Penn State will launch an expanded version of its Newspaper Readership Program on Jan. 17 with a special effort aimed at students who live off campus at University Park.
The readership program at Penn State, a model that is being adopted by many other institutions around the nation, started in spring 1997 as a way to deliver daily newspapers to students living in residence halls at Penn State.
The new program for spring 2000 will allow a pilot group of 2,500 randomly selected Penn State students living off campus to receive free daily copies of The New York Times, USA Today and the locally produced Centre Daily Times. Using a special newspaper access card for the four-month project, participating students can gain access to machines that will be placed in the HUB and elsewhere on campus to dispense the three newspapers. The Newspaper Readership Program Committee, chaired by William Asbury, vice president for student affairs, will monitor the program to gain a better understanding of student interest, the effectiveness of the newspaper dispensing machines, the card access process, and the popularity of the location for the machines.
On Jan. 10, 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students who live off-campus were contacted and asked to come to 316 Grange Building (863-1809) to complete a brief survey and obtain an access card for the newspaper dispensing machines. The students who participate will be contacted again at the end of the semester and surveyed to see what they liked and did not like about the program. The results of the survey will be used to help determine if Penn State should implement a program for all off-campus students at University Park.
Other Penn State campuses have already begun to experiment with Newspaper Readership Programs for their students who live off campus. The Newspaper Readership Program began as an experiment suggested by President Graham B. Spanier with approximately 1,000 students living in the residence halls in the spring of 1997. The program quickly expanded to all students living in residence halls at the University Park campus -- and at eight other Penn State campuses that have residence halls. The readership program in the residence halls will continue during
the spring semester and is funded through the room and board rate paid by those students.
For more information visit the Web at http://www.psu.edu/ur/newspaper/.