Dinner is First Course in Yearlong 60th Anniversary Celebration
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, kicked off its yearlong 60th anniversary celebration tonight by hosting a dinner for the Penn State Board of Trustees and invited guests.
The Board holds its bimonthly meeting in the college’s John M. Lilley Library on Friday, its first visit to Erie in a decade.
Speaking to the approximately 220 dinner guests are:
Jack Burke, Penn State Behrend Chancellor and master of ceremonies
Graham Spanier, Penn State’s 16th President
James Broadhurst, ’65, chairman of Eat’n Park Hospitality Group and chair of the Penn State Board of Trustees. Broadhurst is a Titusville native who joined Eat’n Park as executive vice president and treasurer in 1973 following a seven-year career at PNC Bank.
Robert Mehalso ’64, president of Microtec Associates of Fairport, N.Y., the country’s first corporation dedicated to the commercialization of nanofabrication, and the college’s 1989 Alumni Fellow. Mehalso grew up in rural Crawford County and attended Penn State Behrend and University Park with the aid of scholarships; in return, he and his wife, Liz, have supported the education of 19 Penn State Behrend students through their endowed Robert M. and Elizabeth Q. Mehalso Scholarship.
Joseph Pleso ’08, a mathematics major and one of the 19 recipients thus far of the Mehalso Scholarship. Because of his Mehalso Scholarship, Pleso said in his dinner remarks, he did not have to obtain an off-campus job, which freed him to work on three separate undergraduate research projects while at Penn State Behrend. Pleso credited those projects with helping him land a teaching fellowship in the University of Louisville’s mathematics doctoral program, which he begins this fall. (His last name is pronounced PLEA-zo.)
Sonia Rosales ’11, who has just finished her first year at Penn State Behrend, led the singing of the Alma Mater at the dinner’s close. An Erie resident, Rosales is the first member of her family to graduate from high school, and the first to attend college. She intends to become a history teacher after she graduates. (Her name is pronounced SONE-ya Rose-ALL-es).
Penn State Behrend’s 60th anniversary celebrates its foundation in private philanthropy. In the spring of 1948, Penn State’s Division of General Extension approached Mary Behrend with a proposal: Penn State had been holding classes in Erie since 1920 without a permanent location. If she were willing to part with her family’s 400-acre farm, the University would raise the money needed to buy it.
A few days later, Mrs. Behrend offered a surprising counterproposal. She would donate the farm outright to Penn State as a living tribute to her late husband, Hammermill Paper co-founder Ernst Behrend. Mary Behrend formally signed the farm over to Penn State on June 28, 1948, and the first class of 146 freshmen began classes that September.
Mary Behrend’s Glenhill Farm remains the historic core of Penn State Behrend’s 725-acre campus. The college now offers over 40 degree programs to more than 4,400 students.
For more information, visit behrend.psu.edu.