Alumni & Philanthropy News
Science Journal -- Spring 1997 -- Vol 14, No. 1
In this issue of Science Journal we have integrated the alumni and philanthropy news sections to more appropriately represent the working relationship between these two areas of institutional advancement. The alumni relations and development staff share office space and work together as a team to serve our graduates and to secure resources for college programs.
We hope you will enjoy reading the news and stories on these few pages and invite your suggestions of how we might make this section more informative. Our job is to stay in touch with you and learn about your ideas, your perspectives, and your accomplishments. We believe that our alumni are a resource that can provide valuable advice and input on much of what we attempt to do in the college.
So, let us hear from you. Tell us what you have been doing since graduation. If you are changing location or career, our network of other Penn Staters might be helpful to you. Our academic departments are always looking for speakers or for industry representatives to visit with students and faculty. Perhaps you or someone you know would be an appropriate candidate for one of the alumni awards for professional accomplishments given by Penn State. Many of you have reached that time of your life when you are planning your estate and may want to explore the tax-wise ways of remembering Penn State. If you've always wanted to do something for your alma mater, tell us about it. Together we can make it happen!
Our offices are located in 430 Thomas Building. Please stop in for a visit if your plans bring you to campus, and remember to give us a call if there is anything we may do for you.
Joanne T. Cahill, director of development and alumni relations
Suzanne Sinclair Grieb, assistant director of alumni relations
The Eberly College of Science Alumni Society has a lot to be proud of this year. As we continue to focus on ways to be of service to alumni, students, and the college, we can include among our list of accomplishments the establishment of two new programs. Last fall, we honored the accomplishments of three alumni through the Alumni Society's new Outstanding Science Alumni Award. I am also pleased to announce that the Eberly College of Science Alumni Society Board Endowment, a fund created to help support alumni, faculty, and student activities and programs and promote the educational, research, and outreach missions of the college, has reached its initial endowment goal of $10,000. We thank all those who have contributed to this fund to date and look forward to watching the endowment grow over the years.
In addition to these two new programs, as well as continuing existing Society-sponsored awards and activities, we hope to host several receptions this year at locations away from campus in an effort to get to know more of our alumni. We hope that these receptions will provide networking opportunities for alumni, as well as give our alums the chance to meet the dean, other college staff members, and the Alumni Board. We'll keep you posted on these receptions as plans develop.
We recently celebrated the 20th year of the Eberly College of Science Alumni Society. While it's fun to look back at our history, as well as that of the college, we now need to spend our time looking forward. We encourage you to get involved. Become a member of the Alumni Association if you haven't already joined. Whether you contribute time, money, or professional expertise, there is a place for you in helping us find new ways to serve our alumni and the college. We always welcome your ideas and suggestions, and we invite you to join us at our meetings and events. We'd love to hear from you.
Thomas L. Reissmann, president
When the fax machine rang on January 25, 1996, just like it does a dozen times a week, it wasn't just a meeting agenda or typical fax. The obituary from the Ashland Ohio Times Gazette contained the sad news that Allen Scholl ('32 MS, '34 PhD Chem) had passed away at the age of 87.
A former chair of the chemistry departments at Ashland University, Westminster College, Marshall University, and Ohio State University-Mansfield, Scholl had a keen understanding of the role that private support plays in higher education. He also had a keen interest in developing a philanthropic plan with a dual purpose: to produce a steady income stream throughout his retirement and to shield his estate from taxes. Through a combination of gift annuities and a bequest plan, he accomplished his two-fold goal by establishing an endowed award and an endowed equipment fund in the Eberly College of Science chemistry department and also a University-wide scholarship.
As a former faculty member, Scholl found great satisfaction in his retirement by interacting with students. For this reason, he didn't want to wait for the Allen Scholl Award in Analytical Chemistry fund to be activated through his estate upon his death. He wanted the opportunity to get to know the Scholl awardees during his lifetime. By making an annual gift in the equivalent amount of the income generated for spending from an active endowment of this type, he early-activated the fund and three outstanding graduate students specializing in analytical chemistry received the Scholl award before his death. Each was presented a Scholl award certificate, custom designed by Scholl and members of the chemistry department, which represents the partnership between Scholl and Penn State. The Penn State and Scholl family seals are prominently displayed side by side.
Another kind of partnership?between the lecture and the laboratory?is represented by way of the Allen Scholl Endowed Chemistry Equipment fund. Because of his own academic background, Scholl was a firm believer in using hands-on laboratory experience to reinforce lecture material. When failing eyesight made it necessary for him to forego chemistry as a retirement hobby, he donated his own chemistry supplies and basic equipment to Penn State for chemistry students. Now that the endowment has been activated, the income generated will be used to maintain up-to-date technology in undergraduate instructional chemistry laboratories as well as in research laboratories where undergraduates participate in research experiences.
Scholl admitted a strong feeling of self-satisfaction throughout the late years of his life. He understood the impact of his philanthropy on current and future generations of chemists and never missed the opportunity to remind us that the true impact of his philanthropy was yet to come. The Scholl endowments are a perpetual salute to Allen Scholl's dedication to the field of chemistry and to Penn State.
Elaine C. Robinson
Jennifer Clark could have gone home to Pittsburgh last summer to wait on tables at her hometown pizza shop, but instead she spent many long days and nights in a chemistry lab on Davey Lab's fourth floor studying Capillary Electrophoresis (CE). George Fleming, a retired faculty member of the chemistry department and a benefactor of the Fleming-Meyer Award in Analytical Chemistry, visited with Jen amidst the lab's lasers to see exactly how she spent her summer as a Fleming-Meyer Award recipient.
Fleming listened intently as Jen explained how she injected cells into the ends of capillaries and studied them through laser technology. There were no lasers in the research lab where Fleming spent many long days and nights beginning in 1934 as a research assistant and instructor until he retired as professor emeritus in 1964. One common characteristic, however?found in both the Fleming lab of the mid-century and the lab of Professor of Chemistry Andrew Ewing, where Jen did research last summer?is a contagious enthusiasm for chemistry. As a matter of fact, Jen's summer research funding through the Fleming-Meyer Award was inspired by the relationship of Fleming and a former student, the late John A. Meyer ('49 BS, '50 MS CCh).
"When I was a student in Dr. Fleming's microanalytical chemistry course, he was my inspiration," stated Meyer. "Establishing an award in his name was my way of saying 'thank you' for his guidance as my major professor and for being a friend over the years."
Meyer provided the initial funding to establish the award and then Fleming himself provided additional funding to endow the fund. The university invested the initial gift and spends only a portion of the average annual investment return. The remaining income is added to the principal as protection against the eroding consequences of inflation. Through this perpetual endowment, enthusiasm for analytical chemistry will continue to spread at Penn State, thanks to Fleming and Meyer.
During the fall and spring semesters, the fund is used to help students of analytical chemistry defray the cost of tuition and books. In the summer, the income is used to fund undergraduate research in analytical chemistry and presents an opportunity for the students to reinforce their decisions to pursue chemistry as a career.
"Participation in research is important for undergraduate students because it allows them to get involved in what chemists actually do as professionals. It allows the students to experience an atmosphere of discovery and to work in a research environment similar to what they might expect in graduate school or in an industrial position," says Peter Jurs, professor of chemistry and head of the chemistry summer undergraduate research program.
Jen participated in a research program earlier in her Penn State academic career when she was a biology major. She learned through that experience that her interest was, in reality, in the chemistry behind the biology. She changed her major to chemistry and, anxious to add chemistry research experience to her academic portfolio, enthusiastically accepted the Fleming-Meyer Award. "The chance to apply in a research lab what I have been learning in lecture halls and textbooks heightens my interest in the field of chemistry and confirms that I'm headed in the right direction," says Clark.
Elaine C. Robinson
Theodore Steinman, '60 B.S. PM, a physician at Beth Israel Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and a clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was named a recipient of the Penn State Alumni Association's 1996 Alumni Fellow Award. The award is the most prestigious honor given by the Penn State Alumni Association. Steinman visited the Eberly College of Science for presentation of the award last fall.
He received a bachelor of science degree from Penn State in 1960 and a medical doctorate in 1964 from Georgetown University. Steinman completed his senior residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, where he now is director of the Dialysis Unit, medical coordinator of the Kidney Transplantation Service, and codirector of the Metabolic Stone Unit.
Steinman has research interests in many areas relating to kidney functioning in adults, including the treatment of glomerular disease, discontinuation of immunosuppressives in transplant recipients, dietary treatment of chronic renal failure, the role of nutrition in the predialysis renal failure population, and renal rehabilitation. He holds various committee positions that advance research in these and other areas.
Among the many prestigious awards Steinman has received are the Distinguished Service Award from the National Kidney Foundation in 1988, the Gift of Life Award from the National Kidney Foundation of Massachusetts in 1989, a listing in "The Best Doctors in America" in 1992 and every year thereafter to the present, a Kovlar Grant for Medical Education for South African Blacks in 1992, the Chairman's Award from the National Kidney Foundation in 1994, and the Physician of the Year Award in 1995 from the National Kidney Foundation of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Steinman is the founder and organizer of the Boston Inter-hospital Renal Rounds. He currently serves as a research review consultant with the Department of Veterans Affairs and as chairman of the agency's Data Monitoring Board. He is president of the National Kidney Foundation (Region I), past president of the Renal Physicians Association, vice-chairman of the Polycystic Kidney Research Foundation, member of the Life Options Rehabilitation Advisory Council, and member of the Oversight Committee of the Joint ASN-NKF-RPA Project on Dialysis Outcome Quality Initiative.
He serves on various editorial boards of scientific journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Annals of Internal Medicine, Transplantation Proceedings, the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, Artificial Organs, the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Nephrology News and Issues, the American Journal of Nephrology, Kidney International, and the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
The Alumni Fellow Award, presented by the Penn State Alumni Association, is administered in cooperation with the academic units. The Board of Trustees has designated the title of Alumni Fellow as permanent and lifelong.
Gordon G. Fee, '56 B.S. Phys, has been honored with the 1996 Distinguished Alumni Award. The award recognizes outstanding alumni "whose personal life, professional achievements, and community service exemplify the objectives of The Pennsylvania State University." The title, "Distinguished Alumni," is lifelong, and it is the highest honor Penn State can bestow upon an alumnus.
Fee has made many contributions to the U.S. Government's defense, energy research and development, and environmental programs and continues to do so in his current position as president and chief operating officer of Lockheed Martin Energy Systems. He began his career immediately after graduation from Penn State when he went to work for Union Carbide Corporation in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where for over thirty years he has been involved in programs sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission or the Department of Energy. He has worked on the development of nuclear power plants, on the separation of uranium isotopes, on energy conservation, and on many aspects of environmental remediation and waste management. He has held key managerial positions at the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he was Manager of all Nuclear Regulatory Agency Programs and Director of the Engineering Technology Division.
In 1982, Fee became manager of the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant, the country's most sophisticated machining and manufacturing facility for Nuclear Weapons. When Martin Marietta took over the management of the Oak Ridge Complex in 1984, he was named vice president for defense and manufacturing and Y-12 plant manager. In 1991 he became executive vice president and assumed his present position in 1993.
In 1986 he received the prestigious Eli Whitney Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers for his leadership in Computer Integrated Manufacturing. Under Fee's leadership, the 14,000 Lockheed Martin Energy Systems' employees won the vice president of the United State's Golden Hammer Award in 1995 for cost savings initiatives.
He is a lifetime member of the Penn State Alumni Association and is a member of the Lockheed Martin/Penn State Executive Liaison Team. As an avid and outspoken supporter of Penn State, he has worked to develop new partnerships between the Oak Ridge Complex and the University in research and industrial outreach. He was named a Penn State Alumni Fellow in 1992.
Three Penn State alumni are the first recipients of the Penn State Eberly College of Science Outstanding Science Alumni Award: Robert W. Emery, Jr., director of Cardiac Transplantation at the Minneapolis Heart Institute and cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon at the Minneapolis Heart Institute and St. Paul Heart and Lung Institute; J. Arthur Jones, founder and president of Futura Technologies, Inc.; and Max G. Lagally, Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Materials Science and Physics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
The award, established this academic year by the Board of Directors of the Eberly College of Science Alumni Society, recognizes outstanding science alumni for their leadership in science and for the impact they have had and will continue to have on society and their professions.
Robert W. Emery, Jr., '69 B.S. PM, has research and clinical interests in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, cardiovascular physiology, heart and heart-lung transplantation surgery, investigation of heart and heart-lung transplant donors, use of the artificial heart as a bridge to transplantation, investigation of laboratory models for the study of inotropic support following cardiac surgery, laboratory investigation of biochemical markers of cardiac rejection, and alternative treatments for the failing ventricle.
He has been instrumental in the education of research fellows as well as clinical cardiothoracic fellows, surgery residents, and medical students. He also is active in numerous professional societies and serves on many boards of directors. He is the author or coauthor of four books and more than 60 scholarly publications.
J. Arthur Jones, '61 M.A. '65 D. Ed Math, participates in improving the mathematics education of minority students through projects involving mathematics and science education, research planning and methodology, program analysis and evaluation, and mathematical applications. He founded Futura Technologies, Inc. which uses technology and other innovative techniques to enhance mathematics instruction at the precollege level. He also founded and directs the School-Home Alliance for Revitalized Education (SHARE) in Fairfax County, Virginia, whose objective is to improve student academic achievement through strong ties and cooperative activities between the school and the community. He was appointed chairman of the National Academy of Sciences Steering Committee for the "Making Mathematics Work for Minorities" project and currently is a member of the Committee on Minority Academic Achievement, which advises the Fairfax County Schools.
Max G. Lagally, '63 B.S. Phys, is recognized as one of the leading surface scientists in the world. His research involves structural disorder in surfaces, interfaces, and thin films; microscopic mechanisms of crystal growth; application of diffraction and scanned-probe microscopes to surface disorder, growth, and optical properties; electronic materials, multilayer films, and X-ray optics. Since 1980, over forty companies have requested his assistance in areas including thin-film deposition process development, surface analysis, and interpretation of surface diffraction patterns.
Lagally is the author or coauthor of over 200 publications, including three books. He holds two patents, and has a number of pending patent applications. He was awarded the 1996 American Physical Society Davisson-Germer Prize for his work in surface science.
He has initiated and taught courses to foster science education in youth and has developed and organized such programs as a middle-school science club that involves parents and university staff in weekly presentations. He also developed a program of research experiences for high school students at the University of Wisconsin Thin-Film Deposition Center.
Robert David Minard, senior lecturer in chemistry and director of the Mass Spectrometry Facility and Organic Chemistry Instructional Laboratories, is the recipient of the 1996 C. I. Noll Award for Excellence in Teaching. Sponsored by the Eberly College of Science Student Council and Alumni Society, the award is the college's highest honor for undergraduate teaching.
Minard has made major contributions to the improvement of the organic chemistry laboratory instructional program by developing new courses, restructuring existing ones, and reducing student and environmental exposure to chemical reagents and products by converting the introductory laboratories to microscale techniques. He has written five laboratory guides and instructor's manuals, including one for a writing-across-the-curriculum course, and has designed dozens of experiments for organic laboratory courses.
Among his major achievements are the establishment of an undergraduate Chemistry Resource Center Instrument Room; changes in course structures to allow the hundreds of students taking organic chemistry each semester to have access to modern computer, spectroscopic, and chromatographic instrumentation; and implementation of collaborative learning experiences. In 1993, he guided the $2 million renovation and complete modernization of the organic laboratories.
An expert in molecular analysis by mass spectrometry, his accomplishments include the discovery of a way to analyze many types of polymers in sealed vials both quantitatively and qualitatively. His recent research on polymeric hydrogen cyanide may provide insight into its role in prebiological chemistry. He is the author or coauthor of over 76 research publications.
Minard joined Penn State in 1973 as a lecturer in chemistry and director of the Mass Spectrometry Facility and was appointed director of the Organic Chemistry Instructional Laboratories in 1988 and senior lecturer in chemistry in 1996.
Among the accolades he has received are the Provost's Award in 1996, the Alumni Society Distinguished Service Award in 1994, the Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning Teaching Fellowship in 1994, and the duPont Teaching Award in 1964. He has also been honored by Phi Beta Kappa and American Men and Women of Science.
Nancy E. Killeen and Gary L. Mullen are the recipients of the 1996 Eberly College of Science Alumni Society Distinguished Service Award, the society's highest honor.
Established in 1979, the Distinguished Service Award is presented annually to individuals who have made exceptional service and leadership contributions to the college and/or its alumni society.
Nancy E. Killeen, '87 LAS, manager of staff services in the Department of Chemistry, supervises a majority of the department staff, oversees all department facilities, and manages the department's finances. She began her Penn State career in the Department of Data Processing in 1962 and has since held various positions throughout the University, including the Department of Mathematics and the Eberly College of Science Dean's Office. She joined the Department of Chemistry in 1982 as an administrative aide. "She is a team player with very evident concern for the interests of both the department and the University," states Steven M. Weinreb, head of the Department of Chemistry. "She is knowledgeable about all the workings of the Department of Chemistry and effectively handles most of our nonacademic matters." Killeen has served on several university committees and teams and is a member of the college planning committee and a university-wide continuous quality improvement team. She also is a Penn State student majoring in parks and recreation management and a member of the Alpha Sigma Lambda honorary society for returning adult students. She is a life member of the Penn State Alumni Association and also is a Penn State Nittany Lion Club honorary coach.
Gary L. Mullen, '70 M.A. '74 Ph.D. Math, associate chair of the Department of Mathematics, was honored for his more than 20 years of outstanding service to the Eberly College of Science. As the college's first assistant or associate dean to have held a position at a Penn State campus, he contributed a thorough understanding of the challenges facing Commonwealth Campus faculty and was effective in encouraging them to undertake research projects. "Dr. Mullen has given selflessly of his time for the good of the faculty and students and has excelled in many administrative duties related to the college, in addition to being widely recognized as a scholar, researcher, and effective instructor and advisor," says George E. Andrews, head of the Department of Mathematics.
After receiving his Ph.D. from Penn State in 1974, Mullen became an instructor at University Park. He was promoted to assistant professor of mathematics at the Penn State Shenango Valley Campus in 1975 where, after being promoted to associate professor in 1979, he remained until 1982. He was named assistant dean of the College of Science for Commonwealth Campuses and Continuing Education in the spring of 1982, professor and acting associate dean for research in 1989, and later that year associate dean for research, continuing education, and commonwealth education. He became associate chair in the Department of Mathematics in 1995. As research dean, he oversaw and had responsibility for grants and contracts for the entire college. He simultaneously maintained his research program and was the first person in the department to be funded by the National Security Agency.
He has published over 80 research papers related to finite fields and their many practical applications in information science and is regarded as an international expert in these areas. An enthusiastic teacher of undergraduate and graduate mathematics courses, Mullen has directed the Ph. D. theses of four students and has been selected by three Eberly College of Science student marshals to be their faculty escort at their graduations.
Mullen is founding editor-in-chief of Finite Fields and their Applications,
associate editor of Designs, Codes and Cryptography, and assistant
editor of Fibonacci Quarterly.