Penn State Beaver was chosen by Beaver County Times readers as the Best College/University in the Times’ circulation area.
Beaver campus is an approved provider of continuing nursing education by the PA State Nurses Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.
International Study Abroad opportunities for students accompanied by faculty members have included trips to Turkey, Spain, Singapore, Rome, and the Bahamas.
Faculty and Academic Superlatives
Terrie Baumgardner, instructor in communications, arts, and sciences, received the Pennsylvania Communication Association Carroll Arnold Distinguished Service Award.
Dr. Minhnoi Wroble Biglan, assistant professor of psychology, was honored with the Jack P. Royer Award for Active and Collaborative Learning.
Dr. Robin Bower, associate professor of Spanish, spoke as an invited guest at Columbia University’s Literature Humanities Luncheon Speaker Series.
Dr. John Chapin, associate professor of communications, was the recipient of the National Organization for Victim Assistance Stephen Schafer Award for his research and service on behalf of victims of violence.
Dr. JoAnn Chirico, senior instructor in sociology, received the Penn State Commonwealth College Award for Distinguished Faculty Service/Outreach.
Martin Goldberg, associate librarian, presented “Read Their Words, Listen to Their Voices,” a study of autobiographies of the Holocaust at the Fifth Annual Holocaust Education National Conference at Seton Hill University.
Dr. Caroline Hall, associate professor of English, women’s studies, and American studies, received a Fulbright Award to lecture in Slovenia on “19th and 20th Century American Literature, Culture, and Women’s Studies.”
James Hendrickson, instructor in engineering, holds U.S. patents in the fields of superconductive energy storage, power generation, thermal imaging, personal protective equipment, and continuous steel casting.
Dr. Rajen Mookerjee, associate professor of economics, received a $50,000 grant from the Center for Rural Pennsylvania to conduct research on “Affordable Housing in Rural Pennsylvania.”
Dr. Carol Schafer, associate professor of theatre, integrative arts, and women’s studies, co-developed a play script based on stories of domestic violence survivors and victim support personnel. She worked in conjunction with Pittsburgh’s Crisis Center North which serves victims of domestic and relationship violence. Verizon Wireless assisted in funding several live performances of the play as well as a taping of the production by Penn State’s WPSU-TV where the program continues to be re-broadcast. DVDs of the play are available with all proceeds benefitting Crisis Center North.
Dr. Robert Szymczak, associate professor of history, received Penn State’s prestigious George W. Atherton for Excellence in Teaching Award and was also the recipient of four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Dr. Kay Wijekumar, associate professor of information sciences and technology, in conjunction with researchers from the College of Education, received more than $30 million in grants from public and private sources to design the Intelligent Tutor, a computer program that teaches children how to read by focusing on text organization.
Dr. Chuntao "Chris" Wu, professor of mathematics, received a $65,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study "RUI: Statistical Mechanics Models on Non-amenable Graphs.” In addition, he presented “Ising Models on Nonamenable Graphs” at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society and the Hong Kong Mathematical Society in Hong Kong and presented “Percolation and Related Models in Statistical Mechanics” at Wuhan University in China.
