Paula Milone-Nuzzo, dean of the College of Nursing, is flanked by Marcus Henderson, president of the Student Nurses’ Association of Pennsylvania and chair of the National Student Nurses’ Association Council of State Presidents, and Coventry Jankowski, vice president of the National Student Nurses’ Association.
Rodney Reid leads Penn State Abington students.
Rodney Reid leads Penn State Abington students.
Rodney Reid leads Penn State Abington students.
Rodney Reid leads Penn State Abington students.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The University Libraries’ will offer fun and relaxing activities during “De-Stress Fest” at the University Park campus to help students reduce stress as they study for finals and complete papers and projects. From 3 to 8 p.m. Sunday-Tuesday, April 30-May 2, students can stop in the Mann Assembly Room, 103 Paterno Library, and enjoy free coffee and snacks or stretch their minds with a quick game and mental break.
The first-floor lobbies of Pattee Library and Paterno Library will have bean-bag toss boards, Wii games and puzzles available for students all day throughout finals week. During the De-Stress Fest hours from 3-8 p.m. in the Mann Assembly Room, art therapy and classic games allow students to relieve stress during this busy week. In addition to those study break activities, HealthWorks will offer a De-Stress Zone with brain massage music, biofeedback programs and stress management workbooks from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. each day.
Branch library locations at University Park also will offer snacks and relaxing activities for students. The Architecture and Landscape Architecture Library will provide origami projects and puzzles all day Tuesday-Thursday, April 25-27, with snacks and drinks offered from 7-9 p.m. The Fletcher L. Byrom Earth and Mineral Sciences Library will offer puzzles and other study-break activities as well as apples and snacks, while supplies last, each day Sunday, April 30, through Thursday, May 4.
Bring your own cup and enjoy snacks and drinks from 6-7 p.m. at the Engineering Library Sunday-Wednesday, April 30-May 3, and from 10 to 11 a.m. Monday-Wednesday, May 1-3. With newly configured group workspaces, the Physical and Mathematical Sciences Library will have snacks and drinks available all day, while supplies last, Monday-Thursday, May 1-4, with puzzles and other activities for study breaks.
The schedule for De-Stress Fest activities at all University Park library locations is below:
Architecture and Landscape Architecture Library
(First floor, Stuckeman Family Building)
Tuesday-Thursday, April 25-27
Pattee Library and Paterno Library
3-8 p.m. Sunday-Tuesday, April 30-May 2
Mann Assembly Room, 103 Paterno Library
4-6 p.m. Sunday-Tuesday, April 30-May 2
HealthWorks De-Stress Zone
Paterno Library Lobby
Pattee Library Lobby, Central
Fletcher L. Byrom Earth and Mineral Sciences Library
(first floor, Deike Building)
Sunday-Thursday, April 30-May 4
Engineering Library (third floor, Hammond Building)
Sunday-Wednesday, April 30-May 3 — (all day)
Sunday, April 30 — 6-7 p.m.
Monday-Wednesday, May 1-3 — 10-11 a.m. and 6-7 p.m.
Physical and Mathematical Sciences Library (second floor, Davey Lab)
Monday-Thursday, May 1-4
An 8.5x11 downloadable PDF for this event is available to print or share with colleagues and organizations. For more information about De-Stress Fest or for questions about accommodations for this event, contact Megan Gilpin at 814-867-0069 or mcg13@psu.edu.
Penn State students can stop by the University Libraries locations at University Park and enjoy snacks and stress-relieving activities during “De-Stress Fest.” The event at Pattee Library and Paterno Library takes place Sunday-Tuesday, April 30-May 2.
Eight Penn State Abington students will share their oral histories ensemble-style while celebrating the diverse culture that helps define the Abington experience. "The Diversity Project” will be presented April 20 and 21 in the Sutherland Auditorium.
Participating in the induction ceremony of Penn State Hazleton's chapter of Alpha Sigma Lambda were, front row, from left, students Raiana Nichols, Erin Sweetra, Shelby Jolliff and David Quinn. Back row, from left, Chancellor Gary Lawler, students Richard Facyson, Albert Kauker, Nathan Johnson and Alexander Carpenter; Lorie Kramer, program coordinator and instructor in rehabilitation and human services; and Director of Academic Affairs Elizabeth Wright.
Celebrating National Poetry Month, the University Libraries invites students to share poetry they have written or to read some of their favorite poems at the April 19 Poetry Slam in the Mann Assembly Room, 103 Paterno Library.
Jim Savage, an instructor in the College of Agricultural Sciences, guides Sarah Weir, a Penn State sophomore, on the basics of tree climbing during Penn State Ag Day April 12. Savage, who teaches HORT 201 Applied Arborculture, was demonstrating tree climbing as part of the college's Penn State Ag Day on the lawn by the Penn State Berkey Creamery.
Nearly 30 Penn State Smeal College of Business students recently tackled the ethical dilemma behind prescription drug price hikes and controls as part of the college’s second Ethics in the Workplace Case Competition.
A team of four finance majors — Nicholas Pearson, Raza Asghar, Zachary Cohen and Jason Cook — was chosen from among six other teams on April 7 in the Business Building. Each team member earned $500 and the right to represent Smeal in the 15th annual Collegiate Ethics Case Competition from Oct. 19-21 at the University of Arizona.
Teams were charged with developing a presentation focused on illustrating the benefits and costs of new standards for pricing and profits in prescription drugs. The presentation was to serve as the opening to a round-table event where members of the industry, the Department of Commerce, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Government Accountability Office were in attendance. The presentation needed to demonstrate the balancing of ethical priorities: business, investor, consumer and society.
The second-place team — Allison Adams (enterprise risk management major), Supriya Nair (supply chain management), Kayla Rhea (finance), and Jinsui Song (accounting, Corporate Control and Analysis Program) — earned $1,500. The third-place team — Drew Cohen (finance), Brian Donahue (management), Shivani Patel (finance, economics), Krishna Shah (finance) — earned $1,000.
The seven judges included: Meredith Pritchard, senior banking consultant, First National Bank; Michael J. Tecce, vice president, Ricoh Global Services Americas; Gavin Paul Howe, CORE associate, First National Bank; Adam Hoover, assurance manager, RSM US LLP; Doug Karns, 1977 Penn State graduate in accounting; Linda Treviño, distinguished professor of organizational behavior and ethics and director of the Shoemaker Program in Business Ethics in the Smeal College of Business; Jennifer McGlinn, assistant general counsel, Ricoh Americas Corporation.
Sponsors of this year’s case competition included: Doug Karns and Renee Karns, TE Connectivity, First National Bank, RSM, Ricoh, and Kohl’s.
About Integrity at Smeal
Integrity and ethical behavior are fundamental to the Smeal College of Business culture. These values underscore who we are and what we do as a leading business school community, both in and out of the classroom. The college's foundation of honor and integrity lies in the Honor Code, drafted in partnership with MBA students in 2006 and adopted by undergraduates in 2007. Integrity and ethical behavior are infused into courses across the Smeal curriculum, and the G. Albert Shoemaker Program in Business Ethics supports ethics lectures and related scholarly research. For more information on integrity at Smeal, visit www.smeal.psu.edu/integrity.
Phone: 814-863-3798
Twitter: @SmealCollege
Web: Smeal College of Business
Ph.D. candidate Kristin Kersavage was recently awarded the 2017 Intelligent Transportation Society of Pennsylvania Annual Scholarship.
Ph.D. candidate Kristin Kersavage was recently awarded the 2017 Intelligent Transportation Society of Pennsylvania Annual Scholarship.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Kristin Kersavage, a doctoral candidate in transportation engineering at Penn State, was recently selected as the recipient of the 2017 Intelligent Transportation Society of Pennsylvania Annual Scholarship.
The $2,500 scholarship is awarded to an individual in an undergraduate or graduate program who has a Grade Point Average of 3.0 or better and who completes an application and essay defining their career goals and educational objectives as they relate to the use of technology in the transportation industry. The individual must also be a U.S. citizen attending a college or university in Pennsylvania and must demonstrate exemplary aptitude in the areas of civil and/or electrical engineering in the transportation industry.
“It meant a lot to me when I received the email that I had won the scholarship,” Kersavage said. “I was excited and truly honored to be recognized for the hard work I’ve put into achieving my educational and career goals.”
Kersavage said the scholarship will help her financially as she pursues her doctorate at Penn State. It will also provide a valuable networking opportunity with professionals in the transportation industry.
Kersavage’s research focuses on roadway geometric design, speed management and safety data analysis.
“The areas of my research focus all contain different technologies to make transportation networks more efficient and improve safety in an effort to reduce crashes and save lives,” she said. “Technology is an important aspect in my educational objectives, to research new and innovative transportation engineering solutions, to enhance the transportation field and to improve the safety of our country’s transportation infrastructure.”
Kersavage became interested in this research because she’s always wanted to pursue a career that helps people and can improve their lives in some way and transportation engineering allows her to do that.
Upon receipt of her degree, she hopes to continue her transportation engineering research, either in academia or for a private engineering company.
Kersavage received her bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
The goal of the Intelligent Transportation Society of Pennsylvania is to promote, enhance, educate and advance the use of technology to create a more economical, efficient and environmentally sound transportation system in Pennsylvania.
READING, Pa. — Penn State Berks and Reading Area Community College (RACC) have joined forces to make the road to earning a baccalaureate degree more accessible. Officials from both institutions signed an articulation agreement on April 13.
The articulation agreement provides academic pathways to seven baccalaureate degree programs. College academic pathways serve both institutions’ goals of increasing student retention and completion. This new agreement outlines a seamless transfer for RACC’s associate degree programs to Penn State’s baccalaureate degree programs. Programs included are:
Anna Weitz, RACC president, is excited about this partnership. “The articulation agreement will help create a seamless transition for students who meet agree-upon academic and admission guidelines to attend Penn State Berks after completing their associate degree at RACC. We’re dedicated to preparing our students to be successful at some of the best institutions in the area.”
“Transfer students from Reading Area Community College have embraced what Penn State Berks offers and have become valuable assets to the Penn State Berks community,” says Keith Hillkirk, chancellor of Penn State Berks. “We’re excited about expanding our partnership with RACC and continuing to extend the Penn State Berks experience to its students who share a passion for higher education.”
Robyn Philactos, a graduate of RACC who is currently a senior communication arts and sciences (CAS) major at Penn State Berks, also spoke briefly at the ceremony. She stated that the educational foundation she built at RACC has helped her to continue her academic success at Penn State Berks. She will receive the Penn State Berks Outstanding Service Award, which is presented to a graduating senior in CAS who has demonstrated dedication and commitment to the field and to the CAS program at Penn State Berks, and who has a minimum 3.0 GPA.
For more information, contact Jodi Corbett, director of academic partnerships, at 610-607-6219, or jcorbett@racc.edu.
A Penn State Behrend hacking team won two awards at WiCHacks, a 24-hour female hackathon at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The students developed a simulation that raises awareness of workplace harassment.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Engineering students will display their senior capstone design projects at the Engineering Design Showcase from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 27, at the Bryce Jordan Center. The event is free and open to the public.
The design showcase is the culmination of a semester-long effort by engineering students to design prototypes and solutions to real-world challenges posed by industry clients.
Seniors in biomedical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, energy engineering, engineering science and mechanics, industrial engineering, materials science, and mechanical engineering are participating in the showcase.
Several local, national and global firms and government agencies sponsored the spring 2017 projects, including Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, DiamondBack Truck Covers, Dresser-Rand, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Lord Corporation, Lycoming Engines, Quaker Chemical Corporation, Siemens, Tyco China Investment Co. Ltd and Volvo.
Seventeen design projects were completed by global teams that included Penn State students working with their peers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden; Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China; KV Leuven, Belgium; The Belgium Campus, South Africa; and the University of Melbourne, Australia.
The event will also feature efforts by first-year students in EDSGN 100 Introduction to Engineering Design, who have been tasked by General Electric with designing a strategy to extract rare-earth element ore from a deep mine in a cost-efficient and environmentally conscious manner. This includes, but is not limited to, the use of alternative types of mobile mining equipment, alternative energy sources for mobile equipment or other methods that could exploit the current mine setup.
Judges at the showcase will award accolades for design excellence and best posters.
Visitors are encouraged to vote for their favorite project to receive the people’s choice award.
For a complete listing of spring 2017 projects and sponsors, please visit the Learning Factory website.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – In response to increased industry demand for experts in the growing field of additive manufacturing, Penn State will offer residential and online master’s degrees in additive manufacturing and design beginning in fall 2017.
The residential Master of Science in Additive Manufacturing (MSAMD) and online Master of Engineering in Additive Manufacturing (MEngAMD) are 30-credit degrees offered to graduate students to provide the analytical and practical skills required to digitally design, develop, analyze, numerically model, optimize, fabricate, and inspect new components and subassemblies using additive-manufacturing technologies.
Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, is redefining how components are designed, manufactured and certified. Building three-dimensional parts layer-by-layer using additive manufacturing gives engineers unprecedented design freedom to create lightweight structures, consolidate assemblies of components into a single 3D printed part, and functionally grade structures to improve performance. This is generating considerable interest in a wide range of industries, including aerospace, consumer goods, energy, medical, oil and gas, and space.
To meet these diverse needs, the program will integrate graduate coursework across multiple departments, including the Departments of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering; Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering; Engineering Science and Mechanics; School of Engineering Design, Technology, and Professional Programs; and Materials Science and Engineering; and across two colleges, the Colleges of Engineering and Earth and Mineral Sciences.
Students can choose from complimentary engineering courses covering a variety of topics to fulfill the degree program, including existing courses from programs in Engineering Leadership and Innovation Management, Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, and Human Factors Engineering and Ergonomics. Additional elective courses will also be made available in the Smeal College of Business and College of Information Sciences and Technology to understand and explore the implications of additive manufacturing on supply chains and cyber-security.
“The faculty involved in delivering these courses at Penn State are anxious to advance the education of new graduates as well as practicing engineers in the rapidly expanding field of additive manufacturing. In developing this graduate degree program, we included design for additive, based on the strong guidance from our industry friends. Industry wants to make sure engineers think differently about designs to capitalize on the opportunities that additive manufacturing allows,” said Karen Thole, head of the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, where the degrees will be housed.
The MSAMD and MEngAMD programs will provide unique, hands-on experiences in all aspects of the additive-manufacturing process. All students enrolled in the program, whether resident at University Park campus or online, will be required to spend time on site, working in Penn State’s state-of-the-art additive manufacturing laboratory, the Center for Innovative Materials Processing through Direct Digital Deposition (CIMP-3D) as well as the Material Characterization Laboratory in the Millennium Sciences Complex and the Factory for Advanced Manufacturing Education in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. Students will gain experience working with polymer as well as metallic additive manufacturing systems.
Tim Simpson, Paul Morrow Professor of Engineering Design and Manufacturing and co-director of CIMP-3D will serve as director of the new program.
“We are excited to launch the first multidisciplinary graduate-level program in additive manufacturing and design in the country, and in the world as far as we can tell," said Simpson. "It has been great working with all five departments to establish this program based on coursework and hands-on labs that we have been offering for nearly five years now."
The MS/MEng programs in AMD will prepare students to:
“Feedback from industry leaders in the field has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly with our focus and emphasis on design. Everything we make today was designed to be made with traditional manufacturing processes such as casting, machining, and forging. The real power and potential for 3D printing technologies is only achieved when you design things to be additively manufactured,” Simpson said.
Pending presentation to the Board of Trustees, the degrees will launch in fall 2017. For more information about the degrees or to be alerted as to when applications are available, please email AMDprogram@psu.edu.
ERIE, Pa. — Susan Fowler left Uber, the ride-hailing service, without a leather jacket: After promising one to each of the company’s site-reliability engineers, her manager bought them only for the men, Fowler said.
“He said that because there were so many men (in the organization), they had gotten a significant discount on the men’s jackets but not on the women’s,” Fowler, a software engineer, wrote in a blog post. “It wouldn’t be equal or fair, he argued, to give the women leather jackets that cost a little more.”
It wasn’t the first time Fowler had been singled out because of her gender. In fact, on her first day of work, her boss had propositioned her, she said.
“I found that really upsetting,” said Allison Steinmetz, a software engineering major at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. “To know that people were not taking her seriously, especially at a company so well known as Uber … it’s disappointing.”
Steinmetz and four classmates found a novel way to support Fowler, who now works at Stripe, an online payment-processing company: They developed a text-based simulation game that uses real stories to educate employees about workplace harassment. The program, called KickHerassment, won two awards at WiCHacks, the 24-hour female hackathon at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
The simulation presents a series of uncomfortable workplace scenarios. “Each choice that the user makes — whether it be to take action against the harasser, or to shy away — affects their later scenarios,” said Rachel Rattay, another of the developers. She and Steinmetz built the program with Katie Chuzie, Karlene McCleary and Alexa Foo.
“We wanted to show the frustration and helplessness of being harassed,” Foo said. “Eventually, the same scenario will start repeating, with slight variations. The only way to really get out of it is to quit your job.”
The team built the simulation on-site at RIT in February. Two weeks earlier, another Penn State Behrend team won the #HackHarassment challenge at BrickHack, RIT’s premiere hackathon. More than 400 student designers and coders competed at that event, vying for more than $13,000 in prizes.
The Penn State Behrend team — Mason Toy, Daniel Kovalevich, Conrad Weiser and Vily Kolesnichenko — developed a chat bot called Omniclad. The program uses Microsoft Cognitive Services API and Microsoft’s Azure to filter and remove adult or NSFW content.
A third team won the JetBrains and Best Java Hack awards at the HackPSU event at University Park in early April. Those students — Appa Hardner, Ryan Seipp, Matthew Benkart and Corey Zalewski — built an application called Canvoice, which integrates Canvas, the University’s new learning management system, with the Amazon Echo. Users can activate the Echo, which responds to voice commands, to check their grades or ask for upcoming assignments for a specific class.
The performance at HackPSU was an encore of sorts: In November, Penn State Behrend students won five of 16 prizes at the fall HackPSU hackathon. More than 600 students participated in that event, which was sponsored by the Penn State EdTech Network, IBM, Brazen and Instructure. Three Behrend teams brought back awards:
“Our students are showing their programming skills not only in class, but in competition at other universities, and they’re excelling,” said Naseem Ibrahim, assistant professor of computer science and software engineering. “These competitions allow our students to work together to solve problems that are interesting, innovative and current, while interacting with cutting-edge technologies.”
Assistant director, news and information, Penn State Behrend
