Susquehanna University Sustainability Web Package

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Many of today’s prospective college students are interested in sustainability issues. Susquehanna University, in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, has a lot going on regarding environmental stewardship and it rightfully wanted its website to accurately reflect that. I previously wrote a 2015 cover story for SU’s Currents magazine on the university’s Freshwater Research Initiative, an SU-led consortium of universities and agencies studying the health of the Susquehanna River watershed. As a result, the University Communications office felt I was a logical choice to pull together their sustainability web package.

The assignment involved reviewing copy that already existed, interviewing several administrators and students who were extensively involved in sustainability projects, and creating new and revised copy. The resulting smartly designed web package offers a comprehensive but easily digestible survey that includes:

  • academic programs and research
  • a switch to natural gas heating that resulted in an 80 percent reduction of the university’s carbon footprint; and
  • various examples of student engagement, including recycling efforts and a student-run garden that grows fresh produce for local children and adults in need of good quality food.

To view SU’s sustainability web content, please click here.

 

TU Engineering Graduate Profiles

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Each December and May I profile a handful of seniors who are graduating from Temple University’s College of Engineering. I love interviewing promising students on the cusp of moving on to exciting jobs or interesting graduate programs, and I am fascinated by the breadth of engineering disciplines and how applicable the field is to our daily lives.

Among the latest profiles:

  • Carrigan Braun, a mechanical engineer working on space systems and electronic packaging for a Space Coast contractor in Melbourne, Florida. Her firm developed some of the satellite technology that Google Maps utilized to guide her around San Francisco during her internship with the Pacific Gas & Electric Company the previous summer;
  •  Gabriella Suarez, who is now a software engineer and technical analyst for JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Wilmington, Delaware; and
  • Timothy Schisselbauer, a bioengineering graduate inspired by his physician uncle to enter medical school at Temple.

TU Science & Technology Magazine Illustrates Breadth of Science Research and Career Topics

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This past academic year’s Outlook magazine, the magazine of Temple University’s College of Science and Technology (CST), amply illustrates the wide variety of topics that makes the field so interesting to write about. My cover story (p. 16) focused on scientific breakthroughs and innovations emanating from the college’s 11 research centers and institutes.

Temple researchers are tackling HIV/AIDS, sepsis and ovarian and oral cancers. Can laser-activated gold nanoparticles treat diseases? What’s the next generation of bioinformatics tools needed to fuel the revolution in computational biology and genomics? Cutting-edge investigations are also occurring in materials research and wireless technologies, and one Temple professor is saving endangered species and helping create national parks in Haiti.

In addition, I contributed three other research briefs and wrote three profiles of alumni. They included a Nairobi-based biologist for Conservation International; a math and computer science graduate now developing streaming software for Amazon in London; and a biology graduate and Johns Hopkins doctor who returned to his Greek neighborhood in Baltimore to launch a community medicine program.

To view the latest issue of CST’s Outlook magazine, please click here.

Susquehanna University: A Dickens of a Good Story

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For an English major and lifelong reader of fiction, an opportunity Susquehanna University gave me earlier this year was a dream assignment. In conjunction with the 205th celebration of novelist Charles Dickens’ birthday, I was asked to write a web story about a donation to the university’s rare book collection that included the 20 original monthly installments of Dickens’ third novel, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby (1838-39).

The donation, from a Susquehanna graduate and her husband whose son is now attending the university, also included a first edition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha. In addition, the couple lent the university’s library first editions of some sketches written anonymously by Dickens and three first editions of Washington Irving’s stories.

One of the revelations of the story: product placement is nothing new. In one of the Nicholas Nickleby installments, Dickens mentions a woman “…who every morning bathes in Kalydor …” That same moisturizer was also touted in advertisements that accompanied the serialized text.

To view the story, please click here.

TU Education Magazines Feature Nation’s Top Educational Researcher and Dynamic History Teacher

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This past academic year I wrote, edited and helped project manage two issues of Educator, The Temple University College of Education’s 24-page magazine. The fall 2016 issue cover story profiled Linda Darling-Hammond, EdD ’78. After holding high-powered education faculty positions at both Columbia and Stanford universities, the influential educational researcher last year launched the Washington, D.C.-based Learning Policy Institute. Her nonprofit seeks to bridge the gap between proven research and U.S. educational policy.

The spring 2017 issue cover story profiled Jim Percoco, a 1979 College of Education graduate whose emphasis on place-based history learning experiences has resulted in 36 of his students becoming National Park Service rangers. Originally, the story was only going to be a one-page alumni feature. But the more I learned about Percoco, including  his ties to renowned historian David McCullough and historical documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, the more I felt the story was worth a feature. And it certainly was.

To do the story, I traveled to Harpers Ferry National Park in West Virginia to spend a day with Percoco and his students. His back-and-forth dialogue with them illustrates a teacher at the top of his game. Additionally, I took some of the photographs that illustrate the story, including the first cover photograph that I have ever had published.

To view the fall 2016 Educator featuring Linda Darling-Hammond, please click here.

To view the spring 2017 Educator featuring Jim Percoco, please click here.

TU College of Ed Magazine Features Neighborhood Partnerships

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The spring 2016 issue of the Educator, the magazine of the Temple University College of Education, features the extensive partnerships the college has forged with the two Philadelphia School District elementary schools that are closest to the university’s North Philadelphia campus. The partnerships are funded by a federal grant awarded to the City of Philadelphia–with Temple as the grant’s lead educational partner–to improve the lives of the residents of the nearby Norris Homes.

To research the partnerships, which include services offered by the College of Education and by outside vendors selected by the college, such as an after-school science, technology, engineering, art and math program, I spent one morning and one afternoon at Tanner G. Duckrey School. The most serendipitous moment occurred when a young girl who had celebrated her sixth birthday the previous day asked me to read a book with her during the first-grade Reading Hour–which involves trained Temple student volunteers reading with small groups. Pointing to an illustration of a freshly baked apple pie, with a great smile she told me that her mother had just baked one for her birthday.

I’ve been the chief writer for the College of Education’s publications, including the Educator, for the past decade. The magazine’s other feature story focuses on graduates who pursued careers outside the classroom, including an executive head hunter, Aetna’s chief technology officer and the global head of web and online platforms for J.P. Morgan Wealth Management.

Besides handling most of the writing, I also edit the rest of the copy and provide project management services.

To view the latest Educator, please click here.

 

 

Temple Spring Graduations: Student Success Stories and Commencement Address Announcement

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Prior to this spring’s graduations at Temple University, I wrote six web stories about successful graduating College of Engineering students and also profiled a successful graduating chemistry major from the College of Science and Technology.

I also wrote a story about the College of Engineering’s commencement speaker, Joseph C. McGinley, MD, PhD, the inventor of an innovative orthopaedic drill who earned four degrees from Temple, including BS and MS degrees in mechanical engineering, his MD and his PhD in physiology.

The engineering student profiles included:

  • Sarah Del Casale, who is simultaneously taking advantage of Temple’s accelerated master’s degree program to earn her master’s during the next year while working full time for AECOM, the country’s top-rated civil engineering design firm.
  • Claire Durand, who will be pursing a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Columbia University; and
  • Shaun George, a Dubai native who also is taking advantage of Temple’s 4-plus-1 master’s degree program to earn a graduate degree in bioengineering.

Finally, for the College of Science and Technology I also profiled new graduate Kyle Knouse, an already published organic chemistry student who is heading west to pursue his PhD at the prestigious Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

WCU Magazine Cover Story: 2009-16 Tenure of President Greg Weisenstein

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The latest issue of the West Chester University Magazine features a cover story I wrote on the tenure of President Greg Weisenstein, who stepped down this spring after leading the burgeoning state school since 2009.

To write the text for an 11-page spread, I interviewed a handful of faculty, staff, alumni and West Chester Mayor Carolyn Comitta. I then sat down with Weisenstein and his wife Sandra for a 90-minute interview in the university’s historic presidential home. During the interview, I realized that, on the living room wall opposite of where I sat, hung an Andrew Wyeth original. Afterwards, the Weisensteins gave me a brief tour of the home that included the formal dining room. Prominently featured there was a large Charles Willson Peale portrait of George Washington–a portrait whose image was used by the U.S. Postal Service for two different stamps it issued to celebrate both the bicentennial of Washington’s birth in 1932 and the nation’s bicentennial in 1776.

To view the cover story, click here and go to pages 15-25.

WCU Annual Report Highlights University-wide Research

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For the second year in a row, I highlighted the work of more than a dozen faculty members and a half-dozen undergraduate students for West Chester University’s 2014-15 Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Annual Report. Gautam Pillay, PhD, WCU’s associate vice president for research and sponsored programs, first approached me in the fall of 2013 to write most of a 20-page report highlighting the research, scholarship and creative activities occurring at WCU, which has become the flagship university among the 14 institutions that comprise the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.

Like the first such report, the second one ranged widely from hard science to the arts: from parsing out evolutionary clues found in hermaphroditic snails and developing chemical forensic detection techniques for new designer drugs to analyzing Greek statuettes, conducting linguistic detective work in Hispanic New Mexico and comparing the quality of guidance programs at rural vs. urban high schools.

To view the WCU annual report, click here.

 

Susquehanna University: Aquatic Research Cover Story, Alumni Profiles

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Last August, for the second time in as many months, I donned thigh-high waders to wade through a creek—this time just south of Selinsgrove, Pa., in a narrow stream whose waters shortly thereafter drain into the extremely broad Susquehanna River. I was working on the cover story for the fall issue of Susquehanna Currents—the alumni magazine of Susquehanna University (SU), which is located along the river in Selinsgrove.

The story, “Netting Electric Results,” details the university’s role as the hub of a coalition of 34 academic institutions, government agencies and nonprofit groups dedicated to studying and improving the health of the Susquehanna River. They are doing so through the Freshwater Research Initiative, which is being funded by a three-year, $2.5 million grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

To write the story I conducted numerous phone interviews with various coalition members and current SU students and graduates who have been involved in aquatics research. I also spent a morning tromping through the stream in order to observe SU researchers temporarily electroshocking fish. Their goal: to see if the stream held trout—an indicator of enhanced water quality that triggers enhanced state protections. (It did.)

I pride myself in doing significant background research before I ever conduct an interview or go out into the field to report on a story. In this case, it paid off. Jonathan Niles, the FRI director and one of the researchers in the stream that day, later told one of my SU editors that he was impressed with how well I understood his team’s research program.

Before I decided majoring in English, I seriously considered forestry. That’s why I love writing about science, particularly regarding nature and the environment. I’m always stumbling upon fascinating information. For example, in writing about the river, I learned the following, which became part of the story:

“Its two branches also have distinct chemical signatures. Reflecting the legacy of acid-mine drainage, the West Branch is more acidic. The North Branch carries more sediment and nutrients—a result of agricultural runoff—which, in turn, nurtures oxygen-stifling algae.

“Interestingly, after the two branches meet at Sunbury, their waters flow like two distinct rivers side-by-side, without really mingling together, for about 40 miles. At that point, the Juniata River pours in from the west bank, and the three rivers flow side-by-side for another 10 miles until the rocks studding the river near Harrisburg finally churn the waters together.”

To read the Susquehanna Currents cover story, click here.

In addition, as I have done for the past five years, last fall I interviewed five alumni who were SU’s 2015 alumni award winners: Rick Dorman ’75, the president of Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa.; Peter Arduini ’86, president and CEO of Integra LifeSciences, a $2.5 billion regenerative tissue and medical technology firm based in Plainsboro, N.J.; Michael Kling ’80, an award winning volunteer firefighter near West Point, N.Y.; Jeff Morgan, the immediate past president of the SU Alumni Association’s executive board; and Cassandra Smolcic ’06, a former Pixar Animation Studio designer who now works with Turner Duckworth, a national design firm based in San Francisco.

The interviews resulting in 350-word profiles that were multipurposed, appearing in the awards banquet program and, on SU’s website, as a supplement to much shorter versions that were published in Currents.

To view the alumni profiles, click here.