William Hennrikus, professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation, has been appointed associate dean for continuing medical education (CME). He will lead efforts to provide strategic direction to enhance Penn State's CME presence regionally and nationally, oversee accreditation, guide ongoing program planning, develop new innovative Web-based educational offerings and develop measurement strategies to determine CME's impact on the College of Medicine and the community.

Jason Long, instructor and program leader in the Penn State DuBois Information Sciences and Technology program, has been named the DuBois Education Foundation (DEF) Educator of the Year. Each year the DEF presents the Educator of the Year Award to a Penn State DuBois faculty member who has made a difference in the lives of students.

Donald Mackay, the William P Graham III Professor of Plastic Surgery and vice chair for clinical affairs in the Department of Surgery at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, was recently elected a director of the American Board of Plastic Surgery. The mission of The American Board of Plastic Surgery Inc. is to promote safe, ethical, efficacious plastic surgery to the public by maintaining high standards for the education, examination, certification and maintenance of certification (MOC) of plastic surgeons as specialists and subspecialists.

Jeff Reel, director within ITS Telecommunications and Networking Services, has recently been selected as executive director of the Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research (KINBER). Reel will lead the KINBER coalition in the implementation of the Pennsylvania Research and Education Network (PennREN), a statewide broadband network designed to support educational, research, health, and economic development partners across the commonwealth. KINBER, a nonprofit corporation, was recently awarded $99 million in federal stimulus funding to build the network over the next three years.

Sandra Petrulionis, professor of English and American studies at Penn State Altoona, with collaborator Noelle Baker, an independent scholar, have been awarded a Scholarly Editions Grant in the amount of $230,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund their work on a scholarly, annotated digital edition of the complete Almanacks of Mary Moody Emerson.

From Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign to the oft-spoofed egg and a frying pan public service announcement ("This is your brain, this is your brain on drugs"), substance abuse prevention has long been based on teaching youth ways to resist peer pressure without involving the youth in the message. All that's changed with keepin' it REAL, a program conducted by Penn State Department of Communication Arts and Sciences faculty Michael Hecht and Michelle Miller-Day, both in the College of the Liberal Arts.

State Rep. Richard A. Geist, a Republican from Pennsylvania's 79th District, received the fifth annual "Friend of Penn State" legislative award at a June 11 ceremony at the Hintz Family Alumni Center on the University Park campus for the significant role he has played in the continued improvement of Penn State.