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Outreach . . . Out There
Penn State is one of three organizations sharing a $480,729 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.	Training program unites communities and police   Community policing brings citizens and police together to deal with crime and other social problems in their community. Now, a federal grant is enabling five Pennsylvania counties to create community policing models.   Penn State is one of three organizations sharing a $480,729 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Penn State Lehigh Valley Continuing and Distance Education Office, Penn State Cooperative Extension, the ALERT Partnership and the City of Bethlehem Police Department are partners in this program.   The one-year grant, one of 35 awarded nationwide in 1997, is funding training for municipal police and interested citizens in Carbon, Lehigh, Monroe, Northampton and Schuylkill counties that will help these counties set up community policing programs. To implement the program, the three partners have created the Pennsylvania Regional Community Policing Institute.   John F. Sullivan, assistant professor of administration of justice and member of Penn State’s Institute for Continuing Justice Education and Research, is project director. Kenneth A. McGeary, director of continuing education at Penn State Lehigh Valley, is overall project manager. Penn State faculty members and others are serving as instructors for the training, which is being offered at the Lehigh Valley campus of Penn State Berks–Lehigh Valley College.   Sullivan noted that Penn State has taken the lead in the technical assistance component of the project by providing 10 laptop computers to police organizations to assist them in sharing information over the Pennsylvania Regional Community Policing Institute’s World Wide Web site at http://www.lv.psu.edu/pa-rcpi. The site is enabling residents and police to exchange ideas about community policing.   The ALERT Partnership, part of the Department of Community Health and Health Studies of Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, is helping police build community partnerships that focus on public health and engage neighborhood-based solutions. The Bethlehem Police Department is providing training in family group conferencing techniques that can be used when working with school resource personnel, school administrators, probation officers, guidance counselors and social workers.   The training program will help police and community residents build partnerships between different populations, create community advisory panels and use problem-solving techniques community-wide.   The federal grant is supporting training, equipment, Web site and E-mail development, needs assessments in each community and establishment of community task forces.

PBS uses Olympic Winter Games as teaching tool for young people   The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) partnered with WNET, IBM, CBS and the U.S. Olympic Committee to launch the U.S. Olympic Cyber School Web Site at http://www.ibm.pbscyberschool.org for the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.   The Web site demonstrated the enormous effect the Web can have on education and learning. Built around the Olympic events of downhill skiing, snowboarding and figure-skating, the site offered beginning, intermediate and advanced problem-solving exercises for middle school students working by themselves or with others, both at school and at home, and also offered national standards-based lesson plans and training for teachers to implement technology into the classroom.   WPSX-TV, Penn State’s public television station, is a PBS member station. WPSX supported the U.S. Olympic Cyber School Web site, providing a link to the site from its Web page at http://www.outreach.psu.edu/EdComm/.		Penn College develops statewide job training program   The Pennsylvania Department of Community Economic Development has awarded $203,000 to the Pennsylvania College of Technology and OSRAM Sylvania for development of a customized job training program.   The College’s Technology Transfer Center is providing training to 2,733 OSRAM Sylvania employees at the company’s St. Marys, Towanda, Warren, Wellsboro and York plants and its distribution center in Bethlehem. Training ranges from computer instruction to process chemistry orientation. The program is helping the company maintain competitiveness in a global market.
Continuing Education—Cooperative Extension Partnerships Strengthening Outreach
New tree identification course   A noncredit Tree Identification course was developed by a Penn State Cooperative Extension forester and delivered in Bradford County through the Northern Tier Continuing Education Office. The program evolved into a 2-credit graduate course on Pennsylvania Forest Environments for teachers. The course included forest field trips and a visit to a forest products industrial site, among other activities. It was delivered in summer 1997 to a group of about 15 teachers and will be offered again in summer 1998. Internet classes for gardeners and farmers   The Franklin County Cooperative Extension Office partnered with the Penn State Mont Alto Continuing Education Office to deliver Internet classes to master gardeners and local farmers. Extension staff members taught the classes using the computer lab at Penn State Mont Alto. They showed participants how to use the Internet and how to employ various search strategies to find the information they need. In addition, participants received a list of World Wide Web sites used by horticulturists, farmers and others interested in gardening and farming. Training consortium   A training consortium in Fulton County is being established by 17 small businesses, Penn State Mont Alto, Fulton County Cooperative Extension Office, Fulton County Vo-Tech and Fulton County Economic Development Corp. The consortium’s goal is to deliver education and training programs at a reasonable cost to businesses and individuals in Fulton County.		Summer camps for children   An ongoing collaboration between the Penn State Wilkes-Barre Continuing Education Office and the Luzerne County Cooperative Extension Office continues to enrich the program of 35 to 40 summer camps offered for children from kindergarten through 12th grade. Staff members from the two offices work together to design new program offerings, and they highlight each other’s camps in their respective marketing publications, increasing the market exposure for both summer camp programs. Needs assessment   The Mercer County Cooperative Extension Office and Penn State Shenango teamed up to conduct an assessment of what teachers need to learn about the Internet, World Wide Web and educational software for the classroom. Using a grassroots approach, which is the cornerstone of the Cooperative Extension needs assessment process, representatives from Penn State Shenango and the extension office met with elementary and secondary school principals, superintendents, curriculum coordinators and computer coordinators. The meeting resulted in a consensus that school-by-school, small-group training sessions, rather than other types of programs or college credit courses, would be the most effective means of meeting teachers’ needs. Youth programming survey   Continuing Education and Cooperative Extension conducted a joint survey of faculty and staff involved in youth programming to determine the level and type of youth programming being conducted, identify professional development and training needs for faculty and staff, and discover opportunities for greater collaboration in future youth programs at both the regional and state level.