Student Profiles
Mary Nunn, third year student in Landscape Architecture, provides an example of Public Scholarship at Penn State. Her course-based Civic Engagement represents a Curriculum of Consequence.
Reconnecting People and Place:
Spring Creek Canyon Management Strategy
Mary, awarded First Prize in 2007 in the Public Scholarship division of the annual Penn State Undergraduate Exhibition, brought her work as a Landscape Architecture Major to bear on public land use issues. The ultimate fate of Spring Creek Canyon, eighteen hundred undeveloped acres of exceptional natural resources between State College and Bellefonte, is a contested issue in Centre County. Its fate rests in the hands of informed public decision making. In Mary’s approach to this land management concern, she studied the interests of community members, developed new information from site analyses, and considered the advice of Penn State experts in forestry, horticulture, and wildlife sciences. The outcome of Mary’s research is a proposed management strategy offering a flexible integration of the cultural and ecological goals expressed by the community. Her work brings scholarship and creativity to the forefront of the essence of democracy – public decision making.
Spring Creek, Centre Co, PA – Informed Public Decision Making
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Lauren Bieniek is a second-year Penn State student majoring in Biobehavioral Health with a Minor in Civic and Community Engagement. An active member of Students and Physicians Across Nations (SPAN) and Global AIDS Initiative (GAI) on campus, she also volunteers her time with Centre Volunteers in Medicine – an organization providing medical and dental care to low income clients in Centre County. Lauren plans on pursuing a master’s degree in Public Health, with a focus on health care in developing countries.
Teaching and Learning in Rural Kenya:
A Global Perspective on Education & Health Care
In the summer of 2007, Lauren traveled to Kenya to partake in a two-month teaching internship with Global Routes. While living with a host family in the rural village of Eshiakula, Lauren taught two 9th grade biology classes and a 10th grade English class in a community school. Aside from teaching, she worked alongside two co-interns to design and complete projects which enhanced the educational resources of the school. They painted a mural of the world map, furnished, painted, and stocked a small library, held an HIV/AIDS workshop, and gave a cross-cultural presentation about America. Lastly, they visited a special needs boarding school where they interacted with the children and provided them with mosquito nets to help reduce the spread of malaria. Lauren is currently integrating her fieldwork in Kenya with her academic work through directed readings, discussions, and a video project in an Independent Study with Professor Constance Flanagan, co-chair of the Intercollege Minor in Civic and Community Engagement.
Lauren and her co-interns with the World Map for their students:
Gaining a Global Perspective
Lauren with her host parents, Mama and Baba
Lauren and students at the Matungu Special Needs School