Autodesk recognized the contributions of a Pennsylvania College of Technology faculty member to its support network during the recent Expert Elite Global Summit in Las Vegas.
The multinational software corporation honored J.D. Mather, assistant professor of engineering design technology, as 5-Year Top Expert Elite Autodesk Forums contributor for submitting nearly 500 screencast videos to the Autodesk Knowledge Network, a repository of educational content for the Autodesk community.
Some people spend a lifetime searching for that elusive “dream job.” Thomas Proske spent a summer experiencing his, thanks to an internship at a prominent toy maker.
The Pennsylvania College of Technology industrial design student worked on the design team at K’NEX in Hatfield. A division of Basic Fun, K’NEX is the maker of iconic construction toys pieced together by colorful, interlocking plastic components.
“It was pretty much, ‘Here, go make stuff,’” said Proske, a sophomore from Laceyville. “I didn’t know that they were going to sit me down and have me build all day. It was such an awesome job.”
A second gift of $500,000 from the Tamaqua-based John E. Morgan Foundation has boosted an endowed scholarship fund at Pennsylvania College of Technology to more than $1 million.
The John E. Morgan Scholarship gives first preference to graduates of Tamaqua Area High School who are pursuing “a degree that is not readily available from other institutions, at a comparable price, within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
Examples of such programs offered at Penn College include, but are not limited to, culinary arts and systems, web and interactive media, building science and sustainable design, health information management, industrial design, plastics and polymer engineering technology, emergency management technology, and aviation maintenance technology.
Pennsylvania College of Technology alumnus Keith L. Jeffcoat recently returned to his roots to share advice and industry experience with the next generation of students.
From the Fall 2018 Penn College Magazine: Three graduates’ craftsmanship wows audiences of more than a million a year at Sight & Sound Theatres. Read “Setting the Stage.”
Industrial design majors Nicole Bamonte and Abigail M. Meredick will discuss their June travels to Finland during a presentation at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25, in Room 129 of College Avenue Labs. Bamonte, of Williamsport, and Meredick, of Danville, learned about and prototyped wearable technology among 80 students from 15 countries who attended the ninth annual International Summer School hosted by The Center for Ubiquitous Computing at the University of Oulu.
Designed by students and funded by a forward-thinking group of individual and industry benefactors, a space designed to inspire interdisciplinary innovation and collaboration has opened its doors at Pennsylvania College of Technology.
Dedication ceremonies were held Aug. 14 for The Dr. Welch Workshop: A Makerspace at Penn College, a facility constructed in the Carl Building Technologies Center on the main campus.
Donors – as well as members of the college’s Board of Directors, Corporate Advisory Board, the Penn College Foundation Board and the campus community – gathered in the makerspace to hear about its genesis and to view, in makerspace parlance, its spaces for “clean” (computers, 3D printers, sewing machines and vinyl cutters, etc.) and “dirty” (saws, drill presses, routers, lathes and CNC mills) activities to take place within.
A makerspace, providing a fertile environment for innovation and imagination – and the tools with which students can turn visions into reality – was dedicated in Penn College’s Carl Building Technologies Center on Tuesday. The student-designed Dr. Welch Workshop memorializes Dr. Marshall Welch Jr., a local orthodontist and longtime philanthropist, who died in 2012. The Welch family, including son Marshall III, is the principal donor for the facility; George E. “Herman” Logue Jr. supported the so-called “dirty space” (the Logue Fabritorium) and Frederick T. Gilmour, faculty emeritus, made a commitment for the “clean space” (the Gilmour Tinkertorium). The ceremony spotlighted the students and faculty members who brainstormed the idea into existence, and included representative comments from Rob A. Wozniak, associate professor of architectural technology: “With the many students from various majors that will use this makerspace, it is hoped that they take the opportunity to collaborate with others. To create. To explore. To learn about the tools that they may otherwise never have been able to have access to. To try another way of doing something. To invent (and maybe even patent) something new! And, as a result, Penn College, the community and the world will all benefit … from this amazing collaborative effort.”
The North Eastern Athletic Conference has selected Pennsylvania College of Technology’s Hanna Williams as its 2017-18 Female Student-Athlete Advisory Committee Member of the Year. She joins Keuka College’s Dakota Skinner, who was recognized as the NEAC Male SAAC Member of the Year earlier this week.
College and community members were taken on an exploration of personal and professional layers Tuesday evening in a talk delivered by 3-D printing artist Rebecca Strzelec, as part of Penn College’s Technology & Society Colloquia Series. About 150 people gathered in the Klump Academic Center Auditorium for “Art + Engineering = Creative Problem Solving.” Strzelec, professor of visual arts and program coordinator of visual arts studies at Penn State Altoona, served as the Penn State Laureate in 2016-17. She shared artistic projects crafted in her digital studio and discussed a range of inspirations and collaborations. Earlier in the day, Strzelec visited an industrial design model-building class in College Avenue Labs and dined in Le Jeune Chef Restaurant with graphic design and industrial design students and professors. Her evening conversation featured an engaging question-and-answer session, including discussion related to The Dr. Welch Workshop: A Makerspace at Penn College, expected to open in Fall 2018. The event concluded with a reception in Wrapture. The next presentation of the Technology & Society Colloquia Series is titled “The Great War and the Forgotten Realm” and set for Nov. 8, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War I on Nov. 11, 1918. Presented in collaboration with the Notre Dame Club of Greater Williamsport, the talk will be delivered by John Deak, associate professor of history at Notre Dame University, as part of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Lecture Series.
Penn College alums Jeffrey T. Feeman and Franklin N. Carr enhance the experience of thousands of spectators every year at Sight & Sound Theatre in Lancaster, which offers the largest faith-based live productions in the United States and is one of the nation’s top three theatrical destinations. Feeman, a 2013 industrial design graduate, serves the theater as a scenic drafter, while Carr, who earned three building construction-related certificates in 2007 and 2008, is a scenic architect. Both are very thankful that their education led to such fulfilling careers. “You know at the end of the day that the show you made, whatever part you had in that show, is eventually changing lives,” Feeman says in a video added to the college’s YouTube channel. “You know at the end of the day that what you are doing does matter.” Co-worker Carr is equally enthusiastic about his Penn College-born career: “Here at the theater, designing it on the computer and seeing it put together in reality up on the shop floor is really cool.”(Watch for more in the Fall 2018 issue of Penn College Magazine.)
Orlando, Florida, was fertile ground for Pennsylvania College of Technology this season: Students, alumni and faculty all returned in triumph from an international builders’ show held at the Orange County Convention Center.
For starters, the college was presented with a $73,838 Homebuilding Education Leadership Program grant – the culmination of a yearlong effort led by building construction technology instructor Levon A. Whitmyer, with support from instructor Barney A. Kahn IV and Carol A. Lugg, now dean of construction and design technologies.
A Pennsylvania College of Technology student was one of 20 scholars worldwide to participate in a Japan-based industrial design program.
Dwight D. Alexander, of Umatilla, Florida, completed a four-day workshop at the Kobe University International Innovation Design School in Kobe, Japan. Students from the United States, Poland and Japan attended the program, which required participants to design an innovative product and evaluate how the product will enhance future society.
“It was an adventure. I wanted to go to make more connections, meet new people,” said Alexander, who is scheduled to graduate in December with an industrial design bachelor’s degree. “I can build off of what I learned there and apply it here, where we learn the techniques and technology to transform ideas into practical designs.”
Millions around the world are suffering the symptoms of serious or terminal illnesses, yet only one in 10 has access to effective pain management tools.
Three local experts teamed to explore what tools might be used to extend palliative care to areas within the United States and beyond that have few resources, presenting their findings during the latest edition of the Technology & Society Colloquia Series.
Thomas E. Ask, professor of industrial design at Pennsylvania College of Technology; Dr. John Boll, associate director of the Williamsport Family Medical Residency at UPMC Susquehanna; and Dr. Alexander Nesbitt, UPMC Susquehanna’s medical director for Susquehanna Hospice, Supportive and Palliative Care and Gatehouse Inpatient Hospice Unit, presented “Medical Care on the Edge: Redesigning Care Across Cultures” in the Klump Academic Center Auditorium on Tuesday.
Approximately 200 employers greeted the sophomore at her first Pennsylvania College of Technology career fair. As an industrial design major, the student could approach numerous companies representing all economic sectors. But her focus was the booth decked out in yellow and green, the iconic colors of John Deere.
Hanna J. Williams fell in love with John Deere tractors while growing up on her family’s 800-acre produce farm in Marion, New York. She dreamed of working at the company responsible for the equipment that made her father’s hard farm work a bit easier.
At the career fair, she planned to take the first step to making that dream a reality. She clutched her impressive resume and confidently approached the John Deere booth. Anticipation quickly turned to dejection when company representatives informed her they were recruiting only welding majors.
“They didn’t want anything to do with me,” she recalled.
Crushed, Williams walked away from the booth … but not her dream. “I had to go back,” she said. “This is what I really wanted.”