| News | . . . . | Arts | . . . . | Calendars | . . . . | Letters | . . . . | Links | . . . . | Deadlines | . . . . | Archive |
Fred Waring and Syncopation in 1928.
Photo: Courtesy of the University's Fred Waring Collection
By Karen Wagner
Public Information
For almost 20 years they searched. Collectors and archivists were missing an important piece of film history -- one of the first two talking motion pictures ever made, starring Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians.
For Peter Kiefer, coordinator of University Libraries' Fred Waring collection and former Waring road manager, the missing piece left a noticeable void.
"We have just about everything else from his career," Kiefer said. Waring, who died in 1984, was an internationally known band leader and choral director and a Penn State alumnus.
Film star Dorothy Lee was also interested in finding a copy of "Syncopation." Besides starring in the film, Lee was a former Waring group member herself. Kiefer, who visited Lee in her San Diego home describes her as "a very vivacious, outgoing and attractive woman at 85 years old."
In 1929, RKO released the film "Syncopation," the first all-talking, all-singing motion picture in movie history. Produced before but released just after Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer," the Waring movie was an instant hit. Aspiring dancers competed in local contests, hoping that they too might become "Syncopation girls."
Waring received top billing in the film, which also starred Morton Downey Sr., Barbara Bennett, Bobby Watson, Ian Hunter, Osgood Perkins and Lee. Waring's Pennsylvanians and Dorothy Lee made the film in a Brooklyn studio at the same time they were appearing in the Broadway show "Hello Yourself!"
Syncopation's plot revolves around two vaudeville dancers barely getting by when a savvy entrepreneur invites them to join his dance club band played by Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. Fortunes are won and lost and won again in a film best noted for its sound quality, even 68 years later.
Kiefer stayed in contact with Lee and her two sons, who continued looking for the film.
"Among us, we thought we had exhausted every lead," Kiefer recalled. They had searched the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute at UCLA, Turner Broadcasting archives among others, but found no prints.
Kiefer had all but given up hope when Lee phoned in December with good news. A copy of the film had been located in Russia by James Cavallo, a San Diego film buff and Dorothy Lee fan. Cavallo discovered that the Gosfilmofond of Russia, a film library in Moscow, contained a copy of "Syncopation." With some difficulty overcoming the language barrier, Cavallo verified that the Russian copy was an unaltered 1929 original and not the 1940 remake.
Lee told Cavallo of Penn State's interest in the film and Cavallo forwarded a copy to Kiefer at no charge. Penn State's University Libraries is still interested in obtaining an original print and may at some point query the Gosfilmofond of Russia about their interest in selling the original.
A 20-year search has ended and a famous piece of film history is restored. Thanks to some persistent sleuthing, the mystery has been solved. Fans and film buffs in the U.S. can enjoy one of the few surviving copies of a Fred Waring original and one of the first two motion pictures recorded with sound.
While there are no plans at present to re-release the video, the tape is available for viewing in VHS format. For more information, contact Kiefer at (814) 863-2911.
Penn State has signed a contract with Children's World Learning Centers of Golden, Col., to design, build and operate a child care and educational facility at the Research Park. Construction will begin soon and the facility is expected to begin operation in August.
"Children's World has designed and constructed nearly 400 child care centers and operates more than 500 nationally," Billie S. Willits, assistant vice president for Human Resources, said. "We look forward to our collaboration with Children's World, which will provide opportunities for both quality child care as well as academic research."
The 13,000-square-foot facility will be built next to The Penn State Scanticon and is expected to provide care for approximately 200 infant to school-age children.
According to Children's World Learning Centers, its mission is to provide children with a nurturing environment where individual talents are allowed to flourish and grow. Included in its approach to providing quality child care is the use of developmentally appropriate educational programming, which allows each child to succeed at his or her own pace.
Other child care programs at the University Park campus include the center at Cedar Building and the College of Health and Human Development Child Development Laboratory in Henderson Building. The University also manages the Imagination Station Child Care Center at CATO Industrial Park in partnership with Arc of Centre County.
For more information, contact Linda Pierce, coordinator of the Work/Life Programs in the Office of Human Resources, at (814) 865-5886.
Industry, labor and higher education are putting their heads together in a first-ever collaboration to identify best practices in diversity.
Provosts and vice chancellors at the Big 10 universities, CEOs of Fortune 1,000 corporations and labor union leaders are planning a three-day working conference at The Penn State Scanticon in September to exchange practical strategies on how to improve the work climate through diversity-related programming.
Academics and industry leaders nationwide have received a call for papers on how to develop effective ways to incorporate diversity into the fabric of corporate, labor and institutional organizational structures. Members of the Penn State community are invited to submit a presentation proposal for the September conference, "Best Practices in Diversity: Exploring Practical Applications for the 21st Century," planned for the University Park campus.
Topics for presentation can include policy, institutional and organizational philosophy and administrative initiatives on ethnic and racial diversity, gender, disability services, international and cross-cultural issues, gay, lesbian and bisexual issues and age.
Specifically, planners of the Sept. 18-20 conference are looking for such practical applications -- what works and what doesn't work -- as hiring, retention and promotion practices, diversity training and programming initiatives and industry expectations of college graduates. The conference will address a wide spectrum of areas including ethnic and racial diversity; gender; disability issues; international and cross-cultural issues; gay, lesbian and bisexual issues; and age.
Those who want to participate in the conference will be able to register in March. In addition to keynote speeches, panel discussions and roundtables, there will be up to 45 interactive workshops and discussion groups over the three days that deliberately mix and match participants from labor, industry and education. Reservations will be restricted to about 300 to 400 participants.
Presentation proposals, including a one-page summary, are due March 1 and authors will be notified by May 1. For more information, visit the Best Practices in Diversity Web site at http://www.cde.psu.edu/C&I/BestPracticesinDiversity/ or contact Marc Levey, Office of the Vice Provost for Educational Equity, at (814) 863-2294 or by e-mail at MBL1@psu.edu.
Undergraduate student Heather McGinnis is poised to begin
in Vicky McQuaide's advanced ballet class in 108 White Building on the University
Park campus. The class is part of the Dance Program offered through the
Department of Kinesiology.
Photo: Greg Grieco
Jim Johnson, front, and Dale Remensnyder install wiring
for computers at Pollock Library on the University Park campus. The second
floor of the library houses a new computer lab.
Photo: Greg Grieco
It's always fun to get a package, but when you get 202 computer packages in a day, that's news. On Tuesday, Feb. 18, two truckloads of computers arrived at the Pollock Undergraduate Library, and were hoisted by crane through a hole in the side of the building and stacked ready to be installed in Penn State's newest student computer lab.
"We are always upgrading computer services for students, but this new lab is going to be a wonderful addition," said James Kerlin, deputy director of the Computer Center.
The new lab will have 66 Macintosh computers and 144 IBM computers with four IBM and four Mac computers equipped for multimedia creation in two rooms set up for collaborative learning so students can work together on class projects. One collaborative room will be dedicated to Macs and one to IBMs. Desks around the sides of the main room will be equipped with Ethernet ports to allow students to plug their own laptops directly into the Pollock Lab LAN and access the University computer backbone (and hence the entire Internet). In the Fall of 1996, the Mac lab on the first floor was converted to a dual function IBM lab/seminar facility.
Scheduled to open in April -- just in time for final projects and papers -- the lab will be available to all Penn State students with a computer access account, including those who live both on and off campus, as well as those from other campuses. Alan Williams, CAC director of distributed computing, said.
The new lab will have two computer consultant areas with at least one consultant scheduled on duty 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Student rovers will also check laboratory equipment on a regular basis. Currently 13 of the 28 CAC computer laboratories have consultants on duty during peak hours, but the Pollock Lab will be the first with continuous consultant assistance.
This is cooperative initiative spanning several departments and budgets. The cost of the computers will be covered by the student computer fee.
By April, students will have access to about 1400 CAC computers in laboratories across campus in addition to about 2100 computers in now in college and departmental labs.
For more information, contact Kerlin at (814) 863-0421, or Williams at (814) 865-4760.
Robert D. Steele, associate dean for research in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and executive director of the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been named dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences, effective July 1. Formal approval will be taken up by the Board of Trustees at its March 21 meeting.
"Dr. Steele is an accomplished administrator known nationally for his research in nutritional sciences, and we are very pleased that he will join Penn State as dean of one of our key colleges," said President Graham B. Spanier. "He has a proven track record in the integration of teaching, research and service, and we look forward to working with him."
As associate dean since 1993, Steele is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the research division, administering approximately $70 million of research activity from federal, state and private sources encompassing nearly 600 projects by 300 research faculty in 22 departments and numerous centers. He also has overall responsibility for the operation of 13 research stations throughout the state of Wisconsin, and administers a $4 million internal competitive grants program. He served as acting associate dean for the 1991-92 academic year.
Among his initiatives as associate dean have been the development of a Research Advisory Council to recommend policy and review processes for research proposals, the development of a home page and a database for the college.
His principle areas of research include amino acids; nitrogen and sulfur metabolism in liver disease; interactions of retinol and one-carbon metabolism; blood-brain barrier transport of nutrients; and ethionine hepatotoxicity. His more than 50 articles have been published in such journals as Biochemical Pharmacy, the Journal of Nutrition and the American Journal of Physiology.
Steele has been a professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences since 1987, where he teaches both graduate and undergraduate programs in nutritional sciences as well in the Biocore and Ways of Knowing programs. He helped develop the Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Nutritional Sciences, worked toward integrating research and undergraduate programs and served as chair of the departmental Graduate Admissions Committee.
Before joining the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982 as an assistant professor, Steele was an assistant professor of nutrition at Rutgers University from 1978 to 1982. He received his B.S. in nutritional sciences and his M.S. in biochemistry and nutrition from the University of Arizona in 1970 and 1973, respectively, and his doctorate in nutritional sciences from the university of Wisconsin-Madison in 1978.
Among his awards are the Bio-Serve Award for Experimental Nutrition from the American Institute of Nutrition, and a New Investigator Research Award from USPHS.
He is currently a member of the North Central Regional Research Committee, responsible for review of all Hatch regional research projects; chair of the ESCOP subcommittee on human nutrition, and member of the Board of Scientific Advisors for the American Council on Science and Health.
Steele also has served as institutional representative to such boards as the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council and the Agricultural Research Institute; was conference chair of the Ross Laboratories 12th Nutritional Conference on Medial Issues and co-chair of the A.E. Harper Symposium on emerging aspects of amino acid metabolism. He is a member of a number of professional societies such as the American Farmland Trust, American Society for Biochemical and molecular biology and American Institute of Nutrition, among others and as such has served on numerous committees for them.
William R. Jeffery, professor of biology, is the new head of the
Department of Biology, succeeding 
Robert Mitchell,
professor of biology, who has served as interim department head since April
1995.
Jeffery, who previously was a professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California at Davis, has research interests in gene regulation during embryo development, RNA localization during development, the evolution of developmental mechanisms and molecular evolution. He is setting up a laboratory at Penn State to house six endangered populations of eyeless cave fish that evolved in isolation from each other during the past 100,000 years. Jeffery plans to study the evolution of eyelessness. He also is known for his research on the development of the ascidian (sea squirt).
Jeffery earned his bachelor's degree in biology at the University of Illinois in 1967, his doctoral degree in cell and developmental biology at the University of Iowa in 1971, and completed two postdoctoral positions in molecular biology, one with the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison from 1971 to 1972, and one with the Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston from 1972 to 1974.
After completing his postdoctoral work, he joined the University of Houston in 1974 as an assistant professor and, in 1977, moved on to the University of Texas at Austin. After a series of promotions, he was named Johann Friedrich Miescher Regent's professor of molecular biology in 1987, a position he held until 1990. Jeffery then joined the University of California at Davis, where he served as professor in the Department of Zoology until 1993, when he became a professor of molecular and cellular biology in the Division of Biological Sciences and the Bodega Marine Laboratory. He also was a visiting professor in the Department of Cell Biology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine from 1995 to 1996.
He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of Sigma Xi, and a member of the American Society for Cell Biology. He was president of the Society for Developmental Biology from 1995 to 1996 and a member of its board of trustees from 1986 to 1990 and from 1994 to 1997.
Jeffrey has received numerous honors including the American Society of Zoologists Outstanding Service Award in 1990. He is a member of the editorial boards of nine scientific journals and is the author or coauthor of more than 115 published scientific research papers.
Thomas W. Seiler, facilities services manager with Continuing
and Distance Education, retired after 30 
years of service
to the University.
Seiler came to Penn State as a student and continued to take courses in management throughout his career. In 1966, he accepted a position as a senior clerk in the Department of Production Stores in Keller Building. That department changed its name and functions over the years, eventually becoming facilities services as Seiler became supervisor, then manager of the operation.
"The most satisfying part of my work at the University was the last two years when I coordinated the renovation of Keller Building and commissioned the mural depicting the history of C&DE at Penn State," Seiler said.
Seiler now resides in Cooper City, Fla., with his partner, Jonathan Tubman, an associate professor at Florida International University. After an extended "vacation" learning to play golf, he plans to resume working for another 10 years, drawing on the experience he gained during the Keller renovation.
Anthony Cutler, professor of art history, is co-author of Byzance Medievale 700-1204, published by Gaillmard of Paris. The book is Volume 41 of a series produced by L'Univers des Formes. Cutler's co-author, J.M. Spieser, is an art historian at Strasburg University specializing in architecture and wall paintings. Cutler's specializations relating to the book are mosaics, icons and manuscripts.
The book is available only in French or German. In the work, Cutler breaks down the habitual distinction between the religious and the profane, placing them in the context of the larger notion of the sacred. Additionally, Cutler and Spieser do not neglect the economic aspects of art production; they illuminate the interface of Byzantine art with the Islamic world of the Byzantine Empire in its middle period, considered the most remarkable period. The authors also reconsider numerous traditional views of Byzantium, emphasizing the secular rather than religious aspects, aspects Cutler's research has shown to have been more important than what was previously believed. The book also contains hundreds of full color reproductions of artwork, most of which have not been previously published.
The 1836 London Diary of James Stratton Carpenter, edited and annotated by T. Reed Ferguson, vice president emeritus for public affairs in the Office of Governmental Affairs, was published by Minerva Press. Carpenter, a young physician of English descent living in Pottsville, Pa., kept a detailed diary of his 1836 journey of six months that records the sights, sounds and personalities of London. The diary, complete with Ferguson's explanatory notes, offers unique insights into London during the time of Charles Dickens.
Pro Choice/Pro-Life Issues in the 1990s: An Annotated, Selected Bibliography, compiled by two Penn State librarians, was recently published by Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn.
Richard Fitzsimmons, director of the library at the Penn State Worthington Scranton campus, and Joan P. Diana, director emerita of the library at the Penn State Wilkes-Barre campus, have examined more than 4,000 pro-choice and pro-life publications and releases from 1990-1994, and selected 1,600 for inclusion in the bibliography.
The book provides access to significant literature published in the United States that will assist readers in reaching informed decisions on the pro-choice/pro-life issue. As a 'selected' bibliography, the book includes only materials fitting parameters of research in the ethical, legal, moral, religious and social arenas.
Albert L. Good never attended classes at the Penn State DuBois campus. In fact, he wasn't a college graduate. He and his wife, Harriet, had no children of their own, but they were concerned about access to higher education in the DuBois area. Today, as the result of their generosity, more than two dozen DuBois campus students are getting a financial boost toward their college degrees.
Albert Good was involved in the insurance and real estate business in DuBois for nearly four decades. He was a president of the Rotary Club of DuBois, a director of Deposit Bank and involved with the YMCA, the Tri-County Board of Realtors and the City Parking Authority. He and his wife were both active members of the Mt. Zion United Methodist Church. Albert died in 1990; his wife, Harriet, died in 1994.
Through their will, the Goods endowed a trust fund of nearly $380,000 that will ensure their names are not forgotten at the DuBois campus. The interest from that fund each year is channeled into scholarship awards for campus students. Scholarship guidelines require only that the students have financial need, academic ability and are residents of either Clearfield, Jefferson or Elk counties. Scholarship money was awarded for the first time from the fund this fall.
The DuBois Educational Foundation, the campus advisory board, helped design the funding path for the annual proceeds in cooperation with officers of First Commonwealth Trust Company of DuBois, who manage the principal.
Dancers get a short break and a baby powder rubdown by morale team members, left, during the 25th Interfraternity/Panhellenic Dance Marathon, held Feb. 14-16 at the White Building on the University Park campus. Right, junior Brett Stackhouse ices his forehead to refresh himself while dancing.
A record $1,528,425.64 was raised for the Four Diamonds Fund at The Hershey Medical Center, which benefits children with cancer. Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and Zeta Tau Alpha sorority teamed up to raise the most money, $175,802.45.
Out of the 550 dancers who started the marathon, 534 were still standing at the end of the 48-hour event.
Photos: Greg Grieco
The photo of the Pennsylvania Dance Theatre rehearsal on page 7 of the Feb. 13 Intercom was taken by Helena Lukas Martemucci. The photo credit was unintentionally omitted.
