Students and faculty from eight colleges and universities in northwestern Pennsylvania will come together Saturday, April 26, from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. for the twelfth annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Accomplishment Conference, sponsored by Penn State Behrend and by the northwest Pennsylvania chapter of Sigma Xi, the national research society. The event, held in the Kochel Center at Penn State Behrend, provides a professional opportunity for students to present research they have accomplished during the past academic year.

Seventeen students at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, have been called to active duty in the U.S. military forces since the beginning of the spring semester as the nation prepared for war with Iraq. The two women and fifteen men are members of the military reserves who have already trained and served their country prior to call-up. A committee formed by the Office of Student Affairs has gathered the military mailing addresses for those who are serving so that members of the Behrend community can send them cards, letters, and care packages.

John G. Champagne, associate professor of English at Penn State Erie, has been selected as the 2003 Penn State Alumni Teaching Fellow. This University-wide award was established in 1985 to recognize distinguished teaching and to provide a forum for encouraging effective teaching. Only tenured faculty with at least five years of teaching experience at Penn State are eligible for the award. Champagne, who came to Penn State Erie in 1993, teaches writing in the humanities, film, literary theory and criticism, and has served as coordinator of the composition program.

Registration for College for Kids at Penn State Erie is under way. Now in its tenth year, the program offers a diverse selection of one-week, age-appropriate summer classes for children aged 6 to 14. Classes begin June 9 and continues through Aug. 8 and are scheduled from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. daily, with early and late day care and an optional lunch break available. Cost for each one-week, three-hour class is $65 with material fees included. Early day care and late day care are $10 each per week.

John D. "Jack" Burke, senior associate dean, has been recommended for appointment as dean and campus executive officer (CEO) of Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. Penn State's Board of Trustees will act on the recommendation at its March 21 meeting. Burke has served as interim dean and campus executive officer of Penn State Erie since July 1, 2001, following the appointment of Dr. John Lilley as president of the University of Nevada, Reno. For more on this story, go to http://www.pserie.psu.edu/newscal/news2003/february-newdean.htm

The Multi-Cultural Council at Penn State Erie has a new meeting place--in the same old location. "This year we've updated the MCC suite to become a real Multi-Cultural Resource Center," said Andy Herrera, director of Educational Equity at Penn State Behrend. "We added a library of cultural resources and an academic advising bulletin board. There are frames for organizational photos and places to put organizational flyers, and a VCR and DVD player so that students can offer showing of films that are culturally relevant to them.

Six Penn State Erie students were selected to participate in the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) 2003 Posters on the Hill Session on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., on Tuesday, April 1. Each year, CUR hosts this event to offer an opportunity for undergraduates to present their research and demonstrate its value to Congress. Sixty competitively selected student posters from universities across the nation will be displayed at the U.S. Capitol during a late afternoon reception. Students and faculty mentors will also have the chance to visit their Representatives and Senators' offices.

At Penn State Erie, biologist James Warren continues work that he and colleagues at the University of Michigan began more than seven years ago. Warren and his colleagues have created a line of transgenic zebrafish that will help scientists respond to some of developmental biology's most pertinent questions. In two recent papers, Warren and colleagues from Michigan, the University of Saskatchewan, and Tohoku University in Japan used the transgenic zebrafish to demonstrate the real-time effects of pollution and to demonstrate laser-induced gene expression in single cells.