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Penn State Abington and Calkins Newspapers form alliance by Deborah A. Benedetti
President Graham Spanier speaks to members of the Calkins Newspapers group attending a Leadership Development program organized by Penn State Abington’s Continuing Education and Outreach Office. Photo by Dick Ackley— University Photo/Graphics Harry A. Johnson and Katheryn K. Woodley, Penn State Management Development Programs and Services faculty members, were the lead faculty for the Leadership Development program presented to 40 top managers of Calkins Newspapers Inc. Photo by Dick Ackley— University Photo/Graphics Cheryl M. Kaplan, assistant director of continuing education and outreach at Penn State Abington, and Grover Friend, president and chief executive officer of Calkins Newspapers Inc., are working together to design supervisory development programs for Calkins.	Since fall 1998, Penn State Abington has been working with Calkins Newspapers Inc., headquartered in Levittown, Pa., to design leadership development programs for the organization’s publishers and directors, who work at newspapers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida. Over the last three years, Penn State Abington’s Continuing Education and Outreach Office has been partnering with Penn State Management Development Programs and Services to design and deliver supervisory development and customer service programs for other managers of the newspaper group. Dr. Karen Wiley Sandler, dean and campus executive officer at Penn State Abington, strongly supports this outreach partnership. Sandler said, “Our alliance with Calkins Newspapers is an excellent example of successful outreach programming. We are extending Penn State’s expertise and resources to help a business headquartered in our region meet its education needs. ” Last September, 40 leaders from Calkins Newspapers met in State College, Pa., for a three-day Leadership Development program. Management Development faculty members Dr. Katheryn K. Woodley and Harold A. Johnson presented sessions on Leading the Changing Organization, Building the Leadership Team, Customer Service and Building a High-performance Organization. The participants were from all of Calkins’ six newspapers: Bucks County Courier Times, Doylestown Intelligencer/ Montgomery County Record, Beaver County Times and Uniontown Herald–Standard in Pennsylvania; Burlington County Times in New Jersey; and South Dade News Leader in Florida. Grover Friend is president and chief executive officer of Calkins Newspapers Inc., which has a combined daily circulation of more than 234,000 and a combined Sunday circulation of more than 265,000. Calkins Newspapers also operates a Web site at www.PhillyBurbs.com. As part of the Leadership Development program, Penn State President Graham Spanier talked with the group about Penn State’s innovative Residence Hall Newspaper Readership Program, its World Campus and distance education initiatives and other Penn State news topics. Under Spanier’s leadership, the University launched a newspaper readership program in fall 1997. During the program’s first year, more than 1.3 million newspapers were distributed in residence halls at University Park campus. Nine other campuses that have residence halls also are participating in the program. At University Park, students can pick up The New York Times, USA Today, Centre Daily Times and The Daily Collegian every weekday. At other campuses, the local daily newspaper is available, along with The New York Times and USA Today. “We’ve opened the potential for a couple of million new newspaper readers nationally with the Residence Hall Newspaper Readership Program, ” Spanier said. “Developing a lifelong habit for reading newspapers is the single most important thing people can do for their communities. Our program has been so successful that 100 other colleges and universities have adopted it or are in the pilot phase of the program.” The President also discussed his efforts to help the newspaper companies have the papers they distribute on campus as part of the newspaper readership program be counted in their circulation totals. He testified about the Residence Hall Newspaper Readership Program for an Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) committee studying the circulation issue. ABC, a nonprofit organization that independently audits and verifies circulation information for subscribing newspapers, has agreed to count these newspapers in circulation totals. “We owe a debt of gratitude to Graham Spanier for the newspaper readership program,” Friend said. Another component of the Leadership Development program involved a tour of AccuWeather Inc. The State College-based weather service was founded by Penn State alumnus and Board of Trustees member Joel Myers. The company employs 350 and has 15,000 business, media and government clients worldwide, as well as 500,000 subscribers to accuweather.com. Management Development faculty members Woodley and Johnson were the lead instructors for the Leadership Development program. Other Management Development faculty members also involved in delivering the Calkins Supervisory and Customer Service programs are Michael P. Sawczuk, John Drabouski, John W. McKissick, Peter Dailey and Emil Sadloch. Cheryl M. Kaplan, assistant director of continuing education and outreach at Penn State Abington, said the successful partnership will continue between the organizations, offering more educational programs for Calkins Newspapers employees and managers in the year 2000.