UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Donna Bahry, professor of political science, has been appointed interim director of the Paterno Fellows Program in the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State for the 2016-17 academic year. Cathy Wanner, professor of history, anthropology, and religious studies, will resume the Rick and Sue Barry Directorship when she returns from a one-year sabbatical.
The Paterno Fellows Program is an innovative program offered jointly by the College of the Liberal Arts and the Schreyer Honors College that encourages students to challenge themselves academically. The Paterno Fellows experience offers "an education for leadership" in the best tradition of the liberal arts. It molds well-rounded students who are ready for the world and prepares them for citizenship, for lifetime learning, and for the satisfaction derived from an exemplary education. The program now has 412 graduates, and this fall there will be nearly 800 undergraduate students pursuing Paterno Fellows recognition.
Bahry has served on the Paterno Fellows Program Advisory Board since 2013. Her research focuses on politics in newly democratic countries, and on political attitudes and behavior, ethnicity and federalism in post-Soviet states. She is the author of "Outside Moscow: Power, Politics and Budgetary Policy in the Soviet Republics" and of articles in a number of journals. Her teaching includes courses on comparative democratization and its impacts, on post-Soviet politics, and on the politics of transition in Central and Eastern Europe. Before coming to Penn State in 2003, she was a faculty member at Vanderbilt University, the University of California at Davis, and New York University.
The Barry Directorship was established by a leadership gift from Rick and Sue Barry, who are leading benefactors of the University. Rick is a 1980 graduate with a bachelor of arts in political science and has had a successful career in the financial industry. He retired as the managing director of Eastbourne Capital Management, a California-based hedge fund investment firm he founded in 1999. He is on the board and part owner of the San Diego Padres baseball team.