Posts filed under ‘Other Penn State locations’
Jim Zarroli Leads a Roundtable for Us
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
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
Hold The Phone
A sign of the times in this morning’s Collegian: Beginning this fall, dorm rooms at University Park will no longer come with telephone landlines. The change reflects the reality that pretty much every student on campus has a cell phone, and apparently makes Penn State the first “big” school in the country to make a decision that many of its peers seem likely to follow. (So too might other Penn State locations: I followed up with Conal Carr, the director of housing at University Park, who said phone-free dorms have been discussed at other campuses; for now, the move only affects University Park.)
Worth noting: There will be one “courtesy” phone on each floor of each residence hall, and students who (for some reason) want a landline in their room can request one. Here’s guessing there won’t be many.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Michelle in Malta
Recently stumbled across this blog written by Michelle Hough, an associate professor of business at Penn State Greater Allegheny and Fulbright Scholar who is spending the spring semester teaching in Malta. It’s a cool mix of photos, travel blogging, and Maltese history. Worth checking out.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
A Bigger, Happier Valley
Penn State Lehigh Valley is on the move. Having outgrown its Fogelsville campus, the 97-year-old Penn State branch on the outskirts of Allentown is moving 16 miles east to Center Valley, where it will serve students at a nearly 100,000-square-foot building recently purchased from Lehigh Valley College. The benefits? More room, both existing (the new facility has about twice as much classroom and office space) and for possible future expansion; better access to public transportation; and the chance to upgrade without having to build new facilities.
The Lehigh Valley campus website has plenty of information on the move, including a Frequently Asked Questions page that answers the most common queries. One tidbit that’s not on the FAQ page, but which you can find on the site’s historical timeline: This will be the fifth location for Penn State Lehigh Valley since it opened — “as the first permanent Penn State technical center … in the attic of the Stevens School at 6th and Tilghman Streets in Allentown” — way back in 1912.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
A HUGE week for PSU Hoops
Penn State basketball fans of every stripe have reason to be excited this week, starting with the United States Collegiate Athletic Association men’s and women’s basketball championships. The Fayette and Greater Allegheny campuses are hosting the USCAA tournament, which features six Penn State campus squads. The Penn State Beaver women’s team tips things off at 11 a.m. today, the first of 49 games covering three divisions (two men’s, one women’s) that run through Saturday’s back-to-back-to-back title games at Fayette. (Check here for ticket info, or here to follow the results.)
Back in the Division 1 ranks, the Lady Lion basketball team opens Big Ten Tournament play Thursday night in Indianapolis. It’s been a disappointing season for Penn State, which needs to win the conference tournament to have any hope of postseason play. Tuesday brought some consolation, though: junior guard Tyra Grant was named first-team All-Big Ten.
Jamelle Cornley
The real buzz at University Park this week surrounds the Nittany Lion men, who rest firmly on the bubble for their first NCAA tournament berth since 2001. With two regular-season games left before the Big Ten men’s tournament tips off next week, Ed DeChellis’ team boasts that most favorable of sports cliches — they control their own destiny. A win Thursday night against No. 23 Illinois (which wouldn’t be a huge upset, since Penn State beat the Illini two weeks ago in one of the ugliest games anyone can remember) would give the Nittany Lions a terrific shot at making the Big Dance. No wonder some are calling this the biggest Penn State home game in almost 20 years.
If nothing else, it’s the last home game for senior forward and team leader Jamelle Cornley, whose toughness while battling bigger opponents and a long string of injuries has made him a favorite of every long-time Penn State hoops follower. Few would appreciate — or deserve — an NCAA tourney invite more than Cornley.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
To Shenango and Back
The Lecture Hall at Penn State Shenango was once an elementary school.
Yesterday a bunch of us took a trip to Penn State Shenango, in Sharon, Pa., near the Ohio border. For many of us on the Alumni Association staff, it was the first time we ever laid eyes on the campus, but two members of the group knew the place well: Amy Fellin Caputo ’86, our director of strategic communications, used to work at the Sharon Herald, and Sue Sokolak Beschler ’78, our director of membership, grew up in Farrell and attended Shenango before transferring to University Park.
Our host was Fred Leeds ’69g, ’71g, the campus chancellor, who started as a French instructor 37 years ago and has been at the campus ever since. He’s a very likeable and interesting guy, and refreshingly honest, mostly in ways I probably shouldn’t quote him on. :-) He’d offer some innovative ideas for improving the Penn State campus system—stuff that makes a lot of sense but probably doesn’t have much chance of getting approved—and then he’d say with a smile, “You can see I’m getting close to retirement.”
The former elementary school and former junior high, connected by an atrium.
The campus is located in a pretty depressed area economically. Right next to the campus, for example, is a GE plant that is closed down now, but which once provided 10,000 to 12,000 local residents with jobs.
Leeds says the campus has remained viable in the face of such challenges by educating workers who want to retool for new careers. In fact, half of the students at Penn State Shenango are returning-adult students.
Human Development and Family Studies is a big major at Shenango—it’s one of several four-year majors offered at the campus. (Until about 10 or 12 years ago, the non-University Park sites were primarily two-year campuses, but now, a lot of them offer a handful of four-year degrees.)
A student art project on display in a gallery at Penn State Shenango.
Interestingly, of the students who attend Shenango for only two years, many don’t go on to University Park to finish. Instead they transfer to Penn State Erie or Penn State Beaver—or to some other school altogether, like Slippery Rock or Thiel. (Sue Beschler said when she was a student, a lot of students would do two years at Shenango and then finish at Youngstown State.) The fact that they start, but don’t finish, at Penn State doesn’t mean that the University has failed them, according to Ira Saltz, the campus’ director of academic affairs. A lot of the students have jobs and families in the area and they’re just not likely to move to University Park. “If anything,” he says, their finishing their degree at another college “means we prepared them well” for the next step in their education.
The auditorium renovations should be done in two weeks.
Interesting fact: Leeds said that students at the non-University Park campuses graduate with much more debt than do those at University Park. The average student attending UP will graduate with $22,000 in loans to be paid off, which is bad enough, but the figure for non-University Park students is $35,000. In part that’s because many students at non-UP locations are returning adults, so they’re not usually getting financial help from their parents, and in part it’s because Commonwealth Campus students tend to come from much poorer families: The average family income of a Commonwealth Campus student is about half that of a University Park student. I was impressed to hear, though, that Shenango gives out about $400,000 in aid each year.
Inside the atrium connecting Lecture Hall to Sharon Hall.
The campus is a funky conglomeration of buildings right in the middle of the town: a former elementary school, a former junior high, a former laundromat-turned-union-hall, a former architectural firm, and so on.
We saw a cool auditorium-renovation project that’s almost complete—the hope is that it’ll be done in time for graduation in two weeks. Leeds is hoping the auditorium will also be a draw for the performing arts in the area.
By the way, the photos here were all taken with my iPhone, so don’t inspect them too closely for quality! A side note to iPhone fans: I took many of these with the “Night Camera” app, which is supposed to improve the quality of shots taken with an iPhone in low-light conditions.
Tina Hay, editor
Where Story Ideas Come From, part 2
Yesterday a bunch of Alumni Association staff piled into a van and headed to Penn State Fayette. The boss (Roger Williams, our executive director) has been taking us to various Penn State campuses over the past year or so. It helps us learn more about the campuses, their strengths, and their unique challenges—some are in urban areas and competing with 50-plus other institutions of higher learning, while others (like Fayette) are in economically distressed rural areas and have a whole other set of issues.
I’m embarrassed to say that in my 12 years as editor of the magazine, I’ve been to probably fewer than half of Penn State’s 24-some locations. So these all-day field trips are great for me—I get to see different parts of the huge Penn State system, and I bring back all kinds of story ideas for the magazine. I’m still digesting all that I learned yesterday, but a couple of things stick out.
—Coal mining is big in southwestern Pennsylvania, and Fayette’s two-year degree in mining technology is a strong program.
—There’s a pretty cool Coal and Coke Heritage Center in the campus library. Here’s a grainy shot from my iPhone:
That’s the chancellor of Penn State Fayette, Emmanuel Osagie, on the right-hand side of the photo. He told us his name is pronounced oh-SAGGY, but added cheerfully that “I accept any derivative” of that pronunciation.
The museum has some cool relics from the heyday of the coal and coke industry, like this sign:
—We also learned that Penn State Fayette students have raised close to $400,000 for THON over the past 10 years. They’re the top campus in THON philanthropy almost every year.
—They have a faculty member in art, Dave DiPietro, who travels to Italy every year. He’s got to have some good stories to tell. Here’s one of his works that I lifted from the Research/Penn State Web site. I’ll e-mail the R/PS editor later to get permission. :-)
"Pennsylvania Considerations," Watercolor and pastel, 10" by 14" by David DiPietro
—The campus hosted a “Fayette County Coal and Coke Music Festival” last September, and plans to make it an annual event.
—The campus’ facilities for students are very impressive. Several very nice auditoriums. A newly added, well-equipped fitness center. A big computer lab. A library. A new-media center of some sort, where students can do film editing. Two gyms, each with a basketball court—the bigger of the two was where Hillary Clinton made a campaign appearance last spring.
Anyway, it was a good day. In two weeks we’re off to Penn State Shenango.
Oh yeah, one last photo, just for fun. On the way back we stopped at the Sheetz in Altoona (surely the Taj Mahal of Sheetzes) and I took this shot … sort of a study in neon and twilight:
Again, it’s just with an iPhone, so I don’t think I’ll be submitting it to the Pulitzer committee.
Tina Hay, editor
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