The Mehalso family has made a $250,000 gift to Penn State Erie which will fund a new observatory and advanced telescope as well as a family scholarship endowment.
Penn State Erie alumnus Robert Mehalso and his wife, Elizabeth, have donated $107,500 to fund the new observatory and high-technology telescope. The new facility, expected to open next fall, will enhance undergraduate teaching and research, and also will benefit local residents who attend the popular campus Open House Nights in Astronomy. The balance of the $250,000 gift will establish a scholarship endowment for Erie students.
A successful engineer and entrepreneur with a worldwide reputation, Mehalso is a 1964 Penn State graduate and president of MicroTec Associates in Fairport, N.Y. He attended Penn State Erie from 1960-62. Mehalso was named a Penn State Erie Alumni Fellow in 1989. He currently serves on the college's Council of Fellows.
The new observatory, to be located behind the Otto Behrend Science Building, will vastly improve astronomy facilities at Erie. The college's current reflecting telescope and 10-foot dome were erected in 1978. The new facility will offer advanced optics through a seven-inch refracting telescope, computer telescope control and a 16-foot dome. The new equipment is expected to provide outstanding viewing detail. The new facilities will also offer both direct viewing through an eyepiece and imaging with a charge-coupled detector (CCD), which can obtain images of spiral arms of galaxies millions of light years away, viewing much farther in the universe than was possible with the old telescope. The CCD camera also will make the observing experience accessible to individuals with disabilities.
This year The Graduate School will award the first James B. and Viola M. Bartoo Graduate Fellowship in memory of James Bartoo, dean emeritus of The Graduate School and professor emeritus of mathematical statistics. The $100,000 gift will endow an annual fellowship to recognize outstanding academic achievement by a full-time graduate student.
What started as an award, has over time developed into a fellowship. Friends, colleagues, associates, and family of Bartoo contributed initial funds. When Bartoo retired in 1984, his wife, Viola, suggested friends make donations to establish the James B. Bartoo Award in her husband's honor. When Bartoo died in 1993, she requested memorial contributions be made to the award. An additional contribution of more than $56,000 was made in 1998 by Viola Bartoo to revise the award into a fellowship.
Bartoo joined the mathematics faculty at Penn State in 1952. He was named head dean of The Graduate School in 1969. While dean of The Graduate School, Bartoo was also appointed acting vice-president for research in 1970-71 and interim provost in 1977 by University President John W. Oswald.
A native of Edinboro, Bartoo graduated from Edinboro State College, where his undergraduate program was interrupted for three years of service with the U.S. Army. He earned a master of science and doctor of philosophy degrees in mathematics from the State University of Iowa. Viola Bartoo also graduated from Edinboro State College with a degree in education. She continues to reside in State College with four of their five children; the other lives in South Dakota.