, those folks who turn big hunks of wood into bears, super-size chess sets, and beds adorned with woodland fauna (below). The carvers are talented people, and Kate and Bruce bring their own offbeat vision to the photos.
(c) 2009 kbpictures
To see more of Kate and Bruce’s series on chain-saw carvers, check out their Web gallery.
—Chas Brua, contributing editor
Add comment May 27, 2009
A Unique Approach to Renewable Energy, Take 2
Turns out bug gas isn’t the only unlikely renewable energy source being researched at Penn State. An article today on Forbes.com mentions the work of engineering professor Craig Grimes, whose team is trying to find more efficient ways to turn carbon dioxide into fuel; specifically, Grimes hopes to create a solar-powered “carbon dioxide recycling machine.” Like so much of the research that comes out of Penn State’s world-class College of Engineering, I don’t understand it, but is sounds awfully cool.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Add comment May 27, 2009
Uhhhh … Remind Me Who Joseph Garatti Was?
A section of the Fraser Street Deli menu. Click to enlarge.
I have a meeting at noon tomorrow, and they’re serving us food—a classic illustration of the “no such thing as a free lunch” concept. The good news is that we get to pick what we’re eating; we were invited to go to the online menu of the Fraser Street Deli and make our choices in advance.
Those of you who lived in State College, say, 10 years ago probably remember this same restaurant as the Stage Door Deli, with sandwiches like the Marlon Brando and the Kate Hepburn. I think the place changed hands a few years back, and the new owners have named all of their sandwiches after famous Penn Staters. There’s the George Atherton (corned beef), the Heinz Warneke (Genoa salami), the Kelly Mazzante (a veggie wrap), and the Jack Ham (ham, silly!), to name a few. Even the late radio mogul and occasional College of Communications lecturer Bob Zimmerman ’58 has a sandwich in his honor.
A sandwich named “The Ultimate Hero” honors, appropriately enough, Adam Taliaferro ’05, with a dollar of each purchase going to the Adam Taliaferro Foundation.
For a couple of the names, I had to do a quick Google search to figure out who they heck they were. You get extra-credit bonus points if you know—without looking it up—what Joseph Garatti’s Penn State-related claim to fame was.
Tina Hay, editor
Add comment May 26, 2009
The Blue Band on YouTube
Vince Verbeke ’82 called my attention to the fact that you can now watch WPSU-TV’s excellent one-hour special, Making the Blue Band, on YouTube. Or, if 58 minutes is a little longer than you like to spend in front of your computer monitor, you can watch the five-minute trailer for the show.
It turns out that WPSU (which some of you may remember as WPSX-TV; they changed the call letters a few years back) has a whole channel on YouTube, where you can find everything from full-length specials on autism, Alzheimer’s, and other topics, to episodes of the high-school game show Scholastic Scrimmage, to three- to five-minute gardening pieces on such topics as composting, growing blueberries, and creating a butterfly garden. I also noticed an interview from last football season with Sean Lee, who was taking a medical redshirt at the time while rehabbing a knee injury.
Lots of good stuff here.
Tina Hay, editor
Add comment May 22, 2009
Your Chance to Weigh In
We’re in the middle of a survey of our readers (or, more accurately, a randomly selected sample of them) to gauge their impressions of the magazine, what they’re interested in reading, and related questions.
We sent what’s called an “e-mail blast” on Wednesday to a group of Alumni Association members chosen at random from our alumni database, asking them to click on a link to take them to an online survey. If you received an e-mail that looks like the one here, I hope you’ll fill out the survey.
We do a smaller-scale survey after every issue of the magazine—we’ve been doing that for 12 years now—and while that gives us good anecdotal information about what readers think about specific covers and feature stories, the sample size is pretty small. The big survey we’re doing right now should produce a sample size big enough to yield very solid results.
We’re doing the survey in conjunction with our national professional association, called the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, who has in turn contracted with a vendor called Qualtrics Inc. We’ll not only get detailed results about The Penn Stater but also be able to see how we compare to alumni magazines from other schools. And best of all, it costs us nothing—CASE is doing the survey project as a service to our members.
So, again, if you received an e-mail about the survey (it should have arrived Wednesday afternoon), I hope you’ll take the time to complete it. If you already have, that’s wonderful. And if you weren’t among the random sample that got tapped, but you still have something you want to tell us, by all means feel free to e-mail me anytime at tinahay@psu.edu.
Tina Hay, editor
1 comment May 22, 2009
Searching for an Alum’s Killer
In our May/June issue, we told the tragic story of Veno Leigertwood ’01, a student counselor who was shot to death outside his home in Yeadon, Pa., on Sept. 13. Leigertwood was studying for his M.B.A. degree at Eastern University and was on his way to class. A witness reported seeing two men in the area at the time of the killing.
Leigertwood’s unsolved murder is now also listed on the America’s Most Wanted Web site, including a phone number to help anyone with information share it with police.
—Chas Brua, contributing editor
1 comment May 21, 2009
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