Penn State Harrisburg provides more choices in graduate study than any other institution of higher education in the Capital Region and is the lead institution in professional study at the master’s level in the Capital Region.

The School of Humanities benefits from longstanding relationships with cultural and educational institutions in the region including the State Museum in Harrisburg and local historical societies and museums. If you walk into any historical site or museum in the greater Harrisburg area, you will most likely encounter a graduate of the College's American Studies program. Over 50 graduates are in senior administrative posts in archives, historical sites, and museums.

The School of Public Affairs has regular participation from state and local political leaders who serve as guest faculty, commencement speakers, and students. Notable alums include former Pennsylvania Lt. Governor Mark Singel, State Sen. Joe Conti, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee David Argall, Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes and Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller.

U.S. News and World Report ranks the Penn State Harrisburg Master of Public Administration program, accredited by the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, in top quartile of more than 250 programs at colleges and universities across the nation, and ranks 31st among all programs in the specialty in Public Budgeting. The School of Public Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg has been designated as the University’s flagship school of public affairs.

The School of Business Administration remains the only AACSB-fully accredited School of Business at the undergraduate and graduate level in the Capital region.

The School of Science, Engineering, and Technology has one of five model water resource treatment facilities in the nation, delivering annual training to operators of the 1,400 small public water treatment plants in the Commonwealth.

With support from the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Pennsylvania Recycling Markets Center has been established on the campus of Penn State Harrisburg. State DEP Secretary Kathleen McGinty, in announcing the center's creation, indicated an initial $863,000 grant covers the first of a five-year, $5 million commitment. Working with the college's environmental programs, the center's mission is to expand and develop more secure and robust markets for recovered secondary materials, stimulate demand for products with recycled content, and research and maintain up-to-date market trend data. Penn State Harrisburg will lead the state in the development, production, and commercialization of Pennsylvania recycled materials.

The college’s Capital Area Institute for Mathematics and Science enhances the college’s efforts to improve the quality of education in the region. Founded in 1997, the institute became a part of the college’s School of Behavioral Sciences and Education in 2002 and now serves more than 29 school districts and 17,000 students in the region. Lending its services to a six-county region, the institute has the potential to impact more than 2,000 teachers and 50,000 students in kindergarten through grade 12. The institute provides a variety of services to schools and educators organized into three areas – curriculum resources, materials, and professional development.

The college’s Institute of State and Regional Affairs has partnered with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission to produce a web site, which is the first of its type in the nation. The recently launched Internet Accessibility/Disability Laws site identifies the level of legally mandated accessibility of a building or commercial property in the Commonwealth. It is designed for use by architects, builders, real estate industry personnel, building owners, developers, and the general public in order to ensure voluntary compliance.

A collaboration among Penn State Harrisburg and Penn State College of Medicine faculty members and alumni has resulted in a new book to aid in the continuous improvement and redesign of health care delivery systems. "Portable Health Administration," published by Elsevier, is designed to assist professionals in individual medical practices, hospitals, health systems, and state and federal government. The editors, Penn State Harrisburg Professor of Management and Health Care Systems James T. Ziegenfuss Jr. and College of Medicine Professor of Ophthalmology and Pathology Joseph Sassani structured the volume into four parts: health care systems, policy, and access; critical organization and management issues; finance and insurance; and futures.

Simon Bronner, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Folklore, has been awarded the college’s first Fulbright Chair. He will be teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in American studies theory and method, popular and consumer culture, and folklore at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands as the Fulbright Walt Whitman Chair in American Culture this fall. He was also the first Penn State Harrisburg faculty member to earn a Fulbright Fellowship, to teach a distance education course, and to be awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

Associate Professor of Public Policy Carol Nechemias is teaching at Volgograd State University in Russia this academic year on a Fulbright Fellowship. She is teaching American government and public policy, as well as women in politics in Russia and the U.S. She will also be presenting colloquia throughout Russia. She is also the editor of a book which profiles new problems facing women in Russia. "Post-Soviet Women Encountering Transition: Nation-Building, Economic Survival, and Civic Activism," co-published by Johns Hopkins University Press and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, features essays by social scientists from the United States, Europe, and the former Soviet Union.

Assistant Professor of Public Policy Michael Kenney was one of only eight scholars from across the nation awarded multidisciplinary fellowships to investigate ways governments and agencies can be organized to respond more effectively to terrorism. His Organizational Learning and Homeland Security Fellowship, based at Stanford University 's Center for International Security and Cooperation, is part of a $1.65 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The fellowship program, which started last fall, is part of a joint project with the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. The school, in turn, will develop and conduct computer simulations to help DHS run more effective anti-terrorism exercises. He looked at competitive learning in terms of the strategic interaction between terrorists and counter-terrorists, and how each party tries to learn from vulnerabilities exposed in public emergencies.

Erdener Kaynak, professor of marketing, was awarded his second Fulbright Senior Specialist award by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FSB). In the month of December 2004, He visited the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences of Manas University, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic where he undertook a variety of academic tasks for the benefit of the host university as well as other Kyrgyz universities and non-governmental agencies. He taught comprehensive seminars in global/international marketing and communication, and served as a resource person at an international conference. He appraised the university administrators on the important trends and developments taking place in the U.S. business education as well as providing Kyrgyz academicians with greater insights in U.S. system of faculty promotion and tenure.

Instructor in Information Sciences and Technology Roderick Lee's class in Organization and Design of Information Systems class is part of a Penn State Harrisburg-University Park partnership producing a Web site that will preserve the court records, newspaper accounts, and census data from Pennsylvania's Underground Railroad. Overseen by IST's Computer-Supported Collaboration and Learning (CSCL) Lab, the project is funded by the Pennsylvania Federation of Museums and Historical Organizations and the Center for Anti-Slavery Studies. Eventually, the site could contain an interactive map to link significant places such as African American settlements and Underground Railroad "stations" with documents and discussion about these locations from historical and 21st century perspectives.

Richard Young, associate professor of supply chain management, is working as a member of a team with the Center for Supply Chain Research to potentially benchmark logistics activities for the British Royal Navy. The objective is to find the best logistics and supply practices within a military context for potential application. He was instrumental in assisting with the development, during the early 1990s, of what has become known as the Penn State Non-Competitive Consortium Benchmarking Methodology.

Ten years of research and editing by more than 50 Penn State Harrisburg American Studies graduate students reached a high point last fall with the publication of Citizen Extraordinaire: The Diplomatic Diaries of Vance McCormick in London and Paris, 1917-1919. The 500-page volume, published by Stackpole, will help fill a gap in World War I scholarship and integrate McCormick's observations with those of other diplomats and aides to President Woodrow Wilson. Edited by Penn State Harrisburg Associate Professor of American Studies and Social Science Michael L. Barton and graduate students Cherie Feiser, Susan Meehan, and Teresa Weisser, Citizen Extraordinaire consists of transcriptions and annotations of the diaries of McCormick, a member of a prominent Harrisburg family who was manager of President Wilson's 1916 re-election campaign and director of the War Trade Board, which organized a blockade of Germany and its allies. He also served as the "accountant" at the Versailles Peace Talks, responsible for establishing the amount of war reparations owed by Germany. The edited McCormick diaries chronicle his diplomatic duties in London and Paris.

Professor of Engineering Alex Aswad is a recognized national and international expert on structural design of buildings and bridges for wind and seismic forces. During a recent sabbatical, he tested the strength of 62-foot prestressed concrete specimens typical of the type used in parking decks in the U.S. The spans were the largest ever tested. He is also the winner of the Distinguished Educator Award presented by the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute. The award recognized an engineering educator who has a broad knowledge of prestressed concrete bridges and buildings and who contributes to the advancement of the structural design profession.

Y. Frank Chen (SDCET) just returned from a sabbatical this spring during which he conducted a pilot study related to blast-resistant design for bridge structures and investigated the current condition of major bridges in the U.S. to further find practical and economical ways to make them more resistant to explosive loads. He has also been awarded a research fellowship by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He will visit the University of Tokyo in Japan later this year. He has also been invited by National Central University, Taiwan, to give international lectures on advanced bridge analysis and design this summer. Along with his graduate students, Dr. Chen is working on research projects including high performance steel, prestressed concrete structures and horizontally curved bridges.

Barbara Sims was named Critical Criminologist of the Year by the Critical Criminology Division of the American Society of Criminology. She will travel to Nashville in November to attend the annual meeting of the ASC where she will be recognized for winning this prestigious award. She serves as a Trustee from Region I as a member of the national Board of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

James Ziegenfuss received the American College of Healthcare Executives Senior-Level Career Healthcare Executives’ Regent’s Award. This recognizes ACHE affiliates who are experienced in the field and have contributed significantly toward advancement of healthcare management excellence.