March 6, 2000
University Park, Pa. -- Penn State's 15th Annual Graduate Exhibition, which features performances of Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Shakespeare and posters on such diverse topics as hybrid electric vehicles, sugar maple decline and deep-sea tubeworms, has shifted to mid-week on March 22 and 23 and to the Penn Stater Conference Center.
Graduate students will display and explain research and creative activity underway in many University departments.
For the first time students from the School of Visual Arts will participate in the Performance Option. While their colleagues in music and theater perform in the Music Building on the University Park campus, visual arts students will display their works in the building's lobby. On the following day, at the Penn Stater, topics will range from the deicing of rotor blades using piezoelectric actuators to fruit quality traits in tomatoes and atomic archaeology.
The performance option will take place on March 22 in the Recital Hall of the Music Building at 6:30 p.m. The poster exhibition will be open to the public in the President's Hall at the Penn Stater from 10 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on March 23.
Both events are free to the public and a free guest shuttle runs from the campus to the Penn Stater.
The exhibition provides students with the opportunity to explain and defend their work to faculty, other students, administrators and the community and highlights the importance of research and creative activity to graduate education.
"The Graduate Exhibition is a wonderful opportunity for our graduate students to share their respective research, scholarship and creativity with the larger University community," says Dr. Eva Pell, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate School. "I do hope that many faculty and students will attend the performance option and visit the poster session; -- both to show support for our students and to see first-hand the breadth and depth of accomplishments at Penn State."
For example, a graduate student in landscape architecture is looking at religious waterfronts in India and the impact they have on the ecology of the rivers they border, while a speech communications student is looking at how one online pornography site manages to draw and retain clients.
Antimatter storage for applications in propulsion is the work of a mechanical engineering student who is looking for a way to support 50 year long space missions with beamed core antimatter propulsion. Chinese and American counter culture musicians, Cui Jian and Bob Dylan, are investigated by a comparative literature major who looks at their lives, their socio-cultural context, their folk music and the counter-cultural spirit of their songs.
Nearly 240 Penn State graduate students will compete for awards ranging from $100 to $500 for a total $10,000.
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Contacts:
A'ndrea Elyse Messer (814) 865-9481 (o)/ (814) 867-1774 (h)
Vicki Fong (814) 865-9481 (o)/ (814) 238-1221(h)