Town&Gown OCTOBER 2015
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E C N A S S I A N E R E E R O H ON E OF TH
R A E Y y Health n a t it N t n u For Mo e d CEO Stev n a t n e id s pre out taking b a ll a ’s it Brown, community e h t f o e r ca he loves
Inside: Jake Corman: The man who took on the NCAA • Penn State president Eric Barron has “Lunch with Mimi”
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2015 October T&G - 1
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features 30 / 50 Years of Town&Gown: Transportation
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On the road and in the air, getting around Happy Valley has become much easier • by Tracey M. Dooms
42 / Renaissance Honoree of the Year For Mount Nittany Health president and CEO Steve Brown, it’s all about taking care of the community he loves • by Tracey M. Dooms
54 / Exploring New Directions
54
While he’s been director for the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum for less than a year, Robert Cameron already has big plans for the historical site • by T. Wayne Waters
64 / The Two Jakes
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By day, state Senator Jake Corman is a leader in Harrisburg, taking on (and defeating) the NCAA and also battling Governor Tom Wolf. By night, he coaches Little League and still has to take out the family trash. It’s the former persona that has many thinking he should run for a higher office. It’s the latter one, the one of father and husband, that has put the brakes on those aspirations — for now • by Josh Langenbacher
Cover photo by Darren Andrew Weimert.
Town&Gown is published monthly by Barash Publications, 403 South Allen Street, State College, PA 16801. Advertising is subject to approval of the publisher. COPYRIGHT 2015 by Barash Media. All rights reserved. Send address changes to Town&Gown, 403 S. Allen St., State College, PA 16801. No part of this magazine may be reproduced by any process except with written authorization from Town&Gown or its publisher. Phone: 800-326-9584, 814-238-5051. FAX: 814-238-3415. Printed by Gazette Printers, Indiana, PA. 20,000 copies published this month, available FREE in retail stores, restaurants, hotels and motels & travel depots. SUBSCRIPTIONS and SINGLE COPIES: $45/1yr; current issue by 1st‑class mail, $10; back copy, $15 mailed, $12 picked up at the T&G office. townandgown.com
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departments
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10 Letter From The Editor 12 Starting Off: The List, People in the Community, Q&A 20 Living Well: Trusting your intuition • by Meghan Fritz
74 This Month on WPSU
22 Health: Mammograms and clinical breast exams are the first step in detecting breast cancer at an early stage • by Mount Nittany Health Breast Cancer Center
90 On Tap: Succumb to beer’s darker side • by Sam Komlenic
24 About Town: Local retiree enjoys sharing what’s happening in Happy Valley • by Nadine Kofman 26 On Center: Acrobats and string quartets share the stage in November 11 show at Eisenhower • by John Mark Rafacz 28
Penn State Diary: While university lacks a veterinary school, its research and programs aid farm life • by Lee Stout
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What’s Happening: Schlow Celebration, Penn State homecoming, Paul McCartney, Trick-Or-Treat Night, and more highlight October’s events
Taste of the Month/Dining Out: New Zola owners excited about opportunity to bring local food, extensive wine collection to Centre Region • by Vilma Shu Danz
108 Lunch with Mimi: Penn State president hopes to make university and community a more friendly home for entrepreneurs 122 State College Photo Club’s Winning Photos 124 Snapshot: New SCAEA president continues long-held passion for teaching • by Sarah Harteis
Town&Gown October
A State College & Penn State tradition since 1966.
Publisher Rob Schmidt Founder Mimi Barash Coppersmith With xDrive, BMW’s intelligent all-wheel-drive system, no road condition is too daunting. Because xDrive instantly responds to the slightest wheel slip with increased torque for uninterrupted all-wheel traction and handling in rain, snow and ice. And now that xDrive is available on more models than ever before, you’ve got almost nothing to stop you from getting out on the open road. Take advantage of special offers from BMW Financial Services today.
Editorial Director David Pencek Creative Director Tiara Snare Operations Manager/Assistant Editor Vilma Shu Danz Art Director/Photographer Darren Weimert
Joel Confer BMW, 120 E Clinton Ave, 814-237-5713 For model year 2015 or later vehicles sold or leased by an authorized BMW center on or after July 1, 2014, BMW Maintenance Program coverage is not transferable to subsequent purchasers, owners, or leases. Please see bmwusa.com/UltimateService or ask you authorized BMW center for details. Special lease and finance offers available through BMW Financial Services. 2014 BMW of North America, LLC. The BMW name, model names and logo are registered trademarks.
Graphic Designer Cody Peachey Account Executives Kathy George, Debbie Markel Business Manager Aimee Aiello Administrative Assistant Hailee Miller Interns Lianne Galante (editorial), Alissa Pendorf (graphic designer/photographer) Distribution Handy Delivery, George Brown To contact us: Mail: 403 S. Allen St., State College, PA 16801 Phone: (814) 238-5051, (800) 326-9584 Fax: (814) 238-3415 dpenc@barashmedia.com (Editorial) rschmidt@barashmedia.com (Advertising) We welcome letters to the editor that include a phone number for verification. Back issues of Town&Gown are available on microfilm at Penn State’s Pattee Library.
townandgown.com Facebook.com/townandgownsc @TownGownSC 8 - T&G October 2015
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letter from the editor
Leading the Way A month of leaders and celebrations “When a defining moment comes along, you define the moment or the moment defines you.” While the movie Tin Cup will never be ranked among the likes of Citizen Kane or The Godfather as one of the greatest films of all time, it’s still an entertaining movie. And the quote by Kevin Costner’s character is actually not a bad way to measure or define leadership. One can look at what happened to Penn State nearly four years ago and say that many school leaders allowed that moment to define the university and town, while at the same time, some of the school’s student-athletes and coaches stepped up and showed how to define that moment with their words and actions. While not originally planned, Town&Gown’s October issue features a number of stories on leaders and how they are looking to define the moments before them. They include the cover story on this year’s Renaissance Honoree Steve Brown, president and CEO of Mount Nittany Health. Then there’s Jake Corman, a local kid who is now one of the most powerful people in Pennsylvania as the majority leader of the state Senate. Robert Cameron, the new director of the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum, is looking to revive the historic treasure. Also, Penn State president Eric Barron has “Lunch with Mimi.” October also is a big month for Town&Gown in the community. The magazine is helping Schlow Centre Region Library celebrate its 10th anniversary in its current building by partnering with the library on two special events featuring some nationally known sports writers. The panel discussion, “The Sport of Sportswriting,” is October 1 at the Days Inn, and the celebration party, “Meet the Sportswriters,” is October 2 at the library.
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Also in October, the library’s gallery will exhibit some past covers and images from Town&Gown as the magazine continues to celebrate its 50th year! And finally, Town&Gown is honored to be receiving the John H. Ziegler Historic Preservation Award in Education and Advocacy from the Centre County Historical Society. Town&Gown, along with several other individuals, will receive a preservation award at a presentation October 25 at the Penn State/Centre County Visitors Center. All of this, of course, has been possible because of you — the readers, advertisers, and distributors of Town&Gown. As written about previously in this space, thanks to you, Town&Gown is in its 50th year and stronger and better than ever — and continues to be a free publication. That’s because of the advertisers who promote their businesses in the magazine, the readers who pick up and read the new issue each month and support the advertisers, and the distributors who allow the magazine to be easily accessible to the readers. We thank you again for an amazing 50 years as we look forward to continuing to lead the way when it comes to featuring the people, places, and events that make Happy Valley so special.
David Pencek Editorial Director dpenc@barashmedia.com
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starting off
The List Highlights from Town&Gown’s first 49 years of publication
2006June 2008 February 2006 — As the Pennsylvania legislature debates banning smoking in restaurants, local owners discuss the topic in “Smoked Out.” Mike Desmond, a partner of Hotel State College & Co., which owns establishments such as The Corner Room and Allen Street Grill, says, “Let’s just go smokefree. I think the health benefits and the benefits to our overall business would exceed any loss of business.” May 2006 — Town&Gown works with students from State College Area High School in publishing a “Youth Issue” that looks at some of the issues teens face in Happy Valley. Sophomore Sylvia Ranjeva and senior Paloma Frumento write about the positives and negatives when it comes to living near a major university. In “Party Life Is Not for Everyone,” State High senior Kate Sobel, who lives near fraternity houses, says, “Sometimes parties get out of hand. One night, at around one in the morning, a girl came knocking on the door, screaming and shouting loud enough to wake us up. I think she was on the kind of drug that they put in a drink. My dad had to go down and help her, and called the police to straighten things out.” June 2006 — With the State College Spikes about to begin their first season, Town&Gown looks at the strong baseball tradition in Centre County in “Diamond Treasures.” It includes a look back at the 2001 State College American Little League team that reached the Mid-Atlantic Region title game, only to fall to a team from the Bronx that featured pitcher Danny Almonte. It was later discovered that Almonte was actually 14 years old, two years past eligibility. State College coach Tom Hart told the Associated Press at the time when Almonte’s real age was discovered that “I wanted to believe in my heart that he was 12 because I was witnessing greatness on the level of a Michael Jordan or a Tiger Woods. In my heart, I felt I was witnessing something illegal, and he robbed my kids of their dream.” January 2007 — Town&Gown publishes its first issue that’s 12 - T&G October 2015
entirely in full color and on glossy paper. July 2007 — The debate surrounding manmade global warming is examined in “Heating Up.” AccuWeather senior vice president Joe Sobel says, “We’ve been in a state of global warming for the last 10,000 years or so, since the last ice age. I guess I consider myself something of a skeptic in blaming it 100 percent on us.” Michael Mann, director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center, says, “The most recent warming of the globe over the past few decades appears to be outside the range of what’s been seen over the past 1,000 years. … Human beings are indeed warming the globe and changing the climate.” September 2007 — Several young refugees from war-torn Sudan find their ways to Penn State, and Town&Gown looks at their journeys in “Lost Boys of Sudan.” Gabriel Akec, one of the refugees, says, “I survived because God chose to let me. People have been killed feet away from me, but I was spared. I have no good explanation why I survived, because I could have been that dead child. The only explanation I have is that I was spared and God was behind it.” November 2007 — “Bring It Back” looks at the desire by some to renew the Pitt-Penn State rivalry. Former Penn State receiver (and current assistant coach) Terry Smith, who grew up in Pittsburgh, says, “That’s all we talked about growing up. I knew half the players on Pitt, and it was an ongoing battle of smack talking. … And when [the rivalry] ended, it left the state a little empty.” February 2008 — Town&Gown publishes a “Fiction Issue” to showcase some of the creative-writing talent in Happy Valley. June 2008 — After 42 years, Mimi Coppersmith sells Town&Gown to Indiana Printing & Publishing Company in Indiana, Pennsylvania. The June 2008 issue is the first issue published under the new ownership. T&G
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People in the Community John H. Ziegler Historic Preservation Awards of the Centre County Historical Society
Town&Gown magazine is one of five winners that will be announced at the 2015 John H. Ziegler Historic Preservation Awards presentation on October 25 at the Penn State/ Centre County Visitors Center. Town&Gown is being recognized in the Education and Advocacy category. Other winners include Penn State (Preservation and Restoration) for restoration of the Land-Grant Frescoes by Henry Varnum Poor, Pine Grove Mills Union Cemetery Board of Directors (History and Heritage) for its compilation of biographies drawn from research about each person buried in the cemetery, and Ron and Sue Smith (Jacqueline J. Melander Award) for spearheading the restoration of the Lemont Granary and a lifetime of other community-preservation activities. A President’s Award also will be given, but the recipient won’t be announced until at the event.
Dana Carlisle Kletchka
Palmer Museum of Art curator of education Dana Carlisle Kletchka was named the 2015 National Museum Division Art Educator of the Year by the National Art Education Association. Kletchka, who also is an affiliate assistant professor of art education at Penn State, has been curator of education at the Palmer since 2000. She recently initiated and launched a system of iBeacons, small transmitters created by Apple that communicate with nearby smartphones. Museum visitors can download an app that allows them to receive information on individual artworks as they tour the galleries. Kletchka said in a press release, “I feel fortunate to be able to do work that feeds my soul, connects me with others, and expands my understandings of the world in a university environment filled with learners and seekers of all ages.”
Deb Nardone
In early September, Deb Nardone took over as executive director of ClearWater Conservancy. Nardone, who lives in Halfmoon Township, has worked for local, state, and national organizations, including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Allegheny Ridge Heritage Area, Pennsylvania Council of Trout Unlimited, and the Sierra Club. She was awarded the Conservation Professional of the Year Award by National Trout Unlimited in 2010, and the Pennsylvania Environmental Council named her one of the top 40 Pennsylvanians under the age of 40 working to protect the environment. “ClearWater is known for being a strong community collaborator and an important technical resource — helping to shape and sustain a vibrant community and healthy ecosystem,” Nardone said in a press release. “I plan to build on that reputation as we grow this organization and its impact on this great community.” T&G 14 - T&G October 2015
Q&A with Brandon Rittenhouse, executive director for Penn State Homecoming 2015 By Sarah Harteis Penn State Homecoming has been a highly loved and cherished tradition ever since the school’s first homecoming football game was played in 1920. This year’s weeklong homecoming festivities begin October 4 and end October 10 with the football game against Indiana. Penn State homecoming executive director Brandon Rittenhouse began sharing his passion for Penn State homecoming as a freshman in 2013 when he became involved on the public relations committee. He shared with Town&Gown some of his thoughts and ideas regarding this year’s homecoming celebration. T&G: How did you come up with this year’s homecoming theme, A Legacy to Shape the Future? Rittenhouse: In order to select the theme, the last homecoming executive committee brainstorms ideas and decides on a theme for the upcoming homecoming celebration. This year, we spent a lot of time talking about our collective vision for the upcoming year, followed by copious amounts of shouted-out ideas, consumed snacks, and breaks spent walking laps around the HUB. We inevitably reached the “ah-ha” moment and unanimously agreed that our theme is perfect for what we wish to accomplish this year. T&G: What do you think makes Penn State stand apart from other state universities? Rittenhouse: From the “We Are” chant to the homecoming parade to the singing of the alma mater, our traditions are deeply embedded into the culture at Penn State. There isn’t a feeling that I know of quite like the immediate connection you feel when you see a complete stranger in a completely random city wearing a Penn State shirt. Tradition is the spirit that connects all of us. T&G: How has Penn State homecoming grown? Rittenhouse: Since the first parade in 1962, Penn State homecoming has grown in numerous ways: the amount of volunteers, events, and participants. When the first 16 - T&G October 2015
parade made its way down College Avenue, homecoming at Penn State was planned by a committee. Now, it’s an organization consisting of nearly 400 student volunteers who work together to plan more than 15 events each year. Homecoming is now a yearlong celebration of Penn State pride and tradition. T&G: In what capacity have you been involved in Penn State homecoming? Rittenhouse: In 2013, I had the opportunity to serve as a photography captain on the public relations committee. From there, I served on the executive committee in 2014 as the merchandise director, and it was one of the most amazingly memorable, humbling, and exciting opportunities I could have ever asked for. Once the executive director applications opened, I knew that I wanted to apply. It is truly an honor to be able to see other students falling as in love with homecoming and Penn State as I have! T&G: What do you and the homecoming committee hope to accomplish through this year’s homecoming? Rittenhouse: The theme for Homecoming 2015 to me is all about recognizing the incredible opportunities we have as members of the Penn State family and ensuring we use them to continue to make an impact on the world around us. Besides putting on a successful week of events, we hope to give everyone an experience that makes them proud to call themselves a Penn Stater. T&G For a list of Penn State homecoming events and more information, visit homecoming .psu.edu.
This Monthtownandgown.com On
• In 5 Questions, Laura Rosenberger talks about her children’s book, Goodnight, Penn State. • In recognition of the 10th anniversary of Penn State’s unforgettable 2005 win over Ohio State, the Nittany Valley Society offers a detailed look back at the “week that restored Penn State football.” • Shari Edelson of the Penn State Arboretum previews this year’s Pumpkin Festival. • A special offer and recipe from Zola Kitchen & Wine Bar. • Order your copy of Town&Gown’s 2015-16 Penn State Winter Sports Annual.
Visit our Facebook site for the latest happenings and opportunities to win free tickets to concerts and events! Follow us on Twitter @TownGownSC.
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living well
Choosing the Path of Peace Trusting your intuition By Meghan Fritz This month, my husband and I will celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary. We were married last October in front of our families and closet friends on a sunny, beautiful, cloudless day in southern Florida. Within a year, we met and became engaged, I moved and closed my counseling practice in upstate New York, and we bought and moved into our home and planned a destination wedding. What I learned during that time is that we all have our own path — we don’t owe anyone else an explanation of why the path we choose works for us. Perhaps the best thing we can do is to honor what we want, what we need, and, equally important, what we don’t need. In March 2013, a very controversial article by Susan Patton, also known as “The Princeton Mom,” urged female Princeton students to focus their time at college on finding a good husband rather than dating without intention and focusing on building their careers. The article immediately became a social-media sensation, causing outrage, anxiety, and panic among single women who had devoted their 20s and 30s-plus to
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building their careers and not spending nearly enough time focused on finding a life partner. During that time, I received many referrals from 30- and 40-something-year-old women who felt defeated and panicked about being single and childless. In each of these cases, what became clear in talking to these women is that they didn’t abandon their dreams of wanting a partner, they had just wanted to pursue their own goals and dreams first. How you choose to live your life and the path you take are your choices. We need to stop judging each other and putting women into the cookie-cutter category of finding “the one” and starting a family immediately. Within five years of graduating from college, I attended more than a dozen weddings. These were my friends who knew that they had found their right partners, and they had the desire to build homes and start families early in their lives. They had been inspired to make that choice because it was the right choice for them at the time. Every woman’s path is different — and that is the beauty of life! Whatever choice we make, we need to stop judging ourselves and each other and insisting there is something wrong with us because we didn’t take the path that most people take, or we took the path we thought was right and it ended up in a breakup or divorce. The best gift we can give ourselves is to listen deeply to our wants and desires, and then to honor and pursue them. When we take time to really think about what is right for us and
what inspires us, we find purpose and peace in our day-to-day lives. It is nearly impossible to choose the wrong path when you take time to listen to your instincts and choose the path of peace. When I became engaged, many people asked me how I knew my now husband was the one for me. The answer I always gave was simple: I had a deep sense of peace. There was no fear, angst, anxiety, or drama — just a calm feeling deep within that this was the next step in my journey. Any decision we make out of fear is always a bad one. Don’t settle for less because you are scared or think you are too late to get what you want. It is never too late to honor what you want and what you need. Don’t allow other people to influence you in ways that cause you to feel anxious and neurotic about your future. Don’t spend hours doubting your choices and your self-worth. Stop the madness and simply begin the practice of tuning deep into your intuition. This is your internal GPS system that will guide you on the path that is right for you.
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If you are headed in the wrong direction, you will know it. You will have a feeling of restlessness and uneasiness, and you will feel the quiet voice within you nudging you to recalculate. Don’t ignore that inner feeling. Stop and recalculate until you have a sense of peace. Don’t spend another minute judging and doubting yourself for past choices. Stay in the present and focus on what you want and what inspires you to grow. Hang out with the people and in the places and things that give you energy, support, love, and peace. Walk away from the things that bring anxiety, guilt, shame, or judgment. Know that the best gift you can give yourself is to let peace be your internal GPS in choosing the path that is right for you. Take a deep breath, embrace your path, and accept that no one knows what’s right for you better than you do! T&G Meghan Fritz is a psychotherapist practicing in State College.
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2015 October T&G - 21
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health
Timely Tests Mammograms and clinical breast exams are the first step in detecting breast cancer at an early stage By Mount Nittany Health Breast Cancer Center
A 3D mammography machine generates a threedimensional image of a breast and helps doctors more accurately diagnose patients.
In the United States, breast cancer is the second most common form of cancer in women, accounting for approximately 230,000 new cases each year. Although common, the death rate from breast cancer has dropped steadily over the past 20 years. One of the reasons for the decline is due to increased education and action regarding breast-cancer screenings. Although screenings may evoke feelings of anxiety and apprehension — Will it hurt? What if they find something? When will I get the results? — they are necessary tools in keeping people healthy. 22 - T&G October 2015
The mammogram The most common type of screening test for breast cancer is a yearly mammogram, which is given to women who are generally healthy and do not have any indicators of breast cancer. It can help detect breast cancer in an earlier stage, allowing for timely treatment. In traditional digital mammography, the breast is X-rayed from two angles: the front and the side. To ensure the entire area is viewed, the breast is lifted away from the patient’s body and compressed between two glass plates. From there, a radiologist interprets the images that are recorded. While traditional digital mammography is very good and is currently used across the globe, technology continues to advance. There is now a new type of mammography screening called digital tomosynthesis, which is available at select facilities. Pronounced toh-moh-SIN-thahsis, the technology also is referred to as 3D mammography because it generates a three-dimensional view of the breast. Similar to how a CT scan (the machine that resembles a giant donut) rotates around the body, digital tomosynthesis uses an X-ray tube to arc around a patient’s breast, taking multiple images from many different angles. Because the digital tomosynthesis creates a layer-by-layer look of the breast tissue, breast cancer that is “hiding” among nonfatty tissue can be more easily detected. Additionally, it has been proven that patients are less frequently called back to the office for additional testing, meaning fewer procedures and fewer false positives. From the viewpoint of the radiologist, tomosynthesis produces
images of the breast from several different angles, which means that the doctor has the benefit of reviewing more detailed images. This can lead to more accurate diagnoses and can help lower the need for repeat mammograms. For those concerned with radiation exposure, it’s important to know that mammograms require very small doses of radiation, and tomosynthesis does take a few seconds longer than traditional mammography. However, nearly all experts agree that the benefits of the screening far outweigh any potential harm due to radiation exposure. Still, women should speak with their health-care provider for any concerns regarding radiation exposure, especially if a woman is pregnant. Digital tomosynthesis is now an option for patients at the Mount Nittany Health Breast Care Center. Patients are encouraged to ask their health-care insurance provider if tomosynthesis, or “3D” digital mammography, is covered by their insurance. Depending on insurance coverage, an additional nominal fee of $50 may be requested at the time of service. The clinical breast exam The other method of detecting breast cancer as early as possible is the clinical breast exam. While many women perform breast selfexams — which is the process of checking one’s own breasts for unusual changes and lumps — a breast self-exam cannot replace having a screening mammogram and clinical breast exam. A clinical breast exam is a complement to a regular medical checkup. During the exam, a medical professional will feel the breasts and underarms for any changes or abnormalities. The breasts will be checked while sitting as well as lying down. The exam is performed by a trained healthcare provider such as a doctor, physician assistant, nurse practitioner, or other qualified individual. Most professionals recommend women begin having a clinical breast exam annually, beginning at age 20, and that they continue receiving them even after beginning to have mammograms. Most often, the clinical breast exam will not indicate signs of breast cancer. However, if an
irregularity is detected, follow-up tests may be required. Higher-risk individuals For those with a higher risk of breast cancer, routine breast-cancer screenings are incredibly important. Factors that put women at higher risk can include one or more of the following: • A strong family history of breast cancer. • A personal history of invasive breast cancer, ductal carcinoma in situ, lobular carcinoma in situ, or atypical hyperplasia. • A BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation (or first-degree relative). • Having received radiation to the chest. Additional, less common factors also may contribute to a higher risk of breast cancer, as identified by a health-care provider. With an increased risk, mammography and clinical breast exams alone may not be enough. In these cases, additional tests, such as breast ultrasounds, may be useful in detecting breast cancer. Detection and confirmation of an abnormality If a lump or irregularity is detected during a mammogram or clinical breast exam, a follow-up examination may be required. This may include a breast MRI. This alone, however, does not confirm the presence of breast cancer. A breast biopsy is necessary in diagnosing breast cancer. In this procedure, a needle or surgical procedure removes cells or tissue from the breast, which are then analyzed under a microscope. While this may seem intimidating, many times a breast biopsy does not show cancer. If, however, cancer is detected, chances for survival are highest if the cancer is detected early. Resources Breast cancer is never a journey to be traveled alone. From a team of committed and compassionate providers to support groups, dedicated resource centers, cancer navigators, and more, abundant resources are available in State College and Centre County. T&G For more information, visit mountnittany.org. 2015 October T&G - 23
Darren Andrew Weimert
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about town
Spreading the News Local retiree enjoys sharing what’s happening in Happy Valley By Nadine Kofman What’s behind the “go-see” e-mails from Elaine Kunze of Boalsburg, sent to some 400 Centre County neighbors? Could she be a descendant of a town crier, shouting what’s afoot? Probably not. Are the e-mails fragments of a nonprofit newsletter? Sort of. Kunze, age 68, a biochemist, felt maladjusted in retirement from Penn State after 39 years. She was originally hired as a lab assistant in the departments of biochemistry and biophysics. For the last 20 years, the takecharge person had directed the Flow Cytometry Facility with the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. A five-foot-tall veritable energizer bunny, Kunze needs to be doing as opposed to “sitting around and eating bonbons.” She tried learning Spanish, drawing lessons from the Art Alliance of Central Pennsylvania, PAWS duties, and State Theatre trustee service. All good, but, even with personal travels, not enough. Then, laptop in hand, she became a volunteer herald — sharing the arts and other things with a growing number of “friends of friends.” To her mind, there’s a need. She was surprised to learn that — even though residents know well that they live near a university — “A lot of people didn’t know about 90 percent of things going on.” Her mission is to reinforce announcements — to make the audiences bigger for lectures, exhibitions, fulfilling films, musical gems, and more. Kunze repeats invitations to public events in the Rare Books Room of Penn State’s Pattee/Paterno Library, at Schlow Centre Region Library, and at the Bellefonte Museum of Art, and to poetry readings she knows about and lectures of the Archeology Institute of America. With announcements, she does synopses of area plays, campus departmental cinemas, locally sponsored films elsewhere and those at the nonprofit State Theatre in downtown State College — including its National Theatre Live showings and its Met Opera simulcasts and local pre-opera lectures. Among recent items was a special Harris Township meeting, in cooperation with the National Wildlife Federation, on gas-powered grass mowing alternatives and 24 - T&G October 2015
Elaine Kunze
the benefits of planting native plants. Coverage a year ago included a blues singer at a Bellefonte restaurant, a Penn State Food Service event featuring French cheese-making, a campus film/ lecture on an African artist’s handiworks, and an all-day event in Potters Mills sponsored by the Centre County Knitters Guild (she’s a member). Outside the box are her giddy “Happy Groundhog Day” wishes and, when asked, classifieds on a visiting faculty sublet or a lost pet. Two years ago, for instance, when a pet parakeet flew outdoors and Kunze’s alert led to its successful retrieval, the owner wrote back, “Great service you offer!!!” “People say, ‘Would you pass this on?’ ” And she usually does. Although covering “pretty much everything that comes up,” she shares only a smidgen of political items and just about no garage sales. “I’d like to do more with music,” such as operas and campus recitals, and with Shakespearean events, she says. Art entered her life early. By age
9 (and on a school day), her mother took her and her sister to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to see a “Mona Lisa” exhibit. The family lived near Philadelphia. “She did things like that to make the arts important.” Delight developed in two worlds. “In the sciences, I played all day and got paid,” Kunze quips. She is a 1969 biochemistry graduate of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro — an all-women’s school that accepted men when she was a freshman. Postcollege, she did lab work at the University of Pennsylvania. “It was like Heaven,” she says. In 1970, the former Elaine Lohin married Don Kunze, an Asheville, North Carolina, native who would become a Penn State professor of architecture/integrative arts. The two came to Happy Valley in 1973. Their arrival for his Penn State doctorate in geography followed his undergraduate architecture degree from North Carolina State University and his master’s in geography from Georgia State University.
“And,” Elaine says, “I got hired over the phone by Dick McCarl (a biochemistry professor who directed a research lab).” She was a lab technician there for four years. Like so many transplants who come here “temporarily,” the Kunzes have stayed and have owned a home in Boalsburg since 1985. In its reserved way, their current metropolis is a hotbed of happenings. Across the street, Academy Street, is poet Robin Becker, previous Penn State poet laureate. Silhouette paper artist Harriet Rosenberg lives up the street. On the main drag, Main Street, old Duffy’s Tavern still opens. A few blocks away, the historic Boal Mansion Museum (the Kunzes rented an apartment on the property in 1979) is being revived. In the cemetery beside Church Street, a statue of Victorian ladies decorating graves reminds everyone that Memorial Day started in Boalsburg. It’s a fitting place for a town crier. T&G Nadine Kofman is a native Centre Countian and historian.
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on center
Shostakovich Circus Acrobats and string quartets share the stage in November 11 show at Eisenhower By John Mark Rafacz Sometimes circus is all clown cars, caged tigers, and the incomparable scent of elephant dung. Sometimes it’s more sublime. “Opus,” which comes to Penn State’s Eisenhower Auditorium November 11, “is cut-glass, caviar circus,” writes a reviewer for The Telegraph of London. “It’s black tie and ball gown circus. And it’s an astonishing thing to watch: graceful, bombastic. Profound.” Fourteen acrobats and a chamber ensemble comingle amid the music of Dmitri Shostakovich in Opus, a work of power, virtuosity, and poetry performed by Australia’s Circa and France’s Debussy String Quartet. In Opus, created by Circa artistic director Yaron Lifschitz, three of the Russian composer’s quartets — intimate, passionate, lyrical, and ironic — form the musical and dramatic foundation for a union of extreme acrobatics, lyrical movement, and group choreography. More than just a source of musical accompaniment, the Debussy ensemble performs from memory and is woven into the action. “This show by Aussie circus company Circa should come with a ‘don’t try this at home’ warning,” writes a critic for Time Out London. “The piece relies on so few gimmicks, it looks as though all you might need to pull off a jawdropping acrobatic stunt is a running jump and a couple of hefty guys to catch you. The fact that Circa makes feats of supreme strength, agility, and prowess look like anyone could have a go is an accomplishment, of course. Opus is so effortless and graceful it teeters on the edge of contemporary dance. The appearance of the Debussy Quartet, playing live onstage, certainly helps to blur genre boundaries still more.” A reviewer for the British newspaper The Guardian describes Opus as “an evening so remarkable as almost to defy description. … extraordinarily moving.” A critic for Canada’s La Presse calls it “a masterpiece of circus art.” Since 2006, Brisbane’s Circa has blended bodies, light, sound, and skills to achieve its vision for contemporary circus. The company has toured six continents and performed in more than 30 countries. Based in Lyon, the Debussy String Quartet garners international praise for its many recordings and live 26 - T&G October 2015
Circa brings its production of Opus to Eisenhower Auditorium November 11.
performances. The ensemble, winner of the Evian International String Quartet Competition, was created in 1990. The quartet, which founded the Les Cordes en Ballade chamber music festival, has released more than two dozen albums. “Even the simple collision of art forms is thought-provoking,” writes The Telegraph reviewer. “Why is one high and the other low? What makes a musician virtuosic and a circus performer freakish? Here acrobatics looks as disciplined as ballet: all arched feet and hyperextension. Circus becomes poised and noble. Not unruly. Not cocksure. Violinists start to seem sexy and fierce. Why does no one ever run away to join a string quartet, I wonder? Lifschitz does more than set circus to Shostakovich. That would make the music seem an arbitrary accompaniment. Rather, he interprets it as any ballet master or opera director would. He lets you visualize the music. He makes you understand its structure.” T&G For more information or tickets, visit cpa.psu.edu or phone (814) 863-0255. John Mark Rafacz is the editorial manager of the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State.
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penn state diary
Animal Care While university lacks a veterinary school, its research and programs aid farm life Penn State University Archinves
By Lee Stout
Circa 1927, Dr. J. F. Shigley, Penn State professor of veterinary science, (left) along with Dr. S.I. Bechdel, professor of animal science, created an opening in “Penstate Jessie” to remove stomach contents for analysis of feed digestion and the synthesis of Vitamin B in the rumen.
Why doesn’t Penn State have a vet school? Since it began as an agricultural college, wouldn’t it be logical for one to be located here? How is it that Pennsylvania’s only school of veterinary medicine is located in Philadelphia, at the University of Pennsylvania? Penn established its veterinary-medicine program in 1884, when Penn State’s very existence as the state’s land-grant college was just beginning to stabilize. City veterinary schools had dominated the field, caring for the tens of thousands of horses used in cities to haul people and goods before the advent of motorized transportation. Most of those schools disappeared by World War II, as land-grant colleges picked up the slack. However, Penn’s vet school survived. Penn State was designated the commonwealth’s land-grant college in 1863. Despite a relatively slow and spotty record of agricultural instruction, research, and outreach in the nineteenth century, Penn State, under agriculture dean Henry Prentiss Armsby, was doing very well for Pennsylvania’s farmers by 1900. As a mixed agriculture state, Pennsylvania’s farmers relied on both animal and crop production for income. Thus the development of animal husbandry (as it was first called) was a significant element of Penn State’s School of Agriculture. With the growing significance of dairy farming in the state, 28 - T&G October 2015
dairy husbandry became a separate department in 1905, as did poultry husbandry in 1920. These programs were based on production of meat, dairy products, and eggs. Raising production through animal nutrition and stock management as well as improved breeding practices were central concerns. However, as the disciplines of biology and zoology evolved, the application of basic sciences to understanding animals transformed departments of “husbandry” into departments of “science.” Along with the biology of healthy animals, the study of animal diseases — veterinary science — became part of the curriculum. But while Penn State’s animal scientists became ever more successful and shared their knowledge through agricultural-extension outlets, the actual training of doctors of veterinary medicine did not become a part of the curriculum. By the 1950s, Pennsylvania farmers were becoming increasingly vocal in their unhappiness with Penn’s production of vets — too few of its graduates specialized in farm animals and located in rural areas. The farmers wanted Penn State to create a veterinary-medicine program and pressured the state legislature to appropriate funds for it. President Milton Eisenhower had come to Penn State from Kansas State, which had begun offering the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree in 1905. He welcomed the interest of farmers and rural legislators in broadening Penn State’s work in veterinary science and disease. However, Penn’s legislative supporters were equally strong, arguing that with more funding from the state they could meet the farmers’ needs. Eisenhower quietly agreed to support Penn’s funding increases in exchange for stronger state support for the veterinary-science program at
Penn State. But were other factors involved besides the institutional-political ones? One may well be the fundamental changes that have transformed the study of biology. These dramatic changes have paralleled the growth and change of modern higher education in general. Improving crop yields drew most of the attention in early agricultural education. Evan Pugh’s research was based on the chemistry of plants and soils for the most part, and the efficacy of fertilizers was probably the focal point of agricultural research initially. Interest in plants connected to animals through nutritional studies prevailed here. Armsby was the leader at Penn State with his respiration calorimeter that he and his colleagues designed and used to examine the value of various feeds to improve animal production. Animal studies in agriculture, of course, concerned more than just meat production. Dairy products, egg production, and raw-wool production were all parts of Pennsylvania’s farm economy. Thus animal breeding, nutrition, disease prevention, health, and processing had been direct concerns as well as the study of farmland, structures and equipment, the business of farming, and, gradually, the study of farm life and ag education. Thanks to scientific advances, particularly at the molecular level and in genetics, the focus of veterinary medicine in recent years has turned more from disease prevention to maintenance of the health, usefulness, and productivity of animals. Vets working in government with other scientists are playing an increasing role in preventing environmental deterioration, the spread of animal disease to human populations, and food safety. Pain management and humane housing and treatment of farm animals bring new questions of ethics into veterinary education. At the same time, salaries for veterinarians and funding for veterinary schools are significantly decreasing. Veterinary science at Penn State remains a center for interdisciplinary work in environmental, animal, and human health. Research and extension programs in food safety, diet and health, gut microbiology, genomics, infectious diseases, and animal care are all part of Penn State’s program, even if it doesn’t produce doctors of veterinary medicine. T&G Lee Stout is librarian emeritus, special collections for Penn State.
Get to know...
Ken Hickman: Curating Penn State Sports Ken Hickman always wanted to be a “history guy.” Then, after internships with the Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg, the U.S. Army Heritage & Education Center in Carlisle, and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland, he narrowed his focus to museums. He earned a bachelor’s in history and political science from Penn State and a master’s in history and museum studies from the University of Delaware, and became curator and director of development at the USS Constellation Museum in Baltimore. In 2006, he returned to his alma mater as director of the All-Sports Museum, and last year earned his master’s in information/library science from Drexel University. While interpretation at the Civil War sloop of war Constellation related to a specific time period, Hickman says the All-Sports Museum gave him the new challenge of constantly changing subject matter. “The Civil War is always 1861 to ’65. That’s not going to change,” he explains. “At Penn State, we have 31 teams, and they’re competing every year. We have one bookend at the beginning, but we don’t have a finish.” The All-Sports Museum updates its exhibits every year based on new athletic achievements, such as the women’s volleyball’s 2014 national championship. Hickman himself was a competitive swimmer in high school but recently switched to distance running. He joined his wife in a triathlon this summer (biking was the tough part, he says) and is looking forward to running two marathons in October.
The Penn State Bookstore thanks Ken Hickman and all faculty and staff who carry out the university’s mission every day.
www.psu.bncollege.com 814-863-0205 2015 October T&G - 29
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CATA has become Pennsylvania’s third-largest transit authority in terms of ridership.
Years of Town&Gown: Transportation On the road and in the air, getting around Happy Valley has become much easier
By Tracey M. Dooms Fifty years ago, State College had a reputation as a great place to live but a tough place to get to. Beautiful mountain scenery contributed to the local quality of life but made it difficult to build roads to and from Centre County, and commercial air service was just getting off the ground. For locals, both taxi and bus services around town were limited. Today, Centre County has two interstate highways, an airport with dozens of daily flights, an extensive regional bus service, and multiple taxi options. Although
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local residents sometimes complain about traffic, the average commute to work here is under 20 minutes, according to the US Census Bureau. And thanks to Penn State researchers, State College is serving as the proving ground for future advances in transportation.
From two lanes to interstates
In the 1960s, driving to State College involved two-lane roads over and around mountains. Route 322, known as the Lakesto-Sea Highway because it connected Erie
Left, in May 1973, Town&Gown looked at the issue of the middle section of the State College bypass, which became a major issue in the region. Right, in January 2001, Town&Gown looked at what the opening of Interstate 99 would mean to Centre County.
to Atlantic City, New Jersey, had been a major route to and from Happy Valley since the 1930s, but most of the highway was still a two-lane road. In 1970, Interstate 80 (the “Keystone Shortway�) opened fully as an east-west shortcut across the middle of the state, running through the northern part of Centre County. At the Milesburg interchange, Governor Raymond Shafer fired a flare gun to activate an electronic sign on a Goodyear blimp, signifying that the highway was fully open, 11 years after construction began. In 2007, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission proposed charging tolls on I-80; over the next three years, the Federal Highway Administration rejected that request three times, and the highway has remained toll-free. The Mount Nittany Expressway, or State College bypass, also had its start in the 1960s, although it took a lot longer to finish than I-80 did. By the 1960s, commuter traffic through the center of
State College had become heavy, with routes 322 and 26 both feeding through downtown. Officials proposed a bypass around the center of town, and the first section opened in 1969 in Patton Township, followed by the Harris Township section in 1972. However, arguments about the specific route of the middle 4.3 miles and whether it should be two or four lanes stalled completion until 1985. In 2008, highway travel to and from State College reached another milestone with the opening of the final sections of Interstate 99 between I-80 in northern Centre County and the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Bedford County. Construction of the route through much of Centre County had been first delayed due to arguments over the placement of the State College to Bald Eagle segment; the selected route aligns with the mountain ridge, rather than the alternative valley route. The second major delay came when construction crews in the Skytop area in
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In an August 1970 Town&Gown cover story, the village of Oak Hall was seen as a “casualty” of the proposed bypass.
Patton Township unearthed large deposits of iron pyrite along the sandstone ridge. Exposed to air and water, the highly reactive material leached sulfuric acid into a nearby stream and groundwater. Remediation involved excavating 1 million cubic yards of rock and redistributing it into waste piles built to contain and treat runoff, as well as installing impermeable membrane systems over rock hillsides that could not be removed.
Under discussion
The Centre County Metropolitan Planning Organization is the local entity charged with maintaining a comprehensive transportation planning program for the area. The MPO’s long-range plan, which extends through 2040, includes mention of several projects that have been in the
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news over the past 10 to 15 years but that are on hold, primarily due to funding constraints or lack of agreement among the municipalities involved: • A high-speed interchange has been discussed for Exit 161 of Interstate 80, where it connects to I-99. Currently, traffic moving from one of the highways to the other has to stop and/or turn left across traffic; the advanced interchange would allow transfer without stopping. • The South Central Centre County Transportation Study was intended to develop an alternate traffic route from Route 322 in Potters Mills to interstates 80 and 99. The Route 322 section from the south side of Seven Mountains to the Boalsburg area is the last remaining twolane segment between State College and Harrisburg.
• Corridor O is a proposed four-lane connector road between I-99 in Worth Township, near Port Matilda, to I-80 in Clearfield County. • The Eastern Inner Loop would be a three-lane road from University Drive and Park Avenue to Clinton Avenue, intended to alleviate traffic congestion along North Atherton Street and Park Avenue. The project was discussed in conjunction with the extension of Blue Course Drive from West College Avenue to North Atherton, which was completed in in the early 2000s.
Flights take off
University Park Airport started in 1958 when the State College Flying Service began operating from Penn State land. Two years later, HRB Singer lengthened the runway to 3,200 feet for its company planes. In 1962, the university took over operation of the airport, and in 1965, shortly before Town&Gown began publishing, the airport’s first commuter flights took off for Harrisburg, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. Unfortunately, by 1970, commuter service had pretty much ceased. Public discussion focused on whether to invest in airport facilities at University Park in Benner Township or at Mid-State Airport in Rush Township. Forcing the decision was an Allegheny Airlines feasibility study that named University Park the best location for a public airport. In 1973, Allegheny established scheduled flights, and a new 5,000foot runway was built the following year. In 1978, the
Centre County Airport Authority began operating the commercial portion of the airport, erecting a double-wide trailer as a passenger terminal. Passengers wouldn’t see a permanent terminal until 1984, followed by a complete renovation in 1993 and the lengthening of the runway to 6,700 feet in 1999. A control tower was built in 2011. Today, the University Park airport is a cooperative venture among Penn State, the airport authority, and the community. The airport authority owns and operates the passenger terminal and parking. Penn State owns most of the land and runways and the general-aviation terminal, built
In June 1972, Town&Gown tried to find answers surrounding a possible airport in State College.
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Today, the University Park Airport offers daily flights to Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, DC, and Atlanta.
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in 2000 for corporate and recreational travel. In 2014, passengers departed and arrived 427,653 times on commercial flights here, making this the sixth-busiest airport in Pennsylvania. American, Delta, and United airlines operate 26 flights a day, connecting University Park and Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington-Dulles, and Chicago, along with a weekly flight to Atlanta. The airport also is home to a FedEx facility, the Pennsylvania Air National Guard’s 112th Air Operations Squadron, and a PA Army National Guard field-maintenance operation.
7 million bus rides
After Nittany Transit Co. dissolved in 1948, State College was without local bus service until 1966. That’s when Clearfieldbased Fullington Auto Bus Co. inaugurated three local bus routes: Garner Street, Waupelani Drive, and a campus loop. That same year, Leroy Toney’s Suburban Express Co. began offering bus service on the northern end of town, with routes to Park
Forest and campus. For the most part, the two bus companies kept to different ends of town, but in the few spots where routes overlapped, competition was fierce. In early 1970, Fullington bought out Suburban Express, but ridership was low, and by March 1972, the company informed the Centre Region Council of Governments that bus service would end in the fall unless the company received a subsidy. Many people objected to the idea of giving a public subsidy to a private company. State College Borough and Harris and Patton townships approved the subsidy, and Centre Area Transit began operating in September 1972 using Fullington equipment. The service was plagued with problems, such as foul-smelling vehicles that had been underwater during Harrisburg-area flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes. Buses also wouldn’t pick up passengers in municipalities that weren’t participating in the subsidy. Finally, the borough and townships decided to start an official municipal authority, and
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In 1970, Fullington Auto Bus Co. bought out Suburban Express, while Nittany Cab is one of several cab companies that has found a home in State College over the years.
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the Centre Area Transportation Authority was born in May 1974. CATA now serves all six Centre Region municipalities plus Bellefonte and Benner and Spring townships. In 2005, it became the first transportation agency on the East Coast to fuel its bus fleet entirely with compressed natural gas. CATABus service provided almost 3.8 million rides in the year ending September 1, 2015, plus almost 3.6 million rides on the free campus and downtown loop buses operated in partnership with Penn State. That makes CATA the state’s third-largest transit authority in terms of ridership, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. As a possible means of serving the growing ridership, CATA recently tested Nova articulated buses that can accommodate twice as many passengers as a standard bus. In addition to bus service, CATARide provides door-to-door transportation for senior citizens and for people of any age
whose disabilities prevent their use of the CATABus system. CATACommute offers ride-sharing and van-pool programs for long-distance commuters.
Hailing a cab
Taxi service in State College dates to at least the early 1900s. Fifty years ago, L.R. Toney Cab Service operated a fleet of black cabs with red-and-white lettering. The dispatch office ran out of a tiny office next to the Nittany Theatre on South Allen Street (now the M&T Bank building). The liquor store in Bellefonte was a popular destination for taxi riders until 1965, when the commonwealth opened a store in State College. Cab companies changed hands several times over the years. In the late 1970s, drivers began to clamor for unionization. Eugene Tressler put his Golden Cab Company up for sale, but no one was buying, and the borough was about to be without taxi service. In 1979, the
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Pumpkin Giveaway for Jack-o’-Lantern Contest
Friday, October 16 (6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.)
Lighted Jack-o’-Lantern Display and Food Vendors
Saturday, October 17 (4:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.)
Lighted Jack-o’-Lantern Display Family Activities, Music, Food Vendors
Bring a Flashlight!
pennstatearboretum • arboretum.psu.edu 2015 October T&G - 37
State College Borough Council stepped forward to buy the company for $75,000. Renamed Centre Cab, the operation was the first municipallyowned taxi service in the state. Unfortunately, the borough’s service lost money each year, and in 1982, Jim and Noreen Byers bought it for $1,000, receiving three operational vehicles to add to their Handy Delivery Service. Today, several taxi companies operate in State College, including AA Taxi, Nittany Taxi, Golden Taxi, and Handy Delivery. Patrons in need of a ride downtown also can hop in Vamos! Lion Chariot, whose driver uses
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Penn State president Eric Barron (middle) gets an update on Penn State’s EcoCAR competition vehicle from Advanced Vehicle Team members Ben Sattler and Chris Monaco at Penn State’s Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute.
pedal power to move the open-air vehicle around town. Last February, Uber entered the State College market after receiving approval from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. Founded in 2009, Uber connects riders and drivers through a mobile app and operates in more than 100 countries. The service continues to grow despite criticism from the taxi industry, which generally faces stricter regulation in cities where both operate.
Transportation for the future
Centre County has an impact on worldwide transportation advances thanks to the Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute. Founded in 1968 as the PA Transportation and Traffic Safety Center, it was renamed in 1998 to honor its founder and first director, who also served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of transportation. When it was launched, the institute was one of the country’s first university
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transportation centers; today there are hundreds. The institute centralizes transportation research conducted by Penn State faculty from more than 14 colleges and research centers. Research topics range from railroad engineering to longlasting batteries, and from truck escape ramps to antiterrorism barriers. Locally, the institute operates a one-mile oval track off Rock Road in Benner Township, where researchers can test vehicles, infrastructure designs, traffic signals, and more. It’s all part of the institute’s threefold mission of research, education, and service, bringing together faculty, students, and outside partners to address critical transportation issues with implications far beyond Centre County. T&G Tracey M. Dooms is a freelance writer in State College and a special-projects editor for Town&Gown.
Renaissance
Honoree of the Year For Mount Nittany Health president and CEO Steve Brown, it’s all about taking care of the community he loves
By Tracey M. Dooms
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Darren Andrew Weimert (2)
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S
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teve Brown first started coming to Penn State football games with his dad, who was an agricultural inspector in Mechanicsburg and took certification courses at the university. Brown kept returning to Beaver Stadium as he earned his master’s degree in public administration in health services at Penn State and then with his wife, Mary, visiting their oldest son during his four years at the university. “My seats in the stadium have always been so high that I would look down on the hospital helicopter pad,” says Brown. “Mary would say, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat to actually live here, and you could work there?’ ” He told her that would never happen because, when the top job at Mount Nittany opens up, “every MHA (Master of Health Administration) graduate from Penn State will apply for that job. So I never even thought about it.” But one day he received a call from a recruiter who said the hospital in State College was looking for a CEO. During the job interview, one of the search-committee members asked why he wanted to come to Mount Nittany when he was already running a much larger health system in the state of Washington. “It was about family, and my ties are here,” Brown says. “Plus, our first grandchild had come
Brown took over as president and CEO of Mount Nittany Health in 2010.
along, and Mary said to me, ‘We’re moving back to the East Coast.’ ” Brown became president and CEO of Mount Nittany Health in 2010. He immersed himself in the job and in his new community. “When you spend all the time that I’ve spent coming up here with my dad, taking classes, spending four years coming back and forth with our oldest son, you know the university side,” he says. “As an alum, that’s precious to me. But when you take a job here, you learn the other side, what a neat community this is. “Right from the beginning, this community was so welcoming. It’s like they had known me for years. That’s what makes this special here. It’s a college town, but it’s a strong community.” Five years later, Brown himself is being honored for his role in that community — for his “deep roots in the Centre Region, close relationships with civic and university leaders, and a Brown stands with Eileen Leibowitz, chair, campaign for commitment to philanthropy.” emergency medicine (fourth from left), and Theodore Ziff, Each year, Penn State chooses a MD, medical director, emergency department (far right), at community leader who fulfills that the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Austin’s Playroom in the new description as its Renaissance Fund emergency department at Mount Nittany Medical Center. 44 - T&G October 2015
Steve and Mary Brown (center) with the families of their sons, Zach and Adam (far right). From left, grandchildren, Tyler and Gianna, stand in front of their parents, Laura and Zach Brown. From right, Adam and Sue Brown hold their son, Steven.
honoree. On November 19, Brown will be recognized at the 39th annual Renaissance Fund dinner, which raises money in the name of the honoree to endow scholarships for academically talented Penn State students who have financial needs. A division of the Office of Annual Giving, the Renaissance Fund has grown its endowment to more than $11.3 million, and in 2014-15, the fund awarded scholarships totaling $687,460 to 475 students. “Steve has had an important effect on the lives of almost everybody in this area,” says George Henning Jr., president of the Renaissance Fund board of directors. “He has helped develop Mount Nittany Health into a first-class operation and a teaching hospital in this small town, making the best health care available to all of us.”
More than 40 years of hospital service Brown started his health-care career at age 15, washing dishes in what was then Seidle Memorial Hospital in Mechanicsburg — the hospital in which he was born.
“Every summer, every holiday, every break from college, I worked at the hospital,” he says. “I have never worked anywhere but a hospital, ever.” The oldest of four siblings and a firstgeneration college student, he decided to become a physical therapist because a high school guidance counselor suggested it. He earned a bachelor’s in biology and natural science from Thiel College in Greenville and took a job at a small rehabilitation hospital in Mechanicsburg as a physical therapy assistant, with duties such as walking patients around and cleaning whirlpools. That’s where he met his wife, a physical therapist. He spent a lot of time talking with one patient in particular, since they shared a love of the Civil War. The patient suggested he think about a career in hospital administration and said he would make some phone calls on the young PT assistant’s behalf. Brown had no idea that the patient was Penn State trustee Chuck Douds. The next thing Brown knew, he was 2015 October T&G - 45
“He has helped develop Mount Nittany Health into a first-class operation and a teaching hospital in this small town, making the best health care available to all of us.” — George Henning Jr.
Brown (right) and Kristina Taylor-Porter, director of the Mount Nittany Health Children’s Advocacy Center, accept the CBICC Community Service Award in 2014.
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talking with a Penn State dean who convinced him to enroll in the master’s in public administration program (which later became the MHA). A residency at Milton S. Hershey Medical Center during that program led to his first management job, as assistant director of ambulatory services at Hershey, in 1979. Not long after, Bill Corley, hospital director at Hershey, moved to Ohio as CEO of Akron General Medical Center and asked Brown to join his administration as vice president of
professional and medical services. In 1984, another Hershey connection, former director Knox Singleton, had become head of Fairfax Hospital Association (now Inova Health System) and hired Brown as a vice president and later CEO for Fairfax hospitals. “I didn’t know a thing about being a CEO,” Brown says, “but I had a lot of help. And I think that’s the key to this job. It’s about the people that you surround yourself when you do what you do.” All those years of experience working in hospital kitchens, housekeeping, maintenance, and other areas also had given him broad insight. In September 2001, Brown’s hospital treated victims from the terrorist plane crash at the Pentagon, and then had to prepare for casualties from biological weapons during the anthrax attacks on area news media and US Senators. “It was a bad time,” Brown says simply. On January 1, 2002, he flew to Seattle as the new CEO of Evergreen Health, a single-hospital, multisite system in Kirkland, Washington. He remained there until 2010, when he was recruited
back to State College and to Mount Nittany Health. “I liked what I saw here,” he says of his decision to sign on with Centre County’s hospital system. “There was great opportunity here.”
Leading the way at Mount Nittany Health In the five years since Brown has taken the helm at Mount Nittany Health, the system has expanded to 15 sites in five counties, and Mount Nittany Physician Group has grown to more than 130 providers across 20 specialties. He has overseen several major changes for the hospital and health system: The emergency department has expanded from 15,000 to 57,000 square feet. “The emergency room is a window on the community,” he says. “Everybody — either personally or as a family member or a friend — will need the emergency room.” He brought in FreemanWhite, the North Carolina-based health-care architectural firm that had designed Evergreen’s emergency room. “I said, we’re going to do this right so we won’t have to do it again in five years.”
2015 October T&G - 47
The new emergency department is organized in four flexible pods so that additional spaces can be utilized during major events, such as Penn State football games, that result in increased ER volume. Last year, the ER handled 54,000 emergency-room visits. The Lance and Ellen Shaner Cancer Pavilion opened in 2012, providing state-of-the-art oncology care under one roof in partnership with Penn State Hershey Cancer Instituite. “Mount Nittany is one of the original members of the Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute,” Brown says. “Who better to partner with?” The cancer pavilion houses radiation oncology, medical oncology and examination space, and 19 private chemotherapy suites. The Penn State College of Medicine opened its University Park Regional Campus in 2012, partnering with Mount Nittany Health and other local organizations in the clinical education of medical students based in State College. This year, the campus added its first residency program, in family and community medicine. The three-year program focuses on educating physicians to fill Centre County’s need for primary-care professionals for years to come. “We now have this opportunity to grow our own primary-care doctors right here in State College,” Brown says. “In four short years, we’ve become a regional academic-teaching facility.” Already, the hospital administration is looking at ways to continue expanding medical training opportunities here. Brown says he strives to focus on localized care at Mount Nittany Health. “I don’t think people should have to travel 98 miles to get health care,” he says. “People shouldn’t have to get in their car and go to Danville or Hershey or Pittsburgh for health
“It’s about taking care of people. And in a place like this, we really are taking care of our friends and neighbors.” — Steve Brown 48 - T&G October 2015
“I’m not that kind of guy,” he says. “I’m not a front-seat guy. I’d rather sit in the back seat and thank the people who do the real work here. The people that should be getting this award are the 2,300 people who make sure that this community is healthy.” He says his job, and the job of those 2,300 Mount Nittany Health employees, is simple: “It’s about taking care of people. And in a place like this, we really are taking care of our friends and neighbors.” Off the hospital campus, he also takes care of others through his support of local community Brown and a team from Mount Nittany Health receive organizations. Steve and Mary funding from the Pennsylvania Pink Zone. Brown contribute regularly to the Food Bank of the State College Area, care. Our goal has been to bring as much to this Pennsylvania Pink Zone, THON, the Palmer community as we can.” Museum of Art, and Centre Volunteers Taking care of the community in Medicine (CVIM), which he considers When Brown learned he would be this year’s an “incredibly important resource” for the Renaissance Fund honoree, he says he was speechless. community.
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community. His unwavering support and commitment to CVIM have been invaluable.” Brown serves on the boards of the Chamber of Business & Industry of Centre County, Centre Care, and State College Downtown Rotary Club. He is honorary cochair of this year’s Centre County United Way campaign. At Penn State, he is a lifetime member of the Alumni Association, and the Browns Brown stands with nursing leadership during National are dedicated Nittany Nurses Week. Lion Club members and supporters of the College of Health and Human “Steve was quick to realize the community Development, where he has served on the Master benefit provided by Centre Volunteers in of Health Administration board of visitors. Medicine,” says Cheryl White, executive “I think it’s important to give back. I’ve director of CVIM. “He understands that by gotten where I am because people cared working together with CVIM, we improve enough to do something for me,” he explains, the quality of life and health for our uninsured remembering mentors such as Douds, Corley, residents, helping them to become healthy, and Singleton. “I don’t forget that.” high-functioning contributors to our
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When the Browns moved to State College, they bought season tickets for Penn State football games and received bench seats below the press box. One game, Steve Brown was perusing the stadium through binoculars. “I saw these blue seats, way up there in the end zone, and I said, ‘I think they have seat backs.’ So the next year, I requested those,” he says. Now the Browns, who celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary this year, sit in Section SBU — “Steve Brown Upper deck, that’s how I remember” — with a view toward the helicopter approach to Mount Nittany Medical Center. Brown’s not far from his office, and from the health system he views as a “community trust” for the region. “Taking care of your loved ones is the most important thing that we do,” he says. “I take that very seriously.” T&G Tracey M. Dooms is a freelance writer in State College and a special-projects editor for Town&Gown.
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loring New Directions While he’s been director for the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum for less than a year, Robert Cameron already has big ideas for the historical site By T. Wayne Waters Photos By Alissa Pendorf
2015 October T&G - 55
As he prepares to wrap up his first season as director of the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum, Robert Cameron continues to look ahead to what he envisions for the 200-year-old Boal estate. “I want to create a focal point for the community for the arts, education, and history,” says Cameron, a Boalsburg native and Penn State alum. “The community has responded in such a great way. Volunteers are stepping up and joining in for the committees we’ve formed to help us achieve our goals. Everything seems to be coming together in a very short period of time.” Cameron’s background would seem to set him up well to manage the ambitious plans he and the operation’s board of directors want to undertake. It was late last year when Christopher Lee, the former director of the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum, resigned after he was arrested and indicted by a federal grand jury for child exploitation and child pornography. He is still awaiting trial. The board of directors for the chapel and museum began a search for a new director. Cynthia Shaler, now president of the board of directors (and of the Boalsburg Village Conservancy), says the board interviewed “quite a few” people before deciding upon Cameron. In addition to his academic credentials, 56 - T&G October 2015
including earning a doctorate in plant sciences from Penn State and a master’s in environmental management from the University of Houston, Cameron served as president and CEO of Olde Cloverleaf Village in Danville during the past decade. The village became a tourist destination, and Cameron oversaw reconstruction of two dozen historic buildings that included a B&B, three restaurants, a winery, and a number of retail outlets. The restoration project received the Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence. Prior to that, he was a vice president of Tenneco Inc., in Chicago, and directed the company’s Environmental, Health, Safety, and Technical Research Group. His accolades through the years include receiving the AWMA Centennial Award for Research and the Howard F. Martin Outstanding Teacher Award. “He seemed to fit exactly what we needed and was very enthusiastic,” Shaler says. “He knows the care and handling of antiquities, he knows old structures, he knows landscaping, he knows things like how to take care of old carriages, how to deal with the people we get bids from, fundraising, conservation.
Opposite page, from left, the Columbus Chapel was imported from Spain to the Boalsburg estate in 1909; Cameron is most enthusiastic about the gardens and green spaces he has planned; the Boal Mansion Museum is the historic home to the family that founded Boalsburg Village; the Boal Barn is home to Nittany Theatre at the Barn.
Everything the museum seems to need, he seems to know. So we’re quite thrilled to have him, and we have been very happy ever since we hired him.” She adds that the board is in agreement with Cameron’s plans for the chapel and museum, and that this year’s activities and plans are being “well received” in the community. “I know from that that people are happy with the way we’re moving forward,” she says. “The feedback has been very positive. We have had more visitors this summer so far than we had last summer. This even though we’ve been open only afternoons this year, whereas last year the museum was open mornings and afternoons. With half the hours, we had more visitors.”
She says that the museum plans to return to the morning and afternoon tour schedule when it opens next May. Harris Township manager Amy Farkas also is impressed with Cameron and hopeful for the future of the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum. “Bob Cameron met with our Small Area Panel working on a vision for the Village of Boalsburg and the cultural area around it and the commercial-zoning district,” she says. “I think the property was being a little underutilized in the past, and I think he’s the right guy to make sure it’s utilized to its fullest and it’s a cultural resource again.” The Boal estate is the historic home of the family that founded the Boalsburg Village and also helped found the Farmers’ High School, which would eventually transform into Penn State University. One element that makes the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum so unique is the stone chapel that belonged to the family of Christopher Columbus, who was related to a member of the Boal family. The chapel was imported from Asturias, Spain, to the Boalsburg estate in 1909. It contains a unique collection of historic artifacts, including art and statuary from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Cameron calls it “the most extensive collection of Columbus items anywhere in North America.” One of the most noteworthy items found in Columbus Chapel is an admiral’s desk that apparently belonged to the intrepid Italian explorer, though precise dating of it is problematic. The Columbus Chapel also contains the Columbus family coat of arms granted by Queen Isabella and a historic rendering of the Columbus family tree, among 2015 October T&G - 57
many other historic artifacts. The first item of business regarding the estate structures for the new director during the off-season that begins November 1 is a new roof for the mansion and work on an air-treatment system to control humidity and lessen damage to the museum’s historic artifacts. Fundraising efforts and volunteer call-outs are already underway on those projects. Cameron also plans to expand the Boal Mansion Museum to the second floor by moving the armory items upstairs after this season ends. The weapons room currently includes a large collection of rifles, pistols, and swords dating from the Revolutionary War through World War I. Standouts in the collection include David Boal’s Pennsylvania long rifle from 1802 and Captain John Boal’s saber from the Civil War. Historic clothing from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also are likely to find a home on the newly opened second floor. Cameron also plans to convert the bottom floor of the carriage house into a visitor center that will have space for rotating exhibits. Halloween Owl-Sept. 29
The Columbus Chapel has the Columbus family coat of arms that was granted by Queen Isabella.
The Boal Mansion and outbuildings provide impressive showcases for a great variety of furniture, clothing, art, and artifacts from centuries gone by. Some of the most compelling items include a scale model of the Santa Maria ship, a beautifully restored nineteenth-century stagecoach (built around 1850 and obtained by the Boal family in 1902), an old buggy, farm tools, and other
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historic implements. The décor of the Boal Mansion living room/library and its ballroom is richly ornate and with period pieces and chandeliers. What may have those involved with the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum most excited are the myriad landscaping and horticultural projects Cameron envisions. He is first and foremost a plant scientist, and the excitement he feels for the planned gardens and green spaces at the Boal Estate is palpable. “I love green spaces!” he says with obvious enthusiasm. His plans for the estate grounds include the construction of a variety of gardens on the 48acre estate and a belowground butterfly-rearing facility. Most of the gardens should be laid out by next spring, though he notes that it will take some time for them to reach full maturity. He also is working with local elected officials
to link several Harris Township green spaces to the estate’s to form a kind of green-space trail. “We’ve begun construction on the new gardens, and we’re setting up a committee right now for volunteers for that,” he says. “We’re planning a butterfly garden with a butterflyrearing facility. Also, a culinary garden that will be done in conjunction with our summer kitchen. We have another garden over by the Columbus Chapel and what we call the Spanish Cross Garden and others. We’re also putting together a self-guided walking tour that people can take of the estate grounds.” The estate’s connection to Christopher Columbus has a garden connection. “When Columbus came to America, it resulted in the greatest exchange of agricultural products in world history to that point,” Cameron says. “I’m designing a Mesoamerican garden that will include information placards that lead up to the chapel, so that visitors can learn about not only the expeditions of Columbus but also about this remarkable agricultural exchange.” He says that the garden soils for the three
2015 October T&G - 59
The Boal Mansion Museum features the dining room (left) and library.
primary crops involved in the postColumbus agricultural exchange — maize, squash, and beans — will be ready for planting next growing season. Some area school personnel have been speaking with him about having students involved in the planting of the crops as a learning experience. Another of the gardens, the Spanish Cross Garden, receives its name from the design created by the crushed stone path and the raised diamond-shaped flower beds that together
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approximate the shape of a Spanish cross. “Originally, the pathway was lined with shrubs, but now, a hundred years later, they’re trees,” says Cameron, who adds that it’s a popular spot for outdoor weddings. “We’re looking to restore that to its former grandeur.” He also is planning to use part of the green
space between the mansion and the estate’s barn for a rose garden that will incorporate a restored decorative wrought iron gate. Another garden is being established on the shady wooded slope near the Columbus Chapel. He indicates that various types of ferns, mountain laurel, and other types of rhododendrons are being planted, and that the bog at the bottom of the slope will have natural vegetative growth. But it’s the butterfly gardens that excite him the most. The butterfly gardens will be a longer-termed project that will develop in two parts. The first phase will be simply an aboveground garden with plant life chosen for its appeal to butterflies. The second phase will involve excavating the area where the estate’s former swimming pool was filled in, in order to establish it as a butterfly-rearing facility that can be operated year-round. “We’ll put a glass structure over it once it’s been excavated — in effect, becoming a sunken garden that will become a butterfly-rearing facility that visitors will be able to walk through,” he explains. “I’m very excited about this.”
He hopes to have the second-phase butterflyrearing facility open by sometime in 2017, if a special fundraising campaign is successful. He says he’d also like to produce a map that would allow visitors to take a self-guided tour of the grounds and the buildings Another green-space project he is trying to encourage is the establishment of a Boalsburg/ Harris Township green corridor. “In Boalsburg, we have three main green spaces — Blue Spring Park, Stan Yoder Memorial Preserve, and ours,” he says. “Blue Spring Park is adjacent to our property but divided by an extensive wetlands fed by the artesian spring. One of the things I’ve proposed to Harris Township, and that we’ve had initial discussions about, is for an educational boardwalk linking the museum property to Blue Spring Park. That would be such a great attribute for this area. Another thing is to build a woodland trail that could go somewhat along the boundary of the wetlands and stream to West Main Street, and then just across West Main you have Yoder Preserve. That’s close to 100 acres total that would have
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this linkage of the outdoors, history, etc. So far, we’ve only had preliminary meetings, but there seems to be a tremendous amount of interest.” He also hopes there is interest in several special events happening in the coming months and years that he is planning at the mansion, including an annual dinner and mass in the chapel during Columbus Day weekend, which he hopes to start next year, and formal afternoon British teas in the spring. He adds that the Boal Barn can serve as a venue for special events when it isn’t being used by Nittany Theatre at the Barn, a summer stock theater company that recently completed its first season. “I’m excited at what he has planned, some of which ties in with what the township will be doing,” Farkas says of Cameron. “I think it’s going to be great.” Some of the biggest future challenges Cameron faces concern the organization of the artifacts at the museum and clarifying their specific historicity. Though precise dates are
known for some of the items, only a general historic context is certain for others. “With the thousands of items we have, one of the big chores I have is to go through them, inventory everything, take digital photos of everything, note their condition, and then begin to prioritize for curation,” he says. “There is considerable information available on the various items, largely thanks to the fact that we had eight generations of the Boal family passing information along to one another, but we have to connect it all to the various artifacts. “This is a very unusual museum in that we cover such a wide range of time. With Columbus, we go from the Age of Discovery through the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, and we have artifacts from all those periods. It really is an incredible treasure.” T&G T. Wayne Waters is a State Collegebased writer who has been an independent journalist for more than a decade.
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TheTwo
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By day, state Senator Jake Corman is a leader in Harrisburg, taking on (and defeating) the NCAA and also battling Governor Tom Wolf. By night, he coaches Little League and still has to take out the family trash. It’s the former persona that has many thinking he should run for a higher office. It’s the latter one, the one of father and husband, that has put the brakes on those aspirations — for now By Josh Langenbacher
2015 OctoberT&G - 65
I
n his personal life and within a political setting, the state Republican senator representing Pennsylvania’s 34th District (which covers all of Centre, Juniata, and Mifflin counties and parts of Huntingdon County), has always been a leader, at least according to his father, Doyle Corman. Family vacations in South Carolina lacked fun or variety for Jake Corman’s three older sisters until he — the youngest in the group — made it to the vacation home to take charge and organize activities. And despite his biography noting that Jake Corman was elected to the state Senate in 1998, Doyle remembers his son winning his first election before then — well before then. “Let me tell you what he did in first grade,” says Doyle Corman, himself a state Senator for 21 years. “In first grade, when they were electing someone to be president of his room, unbeknownst to us, he pledged popcorn for everybody if he won. And so he won. The next day, he’s trying to get out of our house with our popcorn maker. We said, ‘What are you doing?’ He finally told us. The teacher told him when he got there, ‘Fine, you can pay off your political debt here. We’ll all have popcorn today, but you must take the popcorn maker home.’ There it was: He was involved in politics when he was in first grade.” Politicking, it seems, was part of Corman’s DNA from an early age, even though he says predicting he would go into politics would have been “crazy.” What he lacked, he says, was a purpose not instilled until later in life. A college dropout who tired of working in his family’s real estate business as a property manager, he has carved out a blossoming political career, becoming the Senate majority leader and one of the most powerful politicians in the commonwealth. He is seen as the man who defeated the NCAA, and for much of this summer he stood toe-to-toe against 66 - T&G October 2015
Governor Tom Wolf on the commonwealth’s budget impasse. And early failures, not successes, played a part in his rise. With his family’s begrudging support, he convinced his parents to allow him to attend Temple University upon graduating from Bellefonte Area High School. His first college stint was short-lived — he phoned his parents and told them he was coming home after three semesters because he was tired of wasting their money. “I was probably the most ill-prepared kid to go to a big-city school,” he says, “but that’s where I wanted to go. As much fun as I had, I didn’t do very well in school, so I came home and worked in the private sector, bouncing around in jobs, and, as friends were growing and moving on in their lives, all of a sudden it dawned on me, ‘Hey, my ceiling’s here,’ and if I wanted to better my life and raise my ceiling of opportunities in life, I didn’t have a trade. I went back to school and learned my lesson of sorts. I was a much better student. My first semester back in school, I got a letter that I
Left, Corman and his wife, Kelli, have been married for 14 years. Above, Jake and Kelli with their kids, from left, Isabella (12), Jacob (9), and Davis (10).
made the Dean’s List, and I thought my whole family was going to pass out.” Corman, who later earned his bachelor’s degree from Penn State, laughs and says there was a point in his life when he could take three of his test scores that wouldn’t add up to any one test score any of his three children bring home now. His mom, Becky, says that’s more truth than self-deprecation. “That’s pretty true,” she says. “He had three sisters ahead of him, and they really put the pressure on him. We went to school to find out what the problem was, and they said ‘Let him alone, quit comparing him to his sisters.’ He did fine from then on.” His career has been a testament to that. Long a respected member of the state Senate, he served as the appropriations chair for four years, earning the admiration of his colleagues for his demeanor in juggling the
responsibilities and deftly working with Governor Ed Rendell, whose hardline approach divided Senate leadership. “That was a very tough time for Jake,” says Senator John R. Gordner, Corman’s right-hand man as the majority whip. It was in that role as appropriations chair that Corman’s star soared statewide, if not nationally, for defeating the NCAA in a lawsuit he filed with Rob McCord, then the state treasurer, over bitterly contested sanctions imposed on Penn State in the fallout of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Corman and McCord’s lawsuit initially sought to keep the $60 million fine imposed on the university within the state, but as the lawsuit expanded to hear testimony on the sanctions’ legality, the NCAA ultimately repealed the consent decree it had Penn State sign. At a time when many questioned whether Penn State’s administration cowered too much, university trustee and former state Senator Robert Jubelirer is among those who consider Corman as the one who had conviction to stand up for Penn State when others wouldn’t. “Yes, I do view him that way,” says Jubelirer, 2015 October T&G - 67
Corman at 6 months old.
who has known Corman since he was 10 years old because of a long, close friendship with Doyle Corman. “He did stand up for the university, and I think at that time we needed someone to be able to do that.” Corman dismissed challenging the NCAA as a bold move — “I think the NCAA’s approval ratings in Centre County are about 2 percent. Maybe,” he says — and notes his motivation to pursue litigation was to keep the state taxpayer money from the $60 million fine in the commonwealth. But as the scope of the lawsuit expanded, so, too, did Corman’s anger at the lack of due process. “When we first started getting into depositions, I remember sitting in the conference room in the Harrisburg office when the lawyers were briefing me,” he says, “and our chins were on the ground. It was like, ‘They did this. Those SOBs did this.
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Everything everyone thought, they did. It was really disappointing. It made me angry. I’m glad we were able to expose it.” He adds, “When it was expanded and we got the depositions, you found out all the conspiracy theorists were right. It was like finding out JFK was a conspiracy. It wasn’t just Harvey Oswald. It was like, ‘Wow, everything I’m reading, the NCAA totally manipulated this.’ That’s what made me really angry. That’s when I really became angry at the whole process.” Corman’s elevated profile and success in taking on the NCAA has led some to wonder about his professional ambition. Steve Miller, head of the Centre County Republicans and a friend of more than 30 years, says “the sky’s the limit for him.” Jubelirer, who served in the state Senate for 32 years and the president pro tempore for 21 of those years, says Corman’s maturation makes a more prolific office such as governor or US senator realistic. “Politics is in his blood, and he’s made a career out of it,” Jubelirer says. “If you’re gonna do that, you’ve gotta be good at it —
and Jake’s gotten better. If you’re not growing, you’re not gonna be very good in a couple years. And I think Jake is still growing.” For most of the duration of an hourlong interview in his Bellefonte office, Corman leaned back casually in his chair, looking relaxed and at ease. But when asked about his future aspirations, for the only time in the interview, he sat up, Corman leaned in his senior-year in, and photo at then Bellefonte Area leaned on High School. his desk. “You never say No to anything,” he says. “That’s not my priority right now. I just became majority leader. I’m a big believer that you’ve gotta do the
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Above, Corman (left) at his swearing-in ceremony in 1999 with his mom, Becky, dad, Doyle, and US Senator Rick Santorum. Right, Corman, at a budget hearing in 2006, became chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee in 2009.
job you’re doing well or you’re not gonna be doing much of anything else. ... I’m a Little League coach. I enjoy being a Little League coach. I don’t know if I could do that if I took
a higher position.” Striking a personal and professional balance has been a priority for Corman, who estimates he puts about 30,000 miles a year on his black Ford Expedition commuting from Harrisburg to his Bellefonte residence. Corman, who also is the Bellefonte Little League’s minor league
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president, works his three kids’ Little League games around sessions and other meetings. “For the kids’ ballgames, it’s almost like he’s Superman,” says Kelli, his wife of 14 years. “He has his suit on in the car, and then he puts on his ball gear, jumps out of his car, and he’s ready and on the field to coach the baseball team. He’s flying home on Route 322 to get home to make the ball game.” Corman’s lifelong love of baseball was borne of his relationship with his grandfather, who, after retiring as a plumber, put down the wrenches and picked up a paintbrush (his family called his stepfather Grandfather Moses, a nod to the renowned American folk artist dubbed Grandma Moses). While painting in a spare bedroom, Corman and his grandfather would listen to Pittsburgh Pirates games on the radio, and Corman remains a devout Pirates fan. In fact, the only personal effect in the lobby of his Bellefonte office is a panoramic shot of PNC Park that hangs behind the front desk. That love of baseball has been passed on to his kids. The Corman family tries to have movie
nights once a week, and, as an avid fan of Field of Dreams — “Jake loves, loves, loves, loves, loves that movie,” Kelli says — appreciation of the sport and the movie runs through his three kids, Isabella (12), Davis (10), and Jacob (9). Love of the Pirates is another matter. Kelli’s Allentown roots left Isabella and Davis as Pirates fans and Jacob a Phillies fan. “My youngest son likes to be the contrarian in the house,” Kelli says. “Needless to say, he does the opposite of what his dad says. He was, at a very young age, the first one in the household to get his room all Phillies, and my husband had a hard time with it — a very hard time with it. He and [Becky Corman] tried to persuade him otherwise, they were so mortified. My husband started saying, ‘I’d rather have my child be a Democrat than be a Phillies fan!’ I don’t know if that will hold true when our kids are old enough to vote.” Baseball, Corman says, taught him principles about life, such as being a good teammate, staying positive, and always looking ahead, not back. That humility has carried over in him throughout his life, Miller says.
Centre Region Parks and Recreation is Your Recreation Destination! An agency of the Centre Region Council of Governments, CRPR provides amazing opportunities for local residents and visitors of all ages. CRPR is proud to host 915 acres of parklands at 54 sites including: •Recreation and fitness programs, summer day camps, youth and adult sports, senior programs, and special events ranging from Historic Harvest Festival to the Annual Halloween Costume Parade to Movie Nights Under the Stars, and so much more! •Parks in the Borough of State College and College, Ferguson, Harris, and Patton Townships •William Welch and Park Forest Community Swimming Pools •Millbrook Marsh Nature Center •Centre Region Senior Center •John Hess Softball Field Complex
2015 CRPR Fall Active Guides are Available
www.crpr.org • 814-231-3071 2015 October T&G - 71
Above, Corman (left) celebrates the completion of the Lewistown Narrows project in 2007. Right, Corman at the groundbreaking ceremony for Medlar Field at Lubrano Park.
“He is a real person,” Miller says. “He may be on the floor of the Senate throughout a long session, but on Thursday nights, he still has to come home and take the trash out. He is a real person, and I think people who know him understand that. People who know Jake Corman know that. People who know him as Senator Corman probably don’t think of him as a real person, but it’s definitely true.” T&G
Josh Langenbacher works on the copy desk at the Altoona Mirror. He has covered Penn State football for the Daily Collegian, the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, and Altoona Mirror.
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PEACE OF MIND Prearrangements take care of all the decisions, so your family won’t have to. Now isn’t that reassuring?
This Month at Schlow: Chess Club Saturdays, all month, 2:00–4:00 p.m. Research Unplugged Thursdays, Oct. 8, 15, 22, 29, 12:30 p.m. Monster Mash Halloween Bash Sunday, Oct. 25, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Additional Listings at
schlowlibrary.org “Volunteering at Schlow Library has allowed me to establish friendships that I never would have had otherwise.” ~Sandy Breon, Schlow Volunteer & Patron U.S. Chess Federation player Sandy Breon has been coming to Schlow since he moved to State College more than 15 years ago. Last year, Sandy started volunteering with Schlow’s Chess Club, which meets weekly on Saturday afternoons. “I feel that it is important for the local community to have its own chess club where both adults and kids can come to learn and compete in a friendly game,” says Sandy, noting that 10 to 20 players show up on any given Saturday. Sandy enjoys sharing his expertise with chess players of all levels, and has made some new friends along the way. “So far, the results have been very positive.”
Celebrating our building’s 10th birthday in 2015.
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Coming to Bryce Jordan Center
October 9 Zedd 7:30 p.m.
15 Paul McCartney 8 p.m. 20 Ag Science Career Day 9 a.m.
25 Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth Live on Stage 7:30 p.m.
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T& G
what's happening
October
8
Schlow Library Celebration
Research Unplugged begins its fall season at Schlow Centre Region Library with “From Cow to Cone: The History and Science of Ice Cream."
18 Pennsylvania Centre Orchestra and new director Yaniv Attar open their 2015-16 season with “A Mozart Celebration” at Good Shepherd Catholic Church.
22 Banjo duo Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn perform at Eisenhower Auditorium.
In partnership with
Town&Gown
Schlow Centre Region Library and Town&Gown celebrate the 10th anniversary of the library building with two nights featuring nationally known sports writers. The panel discussion, “The Sport of Sportswriting,” is October 1 at the Days Inn in State College, and the “Meet the Sportswriters” event is October 2 at Schlow Centre Region Library.
10 Penn State football plays its annual homecoming game against Indiana at Beaver Stadium.
22-25 State College Community Theatre presents Jekyll & Hyde at the State Theatre.
25
15 Legend Paul McCartney performs at the Bryce Jordan Center.
3
The Metropolitan Opera Live in HD season begins with Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the State Theatre.
5-17
Penn State Centre Stage presents its production of the Broadway hit Titanic at the Pavilion Theatre.
Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson brings his one-man show “Undisputed Truth Live on Stage” to the Bryce Jordan Center.
29 The Centre Region holds its annual Trick-Or-Treat night.
16-17 The Penn State men’s ice hockey team plays its home opener with two games against Notre Dame at Pegula Ice Arena.
To have an event listed in “What’s Happening," e-mail dpenc@barashmedia.com.
2015 October T&G - 77
Children & Families
Classes & Lectures
1, 7, 8, 14, 15, 21, 22, 28, 29 – Elementary Explorers, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 3:30 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 1, 5, 8, 12, 15, 19, 22, 26, 29 – Music Together free trial class for children 0-5, Oakwood Presbyterian Church, SC, 9:30 or 10:45 a.m., 466-3414. 2 – Free Developmental Screenings, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 9 a.m., schlowlibrary.org. 2 – Free Playgroup, ages birth-4, Bellefonte Public Library, Bellefonte, 10 a.m., centrecountylibrary.org. 3 – Kindermusik, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 10 & 11 a.m., schlowlibrary.org. 3 – Block Party, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 2 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 4 – Free Family Movement Workshop, Penn State Arboretum, PSU, 2 p.m., cpa.psu.edu. 3, 6, 7, 10, 13, 14, 17, 20, 21, 24, 27, 28, 31 – Music TogethHer free trial class for children 0-5, Houserville United Methodist Church, SC, 9:30 or 10:30 a.m. Sun., 9:30 or 10:45 a.m. Tues. & Wed., 466-3414. 4 – A is for Autumn, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 2 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 5 – Happiest Baby on The Block Class: Infant Calming and Soothing Class, Indigo Wren’s Nest Wellness Center, Bellefonte, 7 p.m., ceaofstatecollege.org. 10, 17, 24, 31 – Saturday Stories Alive, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 11 a.m., schlowlibrary.org. 11 – Penn State Proud!, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 2 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 14 – Dark in the Park, Sunset Park, SC, 7 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 14, 21 – Toddler Learning Centre, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 9:15 a.m., schlowlibrary.org. 16 – Free Playgroup, ages birth-4, Schlow Memorial Library, SC, 10 a.m., schlowlibrary.org. 17 – Jana Marie Foundation’s Wellness Forum for Middle School-aged Girls, Park Forest Middle School, SC, 8:45 a.m., janamariefoundation. 17 – Sibling Preparation Class: Prepare Big Brother or Sister for the New Arrival in Your Family, Indigo Wren’s Nest Wellness Centre, Bellfonte, ceaofstatecollege.org. 22 – Baby Care Class: Comprehensive Infant Care Class, Mount Nittany Medical Center, SC, 6:30 p.m., ceaofstatecollege.org. 28 – Baby & Me Storytime, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 9:30 a.m., schlowlibrary.org.
2 – Penn State Forum Speaker Series: “When She Makes More: The Truth about Navigating Love and Live for a New Generation of Women” by Farnoosh Torabi, Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, PSU, 11:30 a.m. 2 – Paper Views Conversation: “Ilyich’s Lamp: Early Soviet Photography” by Craig Zabel, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 1 p.m. palmermuseum.psu.edu. 3 – Huddle with the Faculty: “Facing Ferguson: Race, Violence, and Justice” by Paul Taylor, Nittany Lion Inn, PSU, 8:30 a.m., alumni.psu.edu/events. 5 – “A Song, A Slogan, and A Service: Dispatches from the Movement for Black Lives” by James Braxton Peterson, State Theatre, SC, 7 p.m., iah.psu.edu. 6 – Central PA Civil War Round Table Series: “For Light and Liberty: African Descent Spies in the War of Rebellion” by Hari Jones, PA Military Museum, Boalsburg, 7 p.m., pamilmuseum.org. 6, 20 – “A Joint Venture,” information session on hip or knee replacement, Mount Nittany Medical Center, SC, 11 a.m. Oct. 6, 7 p.m. Oct. 20, 278-4810. 7 – “I Love My Boobies” by Dr. Toby Jenkins, HUB-Robeson Center, PSU, 6:30 p.m. 7 – Friends’ Richard Koontz Memorial Lecture Series: “President Eisenhower: His Foreign Policy in General and Korea in Particular” by Dr. Greg Ferro, PA Military Museum, Boalsburg, 7:30 p.m., pamilmuseum.org. 8 – Research Unplugged: “From Cow to Cone: The History and Science of Ice Cream” by Tom Palchak, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 12:30 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 8 – Lecture: “Archipenko’s Constructed Modernity” by Maria Elena Versari, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 4:30 p.m. palmermuseum.psu.edu. 9 – Gallery Talk: “Archipenko: A Modern Legacy” by Maria Elena Versari, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 12:10 p.m. palmermuseum.psu.edu. 10 – Huddle with the Faculty: “What is Graphic Medicine? How Comics are Impacting Patients and Physicians” by Susan Merill Suier, Nittany Lion Inn, PSU, 8:30 a.m., alumni.psu.edu/events. 13 – Penn State Forum Speaker Series: “Nutrition Is Farm More Than Meets the Eye” by T. Colin Campbell, Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, PSU, 11:30 a.m.
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14 – Parenting Discussions: “Stressed to Chill,” Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, noon, schlowlibrary.org. 15 – Research Unplugged: “Madam President: Women in American Electoral Politics” by Nichola Gutgold, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 12:30 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 17 – Gadgets for Grownups: Google Drive, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 10:30 a.m., schlowlibrary.org. 20 – Straight Talk: “Drugs and Alcohol: What’s Out There and What You Can Do About It,” Mount Nittany Middle School, SC, 7 p.m., janamariefoundation. 20, 27 – “Tuning Into Kids: Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, noon, schlowlibrary.org. 21 – Parenting Discussions: “Sex-Wise Parenting,” Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, noon, schlowlibrary.org. 22 – Research Unplugged: “3D Evolution: How Three-Dimensional Printing is Becoming Mainstream” by Justin Keenan and Kevin Paroda, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 12:30 p.m., schlowlibrary.org.
23 – Gallery Talk: “You Have to See This: Abstract Art from the Permanent Collection” by Sarah Rich, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 12:10 p.m. palmermuseum.psu.edu. 24 – Gadgets for Grownups: eBook Basics, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 10:30 a.m., schlowlibrary.org. 29 – Research Unplugged: “Earth and the Flying Sauces: Explaining the World’s Obsession with UFOs and Aliens” by Greg Eghigian, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 12:30 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 30 – Gallery Talk: “Here and Queer: LGBT Artists in the Collection of the Palmer Museum of Art in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Penn State’s Commission on LGBT Equity” by Dana Carlisle Kletchka, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 12:10 p.m. palmermuseum.psu.edu. 31 – Huddle with the Faculty: “The Five Myths of Online Learning” by Craig Weidemann, Nittany Lion Inn, PSU, 8:30 a.m., alumni.psu.edu/events.
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Club Events
Exhibits
1, 8, 15, 22, 29 – State College Downtown Rotary, Ramada Inn & Conference Center, SC, noon, centrecounty.org/rotary/club/. 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 – Chess Club, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 2 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 7, 14, 21, 28 – State College Sunrise Rotary Club, Hotel State College, SC, 7:15 a.m., kfragola@psualum.com. 7, 21 – Outreach Toastmasters, The 329 Building, Room 413, PSU, noon, kbs131@psu.edu. 8, 13, 20, 27 – State College Rotary Club, Nittany Lion Inn, SC, 5:30 p.m., statecollegerotary.org. 13 – Nittany Valley Writers Network, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 6 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 14 – Women’s Welcome Club of State College, Oakwood Presbyterian Church (not church affiliated), SC, 7 p.m., womenswelcomeclub.org. 14 – 148th PA Volunteer Infantry Civil War Reenactment Group, Hoss’s Steak and Sea House, SC, 7:30 p.m., 861-0770. 17 – Lego Club, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 2 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 19 – Parrot Owner’s Group, 525 Benner Pike, SC, 7 p.m., 237-2722. 20 – Women’s Welcome Club of State College Coffee/Tea, Oakwood Presbyterian Church (not church affiliated), SC, 9:30 a.m., womenswelcomeclub.org. 20 – Evening Book Club, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 6:30 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 28 – Applique Club, Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 6 p.m., schlowlibrary.org.
Ongoing-November 15 – Everyday Iron: Iron Objects of the 18th and 19th Centuries, Centre Furnace Mansion, SC, 1-4 p.m. Sun., Wed., Fri., centrehistory.org. Ongoing-November 19 – Birth of the Painted World – Jivya Mashe and the Warli Tradition of India, Robeson Gallery, HUB-Robeson Center, PSU, 865-0775. Ongoing-December 6 – Erasing Borders/ Borrando Fronteras, Cuban and CubanAmerican Artists, HUB Gallery, HUBRobeson Center, PSU, 865-0775. Ongoing-December 6 – Jewelry Designs by Janise Crow, Display Cases, HUBRobeson Center, PSU, 865-0775. Ongoing-December 6 – You Have to See This: Abstract Art from the Permanent Collection, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tues.-Sat., noon-4 p.m. Sun., palmermuseum.psu.edu. Ongoing-December 13 – Archipenko: A Modern Legacy, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tues.-Sat., noon-4 p.m. Sun., palmermuseum.psu.edu. Ongoing-December 13 – Images by Maggie Wolszczan, Art Alley, HUB-Robeson Center, PSU, 865-0775. Ongoing-December 13 – Mining the Store II: American Drawings and Watercolors from the Permanent Collection, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tues.Sat., noon-4 p.m. Sun., palmermuseum.psu.edu. Ongoing-January 28 – Stomper Project, Sculpture Corner, HUB-Robeson Center, PSU, 865-0775. 2 – Paper Views Exhibition: Ilyich’s Lamp: Early Soviet Photography, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. palmermuseum.psu.edu. 2-29 – Fiber Arts Festival, Bellefonte Art Museum for Centre County, Bellefonte, 1-4:30 p.m. Fri.-Sun., bellefontemuseum.org.
Community Associations & Development 8 – CBICC Business After Hours: State Theatre, 5:30 p.m., cbicc.org. 20 – Spring Creek Watershed Association Meeting, Patton Township Municipal Building, 7:30 a.m., springcreekwatershed.org. 22 – CBICC Business After Hours: ARM Group, 5:30 p.m., cbicc.org. 28 – Patton Township Business Association, Patton Township Municipal Building, noon, 237-2822. 80 - T&G October 2015
Health Care For schedule of blood drives visit redcross.org or givelife.org. 1 – The Children and Families with Type 1 Diabetes Support Group, Mount Nittany Medical Center, SC, 6:30 p.m., 777-4664. 2, 13 – Juniper Village at Brookline’s Alzheimer’s/Dementia Support Group, Mount Nittany Dining Room at The Inn, SC, 1 p.m. Fri., 6:30 p.m. Tues., 231-3141.
5 – Breast Cancer Support Group, Mount Nittany Medical Center, SC, 5:30 p.m., 231-6870. 6 – The Ostomy Support Group of the Central Counties, Mount Nittany Medical Center, SC, 2 p.m., 234-6195. 8 – Diabetes Support Group, Mount Nittany Medical Center, SC, 6 p.m., 231-7095. 13 – Brain Injury Support, HealthSouth Nittany Valley Rehab Hospital, Pleasant Gap, 7 p.m., 359-3421. 14 – Senior Center Diabetes Support Group, Centre Region Senior Center, SC, 10:15 a.m., 231-3076. 14 – The Fertility Issues and Loss Support Group, Choices (2214 N. Atherton St.), SC, 6:30 p.m., heartofcpa.org. 15 – Better Breathers Support Group, HealthSouth Nittany Valley Rehab Hospital, Pleasant Gap, 2 p.m., 359-3421. 15 – Parents-to-be Orientation, Mount Nittany Medical Center, SC, 6:30 p.m., 231-3132. 25 – Neuropathy Support Group of Central PA, Mount Nittany Medical Center, SC, 2 p.m., 531-1024. 26 – Heart Healthy Support Group for Heart Failure, HealthSouth Nittany Valley Rehab Hospital, Pleasant Gap, 4 p.m., 359-3421.
27 – Stroke Support Group, HealthSouth Nittany Valley Rehab Hospital, Pleasant Gap, 4 p.m., 359-3421. 27 – Multiple Sclerosis Support Group, HealthSouth Nittany Valley Rehab Hospital, Pleasant Gap, 6 p.m., 359-3421.
Music 1 – Penn State School of Music: Bach’s Lunch: British Song Recital, Eisenhower Chapel, PSU, 12:10 p.m., music.psu.edu. 1 – The Knights: Music from the Great War Era, Esber Recital Hall, PSU, 7:30 p.m., cpa.psu.edu. 1 – Lake Street Dive, State Theatre, SC, 8 p.m., thestatethetare.org. 2 – Penn State School of Music: OcTUBAfest I, Esber Recital Hall, PSU, 8 p.m., music.psu.edu. 4 – Arthur Goldstein Jazz Quartet, Centre County Library Historical Museum, Bellefonte, 2 p.m., bellefontearts.org. 4 – Penn State School of Music: Symphonic Band and Symbolic Wind Ensemble, Eisenhower Auditorium, PSU, 4 p.m., music.psu.edu. 4 – Dopapod, State Theatre, SC, 8 p.m., thestatetheatre.org.
BuyHereLiveHere.com 2015 October T&G - 81
6 – Lucinda Williams, State Theatre, SC, 8 p.m., thestatetheatre.org. 6 – Penn State School of Music: Chamber Orchestra, Esber Recital Hall, PSU, 8 p.m., music.psu.edu. 7 – Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Eisenhower Auditorium, PSU, 7:30 p.m., cpa.psu.edu. 8 – Penn State School of Music: Bach’s Lunch: Voice Students of Norman Spivey and Ted Christopher, Eisenhower Chapel, PSU, 12:10 p.m., music.psu.edu. 8 – Penn State School of Music: OcTUBAfest II, Esber Recital Hall, PSU, 8 p.m., music.psu.edu. 9 – Zedd with Special Guests Dillon Francis and Alex Metric, BJC, PSU, 7:30 p.m., bjc.psu .edu. 11 – Penn State School of Music: Essence of Joy, Esber Recital Hall, PSU, 2 p.m., music.psu.edu. 11 – Concert with double bassist Rob Nairn and violist Heidi von Bernewitz, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Centre County, 3 p.m., uufcc.com. 11 – Leo Kottke, State Theatre, SC, 7 p.m., thestatetheatre.org. 11 – Penn State School of Music: Dimensions in Jazz, Esber Recital Hall, PSU, 8 p.m., music.psu.edu.
Celebrating 50 Years
of Town&Gown
at the Betsey Rodgers Allen Gallery at Schlow Centre Region Library. For the month of October, classic covers, stories, and images from Town&Gown’s first 50 years will be exhibited at the gallery at Schlow Library.
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Lucinda Williams performs at the State Theatre October 6.
13 – The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, Eisenhower Auditorium, PSU, 7:30 p.m., cpa.psu.edu. 13 – Penn State School of Music: Percussion Ensemble I and Mallet Ensemble, Esber Recital Hall, PSU, 8 p.m., music.psu.edu. 15 – Penn State School of Music: Bach’s Lunch: Voice Students of Jennifer Trost and Ted Christopher, Eisenhower Chapel, PSU, 12:10 p.m., music.psu.edu.
15 – Emerson String Quartet, Schwab Auditorium, PSU, 7:30 p.m., cpa.psu.edu. 15 – Paul McCartney, BJC, PSU, 8 p.m., bjc.psu.edu. 16 – Penn State School of Music: Philharmonic Orchestra, Eisenhower Auditorium, PSU, 8 p.m., music.psu.edu. 17 – Penn State School of Music: Invitational Orchestra Festival, Esber Recital Hall, PSU, 6:30 p.m., music.psu.edu. 18 – Pennsylvania Centre Orchestra presents “A Mozart Celebration,” Good Shepherd Catholic Church, SC, 3 p.m., centreorchestra.org. 18 – Penn State School of Music: OcTUBAfest III, Esber Recital Hall, PSU, 8 p.m., music.psu.edu. 21 – The Art of Music: Fuse Productions, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 12:10 p.m., palmermuseum.psu.edu. 21 – OcTUBAfest III, Esber Recital Hall, PSU, 8 p.m., music.psu.edu. 22 – Penn State School of Music: Bach’s Lunch: Students in the MFA Musical Theatre Voice Pedagogy Program, Eisenhower Chapel, PSU, 12:10 p.m., music.psu.edu. 22 – Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, Eisenhower Auditorium, PSU, 7:30 p.m., cpa.psu.edu.
Mavis Staples and Joan Osborne (opposite page) come together for “Solid Soul" October 27 at Eisenhower Auditorium.
24 – Acoustic Brew presents Kate Callahan, Center for Well-Being, Lemont, 7:30 p.m., acousticbrew.org. 25 – Concert with cellist Kim Cook and pianist Svetlana Rodionova, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Centre County, 3 p.m., uufcc.com. 27 – “Solid Soul” featuring Mavis Staples and Joan Osborne, Eisenhower Auditorium, PSU, 7:30 p.m., cpa.psu.edu. 29 – Penn State School of Music: Bach’s Lunch: German Songs, Eisenhower Chapel, PSU, 12:10 p.m., music.psu.edu. 29 – Jazz at the Palmer: School of Music Student Jazz Group, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 7:30 p.m., palmermuseum.psu.edu. 30 – Bandorama: Symphonic Band and Marching Blue Band, Eisenhower Auditorium, PSU, 7 p.m., music.psu.edu.
Special Events 1 – Day of Caring, ccunitedway.org. 1 – Battle of the Minds, Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, PSU, 5:30 p.m., cvim.org. 1 – Schlow Centre Region Library & Town&Gown present “The Sport of Sportswriting,” Days Inn, SC, 7 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 2 – First Friday, Downtown State College, 5 p.m., firstfridaystatecollege.com. 2 – Schlow Centre Region Library & Town&Gown present “Meet the Sportswriters,” Schlow Centre Region Library, SC, 7 p.m., schlowlibrary.org. 84 - T&G October 2015
2, 9, 16, 23, 30 – Downtown Farmers’ Market, Locust Lane, SC, 11:30 a.m., statecollegefarmers.com. 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 – Millheim Farmers’ Market, Old Gregg Mills Farmers’ Market, Spring Mills, 10 a.m., centralpafarmers.com.
3, 10, 17, 24, 31 – North Atherton Farmers’ Market, Home Depot Parking Lot, SC, 10 a.m., nathertonmarket.com. 4 – Central PA Crossword Competition, South Hills School of Business and Technology, SC, 238-1809. 7 – 2015 Entrepreneurial Women’s Expo, Celebration Hall, SC, 8 a.m., ewesc.com. 7, 14, 21 – Lemont Farmers’ Market, Lemont Green, Lemont, 3 p.m., lemontvillage.org. 8, 13, 20, 27 – Tuesday Farmers’ Market, Locust Lane, SC, 11:30 a.m., statecollegefarmers.com. 8, 13, 20, 27 – Boalsburg Farmers’ Market, PA Military Museum, Boalsburg, 2 p.m., boalsburgfarmersmarket.com. 17 – Book Sale to support Outreach Programs in the Community, Faith United Church of Christ, SC, 9 a.m., faithucc.org. 17 – Children’s Safety Fair, Target Parking lot, SC, 10 a.m., 237-2822. 17 – Fall Festival, Downtown State College, SC, 10 a.m. 17 – Krislund Fall Festival, Krislund Camp, located off Route 445 between Madisonburg and Lamar, 10 a.m., krislund.org. 17 – Palmer Museum of Art Community Day, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 11 a.m., palmermuseum.psu.edu.
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18 – Pink Zone at Penn State presents Ladies Night Out, Gillbrook Farms, Warriors Mark, 3:30 p.m., pennsylvaniapinkzone.org. 18 – An Educational Wine Tasting to Benefit Center for Alternatives in Community Justice, Centre Hall Grange, Centre Hall, 4 p.m., 234-1059. 24-25 – Then & Now: Living History Encampment/Bivouac, PA Military Museum, Boalsburg, 10 a.m., pamilmuseum.org. 25 – John H. Ziegler Historic Preservation Awards of Centre County Historical Society, Penn State/Centre County Visitor Center, SC, 3 p.m., centrehistory.org. 25 – Halloween Costume Parade, North Burrowes Street and West College Avenue, SC, 6:30 p.m., crpr.org. 29 – Trick-Or-Treat Night In Centre Region, 6-8 p.m., crpr.org.
Sports For tickets to Penn State sporting events, call (814) 865-5555 or visit gopsusports.com. 1-2 – PSU/Minnesota, women’s ice hockey, Pegula Ice Arena, PSU, 7 p.m. 2 – PSU/Quinnipiac, field hockey, Penn State Field Hockey Complex, PSU, 6 p.m.
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2 – PSU/Nebraska, women’s volleyball, Rec Hall, PSU, 7 p.m. 3 – PSU/Iowa, women’s volleyball, Rec Hall, PSU, 7 p.m. 3 – PSU/Army, football, Beaver Stadium, PSU, noon. 4 – PSU/Windsor, men’s ice hockey, Pegula Ice Arena, PSU, noon. 8 – PSU/Maryland, women’s soccer, Jeffrey Field, PSU, 7 p.m. 9 – PSU/Maryland, field hockey, Penn State Field Hockey Complex, PSU, 4 p.m. 9 – PSU/Maryland, men’s soccer, Jeffrey Field, PSU, 7 p.m. 10 – PSU/Indiana, football, Beaver Stadium, PSU, noon. 11 – PSU/Indiana, women’s soccer, Jeffrey Field, PSU, 1 p.m. 16 – PSU/Indiana, women’s volleyball, Rec Hall, PSU, 7 p.m. 16-17 – PSU/Notre Dame, men’s ice hockey, Pegula Ice Arena, PSU, 7p.m. Fri., 3 p.m. Sat. 17 – Penn State Open, cross country, Blue & White Courses, PSU, 10 a.m. 17 – PSU/Purdue, women’s volleyball, Rec Hall, PSU, 7 p.m. 17-18 – Nittany Lion Cup, fencing, White Building, PSU, 10 a.m.
17-18 – PSU/Union NY, women’s ice hockey, Pegula Ice Arena, PSU, 7 p.m. Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. 21 – PSU/Loyola Marymount, men’s soccer, Jeffrey Field, PSU, 7 p.m. 23 – PSU/Iowa, field hockey, Penn State Field Hockey Complex, PSU, 3:30 p.m. 23-24 – PSU/AIC, men’s ice hockey, Pegula Ice Arena, PSU, 7 p.m. Fri., 3 p.m. Sat. 24-25 – PSU/UConn, women’s ice hockey, Pegula Ice Arena, PSU, 7 p.m. Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. 25 – Tussey Mountainback 50, Tussey Mountain, Boalsburg, 8 a.m., tusseymountainback.com. 28 – PSU/Michigan, women’s soccer, Jeffrey Field, PSU, 7 p.m. 29-30 – PSU/St. Lawrence, men’s ice hockey, Pegula Ice Arena, PSU, 7 p.m. 30 – PSU/Ohio State, women’s volleyball, Rec Hall, PSU, 7 p.m. 31 – PSU/Illinois, football, Beaver Stadium, PSU, TBA.
Theater 3 – Metropolitan Opera Live in HD presents Verdi’s Il Trovatore, State Theatre, SC, 12:55 p.m., thestatetheatre.org.
5-17 – Penn State Centre Stage presents Titanic, Pavilion Theatre, PSU, 7:30 p.m. (2 p.m. matinee Oct. 17), theatre.psu.edu. 7 – The Art of Poetry: Steven Sherrill, Palmer Museum of Art, PSU, 12:10 p.m., palmermuseumpsu.edu. 9 – We Trust Your Judgment (film), State Theatre, SC, 8 p.m., thestatetheatre.com. 13 – Plant Pure Nation (film), State Theatre, SC, 7 p.m., thestatetheatre.org. 17 – Metropolitan Opera Live in HD presents Verdi’s Otello, State Theatre, SC, 12:55 p.m., thestatetheatre.org. 18 – Clifford the Big Red Dog Live, Eisenhower Auditorium, PSU, 2 p.m., cpa.psu.edu. 22-25 – State College Community Theatre presents Jekyll & Hyde, State Theatre, SC, 8 p.m. Thurs.-Sat., 3 p.m. Sun., scctonline.org. 24, 26, 28, 30 – Penn State Opera Theatre presents Constant’s Impressions of Pelleas, Penn State Downtown Theatre, SC, 7:30 p.m., music.psu.edu. 25 – Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth Live on Stage, BJC, PSU, 7:30 p.m., bjc.psu.edu. 31 – Metropolitan Opera Live in HD presents Wagner’s Tannhauser, State Theatre, SC, noon, thestatetheatre.org. T&G
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T& G
on tap
Hey, Porter! Succumb to beer’s darker side By Sam Komlenic
Let’s talk about the dark side — the dark side of beer, that is, and what role the Keystone State had in preserving one of the world’s historic beer styles. Porter, a dark ale that is a derivative of London brown ales and stouts, is an English invention going back to the 1700s. According to BeerAdvocate.com, it was “a blend of three different styles: an old ale (stale or soured), a new ale (brown or pale ale), and a weak one (mild ale), with various combinations of blending and staleness. The end result was also commonly known as ‘Entire Butt’ or ‘Three Threads’ and had a pleasing taste of neither new nor old. It was the first truly engineered beer, catering to the public’s taste, playing a critical role in quenching the thirst of the UK’s Industrial Revolution, and lending an arm in building the mega-breweries of today.” Quite a statement! The style was supposedly favored by British transportation workers, hence the brew is reputed to have been named for the porters that were a large part of the railroads’ success and who loved the dark-brown brew. That blend of various component beers would be aged together and, due to the increasing demand, would eventually result in the need for in massive wooden vats in many English breweries, some eclipsing a half-million gallons! Porters of this era were strong beers, generally as much as 7 percent alcohol by volume. 90 - T&G October 2015
Philadelphia became the center of American porter production with the establishment of a brewery by the son of a British porter brewer. Pennsylvania brewery historian Rich Wagner claims (on his pabreweryhistorians.tripod.com Web site) that “Robert Hare and J. Warren are said to be the first two brewers to introduce porter brewing to the United States. On July 20, 1788, George Washington wrote to Clement Biddle, importer and merchant, ‘I beg you will send me a gross of Mr. Hare’s best bottled porter if the price is not much enhanced by the copious draughts you took of it at the late procession.’ A year later Hare was a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention, and in 1795 he was made Speaker of the Senate. “In 1789 George Washington presented his ‘Buy American’ policy by stating he would drink only porter made in America. The porter Washington was drinking was that made by Robert Hare and shipped to Mount Vernon.” Early in the history of the US, then, Pennsylvania was associated with the highest-grade porter available outside of Britain during its heyday. It would not be the last time that our state played a critical role in sustaining the style. Another area besides Pennsylvania that had a strong interest in porter was in the North Atlantic, in the Baltic countries of Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, and Russia, which had been sent an even stronger variant of the British version by those early porter brewers. As with India Pale Ale, Baltic porter had more alcohol, and perhaps more hops, to better survive the journey across the North Sea. These countries embraced the style and eventually began brewing their own versions.
As with so many beer styles across history, however, porter would eventually be eclipsed by a string of emerging new sweethearts of the beer-drinking community. As pale ale (another British contribution) and lager beer (German this time) became more popular in the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, the popularity of porter waned, a situation that continued to varying degrees all the way through to the 1980s, prior to the establishment of American craft brewing. And though that renaissance started a slow revival of the style (which still isn’t on the radar of a lot of craft brewers years later), there were two places on Earth that would not allow porter to die in the interim. Want to take a guess where? You’re absolutely right. Pennsylvania, alone in the US, and some of those far-flung Baltic countries continued their devotion to the style and kept the porter flame burning for some 50 years after Prohibition, even as porter’s mother country, the UK, saw not even one old-line porter brand survive. The Pennsylvania stalwarts were the wellestablished concerns of D.G. Yuengling & Son of Pottsville and the Charles Stegmaier brewery in Wilkes-Barre, which closed in 1974 and whose brands are still brewed by a former neighborhood competitor, the Lion Brewery. 92 - T&G October 2015
The advent of change was inevitable across the years, though. As both of these breweries were built primarily for brewing and aging lager, with aging cellars built to cool an entire floor of tanks with no ability to change temperature to accommodate the warmer fermenting and aging of ales, the style saw its most distinct modern deviation — fermenting with lager yeast instead of ale yeast, changing the product somewhat in flavor but retaining its dark color (from more deeply roasted malts) while still providing a quaffable beer that was very different from a pale lager. What’s really astonishing is that far across the Atlantic the same thing had been happening in those Baltic countries in roughly the same time period. Their brewing traditions, in line with their chilly climate, tended toward colder aging, and they, too, applied lager yeast to the porter style, resulting in a different version of what we find in Pennsylvania. Solid examples include Baltika and Sinebrychoff, and I suggest you seek them out for comparison. These days, many craft brewers embrace both the traditional English and more modern Pennsylvania/Baltic styles, and, as with most marginal beer styles that couldn’t be found 30 years ago, they proliferate today in various areas and at varying times of the year, as some consider porter a seasonal style more suited to colder weather. As I do in almost every “On Tap” column, I encourage you to seek out and experience this “blast from the brewing past,” as there are a number of porters available in Central Pennsylvania. Yuengling porter is available year-round, while the Stegmaier version is brewed as a cold-weather seasonal. Some of the Baltic porters are available here, as well, along with the occasional ultrafresh porter on tap at our local brewpubs. Beer is history, and Pennsylvania accounts for more brewing history than any other state in the Union. Take a ride with a friend, visit some of our wonderful craft brewers, and experience that history like few can or will. T&G Sam Komlenic, whose dad worked for a Pennsylvania brewery for 35 years, grew up immersed in the brewing business. He has toured scores of breweries, large and small, from coast to coast.
Taste of the Month
Dream Come True New Zola owners excited about opportunity to bring local food, extensive 94 - T&Gcollection October 2015 to Centre Region wine
By Vilma Shu Danz Photos by Darren Andrew Weimert
T
he new Zola Kitchen & Wine Bar, located at 324 West College Avenue in State College, opened its doors in April, serving diners an ingredient-driven menu highlighting the bounty of locally sourced foods and seasonal flavors. New owners Bob and Andrew Hufnagel made extensive renovations to Zola that included the addition of a climate-controlled wine room to store their collection of more than 600 bottles of wine. New front windows, lighting, patio furniture, carpeting, and color scheme complete the transformation. The painting on the walls of the restaurant now rotates four times a year, showcasing art by local artists. “It has always been a dream of mine to own a restaurant in this community, so my father, Bob, and I jumped on the opportunity when we found out that Zola was for sale and the former owners were eager to change careers,” says Andrew. A State College native, Andrew attended the International Culinary School at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in culinary management. His father, came to attend Penn State in 1971 and is the CEO of State of the Art, Inc., and with his 35 years of management experience, he will operate behind the scenes to provide Zola with financial, legal, and operational support. With seating for 85 guests, Zola is open for lunch and dinner. As chef, Andrew Hufnagel uses modern culinary techniques to create new American cuisine. “Growing up, we grew our own vegetables, had our own cherry trees, so I am passionate about farm-to-table food,” he says. “At Zola, I
Foie Gras:
Hudson Valley foie, huckleberry, pumpkin brioche, and hazelnut.
Venison Loin
Pistachio crust, chanterelles, mushroom demi, and sweet-potato puree.
get as much local ingredients as I can. I go to farmers’ markets and I buy a lot mushrooms like chanterelles from local foragers.” The most popular lunch items are the salmon BLT and the jumbo lump blue crab cakes. Specialty dishes on the dinner menu include the pistachio-crusted venison loin with wild chanterelle mushrooms and sweet-potato puree, the Wagyu New York strip steak with a Japanese steak sauce and wasabi potato puree, and the rabbit pot pie. The fall menu will feature butternut squash risotto, pumpkin ravioli, kale and quinoa salad, and beet salad. Desserts to try this fall include a cranberry sorbet, flour-less chocolate cake, and mocha crème brulée. In the new wine room, a Cruvinet wine 2015 October T&G - 95
Andrew Hufnagel Executive chef and owner
Beef Tartare
Filet mignon, quail egg, and sourdough crostini. dispensing system was installed that keeps wines as fresh as the moment they are uncorked for up to six weeks. This allows Zola to expand their wine-by-theglass selection. Zola also hired Dave Burkhard, a sommelier who is a trained and knowledgeable wine professional, to help make suggestions for wine pairings and answer any questions that diners might have about wine. T&G For more information about Zola Kitchen & Wine Bar or to view the menu, visit zolakitchen.com.
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For a special of fer for a free mimosa with brunch and a recipe for fall fruit chutney, visit townandgown.com.
Locally owned and operated.
A State College Tradition since 1926. • Full-service alterations department • Custom Clothing & Dress Shirts • Tuxedo Rentals and Sales • Gift Cards for any occasion • Free local delivery
Bills Khakis, Tommy Bahama, Hart, Schaffner & Marx, Jack Victor, Toscano, Allen Edmonds, Peter Millar, Vineyard Vines, and many more.
Mon-Fri: 10am-8pm Saturday: 10am-6pm Sunday: 12pm-5pm
114 West College Avenue, State College, PA 16801 814-238-4767
www.jackharpers.com
NG 10 YEA I T A R RS! LEB E C
Thank you
to all our ticket buyers & sponsors
for your support in the
Te n t h A n n u a l Reverse Car Drawing benefiting The Bestwick Foundation & PSU Coaches vs. Cancer.
www.bestwickfoundation.com
www.cvcpennstate.org
Please visit these organization’s websites for more information on how you can donate, volunteer and give back to those in need within our community.
T& G
dining out
All restaurants are in State College or on the Penn State campus, and in the 814 area code unless noted.
Full Course Dining Allen Street Grill, 100 W. College Ave., 231-4745, hotelstatecollege.com. Directly above the Corner Room at the intersection of College Avenue and Allen Street, the “Grill” promotes a casual gourmet dining experience, superb contemporary cuisine, specialty cocktails, entertainment, and one of the best Town and Gown views in State College. Priced reasonably and offering upscale cuisine is always a challenge but Bert and Becky Burger, the husband and wife French-trained executive chef and general manager, seem to pull it off with ease. From the moment you walk in the door and approach your seat overlooking the bustling sidewalk you become an integral part of this historic corner. Perfect for a business lunch or romantic dinner. Free downtown parking validation in Fraser, Pugh & Beaver Garages based on purchases. Bring garage parking stub and ask server for details. AE, D, MAC, MC, V. bar bleu, 114 S. Garner St., 237-0374, bar-bleu.com. Socializing and sports viewing awaits at bar bleu. Don’t miss a minute of the action on 22 true 1080i HDMI high-definition flat-screen monitors displaying the night’s college and pro matchups. The bar serves up 16 draft beers in addition to crafted cocktails, including the “Fishbowl,” concocted in its own 43-ounce tank! Pub fare featuring authentic Kansas City-style barbecue is smoked daily onsite. AE, D, DC, ID+, MC, V. Full bar. Barrel 21 Distillery & Dining, 2255 N. Atherton St., 308-9522, barrel21distillery.com. A new dining experience brought to you by Otto’s Pub & Brewery, Barrel 21 presents a tapas menu featuring fusion cuisine highlighting our local resources. Menu inspirations will celebrate new culture and cuisine brought to Central PA from around the world. Distillery and tasting room will open in the fall after we have produced our own craft spirits. AE, D, MC, V. Full bar. Bill Pickle’s Tap Room, 106 S. Allen St., 272-1172, hotelstatecollege.com. Not for Saints…Not For Sinners. Located in the heart of downtown State College, Bill Pickle’s is a
great place for lunch, dinner, or a late-night snack. Features include plenty of TVs and occasional live entertainment, along with a wide selection of craft beers and signature drinks! Free downtown parking validation in Fraser, Pugh & Beaver Garages based on purchases. Bring garage parking stub and ask server for details. AE, D, MAC, MC, V. Carnegie House, corner of Cricklewood Dr. and Toftrees Ave., 234-2424. An exquisite boutique hotel offering fine dining in a relaxed yet gracious atmo- sphere. Serving lunch and dinner. Prix Fixe menu and à la carte menu selections now available. AAA Four Diamond Award recipient for lodging and fine dining. Reservations suggested. AE, MC, D, V. Full bar. The Corner Room, 100 W. College Ave., 237-3051, hotelstatecollege.com. A Penn State Tradition, the Corner Room started out as Jack’s Road House in 1885, renamed The Corner Room in 1926. Serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner through a mix of American classics and contemporary cuisine, all at affordable prices. Daily Specials. Free downtown parking validation in Fraser, Pugh & Beaver Garages based on purchases. Bring garage parking stub and ask server for details. AE, D, MAC, MC, V. Cozy Thai Bistro, 232 S. Allen St., 237-0139. A true authentic Thai restaurant offering casual and yet “cozy” family-friendly dining experience. Menu features wide selections of exotic Thai cuisine, both lunch and dinner (take-out available). BYO (wines and beer) is welcome after 5 p.m. AE, D, DC, MAC, MC, V.
Key AE............................................................American Express CB ...................................................................Carte Blanche D ................................................................. Discover/Novus DC.........................................................................Diners Club ID+ ................................................ PSU ID+ card discounts LC............................................................................. LionCash MAC........................................................................debit card MC........................................................................MasterCard V.......................................................................................... Visa ............................................... Handicapped-accessible
To advertise, call Town&Gown account executives Kathy George or Debbie Markel at (814) 238-5051. 2015 October T&G - 99
The Deli Restaurant, 113 Hiester St., 237-5710, The DeliRestaurant.com. Since 1973, The Deli has served up New York-style deli favorites on an American menu offering everything from comfort food to pub favorites, all made from scratch. Soups, breads, sauces, and award-winning desserts are homemade here early in the morning folks. Look for its rotating menu of food- themed festivals throughout the year. AE, D, DC, LC, MC, V. Full bar. The Dining Room at the Nittany Lion Inn, 200 W. Park Ave., 865-8590. Fine continental cuisine in a relaxed, gracious atmosphere. Casual attire accept- able. Private dining rooms available. AE, D, DC, MAC, MC, V. Full bar. Duffy’s Boalsburg Tavern, On the Diamond, Boalsburg, 466-6241. The Boalsburg Tavern offers a fine, intimate setting reminiscent of Colonial times. Dining for all occasions with formal and casual menus, daily dinner features, specials, and plenty of free parking. AE, MC, V. Full bar. Faccia Luna Pizzeria, 1229 S. Atherton St., 237-9000, faccialuna.com. A true neighborhood hang- out, famous for authentic New York-style
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wood-fired pizzas and fresh, homemade Italian cuisine. Seafood specialties, sumptuous salads, divine desserts, great service, and full bar. Outside seating available. Sorry, reservations not accepted. Dine-in, Take out. MC/V. Galanga, 454 E. College Ave., 237-1718. Another great addition to Cozy Thai Bistro. Galanga by Cozy Thai offers a unique authentic Thai food featuring Northeastern Thai-style cuisine. Vegetarian menu selection available. BYO (wines and beer) is welcome after 5 p.m. AE, D, DC, MAC, MC, V. The Gardens Restaurant at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, 215 Innovation Blvd., Innovation Park, 863-5090. Dining is a treat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in The Gardens Restaurant, where sumptuous buffets and à la carte dining are our special- ties. AE, CB, D, DC, MC, V. Full bar, beer. Gigi’s, W. College Ave, on the corner of Cato Ave., 861-3463, gigisdining.com. Conveniently located 5 minutes from downtown State College, Gigi’s is a farm-to-table dining experience inspired by the hottest southern trends. Outdoor Patio. Lunch & Dinner. Full Bar. AE, D, MAC, MC, V.
The Greek, 102 E. Clinton Ave., 308-8822, thegreekrestaurant.net. Located behind The Original Waffle Shop on North Atherton Street. Visit our Greek tavern and enjoy authentic Greek cuisine. From fresh and abundant vegetables to the most succulent kebabs, each dish has been perfected to showcase genuine Greek flavors. When we say “authentic,” we mean it. Full service, BYOB. D, MC, V. Herwig’s Austrian Bistro, “Where Bacon Is An Herb,” 132 W. College Ave., 272-0738. Located next to the State Theatre. Serving authentic Austrian home cooking in Central PA. Ranked #1 Ethnic Restaurant in State College for 7 years in a row. Eat-in, Take-Out, Catering. Glutenfree options available. Bacon-based dessert. Homemade breads, BYO beer or wine all day. Sense of humor required. D, MAC, MC, V.
India Pavilion Exotic Indian Cuisine
Now Open 7 Days a Week Lunch Buffet: 11:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Dinner: 5:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m.
222 E. Calder Way 237-3400 www.indiapavilion.net 102 - T&G October 2015
Carry Out Available
Hi-Way Pizza, 1688 N. Atherton St., 237-0375, HiWayPizza.com. The State College tradition for nearly 50 years, nobody does it better than HiWay! Offering more than 29 varieties of handspun pizzas made from scratch offer an endless combination of toppings. Its vodka “flaky” crust and red stuffed pizzas are simply a must have. Hi-Way’s menu rounds out with pasta dishes, calzones, grinders, salads, and other Italian specialties. Eat-in, Take-out, or Hi-Way delivery. AE, D, DC, LC, MC, V. Full bar. India Pavilion, 222 E. Calder Way, 237-3400. Large selection of vegetarian and nonvegetarian dishes from northern India. Lunch buffet offered daily. We offer catering for groups and private parties. AE, D, MC, V. Inferno Brick Oven & Bar, 340 E. College Ave., 237-5718, InfernoBrickOvenBar.com. With a casual yet sophisticated atmosphere, Inferno is a place to see and be seen. A fullservice bar boasts a unique specialty wine, beer, and cocktail menu. Foodies — Inferno offers a contemporary Neapolitan brick-oven experience featuring a focused menu of artisan pizzas and other modern-Italian plates. Lunch and dinner service transi- tions into night as a boutique nightclub with dance- floor lighting, club sound system, and the area’s most talented resident DJs. AE, D, MAC, MC, V. Full bar. Legends Pub at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, 215 Innovation Blvd., Innovation Park, 863-5080. Unwind with beverages and a casual lounge menu. AE, D, MC, V. Full bar.
Mario’s Italian Restaurant, 272 N. Atherton St., 234-4273, MariosItalianStateCollege.com. Fresh specialty dishes, pasta, sauces, handtossed pizzas, and rotisserie wood-grilled chicken all made from scratch are just a few reasons why Mario’s is authentically Italian! At the heart of it all is a specialty wood-fired pizza oven and rotisserie that imparts rustic flavors that can’t be beat! Mario’s loves wine and is honored with six consecutive Wine Spectator awards and a wine list of more than 550 Italian selections. Mario’s even pours 12 rotating specialty bottles on its WineStation® state-ofthe-art preservation system. Reservations and Walk-Ins welcome. AE, D, DC, LC, MC, V. Full bar. Otto’s Pub & Brewery, 2235 N. Atherton St., 867-6886, ottospubandbrewery.com. State College’s most awarded craft-beer pub and brewery featuring more than a dozen fresh, house-brewed ales and lagers on tap as well as fine, affordably priced, local American food with vegan and vegetarian offerings, a kids’ menu, weekly features, and seasonal menu. Open for lunch and dinner in a family-friendly, casual atmosphere. AE, D, MC, V. Full bar.
Philipsburg Elks Lodge & Country Club, 1 Country Club Lane, Philipsburg, 342-0379, philipsburgelks.com. Restaurant open to the public! Monday-Saturday 11-9, Sunday 9-3. Member-only bar. New golf-member special, visit our Web site for summer golf special. AE MC, V. Full Bar (members only). The Tavern Restaurant, 220 E. College Ave., 238-6116. A unique gallery-in-a-restaurant preserving PA’s and Penn State’s past. Dinner at The Tavern is a Penn State tradition. Major credit cards accepted. Full bar. Whiskers at the Nittany Lion Inn, 200 W. Park Ave., 865-8580. Casual dining featuring soups, salads, sandwiches and University Creamery ice cream. Major credit cards accepted. Full bar. Zeno’s Pub, 100 W. College Ave., 237-4350 hotelstatecollege.com. Located directly above the center of the earth, Zeno’s may be considered a “dive bar” by some, but it is still one of the best places downtown to drink a cold one! Craft beers, Happy Hours, live music, top-notch booze, and hearty food. Also check out Zeno’s 2 Go, nestled between Chumley’s and Indigo Nightclub, featuring a
Duffy’s Tavern Est. 1819
October is “Ghost Story” Month at Duffy’s Tavern Learn more about the other “Patrons” of Duffy’s Tavern… if you dare! Eat, Drink, and be Scary! Located “On the Diamond” For Reservations 466-6241 113 East Main Street Boalsburg www.duffystavernpa.com
Come try
Meyer Dairy's
Pumpkin Ice Cream ! INGREDIENT DRIVEN • SEASONAL • NEW AMERICAN CUISINE EXTENSIVE WINE LIST • BY THE BOTTLE & GLASS
814 . 237. 8474
ZOL A KI TCHEN .COM
MON. - THUR. 11: 30 -9PM • FRI. - SAT. 11: 30 -10 PM • SUN. 11: 30 - 8PM
104 - T&G October 2015
Open Daily 8 a.m. - 11 p.m. 2390 S. Atherton St. - (814) 237-1849
collection of yellow fizzies for mass consumption along with “the real good unique stuff.” Free downtown parking validation in Fraser, Pugh & Beaver Garages based on purchases. Bring garage parking stub and ask server for details. AE, D, MAC, MC, V. Zola Kitchen & Wine Bar, 324 W. College Ave., 237-8474. Zola Kitchen & Wine Bar features ingredient-driven, seasonal, new American cuisine paired with an extensive wine list, certified wine professional, and exceptional service. Zola’s also features a new climate-controlled wine room, premium bythe-glass wine pours, fine liquor, and craft beer at its full-service bar. Serving lunch and dinner seven days a week. Reservations recommended. Catering. Free parking after 5:30 p.m. AE, D, DC, MAC, MC, V. Full bar.
Good Food Fast Baby’s Burgers & Shakes, 131 S. Garner St., 234-4776, babysburgers.com. Love poodle skirts, a jukebox playing the oldies, and delicious food cooked to order? Then Baby’s Burgers & Shakes is your kind of restaurant! Bring the
entire family and enjoy a “Whimpy” burger, a Cherry Coke, or delicious chocolate shake, and top it off with a “Teeny Weeny Sundae,” in our authentic 1947 Silk City Diner. Check out Baby’s Web site for full menu and daily specials! D, MC, V, MAC, Lion’s Cash.
Fiddlehead, 134 W. College Ave., 237-0595, fiddleheadstatecollege.com. Fiddlehead is a soup-and- salad café offering soups made from scratch daily. Create your own salad from more than 40 fresh ingredients. HUB Dining, HUB-Robeson Center on campus, 865-7623. A Penn State tradition open to all! Enjoy 13 different eateries in the HUB-Robeson Center on campus. Jamba Juice, McAlister’s Deli, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Burger King, Higher Grounds, Sbarro, Soup & Gar-den, Diversions, Blue Burrito, Mixed Greens, Panda Express, and Sushi by Panda Express.V, MC, LC. Irving’s, 110 E. College Ave., 231-0604, irvingsstatecollege.com. Irving’s is State College’s finest bakery café serving award-winning bagels, espresso, sandwiches, salads, and smoothies.
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Meyer Dairy, 2390 S. Atherton St., 237-1849. A State College Classic! Meyer Dairy is the perfect choice for a quick, homemade lunch with fresh soups and sandwiches or treat yourself to your favorite flavor of ice cream or sundae at our ice cream parlor. Fresh milk from our own dairy cows (we do not inject our cows with BST), eggs, cheese, ice cream cakes, baked goods, and more! Plus, Meyer Dairy is the best place to pick up your Town&Gown magazine each month!
Night Life
Indigo, 112 W. College Ave., 234-1031, hotelstatecollege.com. Tradition meets innovation. College party bar meets city nightclub. There’s a reason Indigo has been voted one of the top college bars in the nation. Featuring talented DJs from Mint DJ Events, a huge sound and lighting system, and the craziest happy hour in Happy Valley. When you visit Indigo you’re guaranteed to end up on the dance floor with your hands in the air. ThursdaySaturday 9 p.m.-2 a.m. T&G
Chumley’s, 108 W. College Ave., 238-4446, hotelstatecollege.com. A quaint bar where you’re not judged because of your gender or sexual orientation. Chumley’s is a gay bar and grill where you’re encouraged to be one thing, and that’s yourself. Known as one of the friendliest bars in Happy Valley — and proud of it! Serving food and full bar service, including specialty cocktails. Free downtown parking validation in Fraser, Pugh & Beaver Garages based on purchases. Bring garage parking stub and ask server for details. AE, D, MAC, MC, V.
Taste of the
Month Each month Town&Gown highlights a local place to eat and offers a glimpse into the great dining of our community.
If it’s happening in Happy Valley, it’s in Town&Gown!
Wood fired Southern Comfort Food! 1405 South Atherton St. State College 814-238-2333 •www.clemsbarandgrill.com
Tailgate Party Packs to go! Call 814.238.2333
Award Winning BBQ! Sun - Thurs till 10pm Fri & Sat till 11pm Chef/Owner Greg Mussi and the Artisan Griller Clem Pantalone
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Award-winning pizza. and Italian Cuisine. Homemade...with only the best and freshest ingredients. www . fACCiAlunA . Com 106 - T&G October 2015
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lunch with mimi
Invitation to Invent
Darren Andrew Weimert
Penn State president hopes to make university and community a more friendly home for entrepreneurs
Penn State president Eric Barron (right) chats with Town&Gown founder Mimi Barash Coppersmith at the Allen Street Grill in State College.
Eric J. Barron brings 35 years of leadership experience in academic administration, education, research, and public service to Penn State. He became the 18th president of Penn State in May 2014, returning to the university after serving as president of Florida State University since 2010. Barron spent 20 years of his career at Penn State, including serving as dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences from 2002 to 2006 and as founding director of the Earth System Science Center. In 1999, he was named Distinguished Professor of Geosciences at Penn State. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in geology at Florida State and his master’s degree and PhD in oceanography at the University of Miami. He has previously served as director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and as dean of the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Town&Gown founder Mimi Barash Coppersmith sat down with Barron at the Allen Street Grill in State College to discuss alumni relations and Penn State’s new $30 million initiative called Invent Penn State, a commonwealth-wide set of investments that will drive economic development, a culture of entrepreneurship, and student career success. The aim is to accelerate the transfer of new ideas into 108 - T&G October 2015
useful products and build a stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem around the campuses. Mimi: So let’s start. Talk about some of the work you’ve done with the alumni since you’ve become president. Eric: It really has been in three categories. One is to do as many alumni events as we can at different places: locally, taking advantage of when people are here, but also in different states, and so maybe 15 different states where it’s a reception and I talk about the university and then I take questions on any topic. I’ve done that in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tampa, and Miami. Mimi: And what is the mood of the alumni in general? Eric: I do alumni and donor events that are lunches or dinners for 30 or 40 people as well as a lot of one-on-one meetings, probably a total of more than 8,000 alumni. People are hungry for the good news about Penn State, and this is a group that I would say is used to the fact that they have much to be proud of. Mimi: We also get the alumni with the Penn Stater magazine. Eric: We do, and if they get the Penn Stater they have a more positive view. But even if you look at the Penn Stater, much of it is what I would call more personalinterest stories or event oriented. Mimi: It also has letters that give points and reviews. Eric: But misses those areas of excellence that you see if you’re a part of the university. There are all sorts of areas for which we are doing extremely well. We have external viewpoints from independent
agencies that also tell us how the university is functioning, and then we have anecdotal information from external folks, as well. What you discover are the types of things that our alumni are hungry to hear about. Mimi: I spent 21 years on the board of trustees. I can’t imagine how you are impacted in the preparation for those meetings and in the presentations, the degree to which you are frustrated by people within your own family, so to speak. Eric: This is one way to look at it. We’re making a huge investment in Invent Penn State — how to make the university more entrepreneurial, how to get our ideas into the marketplace, how to create successes for our students — and it’s a significant effort. And you can spend a lot of time talking about that, presenting it, telling it to the community, but the discussion switches to something that’s in the Freeh materials, and that’s what ends up in the paper, and not Invent Penn State. That part is very frustrating because a lot of good ideas don’t get the same attention as they might.
Mimi: Well, collaboration is possible if the people involved want to solve it. I wish you well in that. I hope it can happen. Eric: I think eventually it will. Look at the progress we’ve been making on solving the issues such as getting the wins back, getting bowl games back, no longer on probation, and being able to get the revenue from those bowls, step by step. Issues are being resolved, as are the court cases. We’ll get to the point I think where we can focus purely on Penn State’s mission. Mimi: Meanwhile, you have put your arms around the community, the town. Tell me how you’re progressing on this great economic venture. Eric: Invent Penn State has about 12 different areas of focus in four major themes. One of which is how in the university we can make it more entrepreneurial and have more faculty, staff, and students more interested in bringing their ideas to the marketplace. A second part is to add visibility to the ideas that are in the university. I would say very few people have anywhere near a sense of all the wonderful
2015 October T&G - 109
things going on at Penn State and the ideas that are coming there. The third is to build an ecosystem within the community. That means if a student is starting a company that they think, “State College is a great place to do that. I love it here.” Maybe the past history is they’ll go out in the world and then they’ll come back and retire here. Well what about the middle? Can we make this a very entrepreneurial community where people want to create their companies here? This part is particularly important to the community. So what we’ve done is lease the Verizon building across from the Municipal Building, and we’ll take individuals who have good ideas or who win some of the competitions, like an incubator, and get them mentored in terms of the legal issues of setting up a corporation, capital, and business function. We’ll have an alumni mentoring program where our alumni can drop in a day a month, a week for a year, from all over the world. Mimi: How is the Verizon incubator different than the existing incubator possibilities? Eric: Part of our idea is this is quite a bit of
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mentoring and has a broader opening, unlike what you might have at Innovation Park. You come out of IST Startup Week and you win a prize, and maybe this is a good place for you to start. We actually want the psychology that the university is assisting you in developing your company, but we want you to do it in the community. I actually want you to walk off campus and walk to a place inside State College and work to create your company. Mimi: What do we in the community have to do to help implement that road to success? Eric: One of the things that we will do is find mechanisms to open up these ideas to venture capitalists. We need the community to have a place where we can pass companies that are doing well to another part of the community because they can’t stay in the free space forever. They will need partners that will continue to mentor. When you think about it, the university’s facilitating these startups, these ideas, and we need the community to support that and even pass them into the community, because what else are you going to
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do? They start, they get a great idea, and they go to San Francisco to execute, where they pay an enormous amount of rent but they’ve got a community of other entrepreneurs there that have value and access to some capital there, probably more freely than they do here. We have to fix those problems, even create the sort of density of entrepreneurs here that has people saying, “Oh, I can stay here. I’ve got the talent of the university. I’ve got the workforce coming out of the university. I have a community that’s supportive. I want to start my company in State College.” Mimi: You’re not only thinking in fresh ways on the economic side of things but you’re thinking about it on the cultural side, as well. Tell us about it. Eric: I think there are lots of different components here. The university has a wealth of arts — performing, visual arts, a wealth of museums and collections. But if you think about it, it’s hard to access. It isn’t State College as a destination, and it should be. So, imagine you have 35 different museums and collections
Barron (left) with Penn State football head coach James Franklin.
around the campus. Does a school bus come in and stop at one small collection and then the next small collection? That’s not very efficient. You think about the Palmer Art Museum. You have to make a decision to go, find a place to park, and walk through that collection. It’s a wonderful collection. It’s almost as if it’s too hard to access all the wonderful things that are going on, and there are no accidental visitors. You have to have intent to do it. So, one of the
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things we’re imagining is you can think about the arboretum as a destination, a museum of science, technology, and natural history as a destination, theater as a destination. Could you design a place in all those categories where I would arrive intentionally, and I’m going to this science, technology, natural history museum, but to get there I’m walking through the arboretum. Or I’m going to the theater and I’m just strolling through the gardens. Or I’m strolling through the gardens and look, here’s this wonderful art museum. I’d like to have people view State College and the university as a destination for their arts and entertainment and for museum culture so people will come from a distance because they know they can spend a day. Mimi: There has been some discussion about how do we bring some of that into the downtown. Eric: If you do this and you create a destination, it will enrich the town tremendously because now what will these people do when they visit for the day? Well, let’s go out to a restaurant. Let’s go do X. Let’s go do Y.
Mimi: Here you are having the determination and courage to enter into a relationship with the business community to help make this happen. What are your predictions? Eric: The enthusiasm for Invent Penn State has been so great, I don’t see how it can fail. We certainly can do a lot better than we’ve been doing. I just don’t see how we won’t end up having more startups. I don’t see how we won’t do a better job of attracting some industry. We can have a whole community of entrepreneurs that are coming up with all sorts of ideas that become a part of the world, and we’ll have fun doing it. Education is the product in State College. So why aren’t we the center of the world in working in the educational-technology sector? We could be. We just never tried it. How do you parlay the natural things that are going on into a set of companies that feel very at home here? Mimi: Well, AccuWeather is. Eric: AccuWeather is a perfect example of a company borne out of the expertise of the university. Now instead of having an entrepreneur like Joel Myers sit there and do
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Patrick Mansell
In May, Barron (left), along with CBICC president Vern Squier, signed a Memorandum of Agreement that is designed to enhance economic and workforce development in Central Pennsylvania through a partnership with Penn State.
this on his own, you’re conscientiously thinking how do we create more Joel Myers? And then what do you do to make this an even stronger destination so people want to live here? And to me, that means arts, museums, and arboretums, culture and sports and all the outdoor activities that you can do that are kind of hidden but are fantastic in our community. In many ways, I think it all fits together.
Mimi: Is there any work on the way to create a venture-capital fund? Eric: There are several things that we’re thinking about. We’ve been looking at companies that do this and are accelerators that have enough reputation to bring in capital. We’re looking at the notion of a Penn State branded platform that’s open to our communities and to our alumni. They could see the ideas in a set format and business plan, read business plan after business plan that’s coming out of the faculty, staff, and students, and they can decide to invest. This is a deliberate effort to make our intellectual property much more visible to venture capitalists. There is a plan to have what’s called an IP Fair (Intellectual Property Fair) — the first one held in the fall of 2016. We intend to fill the Bryce Jordan Center full of Penn State ideas. If people know that this is happening, they’ll be able to wander around and decide for themselves. We’ll have money on the table for the best ideas to help kick-start companies themselves, and hopefully this will be a draw for people who want to invest.
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Mimi: When do you predict we’ll get a red-hot company out of this? Eric: There are red-hot companies that came out this year. There’s a young company, it was one of the companies at IST Startup Week, Mobium Solutions. It’s focused on 3D printing, adaptive manufacturing. This is a strength of Penn State. The students have looked at what slows down 3D printing — you print something and then you print something else and then you combine them. They have created a device to automate this. They won one of the IST Startup prizes. Then, there’s a national competition with a donor and MIT, and they won that national competition. I’ll give you another example: When someone has a stroke, they frequently get very depressed because they can’t sense the progress they’re making in getting better and getting control over their muscles. Even though they’re making progress, it doesn’t feel like they can do things — there’s that level of frustration, and they might actually give up. Yet, we wear devices that tell us how many steps we’re taking
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and miles we’ve walked, so how about a wearable device that accesses progress for stroke victims in terms of their muscle function? Students are designing this. There’s a group of students understanding stroke recovery, and here’s another group of students that are thinking about sensors and wearable devices, and another group of people who know how to program different applications. These are the ideas borne out of a university like Penn State. Truthfully, I just want them to be successful. That’s all I want. But if they’re all successful in Pennsylvania and State College, that’s even better. Mimi: One final question, entirely different subject. The biggest issue that’s a hurdle to higher education is the cost. What’s your suggestion in solving that problem? Eric: There are several elements here. Believe it or not, I think that’s also connected to Invent Penn State in a strange way. I believe with the economic downturn we lost a connection with states and the public good of the university. And now, study after study is showing that basically
The Invent Penn State initiative looks to bring intellectual properties to the marketplace and help turn new ideas into useful products.
the tuition increases and the increases in outof-state students just replaced decreases in state funding. In all of the research universities in the US, there’s actually less money for the students, if you add tuition and fees and state appropriation. We’ve lost this sense of the public good, and universities have to do a better job of going back and saying, “Here’s what we do for the
commonwealth.” And so Invent Penn State is another part of that conversation about the value of the university to the community. One way to change the cost is to have people believe it’s worthy to fund. Second, see if Penn State does a wonderful job of graduating people, and if you burrow in you see that we have a bigger portion of the population that take longer to graduate. They’re working harder and, in the process, taking longer to graduate. They pay more and borrow more. And so, what we have to do is make sure those students graduate more quickly. Total cost of the degree is the larger issue, not tuition. We’ve launched six different initiatives. We’re piloting them to drive down the cost of a degree while increasing completion rates and on-time completion rates for the important need-based population. I think we actually have the potential to see our student-debt numbers go down, but it will take time. Mimi: Thank you so much! Eric: Thank you! T&G
I Love My Boobies!
6:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 7, Freeman Auditorium, HUB-Robeson Center A workshop geared toward women on breast health, breast cancer, and lifestyle transformation…what everyone needs to know! Sponsored by Penn State’s Center for Women Students Funded by the Giardini Endowment for the Empowerment of Women
Defamation
7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 8, 112 Kern Building, Penn State campus Race, religion, class, and gender collide in this riveting courtroom drama. www.defamationtheplay.com Sponsored by Penn State’s Center for Women Students; Schreyer Honor’s College; CORED (Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity); Hillel; College of Liberal Arts; PLA (Presidential Leadership Academy); Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Ally Student Resource Center; Office for Educational Equity; Paul Robeson Cultural Center; and The Center for Character, Conscience and Public Purpose Funded, in part, by the Giardini Endowment for the Empowerment of Women
Why I Stayed: The Complexity of Domestic Violence
Beverly Gooden
6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 27, Freeman Auditorium, HUB-Robeson Center
“Why I Stayed” is a revolutionary speech by Beverly Gooden, creator of the #WhyIStayed hashtag and global movement. Gooden challenges the question of why did she/he stay and reveals how the current way we interact with survivors of domestic violence is a house of cards. Sponsored by Penn State’s Center for Women Students Funding made possible by Verizon Wireless
Visit the Center for Women Students at:
studentaffairs.psu.edu/womenscenter or call 814-863-2027 to learn more. 120 - T&G October 2015
State College Photo Club’s
Winning Photos
The State College Photo Club provides photo enthusiasts with the opportunity to share their passion for photography with others and to provide an environment for learning and developing new skills. The club welcomes individuals from amateurs to professionals. The club offers workshops to improve skills and sponsors a bimonthly competition for its members. Town&Gown is pleased to present the winning images from the club’s competition. Shown this month are the second- and third-place winners in the Open category from the judged July meeting competition.
“In the Forest” by Patti Worden
>
July Meeting Open Category Second Place “These tiny mushrooms — probably ‘Scaly Pholiota’ — were captured at their peak in Black Moshannon, July 2015.”
“Between a Rock and a Hard Place” by Benjamin Willis July Meeting Open Category Third Place
>
“The town of Twillingate, Newfoundland, is famous for its spectacular sightings of whales, icebergs, and puffins. I was taking a picture of the biggest iceberg in the bay at the exact same moment that a tour boat passed by. I was struck by the similar shape and profile of the rocks in the foreground, the tour boat, and the iceberg itself. The iceberg ‘hunters’ on the boat also help to indicate the enormous size of this particular iceberg.” A copy of many photos taken by the State College Photo Club may be obtained with a $75 contribution to the Salvation Army of Centre County. Contact Captain Charles Niedermeyer at (814) 861-1785 and let him know you would like this image. You can select any size up to 11 inches wide. The State College Photo Club meets on the third Monday of each month at 7 p.m. at Foxdale Village Auditorium. Guests and new members are always welcome.
Visit statecollegephotoclub.org for more information about how to join. 122 - T&G October 2015
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T& G
snapshot
Education Leader New SCAEA president continues long-held passion for teaching By Sarah Harteis From his days of “playing school” with his sister as a child to becoming the president of the State College Area Education Association (SCAEA) in 2014, Eugene Ruocchio’s passion for education has always been evident. “I am a teacher, first and foremost,” he says. “I am proud to be a teacher, and I love every moment of being in the classroom. I cannot think of a more gratifying, joyful career choice.” He has been involved with the SCAEA since early on in his 14-year career. As an Earth-science teacher at State High, he has learned to balance his time between teaching and fulfilling his role as SCAEA president. He enjoys having the opportunity to work with the district administration to help find solutions to problems facing teachers and students in the classrooms. One such problem he seeks to resolve is a diminished respect for the education profession. “The goal of any teacher is to provide students with the tools they need to help our communities, countries, and the world to prosper,” he says. “Therein lies our challenge — to help others recognize the crucial role of our educators.” He also looks forward to working with the administration and seeing the larger picture of the school district come to life. “I enjoy being able to see other teachers throughout the district doing what they do best — teaching, nurturing, and guiding the kids of the community,” he says. Although he says that public education is under much scrutiny, he also believes that teachers are natural problem solvers who will always strive do what is best for their students. While the technology-driven world has outpaced the changes that are needed within student education, he doesn’t feel it is fair to blame teachers, who continue to adjust their curriculums and teaching styles to keep up with these inevitable changes. “To quote an article from The New Yorker, ‘Blaming teachers for the failures of schools is like blaming 124 - T&G October 2015
Eugene Ruocchio
doctors for the diseases they are seeking to treat,’ ” he says. As president of the SCAEA, Ruocchio says his mission is to create an active voice for his students and fellow teachers through the channel of the association. “The better, more coherent, unified voice we can have, the bigger the benefit for the school district, the kids, and the State College community,” he says. He believes that increasing the support of teachers and public education is key to making an impact on the growth many wish to see. “By nature, educators do not gloat about successes, cheer after a successful lesson, nor look for sympathy when we concede to many tireless nights to teach our kids in the best possible way each and every school day,” he explains. “But the support of the community is the proverbial 12th man of the field. As the teachers, administrators, and community members continue to rally behind public education for our kids, there can be no stopping us from making positive changes to the world.” T&G
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