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By Lisa M. Rosellini
Public Information
Editor's note: At press time, details about the weeklong event were still being worked out. For specific information on the visits and lectures, check the Penn State home page at http://www.psu.edu.
Some media heavyweights from the editorial staff of The New York Times will be on the University Park campus for one week in early November to lecture and teach -- a direct result of a newly established newspaper readership program at Penn State.
From Nov. 3-7, students in classes ranging from political science to economics, to English will benefit from the expertise and experience of five of The Times' top staff members, who collectively have more than 119 years of newspaper and magazine experience. The Times foreign editor, book review editor and lead correspondent on college football will be among those to participate in what is being called The New York Times in Residence: A Week of Outstanding Speakers at Penn State (See box at right). The visits also will include public lectures yet to be announced.
According to Patsy Morton, education coordinator for The Times, the visits are a spinoff of the Residence Hall Newspaper Readership Program, which was launched by Penn State this fall. Under the program, the University provides daily newspapers -- including The New York Times and USA Today -- to students at its nine residential locations. Local papers, such as the Centre Daily Times, are also provided. The program was funded by adding $5 a semester to student room and board rates.
"This is our effort to support the readership program, which has been significant for us in a number of ways," Morton said. "The program not only encourages students to read and get as much as possible out of the newspaper, but it also allows meaningful exchanges and real learning to occur," she said. "Our interest is really heightened in this program. This is the first time The New York Times has committed its resources to a program on a particular campus. The Times' staff, both the business side and the newsroom, have really focused attention on Penn State and the purpose of having a newspaper on campus."
Morton explained that through the readership program and the upcoming visits by its editorial staff, The Times hopes to encourage more faculty to integrate the use of newspapers into their course curricula and to use The Times as a teaching tool. Already, many faculty members on the University Park campus are using newspapers in their classrooms. James Eisenstein, professor of political science, is one of those faculty members.
In his "Introduction to Public Policy" course, Eisenstein considers The Times a required text for students, who are asked to apply concepts they have learned in class to articles that appear in The New York Times, one of the nation's top-read newspapers.
As Eisenstein explains it, the value of using the newspaper to teach about the political system is that it illustrates for students how the average citizen obtains opinions and views on politics -- through the media.
"If we use the metaphor of politics as a game, with all this implies -- there are rules, outcomes, strategies, players, resources," Eisenstein said. "then we see that the newspaper plays a significant role. As an example, I ask students to look for the different strategies being used and they may look in the newspaper and see that there was a leak on some issue. That is one strategy. Or they may see that there is a conflict among Clinton's advisers on the stand he should take on global warming. This is a strategy of raising the visibility of the issue. We apply concepts from specific chapters to what we are seeing in the newspaper.
"By using the newspaper, we are applying knowledge -- not just testing recall," he said. "Students are repeatedly asked to link course material and concepts to real-world public policy."
Eisenstein's use of The New York Times is spelled out in a booklet published by The Times on the use of the newspaper in the classroom. The booklet, which describes how faculty members from various institutions across the country are using the newspaper in their courses, is part of a program launched by The Times to increase the use of the newspaper, (what they call "a living textbook,") in the university classroom. Eisenstein is a recently named member of The Times' College Program Advisory Board, a group composed of 37 educators across the nation who have been selected to advise The Times on newspaper use in the classroom.
"From our end, we want to encourage students to read and get as much as possible out of the paper," Morton said. "By sending our editors and writers to campus, we think we can help students become more aware and involved, and also stimulate discussion on a number of issues."
* Monday, Nov. 3
Andrew M. Rosenthal, who was appointed foreign editor of The Times in May 1997 after having served as the paper's Washington editor since November 1992, has been with The Times since 1987 when he was a Washington correspondent.
* Tuesday, Nov. 4
Felicity Barringer, who will be on campus on Nov. 4, became editor of The Times's Monday Business Day section in March 1995 after having served as deputy editor since June 1993. Previously, she had been a contributing correspondent to The Times since 1986, while based in Moscow.
* Wednesday, Nov. 5
Cornelia Dean, editor of Science Times section of The New York Times, previously served as deputy Washington editor, deputy science editor and in various editorial positions in the science department and on the national desk since joining the paper in 1984.
* Thursday, Nov. 6
Charles (Chip) McGrath, editor of The New York Times Book Review section since March 1995, was previously deputy editor of The New Yorker magazine for eight years. Before that, he held various positions at the magazine since his start in 1973.
* Friday, Nov. 7
Malcolm Moran joined The New York Times in 1979 as a sports reporter. Since 1982, he has written the "Players" column for the paper and is its lead correspondent on college football.
With more than 42 tons of newspapers recycled to date, Penn State's Residence
Hall Newspaper Readership Program is encouraging increased recycling of
other materials including cans and plastics.
At the University Park campus, an average of 1.3 tons of newspapers a day -- about half of the 10,000 newspapers being distributed on campus through the readership program -- is being recycled.
"There has been an increase in the amount of recyclable material collected across the board, most noticeably in plastics," Al Matyasovsky, foreman for solid waste management at the University, said. "We attribute the increase to the attention recycling has received due to the readership program and the emphasis on waste management."
The increase in recycled materials is modest, but significant -- representing 1 percent to 2 percent of the total material.
Students living on campus have been receiving copies of The New York Times, USA Today and the Centre Daily Times (local Centre County newspaper) since August. The papers are placed in residence hall lobbies -- 44 locations at University Park alone -- and the residence halls at eight other Penn State locations. The program was funded by adding $5 a semester to student room and board rates, due to the low rates offered by cooperating newspapers.
Informal recycling programs had existed at Penn State since the early 1970s. In October 1989, a University-wide recycling policy and program were implemented in anticipation of requirements posed by Pennsylvania's Municipal Waste Planning, Recycling and Waste Reduction Act. The act required educational institutions to recycle minimum levels of high-grade paper, corrugated cardboard, aluminum cans and leaf waste.
A special recycling program has been arranged to handle the additional newspaper volume created through the readership program. Millions of pounds of shredded newspaper are now being converted to "PennMulch." Sold to turfgrass professionals across the United States and Canada, the product was developed several years ago by George Hamilton, a Penn State researcher. In addition to recycling the newspapers, PennTurf, the company that manufactures PennMulch, promised to fund a student scholarship.
On Oct. 10 a PennTurf representative presented the first check for $1,000, which is being matched by The New York Times, USA Today and the Centre Daily Times collectively. If Penn State readership and recycling totals hold out, new scholarships from the recycling company and newspaper publishers will be coming in every few weeks.
