PENN STATE PLANNING KEEPS Y2K BUGS AWAY HEAR HOW ON NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO’S WEB SITE
No Y2K problems here. Just after midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, all Penn State campuses reported in that their major infrastructures of power, light, heat and other critical systems were unaffected by Y2K. "The Year 2000 came and no lights flickered," said Kenneth Babe, Penn State’s corporate controller and senior administrator in charge of Y2K monitoring last weekend. Nevertheless, staff at all campuses will continue checking computer systems and applications throughout the week on the more than 40,000 computer and other electronic devices at the University that are date sensitive.

The University started making sure its most critical systems were Y2K-compliant more than 10 years ago, and virtually everything with an embedded chip at Penn State was tested well before Dec. 31, 1999 and was found to be in good shape.

Penn State’s extensive Y2K preparations were the focus of the "Weekend All Things Considered" program that aired on National Public Radio stations on Dec. 26, 1999. To hear the program through NPR’s Web site, point your Web browser to http://www.npr.org/programs/watc/ and click on the "archives" button. Follow the links to the Dec. 26, 1999 edition of "Weekend All Things Considered" and click on the "Y2K and Colleges" story.

You will need RealAudio Player to listen to the story. If you don't have the program, you can download it from NPR’s Web page.

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WOMEN IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING STUDENTS ARE TOPS IN CIC COMPETITION

Over the past three years, 41 Penn State graduate and undergraduate women students received CIC WISE Travel Grant awards - the highest number of all of the competing CIC schools -- 8 in 96-97, 12 in 97-98, 11 in 98-99, and 10 in Fall 99. Of the approximately 400 applications reviewed per year from the 15 CIC universities, only 75 grants were awarded annually. CIC is the academic wing of the Big Ten universities. When asked about the implications of these awards, Dr. Nüket Acar, the new Associate Director of the WISE Institute, said, "This is a great accomplishment for Penn State since the majority of the awards went to departments in which women are severely underrepresented.  These travel grants also provided a source of encouragement to these women and assisted in retaining them in their chosen technical fields."

For more information, go to http://www.psu.edu/dept/wise/ on the Web.