Robin Bower, associate professor of Spanish and comparative literature and culture at Penn State Beaver, is one of only two University faculty members to receive the 2012 Milton S. Eisenhower Award for Distinguished Teaching. The award recognizes excellence in teaching and student support among tenured faculty who have been employed full time for at least five years with undergraduate teaching as a major portion of their duties. Bower received the Penn State Beaver Bayer Corporation Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Penn State Beaver Advisory Board Michael Baker Corporation Faculty Excellence in Research Award. She is the campus Honors Program coordinator and chairs the Penn State Beaver Retention Task Force and its subcommittee on pedagogy. Bower can be contacted at rmb29@psu.edu or 724-773-3886.
One of the benefits students have at a major national research university like Penn State is not only learning from faculty in the classroom but also working alongside them -- in the laboratory or the library -- doing research. Undergraduate students like Christine Theberge and Josh Yeh, who are conducting their own undergraduate research, and those who hold research assistant positions have the opportunity to expand their knowledge in areas of academic interest while developing valuable research skills and relevant work experience. (more)
Holly Moncavage, a junior in Penn State Law, will use her labor law fellowship for a summer position at The Workplace Project in New York, helping migrant workers pursue lost wages and unite for better living and working conditions. More than 500 people from 125 law schools applied for the nearly 70 fellowships that were issued by the Peggy Browning Fund. (more)
To get Spanish exposure during a time when the language is a growing part of the agricultural industry, select students in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences go to central Mexico for four weeks every summer. (more)
Penn State York's Cultural and Performing Artists series kick-offs with the acoustic guitar sounds of Javier Mendoza on Monday, Sept 19. This free performance is set for 7 p.m. in the Community Room of the Joe and Rosie Ruhl Student Community Center at the campus. This series is sponsored by the campus and MediaOnePA. Tickets are not required for free performances. (more)
Penn State Beaver students hosted a Day of the Dead celebration last Monday and raised more than $300 for cancer-related charities, including the Susan G. Komen For the Cure organization. The students are members of the Spanish classes taught by Robin Bower, associate professor of Spanish. The funds are from faculty, staff, students and members of the public who visited the exhibit. For more information about next year's Day of the Dead event, contact Bower at rmb29@psu.edu or 724-773-3886. (more)
Penn State student Victoria Jackson, an international politics major and Spanish minor from Fontata, Calif., is interested in Latin American politics and wanted to refine her Spanish language skills. So she studied abroad in Venezuela, living in the town of Merida, taking classes taught entirely in Spanish, visiting Caracas as well as an Afro-indigenous town. She shares her views -- and a few photos from her time studying abroad. (more)
Carol Scheffner Hammer, associate professor of communication sciences and disorders in Penn State's College of Health and Human Development, was recently awarded a $500,000 Head Start-University Partnership Grant that studies the efficacy of a bilingual school-readiness program called Madres educando a sus ninos/Mothers Educating Their Children, a book-reading program that engages mothers through the Hispanic culture. (more)
An article titled "Remembering Things Past: Reading History, Writing Memory and the Poetics of Agency in Ernesto Cardenal" by Robin Bower, associate professor of Spanish at Penn State Beaver, was published recently in the refereed journal The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Vol. 85, Issue 3, 2008. In the spring Bower will serve as a visiting professor in the Department of Romance Languages at Duke University where she'll also teach an upper-level undergraduate seminar and a graduate seminar in medieval Spanish literature. (more)
