Penn State Behrend Students Honored to Dance
Four students from Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, have the honor of dancing at THON 2009—Penn State’s 46-hour no-sitting, no-sleeping dance marathon to fight pediatric cancer. This year’s dancers are sophomores Alyssa Beck from Wattsburg, Pa., who is studying marketing and management, Allison Shearer from New Castle, Pa., who is studying public relations, and Pittsburgh natives Julie Colvin, a communication major, and Jamie Mayer, a nutrition major. Beck and Shearer comprise dancer team no. 230 while Colvin and Mayer are dancer team no. 231.
THON, Penn State’s Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon, begins at 6 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 20. Penn State Behrend’s two dancer couples will be among the 700 Penn Staters who will live in the Bryce Jordan Center, located on Penn State’s University Park campus, for nearly two days.
Students from all Penn State campuses raise funds year-round for this annual event, which is the largest student-run philanthropy in the world and benefits The Four Diamonds Fund at Hershey Medical Center. The THON 2009 theme is “Dream Forward.”
The Dorer family will be in attendance again this year to support the four Penn State Behrend students who are dancing for their 7-year-old daughter, Rylee. In October 2007, Rylee was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma. Penn State Behrend adopted the Dorers as its THON family that same month. Dancer organizations, such as Penn State Behrend, are often paired with a family through THON’s Adopt-A-Family program. This helps the dancers put tangible names and faces on the cause and helps the family feel connected to THON.
To date, Penn State Behrend has raised more than $22,000 for its contribution to THON 2009. The college sponsored its fourth annual 24 For A Cure, a University-sanctioned mini-dance marathon, along with several canning weekends and student-organized contests and tournaments.
Visit http://ext.think.psu.edu/org/index.php?id=122 to make a donation to support Penn State Behrend’s fundraising efforts for THON 2009.
Overall, THON has 15,000 student volunteers, 700 dancers annually, and has raised more than $52 million—$6.6 million in 2008 alone—to benefit The Four Diamonds Fund.
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, is a comprehensive residential college offering 34 bachelor’s, six associate, four pre-professional and two graduate degree programs with 22 minors to more than 4,600 students. Focused on providing a student-centered environment, Penn State Behrend connects its students to a major research and land-grant institution on a campus enriched by more than 110 clubs and organizations, 21 NCAA varsity teams and 19 intramural sports. Penn State Behrend is named in recognition of a donation by Mary Behrend, widow of Ernst Behrend, who founded the Hammermill Paper Co. in Erie in 1898. The Behrend family lived on the 400-acre Glenhill Farm, which is the core of the Penn State Behrend campus today. For more information, visit behrend.psu.edu.