Lynn Hartle, professor of education at Penn State Brandywine, is well acquainted with the struggles faced by early childhood educators. Before beginning her career in higher education, she founded and directed a preschool program in Cookeville, Tennessee, and experienced some difficult years.
Penn State is offering students new study-abroad opportunities in Sweden and Denmark. Students can now study with DIS, a reputable provider of study-abroad programs, at either its Stockholm or Copenhagen location. DIS Copenhagen offers 24 academic programs and DIS Stockholm offers seven. The programs might be particularly beneficial to students in the College of Health and Human Development as it offers coursework directly related to such majors.
Longtime Penn State faculty members Jim Johnson and Jane Keat will be honored by the Pennsylvania Association for the Education of Young Children in April.
The Early Educators student organization at the Pennsylvania College of Technology recently completed three service projects benefiting children. The organization collected children’s items throughout campus for the Jared Box Project. The goal of the project is to lift the spirits of children in hospitals by giving them a small plastic storage box filled with games and activities.
Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, New York University, will be the 2015 Bennett Lecturer in Prevention Science. The lecture will be held Oct. 29, in the Ruth Pike Auditorium, 22 Biobehavioral Health Building.
The Penn State Hershey Center for the Protection of Children has created an online training module – iLook Out for Child Abuse – to help early child care professionals meet new state laws regarding training and reporting of suspected child abuse, the regulations under Act 31 of 2014.
The nation's changing early childhood education expectations are challenging teacher preparation programs. A survey of teacher education programs in 38 states reveals notable difficulties related to preparing teachers to educate the youngest students. Governmental leaders have increasingly identified Early Childhood Education, or ECE, as a vital component needed to close the nation's achievement gap. Public schools have responded by increasing the coordination and alignment of pre-kindergarten, all-day kindergarten and the early elementary grades in a system known as PreK-3rd.
An agreement between Pennsylvania College of Technology and Lock Haven University allows graduates of Penn College's associate-degree major in early childhood education a smoother transition to a bachelor-degree program at LHU. Penn College graduates may transfer up to 60 credits toward a degree in preK-4/early childhood education at Lock Haven.
An assistant professor of education and early childhood education at Pennsylvania College of Technology will serve on the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools' Commission on Elementary Schools. Nancy A. Grausam was selected for a three-year term on the commission, through which she serves on its Membership and Accreditation Committee and Early Age Advisory Board.
Three staff members at Pennsylvania College of Technology presented at the Pennsylvania Early Childhood Education Summit, held Oct. 26-28 in State College, Pa. Barbara J. Albert, program specialist for early childhood education at Penn College, offered two sessions: "Professional Behavior: How to Make Ethical Decisions" and "Meeting Ethical Challenges: Especially for Directors."
Three Penn State Harrisburg faculty researchers have proven an educational program built around a simple disposable camera enhances learning for both children and teachers in preschool settings. The camera-based project is an outgrowth of a just-completed two-year research study undertaken by the faculty members when a local preschool reached out to the School of Behavioral Sciences and Education for help facilitating language acquisition in their English language learners.
The Penn State Early Childhood Education program has been establishing collaborations with researchers in other countries to help develop the field worldwide.
Nancy A. Grausam, assistant professor of education/early childhood education at Pennsylvania College of Technology, has received the Excellence in Leadership award from the Central Susquehanna Association for the Education of Young Children. She was instrumental in founding the association 15 years ago and served as one of its first co-presidents.
Head Start, the federal program that provides comprehensive services to low-income children and their families, has had a positive effect on some aspects of school readiness, but not others. A new Penn State study shows that a program designed to make it easier to integrate research into the classroom by giving teachers enrichment manuals helped children in both academic and social-emotional areas.
Pennsylvania College of Technology's Children's Learning Center has received continued funding to help provide child-care access to its students as part of a four-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The funding comes from the department's Office of Higher Education, specifically for helping to make high-quality child care available to parents who are college students.
