James A. Pawelczyk, assistant professor of physiology and kinesiology, in the College of Health and Human Development's Noll Physiological Research Center, is the 2001 recipient of the President's Award for Engagement with Students.

The award is given to a full-time member of the faculty who has exhibited extraordinary achievement in the integration of teaching, research or creative accomplishment, and service.

Pawelczyk receives this award for engaging undergraduate students in research and creative activity, for humanizing an exceptionally large university for students and for preparing students to contribute to society during their college years and in the years that follow.

The majority of research assistants in his laboratory are undergraduate students who are responsible for key tasks in the laboratory.  While on leave from the university as a NASA payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Columbia, Pawelczyk taught a Penn State class, Physiological Adaptations to Stress, via live satellite link.  Organized by Pawelczyk, NPRC director Peter Farrell and the Penn State World Campus, the lecture was one of four delivered by astronauts to North American universities, marking the first time that university students had spoken live with an astronaut in space.

Dove tailing with his NASA experiences, Pawelczyk serves, with Sven Bilen, assistant professor of engineering design and graphics and electrical engineering, as a faculty advisor for the Flyin' Lions, an interdisciplinary group of engineering students who will fly their experiment on NASA's KC-135 aircraft as part of NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunity Program.  He is also a member of the board of directors of the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium, one of the largest providers of student research funding at Penn State and serves as the College of Health and Human Development's representative on the Faculty Advisory Council of the Schreyer's Honors College.

From 1998 to 2000, Pawelczyk spent two years in residence in Atherton Hall as the Faculty Mentor for the Schreyer Honors College.  Though common in Penn State's past, he is the only tenure track faculty member at Penn State to live full time in a residence hall in recent history.  In this capacity, he served as student advocate for the faculty and administration and as a faculty and administration liaison for students. 

Pawelczyk regularly speaks to alumni, extension, school and community groups and has visited nearly all of the Penn State campuses where he speaks to students and plants grass grown from seeds that flew in space with him aboard Columbia.  The space grass project was conceived by undergraduate students from Penn State New Kensington, and developed by David Huff, associate professor of agronomy.