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H&SSP E N N S T A T E B E H R E N D S C H O O L O F H U M A N I T I E S & S O C I A L S C I E N C E S | 2 0 1 5

PROFESSOR’S WORK AT PETRA AIRS ON PBS 3MAKING INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS 4

ALUMNUS MAKING GLOBAL WAVES 6

SOCIAL MEDIA 101 8

MEET AN ENGINEER TURNED PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR 10

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Director’s Message

I t’s been another busy and successful year for the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Our new programs in Arts Administration and Childhood and Early Adolescent Educa-

tion are flourishing. We’ve created an English Language Study Center to support the double-digit increase in international student enrollment at the college. We plan to unveil an innova-tive interdisciplinary major in Digital Media, Arts, and Technol-ogy this fall. We’re working to introduce a master’s degree in Applied Clinical Psychology as well as post-graduate secondary education certification programs in English and Social Studies.

The stories in this issue of H&SS News illustrate the many ways our school continues to educate, challenge, and inspire students. You’ll read about an archeological project, directed by an H&SS faculty member and involving Penn State Behrend students, that has been featured in television programs pro-duced by NOVA and National Geographic. You’ll get a glimpse of how our social media courses are preparing students for twenty-first century jobs. You’ll learn about an award-winning social network co-founded by a recent H&SS alumnus to connect people with their political leaders and candidates for office. You’ll also read the news of a path-breaking gift from the Samuel P. Black Family Fund that has allowed us to purchase high-end film equipment to advance student learning and help jump-start a creative film industry in Erie.

In closing, I want to congratulate professors Richard Aquila and Juan Fernandez-Jimenez on their retirement from Penn State Behrend. We offer thanks for their many years of service and best wishes for the future. I would also like to thank our many alumni and friends for their ongoing generous support of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, its programs, its faculty and staff, and, especially, its students.

Steven V. Hicks, Ph.D.

The stories in

this issue of

H&SS News

illustrate the

many ways our

school continues

to educate,

challenge, and

inspire students.

ON THE COVER: The Petra ruins in Jordan are a 2,000-year-old architectural wonder that Dr. Leigh-Ann Bedal, associate professor of anthropology at Penn State Behrend, has been helping excavate.

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In Brief

$500K GIFT BOOSTS FILM STUDIESA $500,000 gift commitment from the Samuel P. Black Family Fund of the Erie Community Foundation will support film studies at Penn State Behrend. The gift will give students and faculty members access to high-end cameras, lighting kits, and editing software.

“This gift is path-breaking,” said Dr. Sharon Dale, associate professor of art history and chair of the arts administration program. “For the first time, state-of-the-art equipment, comparable to that used in major film productions, will be available locally.”

The college plans to develop courses in every stage of film production. This will support a new interdisciplinary curriculum in digital media, arts, and technology.

PROFESSOR’S WORK FEATURED ON PBSThe excavation of an ancient desert garden and pool com-plex—an archeological project directed by Dr. Leigh-Ann Bedal, associate professor of anthropology at Penn State Behrend—was detailed in a documentary feature that appeared on PBS.

The program, “Petra: Lost City of Stone,” uses computer reconstructions and hydraulic studies to explore the elaborate water systems in the capital city of ancient Nabataea, located in modern Jordan. The program is part of a three-episode series, Building Wonders, produced by NOVA.

The Petra ruins are a 2,000-year-old architectural wonder: The site includes temples, a palace, a theatre, and elaborate tombs carved into cliffs. “Petra: Lost City of Stone” examines how the community’s original architects—working in a desert canyon—were able to provide water for bathhouses, fountains, and pools.

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Bedal began excavating the site in 1998. Penn State Behrend students have participated in the archaeological field school at Petra, gaining hands-on experience while learning about the history and culture of the Middle East.

SPRING ART SHOW EXPANDED The annual Spring Art Show was expanded in 2015 thanks to funding from the Mary Behrend Cultural Fund. It’s a move that we are sure Mary, who was an artist herself, would have embraced.

The works of twenty-five artists from the Penn State Behrend community—students, as well as faculty and staff members—were featured.

Heather Cole, lecturer in digital arts, and Scott Rispin, lecturer in art, collabo-rated on the show. Pieces on display included photography, paintings, drawings, and digital art in the form of collages, scanograms (scanner art), 3D graphics, and 3D-printed sculptures.

ARTS STUDENTS MAKING MARKThe Arts Administration major is only a few years old, but the program is already producing a wave of young arts professionals. Students in the major are completing intern-ships with top-flight arts and cultural organizations such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Erie Philharmonic and Box of Light studios. Two recent graduates are earning their master’s degrees, while another has accepted a position at a commercial art firm. This spring, the program hosted a net-working event with Erie Arts & Culture, the region’s primary arts advocacy organization. Students met established local arts professionals, made important connections, and learned from mentors in the field.

BEHREND PROFESSOR TRAVELS TO CUBA Just five months after the government eased travel and trade restrictions with Cuba, a dozen Penn State faculty members—among them Dr. Jessica Piney, lecturer in Spanish —were on a plane to Havana.

The United States cut ties with the island nation in 1961. Academic trips were still permitted, however: Piney, a Cuban-American, traveled to Cuba on an academic visa in 2007, and again in 2008. She studied at the national film archives and documented the work of modern Cuban artists.

“This image of Cuba being stuck in a time bubble, forever living in the 1950s, is not entirely accurate,” she said. “The embargo has always had some flexibility in it. There are influences coming in, particularly since the 1990s.”

On the May trip, Piney laid the groundwork for additional Penn State travel to Cuba, including a Spring 2016 embed-ded course with students from Penn State Behrend.

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A double-digit increase in international student enrollment at Penn State Behrend and a Pennsylva-nia requirement that all education students learn

to teach English Language Learners (ELL) led two Penn State Behrend professors to join forces and give students a unique opportunity to practice their communication skills.

“Pennsylvania requires teachers to gain experience teaching ELLs because English is not the native language for roughly 20 percent of students in grades K-12 in the state,” said Dr. Mary Connerty, senior lecturer in English.

English is also not the native language for a growing population of international students at the college that now numbers several hundred.

“We had education majors who needed to learn to teach emergent bilingual students, and we had interna-tional students who needed practice speaking English, so we thought, ‘Why not bring them together so they can learn from one another,’” said Dr. Margaret Burke, assistant professor of elementary education.

HANDS-ON LEARNINGConnerty asked international students in her ENGL 100 English Language Analysis class to volunteer to participate in a seven-week project with students in Burke’s C I 280 Introduction to Teaching English to English Language Learners course.

C I 280 students, who were grouped with at least one participant from ENGL 100, met weekly during class time. Their first task was to get to know one another through personal narratives and biographies.

But the experience delved deeper than conversation. Thanks to a $3,000 grant from the Schreyer Honors

College, Connerty and Burke were able to purchase four video cameras and tripods, which the students used to produce videos promoting acceptance and appreciation of cultural diversity.

Each group worked together, overcoming cultural and language barriers, to come up with an idea, write a script—often in at least two languages—and produce five- to seven-minute videos.

A BITE OF DIVERSITYOne group found a common denominator in something all humans need (and love)—food.

A Bite of Diversity, filmed by Brittni Merenick, Sean Carrick, Aizat Fadhil, Yuanheng Wang, and Tyler Tracy,

A Group Project with an International FlavorChildhood and Early Adolescent Education and international students team up to learn from one another

featured four student chefs making a meal together, each preparing dishes from their cultural background.

Tracy, an American, made bacon-wrapped water chestnuts for an appetizer. Carrick, an Ameri-can of Russian ancestry, made borscht, a Ukrainian soup. Wang, who is from China, made the entrée, stir-fried chicken. Fadhil, who is from Malaysia, made caramel pudding for dessert. Merenick, an Ameri-can, served as host and head film director.

“We had a blast making our video, and I made some re-ally great memories,” said Merenick. “And, I loved learning new vocabulary from China, Russia, and Malaysia.”

As both an international student and an English major, Wang benefited in two ways from the project.

“It allowed me to apply some of the knowledge and skills I have learned in my classes, such as ‘translan-guaging’ techniques, and to gain experience working collaboratively with classmates from different cultures,” he said. “It also let me enhance my communication skills and articulate the information I wanted to share.”

For Fadhil, a junior Mechanical Engineering major who volunteered to participate, the experience was an op-portunity to expand his horizons and engage with people outside his typical social and educational circles. “This whole experience was extremely positive,” he said.

His teammates agreed. “This is one of the most valuable learning experiences

I’ve had,” said Tracy. “In other education classes, I’ve learned about the importance of multicultural classrooms, but actually doing it through this project really put things into perspective.”

“I got to know each member of my group on a personal level and that allowed me to see myself on a personal level, too,” said Carrick. “I realized that as different as our backgrounds are, we have a lot in common, too.”

Connerty and Burke were impressed with the final videos and plan to continue the project with future classes.

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Students in the Bite of Diversity group made a cooking video, preparing dishes from their cultural backgrounds. The group included, from left, Brittni Merenick, Yuanheng Wang, Sean Carrick, and Tyler Tracy. Aizat Fadhil is not pictured.

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In his first three years of college, Sattely had a plan: The editor-in-chief of The Beacon would leverage his three newspaper internships to find a job in journalism, most

likely around his hometown of Pittsburgh. The summer fol-lowing his junior year, the plan took a left turn somewhere in France. Sattely was at a study abroad program in Tours when he realized, “This is what I want to do. I want to live abroad.”

He returned to Behrend with a new plan: Applying to the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, the first academic institution devoted solely to the study of international affairs. A suc-cessful application would require passing a language exam to reassure the Institute that he had the skills to keep up in a master’s degree program taught in both English and French. He ultimately scored in the Advanced level, “something most students do not arrive at without study abroad for a year,” said Dr. Kathryn Wolfe, professor of French. “You could not ask for a more dedicated student than Connor.”

In the summer between his first and second year in Geneva, Sattely’s roommate showed him a website started by a Mexican entrepreneur that tried to link politicians with the electorate. “A political social network was a great idea,” Sattely said. “When we saw the idea, we said, how can we make this even better conceptually, technically, and politi-cally? We spent the next year rebuilding the site to create a platform where politicians and citizens can efficiently and effectively interact.”

Two days after Sattely graduated with a master’s degree in international affairs, he moved to Brussels to launch Gov-Faces at the European Parliament. “I was lucky that in class at Behrend one day (distinguished professor of political science and international law) John Gamble had told us that

the people who work at the European Parliament were some of the most brilliant people he’s ever worked with. I knew not to underestimate anybody there.”

Rather than function as a platform for politicians to broadcast carefully curated messages in one direction, GovFaces focuses entirely on interaction. Leaders are asked (and agree to answer) questions from citizens, journalists, lobbyists—really, anyone who asks—in either a public post or video. The community selects which questions politicians should answer first, and politicians cannot remove or delete a question, only answer it.

“It was a great start, because we were able to prove that the concept worked internationally,” Sattely said. “Our next challenge was to make it work locally. It may have worked in twenty countries, but can people use it to fix a bike lane or reverse a local policy?

GovFaces now hosts politicians from more than twenty countries, has been the subject of media stories across Europe, and was featured heavily in local campaigning during the United Kingdom’s recent general election. The platform is sustained through angel investment, but plans to eventually support itself neutrally by charging government agencies for the ability to respond alongside individuals (whose profiles are free).

Thanks to the site’s innovative use of technology to encourage active citizenship, it was named the Overall win-ner of the European Youth Award presented with support from the European Council late last year.

Sattely’s study abroad epiphany was spot on. “I was cor-rect in thinking that living abroad would bring me joy. When you create a movement that can help people in their own countries, you feel higher than you ever thought you could.”

GovFaces.com, an award-winning social network that connects people with their political leaders and candidates for office, has a Behrend face behind it: Connor Sattely ’11, who double majored in Communication and Political Science, is one of the site’s founders and its chief operating officer.

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ABOUT CONNOR BEHREND DEGREES: Communication and Political ScienceBEHREND STUDENT-ORGANIZATION LEADERSHIP POSITIONS: “Lots. I worked with The Beacon as its editor and with student government running elections. I had a hand in a lot of organizations I believed in, which made for a crazy schedule.”CRAZY IN A GOOD WAY: “Connor is always thinking” said Dr. Ken Miller, senior director of campus planning and student affairs. “He has the energy and interest to follow through on his ideas. When he was editor of the newspaper, he started an August pre-arrival training program for reporters and editors that is still in place today.”CURRENTLY LIVES IN: London, EnglandHAS LIVED IN: Geneva, Switzerland; Brussels, BelgiumHAS VISITED: Bulgaria, Senegal, Gambia, Algeria, Japan, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Austria, plus every country in western Europe “except Portugal, but I’m going to take a weekend there in June.”FIND HIM ONLINE: @ConnorSattely, linkedin.com/in/connorsattely, govfaces.com, facebook.com/govfaces

Studying French at Behrend made studying and living abroad possible. Looking back at my four years of college, of all the things I did, possibly the most valuable was learning a language, based on how much it’s impacted the course of my life.

— C O N N O R S A T T E LY

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Social Media Courses Prepare Students for 21st Century Jobs

IF THERE’S ONE LESSON THAT KARRIE BOWEN, LECTURER IN SOCIAL MEDIA, PUBLIC RELATIONS, AND MEDIA PRODUCTION, HOPES TO IMPART TO STUDENTS, IT’S THIS: SOCIAL MEDIA HAS STAYING POWER AND POSTS DON’T GO AWAY .. . EVER!

Those are strong words to describe a relatively new field. Friendster, the first social network, was launched in 2002, just over a dozen years

ago. Today, with the reach of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms, it is clear that social media is here to stay.

This is good news for students. They can find plenty of career opportunities in this booming industry. Now, there are jobs that didn’t exist—or were only just beginning to appear—when many current practitio-ners were in college themselves.

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RECOMMENDED SITES Here are four platforms that Karrie Bowen, lecturer in so-cial media, public relations, and media production, says you should be using:

1. LinkedIn: “Everyone should be LinkedIn …everyone.”

2. Twitter: “It is important for everyone to understand and use Twitter.”

3. YouTube: “You should be able to use YouTube to create and distribute content regularly.”

4. TED: “I highly recom-mend TED to stay abreast of the latest in science, technology, and sociology as these are driving forces in our culture.”

Runners-Up: “Both Buzzfeed and Reddit are fun to peruse.”

But while the web has always existed for today’s college students, these digital natives still need to learn how to use social media profes-sionally.

That’s why the School of Humanities and Social Sciences developed COMM 428E Social Media Strategies, a course designed to help students use social media in business settings. Students can also earn an Interdisciplinary Social Media certificate, offered jointly with the Black School of Business and requiring a combination of business and humani-ties courses.

“I want my students to have a solid foundation in public relations theory and research,” said Bowen. “I try to marry those principles with both rhetorical strategies and market analysis.”

She says this multidisciplinary foundation is critical. “Students need to understand how important it is to connect with specific audiences using social media and why it’s advantageous to foster a relationship with them both traditionally and virtually.”

Bowen has used the web since its infancy, trying out new technolo-gies as they were launched.

“I have been online and actively using the Internet since 1993,” she said. “I have just kept using the newest stuff to come down the pike.”

This tendency has made her a natural fit to teach about the rapidly changing field of social media.

Bowen’s social media courses include a combination of lecture, hands-on campaign creation, and strategic development. These techniques require agility and responsiveness to new media platforms as they become available.

“Social media channels are growing and changing so quickly,” she said. “There are a lot of platforms being introduced, so it may be chal-lenging to see the benefit beyond socializing, or if that platform is even going to take hold. Once something does stick, you then have to keep abreast of what is going on with it and how it can be used.”

Social media coursework prepares students to monitor, administer, and maintain the social media presence for an organization, person, or brand. In addition, students build versatile skills in marketing, graphic design, photography, digital media, and analytics. They may find work specializing in social media management, contributing to social media as part of another position, or using social media to promote themselves and their own endeavors.

It’s a promising career path. Social media manager was listed as one of CNN Money’s Best New Jobs in America in 2012, which cited a ten-year growth rate of 13.6 percent and a median salary of $41,700. Industry analysts predict more growth for social knowledge jobs across the enterprise.

“If you do your job and do it well, there is money to be made,” Bowen said. “Positions are cropping up constantly for those who understand social media. A lot of people don’t understand the overwhelming impact social media can have.”

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RELATIONSHIP RXWE ASKED CAROL WILSON, associate professor of psychology, to share some advice for couples based on the research work she has done on relationships: AIM FOR 5:1. “For every negative thing you say to your partner, you need to say at least five positive things. As that ratio diminishes, the relationship becomes more distressed.” BEWARE OF CONTEMPT. “Contempt, or thinking the other person is less than you, is a relationship killer. Contempt is a huge red flag.” THINK COMMUNALLY. “Relationships should not be exchange oriented—I’ll give this and you give an equal amount back. Couples should think more communally and give without an expectation of equal compensation.”

— D R . C A R O L W I L S O N

Engineer Turned Psychology Professor

By all accounts, Dr. Carol Wilson, associate professor of psychology, was a STEM success story. Armed with a degree in chemical engi-

neering from Virginia Tech, she was a young woman rising through the ranks at a large Texas company, well on her way to earning six figures.

But she wasn’t happy. This perplexed her because she had done everything right. She had

taken her love of math and turned it into a lucrative career in a growing industry. She was successful, but it felt wrong.

She was also getting increasingly frustrated by biases she had observed on the job.

“All the ‘isms’— ageism, sexism, heterosexism, racism — I had witnessed were getting to me,” she said. “It wasn’t anything overt or obvious, but it happened in small and numerous ways. Rather than it being a knife to the gut, it was like a thousand paper cuts. A small cut doesn’t hurt that much, but a thousand of them can kill you eventually.”

She thought a lot about the “isms” and she wanted to understand the thinking behind the behaviors. A Myers-Briggs personality assessment class offered by her company inspired her to take action.

“The class blew my mind, and that night I went to the University of Houston’s website and learned that Myers-Briggs type testing was in the field of psychology,” she said, “so I signed up for a class in social psychology.”

It wasn’t the first time she had indulged her humanities and social sciences side.

“In college, I was a closeted humanities class taker,” she said with a smile. “I loved creative writing, but I hid it from my friends because they’d have thought I wasn’t a serious engineering student.”

She continued dabbling in psychology, taking an evening class here and there, until she took a statistics course that opened her eyes to the mathematical, logical side of psychology.

“I thought, okay, this is using math and logic to solve problems,” she said. “It wasn’t all that different from what I had learned to do in engineer-ing. It was still using mathematical equations to solve a problem, only it involved people instead of a chemical process.”

Wilson said the statistics class proved to her that there was a place for her in the field of psychology. “I realized I could combine my interests with my experience and go into psychological research,” she said.

Before she could make the leap from engineering to psychology, she had hurdles to clear. The first one was in her own mind.

“I had trained my whole life to be an engineer and if I wasn’t that, then

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Faculty & Staff NewsNEW FACULTY AND STAFFThe school welcomes seven new faculty members: assistant profes-sors Dr. Aaron Mauro, English and digital humanities; Dr. Ashley Sul-livan, early childhood education; and Dr. Chad Waldron, language and literacy education; and lecturers Karrie Bowen, social media, public relations, and media production; Emily Cassano, theatre; Heather Cole, digital arts; Joel Hunt, music; Dr. Jessica Piney, Spanish; and Evan Ringle, English. In the H&SS office, Tina Rapp is the new administrative support coordinator and has been joined by new administrative assistants Nathan Carter ’12 and Sarah Taylor.

HONORS, DISTINCTIONS, AND ACCOMPLISHMENTSFor the third year in a row, a faculty member from H&SS won the Penn State Behrend Council of Fellows Excellence in Teaching Award. Congratulations to Dr. Mary Connerty, senior lecturer in English, who was the recipient of the 2015 award. Connerty also won the Benjamin A. Lane Outstanding Service Award.

Dr. Kilic Kanat, assistant professor of political science, received the 2015 Penn State Behrend Council of Fellows Excellence in Research Award.

Dr. Sharon Dale, associate professor of art history, is a visiting professor at the University of Rome this summer.

Dr. Charisse Nixon was promoted to professor of psychology. Dr. David Kahl was promoted to associate professor of communication.Dr. Carol Wilson was promoted to associate professor of psychology. Elizabeth Fogle was promoted to senior lecturer in English.

STUDENT AND ALUMNI HONORS AND DISTINCTIONSTwo H&SS students won awards in recognition of their character, scholarship, leadership, and citizenship. Yuanheng “Arthur” Wang, an English major, received the Irvin H. Kochel Award and Katherine O’Neill, Creative Writing major, received the Eric A. and Josephine S. Walker Award. Wang also won a Rose Cologne Keystone Citizen Award, while O’Neill took home an Eclipse Award.

Danielle Ropp, History, and Katherine O’Neill, Creative Writing, received Archie K. Loss Undergraduate Honors Thesis Awards.

Jessica Schubert, a recent Psychology graduate and a Ph.D. candidate at Binghamton University, State University of New York, became the first Behrend graduate to return to give a lecture in the Psychology Colloquium Series. She discussed her research work on how sleep affects treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

BOOKSBooks published recently include those by:

Dr. Richard Aquila, professor of history and American studies, The Sagebrush Trail: Western Movies and Twentieth Century America.

Dr. John Champagne, professor of English, Italian Masculinity as Queer Melodrama.

Dr. Sharon Dale, associate professor of art history, The Arca di Sant’Agostino and the Hermits of St. Augustine in Fourteenth-Century Pavia.

Dr. Craig Warren, associate professor of English and professional writing, The Rebel Yell: A Cultural History.

who was I and what would people think of me? It took time for me to work through my definition of success and what it means to me.”

Wilson said she ultimately real-ized two things: Her career does not define her, and psychology is as much of a science as engineering.

About the time Wilson realized she wanted to switch careers, her company announced layoffs offering transition packages. She saw her chance.

“I had been there eight years and was in no danger of being laid off, but I went to my supervisor and volunteered for it,” she said.

She enrolled in the psychology program at Texas A&M and earned both master’s and doctorate degrees.

Today, Wilson’s research focuses on attachment theory, love, and relationships. She recently com-pleted a multi-year study exploring whether seeing the face of someone you love helps to alleviate pain. Data collected could eventually be used to help people undergoing painful medical procedures.

“Psychology is a helping profes-sion,” she said. “There are lots of ways to help people, though. I like to fix problems. I’m still fixing things now, I’m just doing it in a different arena.”

“ It’s the approach to the problem that makes it science, not the matter you’re studying.”— D R . C A R O L W I L S O N

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HUNDREDS EXPLORE H&SS. More than 300 students attended the inaugural Explore H&SS Night to learn more about the academic programs available in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and how those programs might complement their education and career plans. Participants met profes-sors, toured the labs and studios, ate free pizza, and played games linked to specific H&SS programs.

H&SS News is published annually and provided free to alumni and friends of the Penn State Behrend School of Humanities & Social Sciences by the Office of Marketing Communication, William V. Gonda, wvg2@psu.edu, director. Editor: Heather Cass, hjc13@psu.edu. Designer: Martha Ansley Campbell, mac30@psu.edu. This publication is available in alternative media upon request. Penn State is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer, and is committed to providing employment opportunities to minorities, women, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and other protected groups. http://guru.psu.edu/policies/AD85.html U.Ed. EBO 15-250

STUDENTS VISIT NATION’S CAPITAL DURING SPRING BREAK

Seventeen Penn State Behrend students enrolled in Dr. Robert Speel’s PL SC 177 Politics and Government in Wash-ington, D.C., course, spent spring break in the nation’s capital. They were joined by a group of Canadian students from Ryerson University in Toronto. Among the highlights of the week were meetings with Andris Razans, Latvia’s ambassador to the United States, and a brief encounter with Sen. John McCain on Capitol Hill.