In his four years on the Nittany Lion football team, Joe Iorio racked up some impressive accomplishments: the first and only true freshman walk-on to earn a starting role as center; an instrumental player in this year's 9-4 turnaround season by helping to block for teammate Larry Johnson; and a key contributor to Penn State's offensive game.
But throughout the spring, National Football League scouts were equally impressed with Iorio's accomplishments off the playing field. An Information Sciences and Technology (IST) major, Iorio has maintained a 3.71 GPA.
Recently, he was awarded an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship, the 35th Penn State student-athlete to be selected. Named Academic All-Big Ten three times, Iorio last year also received the Nittany Lion Club Academic Achievement Award.
On April 27, Iorio signed as a free agent with the Indianapolis Colts.
"A lot of the NFL people don't really understand what IST is about, but when I tell them it is with computers, networking and developing business systems, they are really impressed," said Iorio, a native of Sylvania, Ohio. "My GPA's a pretty big surprise, too."
On his mother's advice, Iorio began his Penn State academic career as a computer engineering major.
"She told me to get into the hardest major possible, and the computer technology field was expanding," recalled Iorio, who graduated from St. Francis De Sales High School where he had wrestled and did track as well as played baseball and football. He also maintained a 4.0 GPA.
That game plan was fine until Iorio hit a required physics course. Then he switched to IST. While he enjoys project consulting and management, he prefers finding technical solutions to system problems.
That's partly what he did for his internship last summer with WinMill Software. Iorio worked out the bugs for coachillustrated.com, a site for high school football coaches. The biweekly, online magazine has attracted 50,000 subscribers who learn new drills, find new offensive and defensive schemes and read interviews with other coaches.
"Joe is really a class act who clearly models and represents what an IST graduate should be - a strong leader who can systematically address many facets of a complex situation and produce a thoughtful, well-balanced solution," said Michael McNeese, associate professor of IST. "Joe is what we mean by the word 'professional' and is someone fellow IST students can look up to for his accomplishments."
Iorio has three years in which to use the $6,900 NCAA postgraduate scholarship, but right now, his focus is on the gridiron rather than the classroom.
"I've been working toward this goal (of playing in the NFL) for a long time," Iorio said.
*mh*
