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About 6,500 visitors -- high school seniors and their families -- will visit University Park over July 21, 25, 28 and Aug. 1 for Spend A Summer Day. The annual event, coordinated by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at University Park, is designed to give high school seniors -- many of whom will be seeing a Penn State campus for the first time -- helpful information about the University and a taste of campus life. The event includes tours, presentations and an informational fair.
High school seniors may register by phone to attend. Call the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, at (814) 865-5471.
A new educational program, "First-on-the-Scene for Farm Families," offered by the College of Agricultural Sciences is designed to help farm workers and members of farm families know exactly what to do if they are the first person to discover a farm emergency.
"Farm workers face many hazards, from tractor overturns to pesticide exposure," Dennis Murphy, program developer and professor of agricultural engineering, said. "Their survival often depends on the individuals -- usually co-workers or family members -- who find them and must care for them until emergency personnel arrive."
First-on-the-Scene teaches people how to make important decisions that will not further complicate the injured person's medical condition. The program leads participants through various scenarios, forcing them to examine typical injury incidents and to make proper decisions.
For more information about the program, contact the Cooperative Extension office in your county. More information also can be found on the Web at http://server.age.psu.edu/dept/extension/ag_safety/.
Preparations are under way at Penn State
McKeesport to deliver several graduate, continuing and distance education
programs formerly offered at the Monroeville Center. The programs were transferred
to the McKeesport campus after the center closed at the end of the spring
semester.
One program being offered is a master's of education degree in adult education. Students can earn 33 credits required for the M.Ed program within a 24-month period through part-time evening and Saturday study. That program, along with a certificate program in chemical dependency, a variety of three-credit and one-credit workshops geared toward teacher certification, and a human resource development certificate program are among the current offerings. A 42-credit M.Ed in counselor education with an emphasis on chemical dependency will be offered beginning in the spring of 1998.
Representatives from Penn State Erie, Behrend College, and Penn State DuBois will present an MBA Forum in the Hiller Building at DuBois campus from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 15. The forum is designed to address questions from prospective students about the planned MBA degree being made available at the DuBois campus.
Through the combined efforts of Penn State DuBois and Penn State Erie, and with the help of distance learning technologies, students in the DuBois area for the first time will have an MBA program available to them. Penn State Erie has offered the degree since 1985.
Those interested in applying for admission to the program are urged to attend and to bring an undergraduate transcript for an immediate evaluation of qualifications. For more information, contact the Penn State DuBois Office of Continuing Education at (814) 375-4715. Those living outside the immediate calling area can call toll free anytime at (800) 346-ROAR (7627).
Penn State student-athletes continue to score significantly higher in graduation rates than the average for NCAA institutions nationally, according to an NCAA survey.
The survey revealed that student-athletes in the University's entering freshman class of 1990-91 had a graduation rate of 81 percent, compared to the 58 percent average for NCAA institutions nationally.
The survey also found that student-athletes at the University Park campus outperformed other Penn State undergraduates by three percentage points. According to the survey, 78 percent was the average six-year graduation rate for all Penn State students in the class of 1990-91.
The University's student-athletes also were well above national norms in football and women's basketball. In football, the Nittany Lions had a graduation rate of 71 percent, compared to the 52 percent NCAA average. In women's basketball, the Lady Lions entering in 1990-91 had a graduation rate of 100 percent, compared to the overall NCAA graduation rate of 67 percent.
In men's basketball, the graduation rate for the class of 1990-91 was only 50 percent, but that reflects the fact that there were only two freshmen in the entering class that season -- one of them graduated, and the other didn't. Even so, the Penn State rate is still higher than the overall NCAA rate of 45 percent in men's basketball.
"This is good news," said John Coyle, Penn State's NCAA faculty representative. "Our goal always has been to graduate our student-athletes at a rate consistent with the rest of the University Park student population, and we are continuing to meet or exceed that goal. The findings in the report reinforce the great work of our athletic administrators, coaching staff, faculty, academic support center and, most important, the athletes themselves."
Continuing a seven-year trend, graduation rates for African American student-athletes at Penn State were well above the figure for African American student-athletes in the NCAA survey. Led by African American women athletes at Penn State, who had a perfect 100 percent rate, Nittany Lion and Lady Lion African American athletes posted a graduation rate of 78 percent -- 32 percentage points above the 46 percent national average for African American athletes at all institutions.
Penn State's Asian/Pacific Islander and Hispanic athletes in the class of 1990-91 also had 100 percent graduation rates. Female student-athletes at Penn State logged a 96 percent graduation rate, passing their male counterparts, who graduated at a 72 percent rate.
Among student-athletes who exhausted their eligibility, the graduation rate for the survey sample soared to 92 percent.
NCAA bylaws require the University to provide graduation rate information to recruits and their parents. The NCAA provides a compilation of the data to guidance officers and high school and two-year college coaches. The NCAA bases its survey on graduation within six years of enrollment.
This is the seventh release of institutional graduation rates since national "right-to-know" legislation was passed in 1990.
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| Observing 25 years of service at the University are: Peter Behrens, assistant professor of psychology at Penn State Lehigh Valley; Lynn Carpenter, associate professor of electrical engineering at University Park; Carol A. Gibble, coordinator of Student Affairs and health services at Penn State Lehigh Valley; Janet M. Hammers, staff assistant II, Audio Visual Services at University Park; and Valerie N. Stratton, associate professor of psychology, and Roger R. Zellner, associate professor of visual art, both at Penn State Altoona. From Penn State Harrisburg, those observing 25 years of service but who have no photo to accompany this information, are: Charles A. Cole, professor of engineering and acting director of the School of Science, Engineering and Technology; Robert W. Colman, assistant professor of social science and psychology; Clemmie E. Gilpin, assistant professor of community systems and Afro-American studies; William A. Mahar, professor of humanities and music and director of the School of Humanities; Christopher K. McKenna, associate professor of management science; Winston A. Richards, associate professor of mathematics and statistics; James E. Skok, associate professor of public administration and acting director of the School of Public Affairs; and William A. Welsh Jr., associate professor of engineering. | ||
The computer-based simulation game "Alien Planet" features flying lobsters who consume the fruits of the beer plant. When completed, the game will be used to help teach critical reasoning skills.
By Alan Janesch
Public Information
It is the year 2413, and all nine planets in Earth's solar system are running out of room and resources. You, a pilot in the Intergalactic Exploration Squad, are searching the galaxies for a new planet the citizens of Earth can colonize. Your immediate mission: to determine whether an alien planet you are approaching will support human life and to judge whether it is worth colonizing.
This is the scenario for "Alien Planet," a computer-based simulation game University computer science students are developing, in collaboration with a political science professor, to help teach a political science honors seminar in critical reasoning. Their alien planet, not yet fully functional but carefully worked out in concept, can be a dangerous place.
In the air, inquisitive flying lobsters search for their favorite food, the 12-ounce fruits of the beer plant. Mooscles, strong moose-like creatures with unusual coloration -- plaid with yellow antlers -- like nothing better than to catch the lobsters in their antlers, suck out their innards and toss the shells aside. Underfoot, vicious tuna fish -- unlike their counterparts on Earth -- swim in the sand and attack for no reason.
Into this unfamiliar environment comes the intergalactic pilot, who can send limitless numbers of robot probes onto the planet's surface. The robots can do anything a human being can -- test the air for breathability, check the climate or see if something is good to eat. But if the pilot sends out the probe without the right tools, it won't come back with the information the pilot needs to determine if the planet should be colonized.
The game is designed to be fun, but its purpose is serious: to help the students in Larry Spence's Political Science 300H class learn principles of critical reasoning. "Critical reasoning involves becoming self-consciously reflective about the ways we know the world," said Spence, director of the Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning. "When I was first teaching the course, I would try to come up with situations that would help the students reflect on how they think, on how they make the decisions they make every day. And they'd say, 'Well, I just think.'"
So Spence started to look for situations that were so odd that you couldn't count on your own perceptions. But the ideas he came up with didn't really work. Then, one day, a student had an inspiration. "You know," Spence remembered the student saying, "what you want is a computer game, like one with a planet where things run counter to our ordinary experience. That's how it got started."
At that point Spence approached Joseph Lambert, head of computer science and engineering in the College of Engineering. Together, they developed a program through which lower- and upper-division undergraduates would design software packages for "clients" on campus or in the community. (The lower-division students act as software engineers; the upper-division students as project managers.)
Lambert said that projects like "Alien Planet" require students to go off on their own and learn things that aren't part of the normal curriculum. On the one hand, they're learning about the latest developments in graphics interfaces, natural language processing, new programming languages and so on. On the other, they're learning about concepts in political science, teamwork and the ways that projects come together in real life.
"I think the students are learning how hard it really is to come up with a complete project," Lambert said. "Clearly, the students have enjoyed this more and learned more than they would have through a traditional classroom experience."
The project started in spring 1996 and will probably culminate in a finished product in another semester or two -- maybe three. At that point the political science students in Spence's honors course will be able to test-drive "Alien Planet" and see how well it helps them learn and practice the critical reasoning skills the course is intended to teach.
Looking back at the work of the past few semesters, project managers Matt Walnock and Dave Soroka said the toughest part of the job was to keep the "software engineers" focused on working as a group and contributing to the design of the program. Walnock and Soroka, computer science majors, both graduated in May.
"In the beginning," said Walnock, "it was difficult to get across that this wasn't a class where they'd be given some kind of code and have to write it the night before it was due. It was hard to get across to people that they had to design stuff before they could start writing code. It took a semester before they really got a handle on what the problem was. But the following semester they came up with what they wanted the planet to look like."
Spence said that even though the project is taking longer than anticipated, the learning process is at least as important as the final product. "One of the problems, if you can call it a problem, is that the students put almost too much time into the course," Spence said. "They work so hard, and they have learned so many complicated things about computer programs, about new programming languages like Java, about natural language processing -- they've got the computer set so that it answers questions posed in standard English. They really like it."
Robert E. Harkavy, professor of political science, and Geoffrey Kemp, director of Regional Strategic Programs at the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom, are the authors of Strategic Geography And The Changing Middle East, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in cooperation with the Brookings Institution Press.
The authors note that in the aftermath of the Cold War a new strategic map of the greater Middle East is emerging whose future contours are not yet clear. The future of the Middle East will depend to some degree on the nature of the emerging international system, they said. With the increasing demand for Middle Eastern oil especially from the booming Asian economies, the region will remain the global strategic prize and point of contention between rival great powers.
Lee Smolin, professor of physics, is author of The Life of the Cosmos, a book that contains his new theory of the universe, which has been described as "elegant, comprehensive and radically different from anything proposed before." Smolin's theory is based on his premise that "The underlying structure of our world is to be found in the logic of evolution." It also is based on recent developments in cosmology, quantum theory, relativity and string theory, which Smolin's clear and articulate text makes accessible to the lay person. The book, published by Oxford University Press, offers an understanding of how these developments may fit together to form a new theory of cosmology that provides a framework for illuminating many intractable problems, from the paradoxes of quantum theory and the nature of space and time to the problems of constructing a final theory of physics.
