Penn College News

Instructional space yields informative tour for state legislators

Thursday, May 23, 2019

The college's newest (and most lifelike) medical manikin is introduced by Christopher T. Boyer (left), director of paramedic technology programs, and Sandra L. Richmond (right), dean of nursing and health sciences. Getting a closer look are (from right) Sens. Yaw, Phillips-Hill and Ward – a registered nurse.Bradley M. Webb, assistant dean of industrial, computing and engineering technologies, explained the processes taught in three of the college's plastics labs: thermoforming, blow-molding and rotational molding. First stop? Thermoforming, where Webb shows how clamshell packaging is produced.A pair of first-term state senators visited Penn College on Thursday, stopping by several academic areas in the School of Nursing & Health Sciences and the School of Industrial, Engineering & Computing Technologies. The tour, abbreviated by a stormy forecast (but no less valuable), took Sens. Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-York) and Judy Ward (R-Altoona) to nursing, dental hygiene and three labs in the college's ABET-accredited plastics program. The tour covered substantial ground: In addition to curricular information on all six schools, the legislators were apprised of the college's integral corporate advisers, the focused global experiences of students traveling abroad, high-profile internship opportunities, and the essential contributions of equipment and expertise by business and industry. Also on the tour were President Davie Jane Gilmour; state Sen. Gene Yaw, chairman of the college's board of directors; Michael J. Reed, vice president for academic operations/associate provost; Patrick Marty, chief of staff and assistant to the president for college relations; Zack Moore, vice president for government and community relations at Penn State; Jon Hopcraft, chief of staff to Phillips-Hill; and Senate photographer Christopher J. Guerrisi.