IST Around the State
Long named statewide IST faculty member of the year
Jason Long, instructor in IST and IST program leader for Penn State DuBois was named the College of IST Statewide Faculty Member of the Year for 2011-12. The award is given to a faculty member who has consistently supported IST programs at his or her campus, has been a champion for the college, and has made a difference in the community.
“I cannot say enough about Jason. Not only is he a powerful force for IST at DuBois, but he is also a most valued colleague,” said Gerry Santoro, a founding associate professor of IST, and the director of IST Commonwealth Academic Affairs at Penn State. “Jason is a very valuable member of the IST faculty, and I think this award is very much deserved,” Santoro continued.
Hired in 2001, Long has received multiple awards for his service at Penn State DuBois. These awards include Tech Prep Educator of the Year from the North Central Pennsylvania Tech Prep Consortium in 2006, Penn State DuBois’ Penn Stater of the Quarter in the Spring of 2006, and the DuBois Education Foundation Educator of the Year in 2010. Long also has been recognized by DELL for his innovative approach to teaching IST, using DELL’s servers.
Additionally, Long served on the IST Undergraduate Advising Committee, the 75th Anniversary Committee, Teaching, Learning and Technology Advisory Committee, the campus’ University Hearing Board, and other committees.
Long is the founder of the Video Game Day events on campus. These events are held each semester, and bring Penn State students, high school students, and other members of the community together in a fun, safe environment to play video games. Long also uses the events as an educational tool, with his students setting up the computer networks used during Video Game Day. He also coaches soccer and baseball for local youth leagues.
Schuylkill students produce digital stories about community’s history
IST students in Dr. Jeffrey Stone’s IST 301 class at Penn State Schuylkill have been producing digital stories highlighting the history, culture, and events of the Schuylkill County community. This ongoing project involves a local non-profit, Schuylkill County’s VISION, and a local museum/art center, the WalkIn Arts Center. In one project, students constructed a series of digital stories focused on Schuylkill County’s shoe manufacturing industry. The purpose of these videos is to educate the public about the rich heritage through archival materials and first-person oral histories of former shoe industry workers. Students were given the opportunity to interview current and former shoe industry workers as well as individuals whose families had a long history of involvement with the industry. These interviews formed the basis for a series of five digital stories. These videos can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/DrStoneIST.
Virtual incubator at Berks (VIB) to foster student innovations
Dr. Abdullah Konak, associate professor of IST at Penn State Berks, has been awarded a grant by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance titled “A Virtual Incubator at Penn State Berks (VIB) to Foster Student Innovations.” This grant will support the development of a Virtual Incubator at Penn State Berks (VIB) to facilitate Entrepreneurship Student Teams (E-Teams) to launch their IT-based ideas. The VIB is conceptualized as a virtual environment that provides E-Teams with high-end IT resources, which are difficult for students to acquire, and technical and business support through partnerships with academic and industry experts. The grant will also provide seed-funding to E-Teams for patent searches, marketing, and business plan research and development.
Collaborative virtual computer laboratory (CVCLAB) to enhance distance learning in information security
Five IST programs—Altoona, Beaver, Berks (the lead institution), Greater Allegheny, and Harrisburg—
have received an NSF TUES award ($154,151) to enhance information security education by enabling students to practice important skills and to learn together both inside and outside the classroom using a virtual computer laboratory, with a particular focus on distance learning. During the course of the project, the five programs will use the Collaborative Virtual Computer Laboratory (CVCLAB) located at Penn State Berks in several IST and SRA courses. The research activities will involve collecting evidence on the impacts of student-to-student interactions mediated by group work in CVCLAB on student learning, particularly in distance learning, and the project outcomes will provide valuable insights for educators who design distance learning curricula and educational materials.
The project team members include, Michael Bartolacci, Abdullah Konak, Sadan Kulturel, and Mahdi Nasereddin from Berks, Jungwoo Ryoo from Altoona, Abhijit Dutt from Beaver, Philip Hippensteel from Harrisburg, and Galen Grimes from Greater Allegheny.
IST senior Linda Camacho teaches virtual computing at Kenya
Linda Camacho, a senior IST student at Penn State Berks, spent three weeks at the Children Youth Empowerment Centre (CYEC) in Nyeri, Kenya, this summer, working with the centre’s IT staff to utilize virtual computing to train former street children in IT skills. Camacho visited CYEC as a member of a Berks team to teach the children to become entrepreneurs with a focus on recycling e-waste. This program was supported by a grant awarded to Dr. Sadan Kulturel-Konak by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). More information about this work can be found on the team’s blog
http://ewasteatpsu.wordpress.com.
Berks IST faculty spent summer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Penn State Berks IST program faculty members Dr. Sadan Kulturel-Konak and Dr. Abdullah Konak were invited to spend two months this summer at the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. They both conducted research and Kulturel-Konak taught a summer course titled “Engineering and Technology Management” in their International Summer School.
The Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong offers world-class educational and research programs focused on information systems, operations research, optimization and quantitative decision making technologies, and their applications in engineering management, financial engineering and logistics, and supply chain management.
Dwivedi brings SAP training to Beaver campus
Neelam Dwivedi, instructor in information sciences and technology at Penn State Beaver, recently received an SAP Business Associate Certificate (TERP10) from the TERP10 SAP Academy after completing an intensive two-week training course offered by SAP America in Georgia. Dwivedi shared her training this fall as Beaver campus introduced SAP-based content into several undergraduate courses at the junior and senior level. The courses, which will help students in gaining SAP skill sets as well as earning an SAP Achievement Recognition Award and a SAP Business Associate Certificate (TERP10), are designed in conjunction with the SAP University Alliance Program of which Penn State is an active member. Students who complete a minimum of three SAP-approved courses are eligible to receive a SAP Student Recognition Award.
In addition, the SAP Student Recognition Award will make students eligible to attend the SAP TERP10 certification course, which is a two-week instructor-led course followed by an online exam administered by SAP America. The program is designed for students who want to expand their general knowledge of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) business processes using one of the leading ERP software applications in the industry. Penn State Beaver will offer this 2-week course in summer 2012 immediately after commencement
week.
