Kenneth J. Fisher, associate professor of engineering at Penn State Erie, has been elected to serve as a commissioner on the national Technology Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering Technology. Fisher was also elected secretary of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Committee on Technology Accreditation.
Joseph Martino, project manager for the Family Action Network in Luzerne County, was honored as a Caron Foundation Unsung Hero for "his commitment to helping youth and families through risk-focused prevention programming in schools in communities." The Caron Foundation is a nationally recognized addictions treatment organization.
Bruce McPheron, associate professor of entomology, lectured on "Population Genetics and Cryptic Species in Penang, Malaysia, at a joint meeting of the Fifth International Symposium on Fruit Flies of Economic Importance and an international conference on Area-Wide Control of Insect Pests.
McPheron also was appointed chair of the Working Group on Fruit Flies of Economic Importance, a committee within the International Organization for Biological Control, for a four-year term.
Ido Millet, assistant professor of MIS, and Ashutosh Deshmukh, assistant professor of accounting, both at Penn State Erie, presented "An Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach to Assessing the Risk of Management Fraud," at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the American Accounting Association in New Orleans. Millet also presented "Creating Better Reports" at the 1998 Annual Powersoft Conference in Los Angeles.
J. Carl Panetta, assistant professor of mathematics at Penn State Erie, presented "Mathematically Modeling the Treatment of Breast Cancer" during a three-week summer collaboration with colleagues at the University of Dundee in Dundee, Scotland, and the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Jeffrey K. Pinto, the Samuel A. and Elizabeth B. Breene Fellow in management at Penn State Erie, presented "Developing a Customer-Based Project Success Measurement" at the 14th World Congress on Project Management in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Pinto also presented "Project Success and Customer Satisfaction: Toward a Formal Linkage Mechanism" at the Third International Research Network on Organizing by Projects Meeting in Calgary, Alberta.
Mary Beth Pinto, assistant professor of marketing at Penn State Erie, presented "Customer Satisfaction and Consumer Responsibility: Toward an Alternative Model of Medical Service Quality" at the 16th Annual International Conference of the Association of Management, Healthcare Management Division, held in Chicago.
Alan Snider, professor emeritus of agricultural and extension education, received the 1998 Rural Health Leader of the Year Award in May from the Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health for his work on tobacco control issues for youth and development of community coalitions.
Grzegorz Swiatek, professor of mathematics, delivered an invited talk, "Induced Hyperbolicity for One-Dimensional Maps," in the section on ordinary differential equations and dynamical systems at the 1998 International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin, Germany.
Peg Thoms, assistant professor of management at Penn State Erie, presented "The Relationship Between Imminent Turnover and Employee Theft" at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, held in San Diego, Calif.