Penn State’s chapter of EnvironMentors held its annual research symposium on April 26 at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center at Penn State University Park. The EnvironMentors program partners high school students with faculty and undergraduate student mentors in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to plan and conduct environmental research projects. Students then present their results at the annual symposium.

Seeing the “huge juxtaposition” between streams flowing near her childhood home in Lancaster County impaired by pollution from intensive agriculture and the seemingly pristine creeks tumbling down the forested mountains around her family’s cabin in Mifflin County led Bridget Reheard to study how contaminants in waters affect aquatic organisms and aspirations for a career working to protect natural resources.

Erica Smithwick, distinguished professor of geography and ecology in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, is the recipient of the 2025 W. LaMarr Kopp International Achievement Award.

Chen Zhen, Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Food Choice, Obesity and Health Economics in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Georgia, will give the talk, “Introducing a Public-Use Food Price Database: With an Application to Estimating the Health Care Cost of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption.” The talk is scheduled for noon on Wednesday, April 16, in 157 Hosler Building at Penn State University Park.

Emily Grubert, associate professor of sustainable energy policy at Notre Dame, will give the talk, “Public Support for Energy and Climate Technology Deployment,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, April 14, via Zoom.

The Penn State Department of Geography will continue its spring 2025 Coffee Hour lecture series with a talk by Richard B. Alley, Evan Pugh University Professor in the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State. Alley’s talk, "Sea-Level Rise from Ice Sheets: How Bad Could It Be?" will examine the uncertainties surrounding sea-level rise and the scientific challenges of predicting future ice-sheet behavior.

Four Penn State faculty members in areas ranging from agriculture to the biological sciences, geology and physics have been elected to the latest cohort of fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

David Newburn, associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland, will give the talk, “Interacting Incentives for Agricultural Conversation Subsidies and Trading Programs: Implications for Water Quality and Carbon Sequestration Benefits in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed,” at noon on Wednesday, April 2, in 157 Hosler Building on the University Park campus.

Three Penn State deans are co-hosting an event focusing on role of the University as Pennsylvania’s land-grant institution, the similar role of U.S. land-grant universities and the impacts of scholarly research they produce.  

Benjamin Collier, associate professor and Tuttleman Research Fellow in the Fox School of Business at Temple University, will give the talk, “Credit When You Need It: Recovering from Severe Climate Events,” at noon on Wednesday, March 26, in 157 Hosler Building on the University Park campus.