Wide-ranging tour enlightens state Senate committee chairs

A bipartisan group of state legislators, all present for President Davie Jane Gilmour's budget request to the Senate Appropriations Committee in February, got a follow-up look at Penn College during a trip to main campus on Tuesday. Touring a number of instructional labs with Sen. Gene Yaw (chairman of the college's board of directors), administrators, faculty and staff were Sen. Art Haywood (D-Cheltenham), minority chair of the Health and Human Services Committee; Sen. Thomas H. Killion (R-Middletown), who chairs the Community, Economic and Recreational Development Committee; Sen. Daniel Laughlin (R-Erie), chair of the Game and Fisheries Committee; and Sen. Sharif Street (D-Philadelphia), minority chairman of the Banking and Insurance Committee. Along for the visit were H. Fred Walker, director of Erie County Technical School; Kendall Alexander, Haywood's communications director; and three members of Street's staff: policy assistant Micah Mahjoubian, legislative aide Angel Betancourt and special assistant Kenneth Carter. Some members of the Senate contingent, who collectively represent highly populated areas from Erie in the northwest to Philadelphia in the southeast corner of the commonwealth, also enjoyed lunch in Le Jeune Chef Restaurant.

– Photos by Cindy Davis Meixel, writer/photo editor

 

 

The group is led on a tour of the kitchens and baking lab by Lisa M. Andrus, dean of business and hospitality. In foreground (from left) are Haywood, Walker, Street, Killion and Laughlin.

Warm thanks are shared by Street and Gilmour outside Le Jeune Chef.

Paul L. Starkey, vice president for academic affairs/provost, leads the group along the campus mall – lush and green, thanks to the same spring rains that occasioned the carrying of umbrellas.

Haywood marvels at the breathing chest of a "patient" in the School of Nursing & Health Sciences, where Dean Sandra L. Richmond (left) explained the simulation aids available to nursing students.

Yaw listens to William B. Ernst-Wingfield, a near-graduate in brewing and fermentation science, as he discusses the art and science of brewing.

On left, David R. Cotner, dean of industrial, computing and engineering technologies, and Jason K. Bogle, director of construction and planning, take the group through the expansive welding addition under construction.

The president points out the Dodge truck water feature as the group makes its way from the Lycoming Engines Metal Trades Center to College Avenue Labs.

Vanessa Mathurin (in blue), automotive restoration graduate and toolroom attendant, offers insights on her lab’s vintage automobiles. The Philadelphia native also earned a bachelor’s degree in applied management from the college.

Laughlin and Yaw explore paint samples in the collision repair lab.

Gilmour discusses the Genos M560 vertical machine center – built by the Okuma Corp. – a $185,000 machine on loan to the college's manufacturing labs through a collaboration with Gosiger and Lycoming Engines.

The newest addition to the plastics and polymer engineering arsenal, the LRM 1500 Rotomolding Laboratory System, is shown off to the senators – and Walker (in the orange tie) – by Bradley M. Webb (center), assistant dean of industrial, computing and engineering technologies.

In the dental hygiene lab, guests hear about students’ community and global service work from Shawn A. Kiser (right), director of dental hygiene, and Richmond.

Killion listens intently to information about the industry collaboration and impact being made by the brewing and fermentation science major.