Penn State Erie has received a gift of $430,000 from Susan H. Hagen that will allow the college to assist Erie County's adolescent pregnancy prevention efforts by providing review and evaluation of current prevention programs. This project will be the initial effort of the newly created Center for Organizational Research and Evaluation (CORE), an applied research center that will gather data on social service programs in northwestern Pennsylvania and evaluate the efficiency and impact of these programs. CORE will be an outreach service of Penn State Erie's School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Hagen is a conflict management specialist with Hagen, Herr, Pepin and was a member of the Ad Hoc Teen Pregnancy Prevention Review Committee of the Erie County Policy and Planning Council.
CORE will make specific contributions to social service organizations by:
Carl Kallgren, associate professor of psychology, has been named acting director of CORE. He and a group of student researchers already have gathered data on social service programs available in the area. A teen pregnancy prevention bibliography developed by Kallgren with student assistance over the last 10 years can be found on the Web at http://www.pserie.psu.edu/h&ss/psych/bibweb.htm.
The Pennsylvania Manufacturing Confectioners' Association (PMCA) has pledged $250,000 in new support for an endowed graduate fellowship focused on chocolate and confectionery science and technology in the Department of Food Science.
Established in 1988, the PMCA Graduate Confectionery Fellowship at Penn State honors past association leaders in research and technical education by providing opportunities for the graduate degree-level training of future industry leaders. Three students have held fellowships named for past PMCA leaders to date.
Recipients of the PMCA fellowship are required to visit or work at several candy manufacturing facilities before beginning research requirements for their degrees to gain a better understanding of industry practices and challenges. Following this practical work survey, they are expected to develop a research project that addresses one or more of those challenges.
Financial support provided by endowed graduate fellowships helps Penn State recruit highly talented advanced degree students to academic programs that are experiencing growth nationally due to industry hiring trends.
PMCA, whose roots and heritage lie in Pennsylvania, is a nonprofit, international trade association that represents confectionery manufacturers and supplier companies in related industries throughout the nation in the areas of production technology and industry education.
Alumnus Norman W. Hickey of Daytona Beach, Fla., has honored his friend and former Nittany Lions football squad teammate John E. Sherry with a $100,000 gift commitment to the College of the Liberal Arts. The gift will endow a scholarship named for Sherry.
A retired public administrator, Hickey and his wife, Dolores, established the scholarship for academically talented undergraduates with financial need in any of the college's majors. He was born in Belleville, N.J., raised in Upper Darby, Pa., and came to Penn State following service with the U.S. Marines. A walk-on football player with the Nittany Lions for a year, he earned a bachelor's degree in arts and letters in 1954.
Hickey's long career has included public management responsibilities in Connecticut, St. Petersburg and Hillsborough County, Fla., and San Diego County, Calif.; U.S. State Department work in Colombia and Vietnam; and teaching assignments with San Diego State University and the University of South Florida. He recently worked with the National Academy of Public Administration and the Fulbright program to help the University of Georgia in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia set up its first graduate program in public administration. He also has been involved with the International City-County Management Association.
The College of the Liberal Arts named Hickey an Alumni Fellow, the highest honor given through the Penn State Alumni Association, in 1989.
Dolores Hickey studied music at Wesleyan College in Georgia. A former professional singer, she is active in volunteer work with senior citizens in Daytona Beach.
John Sherry played with both the Nittany Lions football and basketball squads in the early 1950s. He was a captain on the 1953-54 basketball team, the only Penn State team to make the Final Four in NCAA playoffs. He averaged 11.6 points per game and the team finished third that season. A graduate in labor studies, Sherry worked for American Seating for 24 years before starting his own company in 1985. He sold his business in 1995 and now works as a consultant for Rem Systems in Paoli, Pa.
The University invests endowed gifts and uses part of the annual income for the purposes designated by the donors. The remaining income is returned to the principal to protect it from inflation.
John T. and Nancy Glenn Steimer of Tidioute, Pa., have committed $1.1 million to Penn State's School of Forest Resources for new facilities and scholarship support.
The Steimers targeted $1 million of the gift to the planned Forest Resources Building that will provide new state-of-the-art facilities at the University Park campus; and $100,000 to increase an endowed scholarship fund for undergraduate forestry students that they established in 1987.
The School of Forest Resources enrolls 750 associate, bachelor's and graduate degree students in its forest science, wildlife and fisheries science, and wood products programs at the University Park campus, Penn State Mont Alto and Penn State DuBois.
John Steimer earned his bachelor's degree in forestry from Penn State in 1949. He worked as a forester with the Pennsylvania Department of Highways before heading the Penn Glenn Oil Co. and later founding Industrial Terminal Systems Inc. of New Kensington, a petroleum packaging firm. He retired as president in 1990.
Penn State named him a Distinguished Alumnus in 1992, the highest honor it can bestow on its graduates. He serves as a member of the College of Agricultural Sciences' volunteer fund-raising committee for the forthcoming University-wide capital campaign.
In addition to their latest gift, the couple created the Nancy and John Steimer professorship in agricultural sciences in 1989 and have generously supported both The Bryce Jordan Center and the new Sarni Tennis Facility, which features a center court named for them.