We held the roundtable in Robb Hall of the Hintz Family Alumni Center. (Click to see bigger version.)

A project I’ve been working on for the last several months finally came to fruition today, when a group of key campus leaders came to the alumni center to talk about college costs and affordability.

Penn State has long prided itself on providing an affordable education to the sons and daughters of the working class—that’s what a land-grant school is supposed to do, after all—but that mission is a tough one to uphold in the face of shrinking state appropriations, a nationwide recession, and other challenges.

NPR's Jim Zarroli ’79 moderated the discussion.

So we brought together some major players to discuss these issues in Robb Hall at the Hintz Family Alumni Center, and we were especially happy to have NPR business correspondent Jim Zarroli ’79 drive in from New York to moderate the discussion.

The panelists were Anna Griswold, executive director of student aid at Penn State; Don Heller, a faculty member in the College of Education and director of Penn State’s Center for the Study of Higher Education; Gavin Keirans, president of the University Park Undergraduate Association; Rod Kirsch, senior vice president for development and alumni relations; and Rob Pangborn, vice president for undergraduate education.

Don Heller and Anna Griswold were among the five panelists.

What did they talk about? I don’t know—I was too busy running around with a camera and periodically stopping back to make sure the audio recorder was working. I did catch some bits of conversation about how facilities construction and upgrades at Penn State are funded … about the role of the University’s capital campaign in raising money for more scholarships … and about the latest news out of Harrisburg about Penn State’s appropriation and how it may hinge on casinos adding table games.

I’ve already shipped the recording off to a transcriptionist, who will return it to us as a text document; from there we’ll edit it down and print it as a feature in our January-February issue.

Tina Hay, editor