Alicyn M. Rhoades, an assistant professor in the Penn State Behrend School of Engineering, gave the faculty address at the college’s spring commencement ceremony, held May 4 at Erie Insurance Arena.
The Yahn Planetarium, which operated as the Erie Planetarium since 1959, relocated to Penn State Behrend in 2014 and has become a staple of the college’s School of Science. More than 11,000 visitors enjoyed a show at the planetarium in 2017.
John Champagne, professor of English and chair of the Global Languages and Cultures program at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, has been named Penn State Laureate for the 2018-19 academic year. As laureate, he will tour Pennsylvania to ask probing questions about — and offer a historical perspective on — the role of the artist in times of political turmoil.
More than 200 seventh-and eighth-grade girls attended Math Options Career Day, held May 8 at Penn State Behrend. The daylong program, now in its 22nd year, was designed to introduce young girls to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics — fields that generally are dominated by men.
The Penn State Behrend track and field teams won the Colonial State Athletic Conference championships at Gwynedd Valley on May 6. Rachel Pell, a senior from Elizabeth, was named Track Athlete of the Year.
The end-of-semester Trash to Treasure indoor yard sale at Penn State Behrend will again benefit bargain-hunters, the environment and United Way of Erie County. The sale will be held in Erie Hall on Saturday, May 12.
The Penn State Behrend softball team secured the No. 1 seed for the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference tournament, which begins May 4. The team ended regular-season play with a 14-4 conference record.
HERO BX, an Erie-based biodiesel company, has opened a $1 million research lab at Penn State Behrend. Students will work with the company's chemists to develop cleaner, cheaper fuels.
At Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, students in the honors sections of Charlotte de Vries’ EDGSN 100: Introduction to Engineering Design course have become more engaged in the classroom thanks to the ability to make Arduino prototypes. De Vries, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, started this project in the fall as a solution to lack of student engagement and interest in classes where students were unable to build actual prototypes.
