November 6, 2006
Kenney: Professor beyond the classroom
Continued from page 1
it,” Kenney said. “I’m not saying
that the postman I dealt with was
corrupt, but well, you just
don’t know.”
In addition to being a Peace Corps
volunteer, Kenney also volunteered
at VISTA (Volunteers In Service
To America). There, he was a drug
prevention and education specialist
at the Center for Drug Free Living
in Florida. He also worked at
Project Rebound in Massachusetts
where he was a crisis counselor at
the Adolescent Drug Rehabilitation
Center. It is indeed apparent that
after Kenney’s own experiences
with drugs, he wanted to
help others.
Kenney, 39, received his master’s
degree in Latin American studies
from the University of Florida
Middletown seems safe
Continued from page 1
“I don’t see violent crimes here,”
said Jue Chen, Electrical Engineering.
“I bike home from campus at 11
at night sometimes, and I’m never
really worried about something bad
happening to me.”
Chen is a Philadelphia native, where
he works as a waiter and cashier at his
parents’ restaurant. He is no stranger
to crime, as the restaurant was
robbed twice while he was working,
one time at gunpoint. He said that the
restaurant is in a good neighborhood,
and the robberies were just bad luck.
He feels very safe in Middletown.
While PSH and Middletown prove
safe places to live, both Stoehr and
Reismiller said the most common
crime committed by PSH students is
underage drinking. Stoehr said that
number continues to rise.
PSH and Middletown police have
programs to inform people how to
avoid becoming victim to crimes.
Officer Jenn Allshouse, campus
police,, runs a program called RAD
(Rape Aggression Defense), a 12
-hour self-defense course which
teaches self empowerment. She said
the course teaches people they don’t
THE CAPITAL TIMES
at the height of the drug war. He
studied how it affected the United
States and Colombian relations.
He received his doctorate degree
also from the University of Florida,
but in political science. For his
dissertation, he did a comparative
case study of the learning capacity
of the Colombian Drug Trafficking
Organizations and Government
Counter-Narcotics Agencies.
Kenney was even nominated for
the American Political Science
Association’s Helen Dwight Reid
Award for the best dissertation in
the field of international relations,
law and politics.
Teaching and scholarship had
always been an interest to Kenney.
He began teaching at Penn State
Harrisburg in fall 2003 and really
enjoys it, especially the
classroom interaction.
have to be a victim
Other programs of the PSH
police include SAFE (Self Defense
Awareness and Familiarization
Exchange Program) and courses on
drug and alcohol problems.
Middletown police participate
in DARE (Drug Awareness
Resistance Education) and
Stranger Danger programs in the
Middletown Area School District.
They also receive periodic training
to establish a good relationship
with the community. Their most
recent training book is called
The Police and the Community-
Successful Relationships /
Successful Outcomes.
Stoehr and Reismiller said that
to avoid victimization, students
should use common sense, follow
their instincts, and stay alert. Both
Adams and Chen said they are
always aware of their surroundings
and always watching their backs, no
matter what.
“Crimes can occur at any time, not
just if it’s dark or late,” said Stoehr.
“Everybody needs to be aware of i
their surroundings, and if something
doesn’t seem quite right, you should
trust your instincts.”
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“It’s great when students
participate and everyone is
collectively exposed to new ideas
that either of us may not have been
exposed to before,” he said.
In fact, he said that he couldn’t
think of any other job he would
rather do. The downside, however,
is grading. If it were up to him,
he would simply ask each student
what grade they honestly think they
deserve in the course and award that
grade, he said.
“I hate it,” he said laughing. “I’d
rather get together with all my
students and talk, read and discuss
as a group than grade tests
and papers.”
Classes he teaches include
• international relations, U.S. foreign
policy, Latin American politics,
politics of terrorism, and drug policy
in comparative perspective. Of
U.S. pesticide under scrutiny at world ozone meeting
Defense Council. He linked the
decision to additional cancer and
illness caused by radiation that
comes through the hole in
the ozone layer.
The Bush administration
also had to overcome
objections by
European allies who want
a faster reduction in the
fumigant’s use.
The U.S. position “is
certainly undermining
the spirit of the Montreal
Protocol and setting a
bad example for other
countries, especially
developing countries, and
their aspirations to comply
with the ban,” Swedish
delegate Husamuddin
Ahmadzai said before
the decision.
This year marks the first time other
nations working to curtail methyl
bromide production have seen the
size of the U.S. stockpile.
The administration says the
inventory is needed to ease growers’
adjustment to the methyl bromide
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Continued from page 1
mpri nian
MOVING TO
these, he teaches only two or three
a semester.
Kenney is fluent in two languages
and functional in one. The obvious,
English, and also in Spanish. He’s
functional in Portuguese. He was
bom in Indiana, raised in Australia,
and has lived in Boston, New York
and Florida. Out of the five places,
he liked Australia the best. In
addition to Australia, Ecuador and
Columbia, he has traveled to Brazil,
Israel and Canada. Recently, he got
the opportunity to go to Spain and
the United Kingdom to conduct
research, for which he is
very excited.
He moved to Pennsylvania from
Florida in 2003 and lives with his
wife and three-year-old daughter.
His wife has been one of his biggest
influences, he said. She helped
him to realize that there is more
phase-out that was ordered 14
years ago. Importantly, they say,
both stockpiles and production are
steadily declining.
Each year when seeking so-called
Photo courtesy of Googla Images
Jugs of pesticide pile in a landfill, an ozone-harming contributor.
critical use exemptions, U.S. officials
plead the case of American growers
who mostly use the potent chemical
to destroy pests before planting.
The restrictions have pushed many
farmers to switch to other pesticides,
but the United States says the
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it it it it it it it
to life than drugs and terrorism.
After the birth of his daughter, he
understood the concept of sharing
and selflessness.
“When you’re young, male and
single, you can afford to be selfish,”
said Kenney. “But when you have
a child, you recognize the fact that
sometimes they come first.”
As a child, he wanted to be a
baseball player, an architect and a
writer. At one point, he even thought
that he would be a novelist but then
he realized that writing fiction is
extremely difficult, so he’s glad that
he became a professor instead. His
goal now as a professor is to
be tenured.
Kenney’s hobbies include
watching the Florida Gators play
football, doing yard-work, playing
with his family and being with
his daughter.
substitutes don’t work in all cases.
The Bush administration says the
stockpiles existed before the 2005
ban and thus are not subject to the
same restrictions as newly produced
methyl bromide.
“The U.S. position is
that we are appropriately
managing the strategic
reserve,” said Drusilla
Hufford, director of the
Environmental Protection
Agency’s stratospheric
protection division.
“We’ve drawn it down
every year.”
She said the United States
has spent $l5O million on
alternative pesticides and
has achieved a 75 percent
reduction from 1991
methyl bromide levels.
“There’s a lot going on
but in order to continue
the progress so you
don’t have supply shocks or sudden
unanticipated changes in the market,
we found in the past that it is useful
and helpful to the cause of ozone
protection to have that reserve,” she
said.
Advocates say the stockpiles far
Kenney's list of fovs
surpass what is needed for a market
cushion. They say the U.S. approach
undercuts the goal of limiting methyl
bromide because stockpiles can be
used to meet demands that the treaty
has rejected.
Former EPA Administrator William
Reilly said the current U.S. stance,
14 years after methyl bromide was
added to the treaty’s target list,
undercuts world efforts to protect the
Earth’s ozone.
“The point of the Montreal Protocol
was to get us out of ozone depleters
and provide a certain transition, with
some small exemptions,” he said.
“We provided for that, but a 14-year
transition is a little hard to justify for
mainline uses.”
The EPA in September disclosed
that the methyl bromide inventory,
owned by 35 companies, reached
almost 11,000 tons at the
beginning of this year, down
from more than 18,000 tons two
years earlier.
U.S. farmers are allowed
nearly 8,900 tons under treaty
exemptions, of which about 7,600
tons can be newly manufactured or
imported. The rest would be drawn
from stockpiles.
Place to travel:
Anywhere oversees.
Animal: Dogs because
they are man's
best friend.
Food: Steak.
Drink: Milk. He drinks
gallons of it in just
one week.
Sport: Real wrestling. Not
that fake stuff shown
on TV.
Achievement: His
book called "From
Pablo to Osama:
Trafficking and Terrorist
Networks, Government
Bureaucracies, and
Competitive Adaptation"
that is scheduled to
come out in April 2007.
Music: Classic rock.