Penn State

World famous violinist, Itzhak Perlman will pay a visit to Penn State, University Park on Thursday evening, November 14. He'll talk about his life, share some photos and video, and play music with pianist Rohan da Silva in a progarm called "An Evening with Itzhak Perlman." WPSU’s Kristine Allen spoke with him by phone about his career and his upcoming performance.

You'll find more information on Perlman's performance here.

Monday was Veterans Day. And on Wednesday, the Penn State Veterans Organization will host a student panel discussion, "Stupid Things Good People Say." WPSU’s Anne Danahy spoke with the organization’s president, Kyle Larson, a Penn State student who served in the Marines. The event is co-sponsored by Student Disability Resources and is part of Penn State's Military Appreciation Week. It's open to the public and will take place 5:15-8:30 p.m. in Foster Auditorium, Paterno Library, on the University Park campus. A social hour will follow the panel discussion. 

The Silkroad Ensemble, a diverse group of musicians from around the world, will give a concert Tuesday night on Penn State’s University Park campus. The group was founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1999.

“There were 60 musicians,” says Silkroad’s co-artistic director, Nicholas Cord.  “We premiered 15 new pieces. A beautiful cacophony is the best way I could describe it.“

“Silkroad was Yo-Yo’s brainchild in a lot of ways. And I think Yo-Yo had always had an idea in his life to do something of this magnitude.”
 

Catherine Wanner is a professor of history, anthropology and religious studies at Penn State. She is currently in Ukraine as a Fulbright Scholar, completing a book on the politics of religion in Russia and Ukraine. The book, "From Smoke Comes Fire:  Religion, Faith and Belonging in Ukraine," will come out next year. Wanner spoke with WPSU’s Anne Danahy about President Trump’s phone call with the new president of Ukraine and Ukraine's ongoing conflict with Russia.

Enforcing immigration law requires a complicated mix of government agencies whose direction can change from administration to administration.

Our guest this week, Penn State’s Shoba Wadhia, is an expert on immigration law and author of the new book “Banned: Immigration Enforcement in the Time of Trump.” She directs the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic and has represented refugees and asylum seekers.

In Performance at Penn State is a monthly hour-long program that showcases performances from Penn State's School of Music. This month, hear the Penn State Philharmonic playing two Slavonic Dances by Antonin Dvorak; musicians from the Penn’s Woods Music Festival playing some of the Eight Pieces for English Horn, Clarinet & Piano by Max Bruch; and the Piano Concerto No. 2 in F by Dmitri Shostakovich with pianist Philip Edward Fisher, conductor Gerardo Edelstein and the Penn’s Woods Music Festival Orchestra.

Penn State will host the Project Drawdown conference Sept. 16-18. It’s based on a book that outlines the 100 top actions to reverse climate change.

We talked with two conference presenters about “Drawdown” and the research they’re doing into fighting global warming.

Starting with the fall 2020 semester, Pennsylvania youth who have been in foster care will be able to attend any college or university in Pennsylvania tuition free thanks to a waiver program signed into law by Governor Tom Wolf this June.

Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network at Penn State Jennie Noll says the waivers will benefit a population that often has bad outcomes.

Goldie Blumenstyk is a reporter and editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education. She covers a wide range of topics and is known for her expertise on for-profit higher education, college finances and more. Her book, "American Higher Education in Crisis? What Everyone Needs to Know," talks about changing demographics in colleges and the rising cost of higher education.

Jason Wright is an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State. Wright is also a champion of the search for extraterrestrial life. WPSU's Anne Danahy spoke with him about whether he thinks there is other life in the universe, how we might go about finding it and why it matters.

Saturday, July 20th is the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 moon landing, when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface.

Nancy VanLandingham of Warrior’s Mark was 14 years old in 1969.

“To me, it felt like it was pretty much the most important thing that had happened in my lifetime,” VanLandingham said.

As she remembers it, everyone back then was focused on space travel.

On Tuesday, July 16, the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium at Penn State invited the public to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch. They held a rocket launch event at the Ag Progress Days sight in Pennsylvania Furnace.

With a drone buzzing overhead to film the event, they launched 24 model rockets at 9:32am – the exact time of the Apollo launch 50 years ago.

Fifty years ago, on July 16, 1969, a Saturn V rocket was launched from Cape Kennedy Florida (now known Cape Canaveral), sending astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on their way to the moon.

That morning, legendary CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite was in a Florida studio near the launch site bright and early. The Saturn V rocket stood next to the launch tower on the screen behind him.

It's not every day you hear people get excited over tofu. But tonight’s tofu dish, served by Taproot Kitchen, comes with a side of vegetables grown at Penn State’s Student Farm. 

Taproot Kitchen is a nonprofit catering company that employs adults with autism and intellectual disabilities to cook and serve quality local food, something customers at this year’s Summer Solstice Celebration found out for themselves as they ate everything from flatbreads topped with vegetables to sweet chili tofu with a side salad. 

I believe in high heels.

I can still remember prancing around the living room of my childhood apartment in my mother’s white satin stiletto sling backs. They were a gift from my father and she wore them for special occasions. When my mother took an afternoon nap, I quietly removed the shoes from their box, slid them over my small feet and stepped out across the parquet floor. I felt great. I couldn’t wait to grow up and wear heels every single day.

There aren’t many students in Penn State’s HUB-Robeson Student Union this time of year, but the community members and students who are there have mixed thoughts about the abortion laws passed by almost a dozen states in recent months.

Aman Kaur from State College said women should be able to make their own decisions when it comes to ending a pregnancy.

In Performance at Penn State is a monthly hour-long program that showcases performances from Penn State's School of Music. This month, we have the Prelude and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 539 by Bach, played by the Pennsylvania Quintet; The Penn State Philharmonic, led by Gerardo Edelstein in the “Dances of Galanta” by Zoltan Kodaly; the song, “Spirit,” by Greg Simon, with a text by Walt Whitman, sung by The Penn State Glee Club; and the Violin Sonata in G Major, Op. 78 by Johannes Brahms, played by PSU faculty members James Lyon, violin and Timothy Shafer, piano.

An original musical opens Wednesday night at Penn State’s Downtown Theatre in State College.

"The Last Day" is the story of a college musical theatre student tormented by a secret he has never shared, until he’s dropped from the program and turns to his fellow students for help. 

Penn State’s musical theatre department commissioned Altoona native and Penn State football star Mike Reid and Sarah Schlesinger to write the play.  

Rick Lombardo is the new is the Director of the School of Theatre at Penn State, hired last summer.

WPSU’s Kristine Allen spoke with Lombardo about bringing back the professional summer season of Penn State Centre Stage  in the summer of 2019 and about how his college pre-med plans were thwarted by theatre.  (Listen to the interview at the link above.)

You'll find more information on the Penn State Centre Stage summer season here.