Programs like the Workshops for Science Teachers serve to fulfill the outreach mission of the Eberly College of Science by integrating teaching, research and service activities to meet society’s changing needs.
Dr. Norman Freed, associate dean of the Eberly College of Science and professor of physics, noted, “The Eberly College of Science recognizes its need to be fully engaged in transmitting the benefits of its research and instructional programs to increasingly broad and diverse audiences. Our outreach efforts can be seen as an attempt to translate that recognition into reality. ”
Some highlights of the college’s outreach programming include:
 | The Statistical Consulting Center provides statistical consulting services to faculty and students across the University. The college is in the process of extending these services to external constituencies, including corporate and governmental sectors as well. |
| The Cooperative Education program provides opportunities for students in the Eberly College of Science to be placed as interns in industrial and governmental labs and offers potential employment services to the employers. Current efforts to expand internship offerings will extend opportunities for corporate internship appointments of graduate students in statistics and in the Life Sciences Consortium. |
| The postbaccalaureate premedical program provides opportunities for individuals who have graduated from nonscience programs in this and other colleges and universities to obtain the educational background necessary to qualify for admission to medical and other health-related schools. |
| For the past decade, the Eberly College of Science has hosted the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Sciences conference. Each year, the three-day meeting brings to Penn State approximately 4,000 students and 500 teachers from public and private schools across the Commonwealth. |
| The Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department (BMMB) hosts the annual Summer Symposium program, which has for more than a decade attracted eminent speakers and audiences from around the world. Like BMMB, all of the departments in the Eberly College of Science host a wide range of professional meetings, which enjoy broad attendance and participation. |
| Biotechnology workshops conducted as an outreach activity of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department attract technical staff personnel from biotechnology firms across the country who attend in order to improve and update their analytical skills in subfields of biotechnology. |
| The Chemistry Department hosts Hewlett-Packard workshops in analytical chemistry, such as high-performance liquid chromatography and gas chromatography, for technical staff in the chemistry field nationwide. |
| For four years, departments in the college have delivered summer institutes for high school teachers (Please see cover story). In the coming years, the college plans to expand offerings to include more disciplines. The new institutes will continue to be directed primarily to high school teachers and will offer opportunities to update and enhance their subject matter expertise in various sciences. |
| An on-line master’s degree program in statistics is now being prepared for delivery through the Penn State World Campus. |
| A new Center for Industrial Mathematics will be housed in the Math Department. The center is being developed as an expansion of the Statistical Consulting Center concept and will include a broad program of outreach initiatives in mathematics. |
| Next summer, a variety of youth camps will offer opportunities for middle and high school groups to study science topics in either day camp or residence settings. The main focus of these camps will be in areas of astronomy, chemistry, physics and the life sciences. |
