A national organization that empowers citizens to exert greater control over public spending was selected as the first recipient of the Brown Democracy Medal, an award that will be presented annually by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy in Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts. The inaugural medal winner, the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), is a nonprofit organization that promotes “participatory budgeting,” an inclusive process that empowers community members to make informed decisions about public spending. More than 30,000 people in communities across the United States have participated in programs that PBP helped spark over the last five years.

The Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State is offering the Anti-Sexual Misconduct Toolkit for educators on its website. Educators can use the toolkit to bring the compelling and highly relevant issues of binge drinking, consent and campus sexual assault into the classroom.

Two Penn State students received the 2014 Stand Up Award for showing courage and fortitude and demonstrating ethical leadership through personal example. The Stand Up awards are sponsored by the Rock Ethics Institute in the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State. This year's honorees are Zachary Brubaker, a physics major and president of the Penn State Alliance of the Blind and Sighted, and Maggie Cardin, a childhood and early adolescent education major and President of Penn State’s chapter of Aevidum, an organization devoted to helping teachers recognize and respond to student mental illness.