Friday, October 20, 2006
Radio station on campus contributes to community
By Alexis McKnight
On the first floor of the Reed Union Building,
there is a nationally recognized commercial
radio station. It is WPSE, a professionally oper
ated broadcast station.
Its frequency is 1450 AM. The station was
gi\en as a gift to Behrend in 1989 from Burbach
Broadcasting, a regional broadcasting company.
The station is commercial, which means it is
funded independently from the college’s fund-
The station broadcasts commercial networks,
such as CBS Radio News & Sports, WJET-TV
action news simulcasts. Business Talk Radio,
Westwood One, Bloomberg News and, of course,
the Penn State Sports Network; the latter is the
number one station for NFL, NCAA, and Penn
State sports coverage.
The station's mission is to direct its energies
outwardly toward community service. Ron
Slomaski. the station's director and general man
ager. said. “We receive ongoing, positive feed-
COMING SOON
The Behrend Beacon’s
Ist Annual Coolest T-
Shirt Contest. Win gift
certificates to your
favorite bars.
Keep your eyes peeled!
staff writer
yyy-
nr
D _
back to business news programs from listeners
affiliated with companies, and to personal
finance programs from individuals interested in
keeping track of their investments and retirement
funds."
Business Talk Radio’s Network Vice President
of Affiliate Relations, Jon Patch, also had a few
words to say about the station. “WPSE offers a
unique, on-air, educational environment where
CEOs share their success and challenges with the
listening audience. WPSE is known throughout
the network as an innovator."
Melanie Deppen. assistant manager of WPSE.
explained that the station operates in a financial
ly successful manner by maintaining a small
staff and using technology to run its program
ming 24'hours a day, seven days a week. Another
staff member is Valerie Engelleiter. She is the
traffic manager who summarizes the station’s
programming as network offerings.
Anyone interested in an internship, work-
study, or volunteer opportunities may apply
Student Life Sni
School of Engineering Speaker Series begins
By Sean Mihlo
student life editor
Today, October 20, two advisories will be tak
ing place regarding Penn State Behrend and its
endeavors. The first involves an anonymous dona
tion to the campus, while the second highlights
advances in business and engineering.
At 10 a.m. at East High School in Erie, Penn
State Behrend and the School District of the City
of Erie will announce a $1 million donation to
support Trustee Matching Scholarship. The schol
arship will help graduates of East and Strong
Vincent High Schools in their post-secondary edu
cation at Penn State Behrend. Chancellor Jack
ZUM to deliver “gypsy-tango” for Music at Noon Series
By Sean Mihlo
student life editor
On Tuesday, October 24. the Kay Logan Trust
sponsored Music at Noon series welcomes its sec
ond act of the semester, the London-based ZUM.
Formed in 2001, ZUM, which takes its name from
a composition composed by the master of modem
tango Astor Piazzolla, combine Eastern European
gypsy fiddle music with Argentinean tango;
they’ve been dubbed the “Original Gypsy-Tango
band.” Comprised of five diverse members,
including David Gordon (piano), founder and
principle creative force behind ZUM, Chris Grist
(cello), Adam Summerhayes (violin), Eddie
Hession (accordion) and Jani Pensola (stand-up
bass), ZUM performs traditional tango pieces
from the genre’s golden era, but blends in many
different musical styles like jazz and bluegrass.
Over the past five years, ZUM has sold-out
Ask ASCII:
By Logan Stack
staff writer
We've all been getting a deluge of e-mails
from sports teams seeking members.
This weekend, a different kind of sport is
holding tryouts.
Every year, Behrend sends a team or two of
crack programmers to the ACM
International Collegiate Programming Contest.
We've never actually won at the regional com
petition. We don't take it as seriously as some
other colleges, most notably Waterloo. Last
year's teams took a van to Canada to compete
andcrawl the bars.
Contest programming is a lot like other
sports. Each college has one or more teams
competing. The teams get a set of problems and
score points by writing a program to solve
each. At the end of the competition, the team
with the most points wins. If there's a tie in the
number of completed problems, whoever
scored points fastest wins.
This Saturday in Nick 156, Behrend will be
holding tryouts. From 1:30 to 5:00, anyone can
tease their brain trying to solve these problems.
The programming required to solve the prob
lems is rarely difficult, and nobody takes off
points if you use global variables or have bad
form. The problems have a logical difficulty
Burke will join James Barker, superintendent of
the School District of the City of Erie, and the
anonymous million-dollar donor at the ceremony.
Also today, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. is a program
called Penn State Today, the first in the 2006-2007
School or Engineering Speaker Series. Held in the
Research and Economic Development Center
(REDC), the program, which is presented by the
Black School of Business and School of
Engineering, features seminars and panel discus
sions, an overview of the partnership between
both schools, along with tours of the REDC. The
programs are free and open to the public, but
reservations are encouraged. Call 814-898-6153.
tours and participated in numerous music festivals
across the United Kingdom and Europe, entertain
ing and enlightening venues with its original com
bination of gypsy music and tango. The band has
released many albums of genre-bending material:
Gypsy Tango Pasion, the band’s first studio
album, released in 2001; Live on the South Bank,
London, its second release and first live album,
recorded in the Purcell Room in December of
2001; and the band’s latest release, Inferno.
Described by the BBC as “...fiery, passionate
and intriguingly beautiful,” ZUM will hit the
stage on October 24 in McGarvey Commons at
noon. For more information on the Music at
Noon series, visit the program’s webiste at
www.pserie.psu.edu/musicatnoon or call 814-
898-6108. To hear sample songs from ZUM’s
current and previous releases, and to view a per
formance schedule, visit the band’s website at
www.zum.org.uk.
Solving problems online
comparable to brain teasers or puzzles, which
makes them difficult and interesting. You can
practice on over 11,000 problems available at
http://acm.uva.es/problemset/. The problems in
the competition and the judging program are
very similar to these.
The online judge accepts programs written in
Pascal, C, C++, and Java. Because all of our
Computer Science students are all familiar with
C++, that will be the language our team uses at
the contest unless we can find a group of stu
dents who are knowledgable in another lan
guage.
Contestants are allowed to use any reference
books or notes they want, but Internet access is
strictly forbidden. All of these problems, like
the sphinx's riddle, have been solved. Internet
access would allow people to cheat by copying
the answer from a website. The contest organ
izers don't want to force competitors to memo
rize every structural nuance of programming
though; the contest is about logic more than
programming.
So if you've taken a programming class,
come try out this Saturday.
Do you have a computer question? Then ask
ASCII! Send an e-mail to ascii@psu.edu and
you may see it answered in next week’s col
umn.
The Behrend Beacon I
ets
Michael Sharkey/THE BEHREND BEACON
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO