University Park

The Penn's Woods Music Festival is a decades-long tradition: a professional festival held each year in June on Penn State’s University Park Campus. Like so many events, it was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic. And it couldn’t be held in June this year, either, due to pandemic restrictions.  But at the end of June, hope was suddenly on the horizon.

“We had been looking at all the restrictions starting to lift,” said Russell Bloom, assistant director of Penn State’s School of Music. 

Bloom said Penn State’s School of Music put all kinds of options on the table.

Governor Tom Wolf has lifted the coronavirus ban on traveling between states. Officials at the University Park Airport in State College hope this change will boost business at the hard-hit airport. 

Bryan Rodgers is the director of the University Park Airport. He says business was down by 70% this January from last January, and it was like that throughout 2020. 

The government kept airports and airlines afloat with CARES Act funding. The University Park Airport received $2.3 million in the COVID relief aid.

While many Penn State students are set to return to the University Park campus for the fall semester in less than a month, some are worried about what school will look like amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Penn State hosted a virtual town hall on its COVID-19 plans for the fall semester Thursday, including testing for students, faculty and staff amid the pandemic. 

Since June 27, an Instagram account called “BlackAtPennState” has shared anonymous stories of racism from Black Penn State students, graduates and staff. WPSU intern Andrew Destin talked with the Instagram account creator, a Black student at Penn State who has chosen to keep his identity confidential out of concern for his safety.  

Since March 15, Pennsylvania has paid out more than $24 billion in unemployment benefits, according to the state's Department of Labor and Industry. But some central Pennsylvania residents, many of whom were laid off because of coronavirus shutdowns, are eligible for unemployment compensation aren't getting it. 

Penn State leaders hosted a virtual town hall for parents and students on Monday to clarify any concerns about the university’s "Back to State" plan for returning to school in the fall. Some students say their questions remain unanswered.

Penn State announced Monday it will move a virtual town hall on the return to in-person instruction for the fall semester because it fell on Juneteenth.

Junior journalism major Lexy Leidlein is back home in her childhood bedroom in Waterbury, Connecticut. In mid-May she visited State College to move out of her dorm. While she was in town, Leidlein noticed several downtown houses hosting “porch parties.” It made her think students will not follow social distancing protocols. 

As director of Global Programs, Jennifer Campbell oversees Penn State’s international community. She says her office has helped Penn State’s Chinese students by giving deferments to incoming students, assisting in buying medical equipment and by translating press releases about the disease to ensure correct information is spread.

“It’s when misinformation, disinformation happens I think that causes fear or panic that’s when you can kind of have more concerns than just the actual virus,” she said.

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.

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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.”
 

Penn State held a celebration Tuesday to celebrate National Constitution Day. Students shared their interpretations of several different amendments to the U.S. Constitution at Heritage Hall in the HUB student union. 

Isabella Scotti, a sophomore and a music education major, presented about the 14th Amendment, which addresses citizenship and equal rights for all citizens. Scotti says the Constitution can be used to interpret some of the political debates that are happening today.

Antoine van Agtmael was the founder and CEO of the investment management firm, Emerging Markets Management, and now serves as a Senior Advisor at the Foreign Policy Group. He and Fred Bakker co-author the book, “The smartest places on Earth: Why rustbelts are the emerging hotspots of global innovation.” 

His work analyses how “emerging markets” across the globe grow and he spoke with WPSU about how the West could respond to the challenges they bring.

Calling for respect and unity that he said will lead to common ground, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke visited Penn State University Park on Tuesday and spoke to a crowd of hundreds about how he wants to serve the country.

The former congressman from El Paso, Texas, is the first declared presidential candidate for the 2020 race to host a public event in Pennsylvania. Coming from previous stops in critical swing states like Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan, O’Rourke said his “grassroots road trip” is really important to him.

Kathy Wells started her career early. She didn’t get a chance to go to college after graduating high school in rural, Northwestern Pennsylvania.

In her words, she grew up in a “large family, small area.

“Basically, you work,” Wells laughed. “You don’t go to school.”

Now 48, Wells is an administrative assistant for the Forest Area School District in Forest County — one of the most remote and scarcely populated areas in the state.

An atmospheric scientist and evangelical Christian, Katharine Hayhoe is known for her ability to communicate science to everyday people, including skeptics of climate change. She is an award-winning professor at Texas Tech University and is involved in a number of educational initiatives, including hosting "Global Weirding," a public media program on YouTube.

The great, great, great granddaughter of Charles Dickens, Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, is an author, lecturer and award-winning travel writer. She also has a masters degree in art history. She is on Penn State’s University Park Campus Thursday, December 6th to give a talk on “Dickens and Christmas,” at 4:00 in Paterno Library. She spoke with WPSU’s Kristine Allen about the publication of “A Christmas Carol.”

Penn State students are back at the University Park campus. Last week, nearly 300 freshmen attended “Results Will Vary*,” a theatre performance that put a new spin on student orientation. The show explored issues students might face and resources the university has to support them.