Behrend junior wins Finnegan Fellowship
by Erin McCarty
assistant news editor
Stephen Webb, a junior at Penn State
Behrend majoring in political science,
is one of the recipients of this year’s
James A. Finnegan Fellowship
Foundation Summer Internship
Contest. Finnegan, a Lieutenant
Colonel in the Air Force, President of
Philadelphia’s City Council, and
Secretary of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, died in 1958.
The foundation which honors him
w&s established two years later for the
purpose of providing exceptional
undergraduate students from or
attending college in Pennsylvania with
hands-on experience in the affairs of
state government.
In order to apply for this award,
Webb had to submit a certified college
transcript, at least one letter of
recommendation, statements on why
he was competing for the award and
what extra-curricular activities he has
been involved in, and an essay on a
subject pertaining to political science.
This essay asked the applicant to argue
for or against Internet voting in state
elections.
Webb’s response, which cited the
potential lack of security and privacy,
the diminishing of civic pride, and the
Internet accessibility gap as some of
the downfalls to adopting an internet
voting system at the present time, was
a major factor in the judging
committee's decision to grant him the
Dinner to
raise money
for charity
by Libbie Johnson
staff writer
Everyday 31,000 children die from
malnutrition and preventable diseases,
according to the Barna Research
Group.
To raise awareness about hunger
throughout the world and in Erie
County, Reality Check, Behrend’s
service organization, and the Student
Activity Fee are co-sponsoring the
Empty Bowl Dinner. For as 2
donation to benefit a local charity, a
simple dinner of soup (choice of
Vegetable or Chicken Noodle), bread,
and water will be served. Those who
attend will be able to keep their soup
bowl as a reminder of those who do
not have enough to eat.
The Empty Bowl Dinner will take
place on Tuesday, April 3, at 6:00 p.m.
in Reed Commons and will feature
guest speaker Pamela Weber.
Weber plans to discuss what is
being done in the community to meet
homelessness needs and how a
community can develop programs to
fight this problem. “Each night in Erie
there are approximately 994 homeless
persons 200-300 are children,"
Weber said.
Weber has worked in the human
service field for over 22 years, and the
last ten were spent with programs that
deal with poverty and homelessness.
Weber is the director of Project Hope,
which she describes as “a 1.3 million
dollar, 3-year Department of Housing
and Urban Development funded
project that began program activities
July 1, 2000. The project,
administered by the Erie United
Methodist Alliance, is a collaborative
effort among the Refugee Emergency
Shelter for Families, the Rainbow
Connection Thrift Store, the
Department of Military and Veterans
Affairs, and the Disabled American
Veterans.”
Sarah Orr, Reality Check’s
secretary, came up with the idea to
host the dinner after attending the
Bread Box Awards, a ceremony which
honors those groups and individuals
who do projects for the The Second
Harvest Food Bank. According to Orr,
another school hosted a similar event.
She hopes that the dinner will “create
awareness [and] raise money.”
Erin McCarty, public relations co
chair for Reality Check, said, “The
Empty Bowl Dinner is an ideal way
for members of the Behrend
community to identify with the
hungry while making a contribution
to alleviating that hunger. We hope
that this event will raise awareness of
the problem of hunger in the Erie area.
During the season of introspection it
is a good time to reflect on how
blessed we are and share our blessings
with others.”
internship.
Webb is spending today at the
Governor’s Mansion in Harrisburg at a
luncheon hosted by Governor Ridge and
his wife. This event, which honors the
winners, also serves as an occasion for
interns and government administrators to
meet one another and plan out the
particulars of their summer placements.
This summer, Webb will spend ten weeks
in Harrisburg as a paid intern at a state
agency, meeting with various state
Iteve Webb is a
junior mai
Behrend’s
Recreati
April 19, 200 at 8:00 PM‘#
with special Quest
Students
Faculty/Staff
Public
Four tickets can be purchased
Public can buy tickets
officials each week. Webb, who plans
to attend law school after he has
graduated from Behrend, is very pleased
to be given this opportunity.
“1 am honored to have won a summer
internship from the James A. Finnegan
Foundation,” he says. “The political
science department here at Behrend has
helped me prepare ffor] and enter into a
career in the political science field and
I would like to thank them for their
guidance."
ilitical science at Behrend
At Pe
with each Penn State ID
at Dig Dios
$15.00
$21.00
$21.00
CMU professors speaks on interdisciplinary class
by John Federowicz
staff writer
What do you get when you put an
engineer, a technical designer, and a
marketer in the same room? No, this
isn’t the setup for a bad punch line. The
answer: the Integrated Product
Development class at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, Pa.
On Thursday, March 22 in Reed 113,
the General Electric Speaker Series
that is supported by Behrend’s General
Electric fund grant hosted a
presentation that gave an overview of
a cross-disciplinary class offered at
Carnegie Mellon. The GE Speaker
Series was initiated to spark energetic
collaboration between both the
Behrend School of Business and the
School of Engineering.
Thursday’s presentation focused on
the Carnegie Mellon class instructed by
Jonathon Cagan and Craig Vogel.
From the Department of Mechanical
Engineering and School of Design,
respectively, the Carnegie class
successfully merges the disparate fields
of engineering, technical design,
marketing, and supplying into a goal
oriented class targeted to create viable,
real-world products. Seniors and grad
students make up the roster of
Carnegie’s cross-disciplinary
brainchild.
Cagan explained in his presentation
that the class is a triumph of tinkering.
That is, it has taken 12 years of
evolution for the class to become the
smooth-running, cross-disciplinary
course it is now, seven of
which Cagan has
instructed. Although
originally initiated in a
conventional classroom
setting, Cagan lightly
boasts of the class’ current
affiliation with corporate
giant Ford Motors. In
efforts to gain both real
world experience and to
ratchet the class up a notch,
this affiliation with
America’s automotive
juggernaut has resulted in
patent-worthy products,
many of which are targeted
at the American truck
driver, a huge auto
ownership demographic for
Ford. Among the Ford
affiliated products that have
been created by the student teams are
a pickup truck storage system, a
detachable table that hooks onto the
side of the truck, and a self-contained
camping system that fits snugly into the
truck’s bed. As a result of Carnegie’s
newfound affiliation with corporate
entities, a more accurate model of real
life business scenarios is able to enter
the classroom, allowing the students to
create innovative, practical products.
Among the other products in the past
student repertoire of the IPD class is
the Apotheca, a self-contained system
for managing medicine at home. The
Grab ‘n Do, a poison response system,
prepares the buyer for any toxic
contingency. Finally there is the
, ' ''"i. *
FRIDAY, MARCH 30,2001
Professor Jonathon Cagan introduced his
audience to the integrated product develop
ment class at Carnegie Mellon University.
Cagan spoke at Behrend as part of the
General Electric Speaker Series.
Dionysus, which is aptly named after
the Greek god of wine since it is a
cooler of the alcoholic beverage
bottles
The tailoring of these products to
certain researched demographics
illustrates the IPD commitment to real
life marketing accuracy, and at the
same time it allows engineering
students the latitude to design the
product at the nuts-and-bolts level. The
class acts as a unifying force bringing
together these different fields and then
submerging them in business scenarios
that are patterned after real lite.
So, again, what do you get when you
cross all of these fields together''
Perhaps the wave of education’s future.