Science News - 2018

SCIENCENEWS P E N N

S TAT E

Lake Erie is a Scientist’s Playground

B E H R E N D

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Inside NURSING FACILITIES EXPANDED BIOFUELS R&D CENTER OPENS ALUMNUS HONORED FOR MAYFLY WORK

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STUDENT AMBASSADORS SHINE 12

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S C I E N C E | 2 0 1 8

“ I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the

conditions in which they can learn.”

In Brief

— ALBERT EINSTEIN

DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE As I look across the School of Science, I see more than just educators teaching in classrooms and laboraMARTIN KOCIOLEK, PH.D. tories. I see the opportunities for learning everywhere I look.

Living laboratories like Wintergreen Gorge and Presque Isle State Park allow our students to get their hands dirty while learning about the world around them. State-of-the-art simulation equipment prepares the next generation of well-trained and exceptional nurses for the experiences they will encounter in their future profession. Engagement with organizations like HERO BX and Pennsylvania Sea Grant give students opportunities to apply knowledge from their courses to real-world problems. Programs like Science Ambassadors teach students how to communicate science to the public and give them the confidence to become the science leaders of tomorrow.

When I am asked what makes the School of Science special, these are the kind of initiatives I am most proud of and that I love to talk about.

I hope you enjoy reading about all of the great things going on in our school in this issue of Science News.

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BEHREND STUDENT DONICIANA CORTES, right, demonstrates the interactive math word wall for Barber National Institute students and their aides.

DIGITAL LEARNING DAY Students in MTH ED 427 Teaching Mathematics in Technology-Intensive Environments, taught by Dr. Courtney Nagle, associate professor of mathematics education, had the opportunity to put theory into practice this spring. They participated in Digital Learning Day at Erie’s Barber National Institute, which serves children and adults with autism, intellectual disabilities, and behavioral health challenges.

The students created an interactive math word wall using the Aurasma/HP Reveal app to showcase multiple representations of mathematics terms and demonstrate how the app can be used to teach mathematics to students with diverse learning needs.

Digital Learning Day began in 2012 as a grassroots effort to highlight innovative education and teaching practices that are improving student outcomes through technology.

“Technology can be especially effective for helping children and adults with disabilities engage with learning and develop new skills,” said Dr. Maureen Barber-Carey, executive vice president of the Barber National Institute.

Faculty and Staff News New Faculty and Staff

MATH TEACHERS ADD SKILLS This summer, nearly 100 middle and high school mathematics teachers attended Penn State Behrend’s Best Practices in Teaching and Learning Mathematics Conference. The annual conference is organized by faculty members and students in the school’s secondary education in mathematics program.

GET YOUR HEAD IN THE STARS Yahn Planetarium at Penn State Behrend, located in the Zurn Building, is open year-round. The planetarium offers public shows on Thursdays at 1:00 p.m. and Saturdays at 1:00 and 2:30 p.m., all followed by a look at the current night sky using the planetarium dome.

Groups, clubs, and organizations are welcome to schedule private events and can choose from more than twenty different shows.

Programs for the public change seasonally. The current offerings are: Sunstruck— Thursdays and Saturdays at 1:00 p.m. —recommended for ages 9 and up. Travel back in time to experience the birth of the sun and learn how it came to support life, how it threatens life, and how its energy will one day fade away.

Larry Cat in Space— Saturdays at 2:30 p.m.— recommended for all ages. Take off on an adventure with a curious stowaway cat.

Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for children 12 and younger.

Shows are free for all current Penn State students as well as faculty and staff members with Penn State ID. For additional information, contact planetarium director Jim Gavio at 814-898-7268 or jvg10@psu.edu.

The school welcomed ten new faculty members: Dr. Lynne Beaty, assistant professor of biology; Patrick Kelly, lecturer in mathematics education; Brittany Kramer and Dr. Cody Wood, lecturers in mathematics; Dr. B. Chase Russell, assistant professor of mathematics; Dr. Zachariah Riel and Dr. M. Faly Mbengue, assistant teaching professors of mathematics; Dr. Kellie Brosius-Jircitano, assistant teaching professor of chemistry; Debra Lynn Loop, instructor in nursing; and Dr. Kim Raines, assistant teaching professor of nursing.

Awards Dr. Courtney Nagle, associate professor of secondary mathematics education, was the 2018 winner of the Allegheny Mountain Section Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Mathematical Association of America for 2018.

Promotions Terry Blakney has been promoted to associate teaching professor of statistics. Jonathan Hall has been promoted to associate teaching professor of physics. Tracy Halmi has been promoted to associate teaching professor of chemistry. Dr. Courtney Nagle has been promoted to associate professor of secondary mathematics education with tenure.

Jodie Styers has been promoted to assistant teaching professor of secondary mathematics education.

SILVER HONORED Dr. Pam Silver, interim associate dean for academic affairs and distinguished professor of biology, was recently honored with a Distinguished Service Award for her twenty-one years of service and devotion to Freshwater Science, a DR. PAM SILVER peer-reviewed scientific journal. Silver served in various roles at the journal, including editor-in-chief for the last thirteen years, until her retirement from the journal this spring.

You can read more about Silver’s honor and work on the journal at www.behrendblog.com.

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Need for Nurses Leads to Expansion

When Penn State Behrend’s nursing graduates walked across the stage this past May, they all had jobs waiting for them.

“All of our nursing students had job offers before their senior year,” said Kimberly Streiff, campus coordinator of nursing programs at Behrend. “I have hospitals and medical facilities scooping up nurses as soon as we can get them through the program.”

It’s not easy: Behrend nursing students must meet high grade-point average standards and put in many hours practicing clinical and critical thinking skills before doing rotations at Erie-area medical facilities.

Recognizing the demand for nurses locally and nationally, Behrend is expanding its nursing labs with the help of two grants from The Orris C. Hirtzel and Beatrice Dewey Hirtzel Memorial Foundation, totalling $900,000.

The increased space will allow for the admission of eighty B.S.N. students this fall, beyond the fifty of previous years. The program’s existing simulation lab with full-body programmable simulation mannequins will be moved to a larger space that will allow for three sim bays.

“Two labs will be medical/surgical and one will be OB/ neonatal, but with the option of changing one of the med-surg labs to pediatrics or mental health or any other specialty,” Streiff said.

Activities in the sim labs will be broadcast into a classroom next door, so students can learn from the experiences of one another. As part of the expansion, the previous sim lab space will become a larger nursing skills lab.

“These changes will allow for more access, greater flexibility, and a larger number of students who can use the labs at one time,” Streiff said. “We are very excited about it.”

Nursing Students Observe Cuban Health Care System A tour of a Cuban mental-health facility left Megan Cavanaugh in awe.

Everywhere she looked, she saw papier-mâché artwork that had been created by patients, and throughout the building, she heard the sounds of some of the very same patients making music.

The experience of seeing how everything at the facility was focused on tapping into patients’ skills and talents left the Pittsburgh native and her tour companions in tears.

“Cuba’s big goal in their mental-health facilities is to reintegrate patients into society. They find a patient’s talents and have him or her pursue them,” said Cavanaugh, a senior nursing major. “At the end of the tour, we could not help but cry. The doctor asked us if we had suggestions, and no one could come up with anything because it was so well done.”

Cavanaugh’s takeaway is an example of why she and twelve other students from three Penn State locations—Behrend, Hershey, and University Park—visited the country over spring break. As part of the embedded course NURS 499: Foreign Study, students traveled to Cuba’s capital of Havana to tour health clinics and learn about the country’s health care delivery system.

The goal was for the students to compare the Cuban system to that of the United States while also exploring ways to learn from Cuban practices.

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“It’s part of the College of Nursing’s Strategic Plan that we increase our students’ academic travel, so they not only gain an increased understanding of diversity but also become more academically astute,” said Carolynn Masters, an associate teaching professor of nursing at Penn State Behrend who traveled with the students.

“Every day we were there, we were immersed in the health care system and the challenges the country faces,” Masters said. “It was very altering to the students. You could see their eyes opening, and then their minds, and then their hearts.”

Biofuels R&D Center Opens HERO BX partnership extends open-lab model to college’s School of Science A $1 million investment by HERO BX, an Erie-based biodiesel company, is creating research opportunities for students and faculty members in the School of Science. Much of the work is conducted in a new, 1,500-square-foot chemistry lab the company has developed in the Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation Center in Knowledge Park.

Students are working with HERO BX chemists and other researchers to reduce the sulfur in biodiesel feedstocks, which are processed for reuse as transportation fuels and heating oil. HERO BX produces more than fifty million gallons of biodiesel every year.

Subsequent work by students is expected to focus on increasing the efficiency of biodiesel in coldtemperature applications, including commercial aviation.

HERO BX operates production and distribution facilities in Erie, Alabama, and New Hampshire. The company is the largest producer of biodiesel in the eastern United States.

HERO BX staffs the Knowledge Park lab with a full-time manager. Penn

State Behrend students contribute to research during the academic year and as summer interns for the company.

“Having a lab on campus gives our students the flexibility to work in new ways,” said Dr. Martin Kociolek, director of the School of Science and an associate professor of chemistry. “It is much easier for students to integrate their work with HERO BX into their academic schedules. They can walk over and work for a few hours between classes.”

The commitment by HERO BX to staff the lab with a manager and additional researchers as needed allows students to engage with industry scientists on a daily basis, Kociolek said.

“They don’t work in isolation here,”

he said. “They learn the entire process for the production of biodiesel, from beginning to end, and see how the chemistry they have learned in their classes is used in a real-life application.”

The HERO BX partnership is the first open-lab initiative in the college’s School of Science.

“The HERO BX lab creates new opportunities for Penn State Behrend students to collaborate with an industrial research partner – in this case, developing cleaner, domestically produced, renewable fuel sources,” Chancellor Ralph Ford said. “This is a true collaboration, with a commitment by both partners to engage directly and regularly in a way that only a presence on campus makes possible.”

The Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation Center was designed to foster exactly that kind of collaboration.

The building, which is located in the college’s Knowledge Park, advances Penn State Behrend’s open-lab model of learning, which matches students and faculty members with private-sector partners for experiential student learning, applied research, and advanced product development.

Pat Black, far left, founder and CEO of HERO BX, cuts the ribbon on the new biofuels research center in Knowledge Park. Black was joined by numerous government, industry, and Behrend officials, including Chancellor Ralph Ford, second from right, and Dr. Martin Kociolek, fourth from right, director of the School of Science.

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Class Reunion, Borneo Style Jonathan Hall, associate teaching professor of physics, began his career halfway around the globe as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malaysia in the late 1970s. There, he taught his first students at the only secondary school in the Sipitang district of Sabah, formerly known as North Borneo.

Forty years later, Hall returned to his teaching roots along with his daughter, Liz, where they caught up with several of Hall’s former students.

First, a short history lesson “Malaysia was formed from a collection of colonies in the early 1960s,” Hall said. “In order to develop as a nation, expanding education from the few to the many was the number-one priority of the government. To accomplish this, they ‘imported’ teachers from other countries to teach, especially math and science, in rural areas, which is how I came to be there as a Peace Corps volunteer.”

As in many other Asian nations, a student’s academic suceess and future career is largely determined by the results of national standardized exams, which are given in ninth and eleventh grades. Math is a mandatory pass. If you fail the math exam, that is the end of your education.

“Unfortunately, because they lived in remote areas, many of my students didn’t have qualified math teachers in their early years and had a lot of catching up to do,” he said.

Hall worked with his students in and out of regular class time, often hosting additional study sessions in the evening and on Saturdays.

The extra effort paid off for several of Hall’s students, something he learned on his return trip.

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Jonathan Hall, associate teaching professor of physics, and a former colleague, Wan Masa, who taught with Hall in North Borneo forty years ago.

Delayed gratification After a fourteen-hour flight and a recovery day on the beautiful beaches of the South China Sea, Hall and his daughter had dinner with a group of his former students who live and work in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah.

“Several of my students had come to high school unprepared in math, but learned and became proficient enough to pass their exams, which allowed them to move on to careers in teaching, nursing, banking, business, and law,” Hall said. “It was awesome to find out what a difference a teacher can make.”

Reaching new heights with another grad On his third day in Malaysia, Hall met up with one of his most successful former students, Daring Laban. Laban is the manager of Sabah State Parks, a group of parks that host 1.3 million visitors a year.

“When I taught Daring, he lived in a remote village, Long Pa Sia, close to the Indonesian border,” Hall said. “Students from his village traveled five days on foot through the rainforest to attend secondary school, where they lived in a dormitory.”

During the reunion visit, Hall and Laban met at Kinabalu Park and climbed Mount Kinabalu, where they traveled through four climate zones before reaching bare rock and the mountain’s peak at 13,400 feet. They celebrated with a post-climb feast at an open-air restaurant that specializes in wild boar.

Hall, center, at the top of Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia with his daughter, Liz Hall, right, and former student, Daring Laban, who manages the park.

More connections In the village of Long Pa Sia, Hall and his daughter spent one day hunting and fishing with another former student. They attended a wedding in Sarawak and found time to sightsee in between. In Sipitang, he had dinner with more students and a former colleague, science teacher Wan Musa.

“Forty years ago, I attended Wan Musa’s wedding, where I was the Malay equivalent of his best man, which included having his face and mine smeared with rice flour,” Hall said. “It was great to see him again.”

The warm reception Hall received after forty years may surprise some people, but Hall said it’s not unusual in Malaysia for bonds to span four decades.

“They are very hospitable people,” he said. “It is part of a way of life there. Forming relationships with others and strengthening them is valuable and important in their culture.”

While Hall taught his students science, math, geography, and English, he said they taught him an important life lesson.

“The students in my class came from diverse backgrounds with different languages, cultures, and religions, but they all worked and learned together and respected one another,” he said. Forty years later, that has not changed. “It is normal and

Hall, standing, second from left, had dinner with several of his former students in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah.

natural for Muslims to invite their Christian and Chinese friends to their homes to share meals at the end of Ramadan. They don’t let their differences divide them. In fact, they respect and celebrate those differences.”

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A Scientist’s Playground Though you won’t find it on any campus map, Penn State Behrend has a 3,112-acre laboratory nearby.

Presque Isle State Park, a sandy peninsula that juts into Lake Erie, draws four million visitors a year. Not everyone is there to enjoy a day at the beach. Some, including many School of Science students, faculty members, and alumni, are there to work, learn, and do research.

Lake Erie is a tremendous resource for scientists at any stage in their career.

The Student Julia Guerrein, a senior environmental science major, spent a summer mapping the shoreline changes to Gull Point, at the tip of Presque Isle. Using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), a sophisticated mapping software, Guerrein made six maps that show how much the peninsula changed between the years of 1939 and 2015.

“I took aerial photos from an online digital database and pieced the photos together using the software,” Guerrein said.

“Then I traced the peninsula and Gull Point alone to look at the change in the area and perimeter of the total park.”

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LAKE ERIE AND PRESQUE ISLE STATE PARK OFFER RESEARCH, PARTNERSHIP, AND CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

Layering the new and old maps effectively illustrates how humans and nature have changed and influenced the shape of the park over the years.

“I found that the area of Gull Point increased by almost 200 percent, which is significant in regards to an ongoing debate about sand replenishment and the breakwaters at the park,” said Guerrein, who worked with Dr. Michael Naber, associate teaching professor of geosciences, on the project.

Guerrein and Naber built on research that had been done

by Dr. Pam Silver, distinguished professor of biology and interim associate dean for academic affairs, in the 1990s.

“Dr. Silver did a similar project that was focused on wetlands at the park in 1996, but she didn’t have access to GIS at the time,” Guerrein said.

This summer, Guerrein traveled to Toronto to present her work at the International Association of Great Lakes Research conference. She also plans to share her findings with Erie and Presque Isle State Park officials.

“My maps can’t influence policy change on their own, but they are a useful tool for other studies,” Guerrein said.

The Professors It would be impossible to list all of the research projects underway by School of Science faculty members at Presque Isle or in Lake Erie. In every program, from mathematics to environmental science to physics, faculty members are doing research work in, around, or about the lake. Here are just a handful of recent and current projects: Dr. Matt Gruwell, associate professor of biology, assisted the Great Waters Research Collaborative with a study of ballast water and invasive plankton species in the Great Lakes.

Dr. Michael Rutter, associate professor of statistics and assistant director of the School of Science, is working on a predictive, weather-based model to help park managers identify when high levels of E. coli might be present in the water.

Dr. Tony Foyle, associate professor of geology, is finishing a three-year project funded by the Department of Environmental Protection examining erosion rates along the bluffs of Lake Erie. Further study is already funded (see story on page 11).

The Practitioners Many School of Science alumni, particularly those who get their feet wet (pun intended) doing undergraduate research work in Lake Erie, go on to work at Presque Isle State Park or for the variety of environmental and government agencies that serve the Lake Erie region.

Organizations and offices where you’ll find Penn State Behrend alumni hard at work include the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Tom Ridge Environ-

Julia Guerrein, a senior environmental science major, spent a summer mapping the shoreline changes to Gull Point at the tip of Presque Isle. Using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), she made six maps (above) that show how much the peninsula has changed between 1939 and 2015.

mental Center, the Presque Isle Audubon Society, Pennsylvania Sea Grant, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the Office of the Great Lakes and Coastal Zone Management, and the Purple Martin Conservancy.

To learn more about Presque Isle State Park and the scientific research work underway there, visit trecpi.org and click on “A Place to Teach and Learn.”

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Alumnus Honored For Lifelong Mayfly Research Work As a child growing up on the bluffs overlooking Lake Erie’s Presque Isle Bay, Dr. Peter Grant ’75 delighted in chasing fireflies, plucking cicada exoskeletons from trees, and capturing the mayflies that would cling to his family’s Front Street home each summer.

“I remember waking up and seeing that there had been a mayfly hatch the night before and rushing outside to catch them,” he said. “They’re pretty slow, so they were easy to get.”

Little did he know then that those ancient winged insects would become his life’s work.

Grant, a biology graduate, was recently honored for that work with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Committee of the International Conference on Ephemeroptera, the order to which mayflies belong.

“I was very surprised,” he said. “I still don’t believe it.”

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Currently the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of biology at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, Grant has studied mayflies for nearly four decades.

He has compiled an annual bibliography on the insect for the North American Benthological Society (now the Society for Freshwater Science) for twenty-seven years, and he founded and served as the editor of The Mayfly Newsletter for twenty-six years.

Getting his feet wet in Walnut Creek Grant’s education and career have taken him from Pennsylvania to Texas to Florida to South Carolina to Oklahoma, but he still keeps in touch with the Behrend professor who encouraged his first research work. Dr. Ed Masteller, professor of biology emeritus, recruited Grant to participate in a summer research project in Walnut Creek after his first year at Behrend.

Mayflies are part of an ancient group of insects called the Palaeoptera, which includes dragonflies and damselflies. The gossamer-winged, short-lived mayfly has never really held a candle to its zippy, flashy “cousins.” But they stand out for a few reasons.

“Mayflies are the oldest known winged insect,” Grant said. “The ancestry goes back about 300 million years, further than any currently living group of insects.”

Despite the longevity and variety (there are more than 3,000 species of mayfly), the insect has a brief adult life. Few live more than a day or two as flying insects.

“They don’t even have any functional mouth parts or a digestive system,”

Dr. Peter Grant ’75

Grant said. “They exist in their adult form simply to reproduce.”

A mayfly spends the majority of its life, up to a year or more, in its immature nymph stage as an aquatic freshwater insect. They can be found at the bottom of nearly any freshwater source—creeks, rivers, lakes—in still or running water. Turn over a few rocks in the water, and you are likely to find a mayfly on one of them.

Still hard at work Grant balances his academic responsibilities with his research work. He’s currently involved in a long-term project cataloging the mayflies of Oklahoma as well as a study looking at the population size of endangered species of mayflies and caddisflies in the state.

Grant is happy with his lot in life.

“I’ve wanted to be a scientist since I was a kid,” he said. “Being a college professor has given me the flexibility to both teach and learn.”

Will Work for WATER Water is vital to the survival of all species on earth, including humans, so protecting and preserving our largest natural sources of water—lakes, oceans, rivers, and other marine areas—is of paramount importance.

That’s why, fifty years ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) formed the National Sea Grant College Program, a national network of colleges and universities, including Penn State, that conducts research and promotes education, training, and extension projects geared toward the conservation and practical use of the country’s coastal areas, Great Lakes, and other marine zones.

Pennsylvania’s Sea Grant program, formed in 1998 and granted Sea Grant College status in 2016, is based at Penn State Behrend. The program focuses its efforts on three diverse coastal regions in the Commonwealth: Lake Erie, the Delaware River, and the Susquehanna River.

It’s a question that Foyle plans to explore further with Dr. Mike Rutter, associate professor of statistics and assistant director of the School of Science, and Dr. Karen Schuckman, assistant teaching professor at University Park’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. The three were recently awarded a $125,000 grant from Pennsylvania Sea Grant to continue studying bluff change.

Dr. Mike Campbell, professor of biology and director of the Lake Erie Regional Grape Research and Extension Center (LERGREC), is also leading a Sea Grant-funded project in partnership with the Penn State College of Agriculture.

“The funds are being used to support student researchers who are analyzing climate data that has been collected at LERGREC since 1948,” said Campbell. “They have already been able to show that winters along Lake Erie have changed as the result of warmer autumn weather.”

INITIATING RESEARCH

Pennsylvania Sea Grant was recently awarded an $800,000 grant Pennsylvania Sea Grant not only from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife conducts research, it funds it.

Service to support a two-year Dr. Tony Foyle, associate effort to control and prevent the professor of geology, and Dr. Mike spread of aquatic invasive species Pennsylvania’s Sea Grant Naber, associate teaching profes(AIS) across Pennsylvania, with an program is based at Penn sor of geosciences, are finishing emphasis on the Lake Erie Basin. a three-year research project “This funding is critical to State Behrend. The program studying bluff erosion along preventing the introduction and focuses its efforts on three Lake Erie’s shoreline. Foyle and spread of aquatic invasive species in diverse coastal regions in the Naber are working with Dr. Sean Pennsylvania,” said Sarah Whitney, Rafferty, research director and director of Pennsylvania Sea Grant.

Commonwealth: Lake Erie, associate director of Pennsylvania “It will enable us to work on differthe Delaware River, and the Sea Grant, to calculate the rate ent aspects of the issue, including Susquehanna River. at which the bluff is receding and prevention, early detection, rapid identify the factors that influence response, and control of aquatic bluff recession. invasive species.”

All of their findings will be The funds will allow Pennsylvania posted on the Pennsylvania Lake Erie Watershed Water Sea Grant to develop a consistent and coordinated approach and Land Technical Resources (WALTeR) website, which to controlling aquatic invasive species outbreaks across the was developed by Dr. Kathy Noce, teaching professor state by training resource managers to implement Pennsylvaof management information systems, and Penn State nia’s AIS Rapid Response Plan.

Behrend Information Technology Services members.

Some of the money will be used for the continued WALTeR serves as a portal for Pennsylvania Great Lakesdevelopment of an online database and mapping program related data, studies, and spatial information. that will record aquatic invasive species threats across With an estimated 40 percent of the U.S. population the Great Lakes watersheds. Sea Grant also plans to now living in coastal communities, there’s a lot to lose develop an app for Pennsylvania’s Field Guide to Aquatic when chunks of land are falling into the water. “Tax base Invasive Species, a mobile companion to a printed guide it and tourism dollars, not to mention scenery,” Foyle said. developed 2013.

“Bluff retreat is a major coastal hazard affecting over It will be money well spent as nearly 200 invasive species $66 million worth of property along all nine municipalities already have been found in the Great Lakes, from zebra and in Erie County,” Foyle said. “Also, when parts of the earth quagga mussels to round gobies and starry stonewort. A slough off into the lake, how does that impact coastal new invasive species appears in the watershed every six to water quality?” eight months.

SUPPORTING RESEARCH

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Penn State Erie, The Behrend College School of Science 1 Prischak Building 4205 College Drive Erie, PA 16563-0203

Non-Profit Org. U.S. POSTAGE PAI D Erie, PA Permit No. 282

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE: More than 1,000 fifth-grade students from the Erie region spent a beautiful spring day on campus learning about the importance of water at the third annual Children’s Water Festival. Students participated in a variety of activities led by faculty members, students, and area environmental experts.

Students Make Excellent Ambassadors

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ho better to speak for the School of Science than its students? Last year, a group of twelve standout students from across the school’s academic programs were chosen to pilot a School of Science Ambassador program.

The students took a 1-credit course, SC 297 Service in Science, to learn about the school, its programs, its students, and how they can play a role in outreach efforts and recruitment.

“We want to create a culture of service in the sciences and the best way to get students involved is to have their peers asking them to participate,” said Tracy Halmi, associate teaching professor of chemistry, who is leading the program.

In their inaugural year, the Science Ambassadors helped with outreach and public-education efforts, spoke to visiting high school students, served as peer mentors, and represented the school at open houses and other admissions events.

This fall, the group will develop a framework for the program, including a formal application process that will allow all interested School of Science students to apply.

Though ambassadors are expected to be academically strong students, Halmi said grade-point average is not the only consideration in choosing students to represent the school.

“We’re looking for dynamic, engaging students who enjoy sharing their love of science and Penn State Behrend with others,” Halmi said.

Science News is published annually and provided free to alumni and friends of the Penn State Behrend School of Science by the Office of Strategic Communications, William V. Gonda, wvg2@psu.edu, senior director. Editor: Heather Cass, hjc13@psu.edu. Designer: Martha Ansley Campbell, mac30@psu.edu. This publication is available in alternative media on request.

Penn State is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer, and is committed to providing employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. U.Ed. EBO 19-156

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