UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa -- Journalists talk about Penn State every day. They report on the research that faculty and staff are doing here. And they look to people on campus for expert opinions on the happenings in the world.
Monthly, Penn State’s Office of Strategic Communications features national and international news coverage of the work and expertise of Penn State’s faculty, students and staff.
November's highlights:
-- After the terrorist attacks in Paris many people, including lawmakers, started questioning whether or not the United States should allow immigrants from Syria. The governors of many states announced they wanted to close their borders to that group. Penn State Law professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia explained the refugee process to CNN. She told them the governors couldn’t make their own rules about immigration: "Refugee admissions are set by the president, and guided by federal law. States play a role in working with the federal government when refugees are resettled, but the overarching authority rests in federal law." Wadhia also calmed viewers' fears about who would possibly be granted asylum. "It's been misleading for leaders of states to apply what happened in Paris to would-be refugees who may come to the U.S," Wadhia said. "There is a significant screening process to take before individuals are admitted."
-- The New York Times took a look at the mental resilience of college students, and researchers from Penn State and Duke told them they should be looking back to the students’ childhoods. The two universities collaborated on a research study 20 years in the making. They interviewed adults that had been evaluated on their social skills as children and found that those early years are crucial to long-term success. Mark Greenberg, a professor of human development and psychology, said those social skills were more important than social class, early academic achievement and family circumstances: “That tells us that the skills underlying what we’re testing — getting along with others, making friendships — really are master skills that affect all aspects of life.”
-- Penn State is often at the forefront of cancer research. But Rebecca Evans-Polce and a team of researchers were looking into a common cause of cancer: smoking. Their findings that some anti-smoking programs actually had the opposite effect were posted in the journal Social Science & Medicine. And dozens of mainstream outlets like US News & World Report wanted to know more about the study. The researchers found that programs made smokers feel like they were outcasts and that, in turn, made it harder to quit. Now Evans-Polce, a postdoctoral fellow in Penn State's Methodology Center and the Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, wants to take that knowledge further. "Future research is needed to understand what factors are related to how individuals respond to smoking stigma," she said.
-- A team of Penn State researchers made headlines across the country when they announced that having an opposite-sex sibling improved your love life. The researchers analyzed data from five years' worth of interviews and found that opposite-sex siblings thought of themselves as more romantically competent. The study suggested learning to talk to members of the opposite sex from a young age gave people more confidence in the dating world. The story was picked up by Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, but Men's Fitness just said “Here’s why you should thank your sister for your love life.”
-- Fresh off of Halloween, The Atlantic looked at urban legends from college campuses across the country. After telling a few of those stories they needed someone to tell them why those legends exist. Simon Bronner, an American studies and folklore professor at Penn State Harrisburg, wrote a book on the legends that get passed to students and why. Bronner told The Atlantic, “Telling them is partly ritual, partly humorous. Students are using that frame of lore to raise issues about aging, about where they are in a strange place on their own for the first time.” He added that it was also a way to share advice from one student to another through the method of storytelling.
These are just a few of the highlights. For more of Penn State’s experts’ appearances in the media, visit http://news.psu.edu/media-highlights.