The Penn College Business Club recently made and sold 100 apple dumplings to benefit survivors of Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas.
The hurricane struck the island nation on Sept. 1, leaving 70,000 people in need of immediate humanitarian relief after high winds and waves combined to destroy homes and infrastructure.
The idea for the fundraiser came from conversations with the club’s advisers about the devastation experienced by Bahamas residents. The advisers suggested the club raise funds. The club’s members quickly agreed.
The 580,000 restaurant and food service jobs in Pennsylvania represent 10% of the state’s total employment. To serve that industry, Pennsylvania College of Technology is launching a bachelor’s degree in business administration: restaurant and hospitality operations.
The new degree, available in Fall 2020, answers the hospitality industry’s demand for front-of-the-house managers who have strong knowledge and skill in business applications. Feedback from the college’s industry partners further indicates that a bachelor’s degree is required for entry-level management positions in most restaurant companies.
“What I enjoy most out of life is giving back.” Pennsylvania College of Technology alumnus Robert E. Wood lives that credo daily as the executive chef at JBJ Soul Kitchen in Toms River, New Jersey. As part of the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, JBJ Soul Kitchen is a nonprofit community restaurant that serves paying and in-need customers. Wood, who earned a bachelor’s degree in culinary arts and systems, employs his skills to create three-course meals that feed stomachs and souls. “I love cooking. I love all that stuff. But being able to feed someone that really needs it, someone that really wants it, it goes a long way. You can actually see the difference you’re making in people’s lives.” As is readily apparent in a new video on the college’s YouTube channel, the 2017 Penn College graduate truly is a tomorrow maker.
Four Penn College sport and event management students spent the day getting to know the industry firsthand on Sept. 10. The group traveled to Citizens Bank Park, home of the Philadelphia Phillies, to network with team executives.
Stopping for a photo op at the Gold Rush Excavator are (from left) Everett, Gilmour, Cutler, Smeltz and Yaw.During his travels, Cutler enjoyed interactions with students who reside in or near his legislative district, including baking and pastry arts students Rebecca High (left), of Willow Street, and Alana L. LaPenta, of Lemoyne.In the manufacturing lab, Cutler learns about the mechanics of BAJA team racing from students including John D. Kleinfelter (center in red shirt), a manufacturing engineering student from Lebanon.The tour winds its way through the new welding expansion. Cutler’s late father was a welder, so he held a keen interest in the facility and the skill.Back to his roots, Cutler visits the radiography lab to hear about advances in technologies from Christine L. Eckenrod, the college’s new director of radiography.
State Rep. Bryan Cutler (R-Lancaster), the second-highest ranking member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, visited Penn College on Thursday. Cutler, serving his first term as majority leader, was accompanied on the tour – which took in a number of instructional areas of main campus – by Jacob G. Smeltz, his chief of staff, as well as two members of the college’s board of directors: Sen. Gene Yaw, chair, and Rep. Garth Everett. President Davie Jane Gilmour and other members of the college administration (including Michael J. Reed, vice president for academic affairs and provost, and Patrick Marty, chief of staff) welcomed the guests, and various deans and faculty members led Cutler through The Victorian House, welding and metal fabrication, advanced manufacturing, automotive restoration, culinary arts and hospitality, plastics and polymer engineering, and several majors in the School of Nursing & Health Sciences. Cutler started his career in radiography, earning a certificate from Lancaster General School of Radiology. He worked as an X-ray technologist before earning a health care management degree from Lebanon Valley College and working as an administrator in his local hospital’s radiology department. He later earned a law degree, focused on health care law, from Widener Law School and has served in the Legislature since 2007. The day’s itinerary also included lunch at Le Jeune Chef Restaurant and a chance to see the Gold Rush Excavator on a nearby parking lot.
An instructor of baking and pastry arts and culinary arts at Pennsylvania College of Technology was invited to teach one of this year’s two-day regional workshops for the Bread Bakers Guild of America.
Chef Charles R. Niedermyer II, a faculty member at the college since 2005, taught “A Modern Approach to Classic Viennoiserie” to 14 guild members Aug. 8-9 in the college’s baking and pastry arts laboratory.
Pennsylvania College of Technology’s Le Jeune Chef Restaurant, which offers casual fine dining to the public, received Wine Spectator magazine’s 2019 “Award of Excellence” as part of the publication’s Restaurant Awards program.
Wine Spectator magazine reaches about 3 million readers worldwide. The magazine’s annual Restaurant Awards program recognizes restaurants whose wine lists offer interesting selections, are appropriate to their cuisine and appeal to a wide range of wine lovers. Honorees are published in its August issue.
Le Jeune Chef, operated by the college’s School of Business & Hospitality, has been recognized by Wine Spectator each year since 1995.
Nine students from Pennsylvania College of Technology’s SkillsUSA team earned medals in six categories – three silvers and three bronzes – during the National Leadership and Skills Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, from June 24-29.
“The students represented themselves and the college well, and it showed with the number of medals we returned home with,” said SkillsUSA adviser James N. Colton II, an assistant professor of welding. “I look forward to next year and the students that we will have competing.”
The email contained a stark message for the transfer student. After a year of subpar grades, Pennsylvania College of Technology had to place her on academic probation.
Jacqueline M. Westervelt repeatedly scanned the message, hoping that the words would change. They didn’t.
Her dream of earning an information technology degree – already delayed for two years – was in jeopardy. Self-doubt, fueled by past struggles in school, flooded her mind. Tears flowed as she thought that the people who told her she wasn’t college material were right.
A dozen residential Pre-College Programs and a daytime Creative Art Camp brought hundreds of young women and men to Penn College’s campuses in mid-June, providing hands-on entry to the myriad career opportunities reflected in the institution’s postsecondary curriculum. Keeping campers (and PCToday photographers) busy in recent days were these fun learning opportunities, some of which involved culminating projects: Architecture Odyssey, Autism Spectrum Post-Secondary Interest Experience (ASPIE), Automotive Restoration, Aviation, Building Construction (new this year), Creative Art Camp, Engineering, Future Restaurateurs, Graphic Design Summer Studio, Grow & Design Horticulture, Health Careers, Information Technology and SMART (Science and Math in Real-world Technologies) Girls.
A collaborative learning lab at Pennsylvania College of Technology will bear the name of a financial institution that partners with the college in support of students and academic programs.
The Woodlands Bank Innovation Lab in Memory of Nicole Guthrie-Jones was dedicated May 29 as a unique space on campus for cooperative teaching and learning.
Its name also honors a 2001 office technology: executive emphasis alumna of the college who was employed at Woodlands Bank when she passed away in August 2017.
College employees rallied to provide nearly 40 educational sessions for middle schoolers from across the region who visited campus on Monday for the college’s twice-a-year Career Day. Facilitated by the college’s College Transitions Office, the event provided 1,267 students with opportunities to explore a wide variety of careers in each of the college’s six academic schools. Visitors included 13 schools and home-schooled students.
Pennsylvania College of Technology held the Triple Crown of commencement ceremonies May 17-18 for more than 900 students who petitioned to graduate following the Spring 2019 semester. The Friday afternoon proceedings at the Community Arts Center honored students from the School of Industrial, Computing & Engineering Technologies and the School of Sciences, Humanities & Visual Communications. Saturday morning featured The School of Construction & Design Technologies and the School of Health Sciences, while students from the School of Business & Hospitality and the School of Transportation & Natural Resources Technologies graduated during the afternoon session. Student speakers were Hannah G. Maize, of Riverside, who received a bachelor’s degree in plastics and polymer engineering technology (summa cum laude) on Friday; Lauren S. Herr, of Lititz, awarded a bachelor’s in construction management (summa cum laude) at Saturday morning’s session; and David A. Gadalla, of Mechanicsburg, who received a bachelor’s degree in aviation maintenance technology in the weekend’s final ceremony. The college also bestowed three teaching honors – the Veronica M. Muzic Master Teacher Award and two Excellence in Teaching Awards – as well as three alumni awards.
Pennsylvania College of Technology presented honors to three alumni during Spring 2019 commencement ceremonies, held May 17-18 at the Community Arts Center, Williamsport.
John Estep, of Troy; Darryl Kehrer, of Fredericksburg, Virginia; and Kristina Wisneski, of Ardmore, were recognized for their exemplary achievements.
A team led by Chef Michael J. Ditchfield, Penn College instructor of hospitality management/culinary arts, was named the winner of the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank’s inaugural cooking competition, Chopped.
On Ditchfield’s team were volunteers from three of the Food Bank’s partner agencies: Ron Taylor, a trained chef and a volunteer and member of Diamond Street Christian Church; Karla Sexton, business development/client development officer for River Valley Health and Dental; and Narcisa Ebner, a client of Hope Enterprises’ as well as Food Bank board member Frank Pellegrino. Ditchfield’s “Blue Team” faced off against the “Red Team,” led by Chef Peter Daugherty of The James Restaurant and featuring a similar group of community members.
