Patty Klug

In her time at Penn State, Jordynn Cheatle has sought out experiences that have shown her the value of having difficult conversations and how to have them well.

Student startup Bindr, a dating app that provides a safe space online for bisexual individuals, won $15,000, the largest prize amount, in the 2023 Invent Penn State Inc.U Competition. The competition, part of Penn State Startup Week powered by PNC, saw six Penn State student teams pitch their startups to a panel of judges and compete for up to $30,000 in funding.

In celebration of Women’s History Month, Penn State University Libraries will host a virtual, month-long, Wikipedia editathon focusing on Native American women activists and environmentalists, from March 27 through April 18.

U.S. college students’ knowledge of bees focuses primarily on honey bees and pollination services, according to Penn State researchers, who said findings from their recent study could help in designing campaigns to generate support for protecting threatened pollinators.

Celeste Good, who graduated with a degree in women’s studies in the College of the Liberal Arts, is the recipient of the 2023 Jackson Lethbridge Tolerance Award. The award recognizes a junior, senior or graduate student for outstanding efforts to enhance the understanding of diverse cultures and create a community where all individuals are accepted and valued equally. 

Max Dean, a senior majoring in economics in the College of the Liberal Arts, and Ally Schlegel, who graduated in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in corporate innovation and entrepreneurship from the Smeal College of Business, have been selected as the 2023 recipients of the Ernest B. McCoy Memorial Award. The Ernest B. McCoy Memorial Award annually recognizes a senior man and woman who have successful athletic participation with academic excellence. 

For the last five years, Amara Solari, professor of art history and anthropology at Penn State, has led a research team on an historical and, unexpectedly, scientific journey in the Yucatán. Working closely with colleague Linda Williams of the University of Puget Sound, she has scoured the peninsula to identify, document, interpret and analyze murals painted inside churches by Maya Christian artists more than 400 years ago, combining art history and cutting-edge materials science in the only known cohesive study of these fragile artworks.

Professor of English Hester Blum is using her experiences from her five visits to the polar regions to teach students about the human impact of the climate crisis. The course aligns with the College of the Liberal Arts’ current theme, “Moments of Change: Creating a Livable Planet.”

Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute will kick off its 2023 Expanding Empathy Speaker Series with the first of four spring discussions on Friday, March 24.

Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer and human rights activist in Iran, will receive the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s 2023 Brown Democracy Medal.