Vairo Library surveys social media possibilities

By: Sara Piatetsky, Lion’s Eye Staff Writer, svp5316@psu.edu

The spring semester has been a semester where students and faculty have watched the campus slowly being to transform into a bigger, better Brandywine.

The changes don’t just come in big forms such as buildings and new ways to schedule courses.  Behind the scenes, the Vairo Library has been working on ways to change and better its reach and interaction with students on campus. Besides being a faithful hide away for finals and having spacious areas for group work, the library offers a lot more than printers and emergency cell phone chargers.

With finals approaching, the library will offer extended hours (including free coffee after 7 p.m.), a safe zone better known as the quiet zone downstairs, plenty of tables for projects and final paper touches from the Writing Studio. The library is also home to the media commons lab, the one button studio, and the STEM lab. However, students may not be aware of what the library offers because of a gap in communication between the library and students.

In March, Vairo library intern and a friendly face around the library, Malaika Hamid, lead a survey. The survey was conducted to discover what library resources students enjoyed the most and what visual and social media the library should adopt to better communicate with the campus community. The survey had 131 student responses.

Head Librarian Susan Ware explained that a word cloud was created based off of the survey showing how students perceive the library’s atmosphere. An overview of the results showed that students relate word such as: study, chill, procrastination and helpful with the library. The word cloud displays how the library can offer many different environments from the students’ needs and assistance.

“The library is looking into expanding its options for students,” Ware said. “We’re currently working on adding individual study pods to the library for students to work alone but still be a part of the library environment, the pods are a lot like the singular work places in the quiet zone.”

The most popular areas of the library, according to the survey, for students were the study tables, the quiet zone, and the group study cells.

“I spend a lot of time in the library and the Lion’s Den,” Senior psychology student Alexis Cavalli said. “I always read the messages on the screens because they’re typically attention catching and brief but information. I think they’re good resources for students because they give you the information you need and might want quickly without drowning you in details. I get a lot of event news and even the library hours from there.”

Eighty-nine percent of the respondents from the survey agree with Cavalli that they learn news about the library from the digital screen behind the front desk.

If the visual aids in the library are enough to make a large impression on the students who come through the library daily, the question is how social media can help as well. The library’s presence on social media could give students better access to library, research presentations, and other resources that become available to students through library.

Based off of the survey results, Hamid will conduct a focus group of 12 students. The focus group will be used to gather more detailed information about the preferred media for communication with the library students on campus.

There is currently a minimum presence of the library online, only through the library’s official webpage. The reach of a Facebook and Twitter account would not only be a way to inform students, but also the network of alumni of the exiting resources, services and development of the Vairo Library.

This summer the library staff plans to further the research based off of Hamid’s survey and focus group to improve the library’s communication strategies. Depending on the results, a Facebook and Twitter account may start in time for the fall semester.

By: Meghan Burton, Lion’s Eye staff writer, mcb5509@psu.edu

Spring Fling was in full swing on Brandywine’s campus on April 27.

A live band, food, refreshments, inflatables, novelties, puppies and to top it off a fashion show took place on the campus lawn.

The band called Lost in Paris also known as the LIP’s entertained the students. They played upbeat popular music from well-known artist such as Justin Bieber, The Weeknd and Bruno Mars. Randy Major, lead vocalist and guitarist, amped the students up for the last week of classes.

Along with a great entertainment, there was great food. Zac’s Hamburgers, a family-operated business set up a tent. The Zac’s staff gave out free hamburgers and veggie burgers.

Senior Chris Burton enjoyed himself.

“They were delicious,” Burton said.

Even though the weather was a little chilly, students also indulged in Rita’s Italian Ice. Inflatable and novelties such as a moon bounce obstacle course and human hamster balls were located on the left side of the lawn. Students were able to let out some energy by playing against each other in different games using these inflatable contraptions.

PAWS, an organization that helps animals, was also present and they had puppies. Students got to relieve some upcoming exam stress by petting various furry friends, along with learning more about the mission of PAWS.

“I think PAWS is a wonderful organization,” junior Julia Allman said. “I am an animal lover so it was awesome to get the opportunity to play with puppies today.”

Lastly, a fashion show took place near the fountain area. Meaghan Paige, a senior at Brandywine and designer, displayed her new spring fashion line. This line was filled with colorful patterns and illustrated a 50s vibe. Paige had Brandywine students, such as Hannah Rogers, model her clothes.

“I had so much fun at the show and I am so proud of my friend Meaghan,” Rogers said. “She is so talented.”

Spring Fling, filled with activities, food and entertainment, allowed students to relax and have fun before final exam week.

By Joel Koshy, Lion’s Eye staff writer, jxk5149@psu.edu

Presidential candidate Governor John Kasich stopped by Penn State Brandywine for a town hall meeting on Thursday, April 20.

It was an interesting turn of events, when the Governor stepped on the stage to deliver his speech. Kasich introduced himself as a man who comes from a working class family; he mentioned how his father was a mailman and his grandfather worked as a coal miner.

“My whole purpose in political life has been to stick up for people who don’t have a voice,” Kasich said.

Behind Kasich was a large ticker with a dollar amount, which represented the national debt of the United States; it was somewhere around $19 trillion and rising. Kasich strongly believes that he’s the only candidate in the Republican Party, who can bring both the Republican and Democratic parties together and come up solutions to help move the country move forward.

Kasich has no intentions of dropping out if the race anytime soon, even though he’s far behind Donald Trump and Ted Cruz as they seem to be taking the lead at the moment.

“I’m aware of the fact that the Democratic National Committee is trying really hard to get me out of this race, because they really don’t want me to run against Hillary,” Kasich said.

Towards the end of the meeting, audience members were more than happy with his speech, and they stood up an applauded Kasich for his passion for change and leadership to be the change the country needs.

Not everyone on the crowd was applauding; one example is 26-year-old Will Gruehn, a communication student at PSU Brandywine who will vote for the president of United States for the third time.

“I thought he had some good points, but it was boring and unimpressive which was reflected by the disappointing turn out,” Gruehn said.

The Pennsylvania primary was held on Tuesday, April 26.

By: Deja Footes, Lion’s Eye Staff Editor, dmf5475@psu.edu

Dr. Angela Putman, a new communication arts and sciences professor, from Detroit Michigan is very excited to be in her first year here at Brandywine.

She graduated from Western Michigan.

“I didn’t take the traditional education path of getting all three degrees right away,” Putman said. ” I started teaching first.”

Putman began teaching in communications at colleges in Dallas and South Texas. After teaching full-time for eight years, Putman realized teaching
was her passion and decided to pursue her doctorate to be able to do this as her career. During the third year of her Ph.D. program in intercultural communication from University of New Mexico, she landed a job at Borough of Manhattan Community College as an assistant professor in the communications and theatre department and joined her fiancé in New York City.

Putman explained that living in New York City was not what she expected.

“It was hard, and fast-paced,” Putman said. “There is not much human connection at all. People rarely look at each other or talk to each other and are mostly wearing earbuds. Since I am from the Midwest, I am used to talking to people, even strangers. When I tried to strike up conversations with people, they would give me a funny look or not even respond.”

After filling out many job applications, she finally secured the perfect opportunity at Penn State Brandywine and she and her fiancé moved to Delaware
County. Her fiancé, turned husband, currently teaches middle school in Havertown.  Putman did not always want to be a professor.

“I never thought I wanted to be a professor, I wanted to be Whitney Houston,” Putman said.

She originally went to college for voice performance, but learned that it was a struggle.

“Throughout high school I was the big fish in a little pond, but in college I became a tiny fish in a big pond,” Putman said.

After failing her sophomore jury exam and having a deep conversation with her voice teacher, she realized that she had the talent but not the drive to be an opera singer.

She took a semester off from music and decided to take all general education classes. One class she took and ended up connecting with was the interpersonal communication class.

“This was the first class in college that I took that made sense to me,” Putman said.

Putman then decided to go to graduate school, and is the first in her family with a degree.  In graduate school, Putman earned a teaching assistantship and realized that she had found her dream job as a college professor, and the rest is Brandywine history.

By: Paul Alberici, Lion’s Eye Editor, paa5102@psu.edu

Each fall and spring break, Brandywine gives its students the opportunity to travel around the world, study abroad and take classes in a variety
of countries.

However, this past spring break, the office of Student Affairs at Brandywine gave students a unique travel experience to Nassau, the
capitol of The Bahamas for a cultural immersion and service learning trip.

Ronika Money-Adams and Stephanie Jones, the director and associate director of Student Affairs respectively, were the ones responsible for organizing the
trip. The motives for the trip were clear as were their hopes for what the students would get out of the trip.

“When you think of The Bahamas, you think of paradise,” Jones said. “I wanted the students to see real side of it all, especially the people and the culture.
My hope was that students would see the similarities with areas in the greater Philadelphia area to areas in the international community.”

The trip was run by “Bahama Shorts,” and was organized by the founder of the company, Valdez Russell. This company’s purpose is to expose groups
to the side of The Bahamas where most people live which, for the most part, is impoverished. A group of about 10 students went on this trip, all of whom are at different points in their college careers. Some were freshman and some were seniors. Other than the planning done prior to the trip, such as a book drive to help fill their under-stocked and out-dated libraries, most of them really didn’t know what to expect before they traveled down to Nassau at the beginning
of their spring break.

“I expected to do the events we did but I did not expect it to have such an awesome effect on me. I knew I’d leave with a better view of myself
and the world but I really had no clue what I was getting into. It was such an amazing experience that absolutely surpassed all expectations in so many
ways.”

Along with students from Penn State Brandywine, a group of about the same size joined them from Penn State York, led by their Director of Student Affairs,
Patrick Tanner. This trip had two components to it; a service aspect and a cultural immersion aspect.  During the service aspect of this week long trip, the students traveled to schools to do a variety of different tasks such as reading to students, stocking the libraries with the books they brought, as well as being an aid for some of the students in the classroom.

The cultural immersion aspect of the trip consisted more of the historical side of the Bahamian people. This piece consisted of a trip around historic
Nassau, sampling a variety of different Bahamian foods, learning about different festivals and customs of the people, shadowing professionals in the
students intended majors at the technical school, and even attending a class at the College of The Bahamas.  With all of these different memorable
experiences, students had a variety of stand-out memories from the trip.

“My favorite memory about the trip was going to the elementary school and middle school and reading to the children and answering their questions,”
Brandywine sophomore Kara Lester said. “They were all bright for their age that they often had me pause to think. One question, for example,
was ‘how many people actually live in the United States?’ They were so excited to know more about our country so it was really nice to be able to answer
their questions.”

Fatima Kebe, a junior at Brandywine, really enjoyed the historic tour around Nassau.

“Most people go to Nassau for the paradise island but never see the city of Nassau or the island of New Providence,” Kebe said. “So to be able to be given the chance to see what Nassau consists of was really a highlight of trip.”

This trip was truly life changing for pretty much everyone who went and had a different impact on each of them. In a sense, this fulfilled what  Jones and Money-Adams hoped students would get out of it.

“[I was] more than pleased with the outcome,” Jones said. “He [Valdez Russell] had a very enriching itinerary that gave the students the best possible experience.”

With the positive feedback from this trip, they hope to continue this trip for other students for years to come so more people can see both
sides of paradise.

By: Michael McCarrick, Lion’s Eye Writer, mqm5415@psu.edu

When terrorist attacks struck Paris in November 2015, Penn State Brandywine had to decide whether to continue with the planned study abroad trip to Paris during Thanksgiving break.

It was ultimately decided that the trip would be moved to March for both the safety of the students and a display of fearlessness against the terrorists. All of those fears were washed away during Spring Break when more than 20 Brandywine students made the long trip over to the City of Light. The three classes which offered this opportunity were: Introduction to the Arts in Paris taught by Professor Dr. Paul Green, Black American Writers led by Dr. Kimberly Blockett and Cross Cultural Psychology from Dr. Pauline Guerin.

On the first day, everyone was exhausted from the long flight and was struggling to stay awake. That was until they saw the famous Arc d Fountain and had
their spirits rejuvenated. It was the first of many photo opportunities during the trip as they observed Paris’ iconic landmarks in person for the first time.
At night the streets of Paris were illuminated with the lights of clubs and restaurants such as the Cafe De La Paix, the Le Corail, and the Lombard
Jazz Club.

Students could travel anywhere around the city using the metro station underground. Another fun show some witnessed at night was the Moulin
Rouge which was as visually stunning and glamorous (and exposing) as live theater could get. Senior James Williams had never taken
a study abroad trip before and shared his first experience.

“I very much enjoyed the Seine River Cruise and going up the beautiful waterways of Paris, and also taking the stairs of Pompidou,” Williams said.  “I took two different classes for this trip: Harlem Renaissance and Intro to Art. For Harlem, I went to Josephine Baker’s place and walked to the Montparnesse to see where famous twentieth century French writers and artists worked.”

Williams recommends this trip for sure.

“Of course I would, I think this is an incredible experience to see how foreign cultures are different from home.”

One of the most famous art museums in the world is the Louvre, which is best known for having the most famous painting of all time, Leonardo
Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Also in the museum was Napoleon’s lavish apartment rooms and dozens of excellently crafted of statues from ancient France.
As fascinating as those places were, no monument means more to the identity of a city than the Eifel Tower is to Paris. It is one thing to see it in pictures; to
see it in person shows just how much mystique it carries. Looking into the details of the structure’s architecture, the Eifel Tower proved to everyone
that it is not an over-hyped building, but a worldly manmade treasure.

Student Macy Knackman said it was her favorite part of the trip.

“Seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time and how incredibly detailed and large it was,” Knackman said.  “I took the art class with Dr. Green and the psych class with Dr. Geurin. For the psyche class I went to the Immigration Museum which helped my perspective on how exactly we’re different from French people in ways that are not so obvious.”

And who says that it’s no fun to be an American in Paris when one can still go to Disneyland? Not the Disneyland in Anaheim, but Paris’ version of the
happiest place on earth. Disneyland was a fun experience for everyone who went and, unlike American Disney parks, the lines were shorter.

In the hours of rest the Paris La Fayette hotel was home for everyone, but most students didn’t have much time to hang around because of the many activities to be had on a daily basis. In fact it was hard to go to sleep at midnight in Paris, because there is always something to do. (And they say New York City and Las Vegas never sleeps).

Fellow students Maria Gallelli, Alexandria Hatchett, and Meaghan Daly all agreed that they loved the food, the crepes, the atmosphere, the
architecture, and the people.  They also recommended others to take an overseas trip during their stay at Penn State because it an expose one to something different.

When the long week came to an end on March 13, the magic of the trip ended too, as the students embarked on a long journey back home
with long flights and bus rides along with too few hours of sleep. Some said that once they were finally home, their sleeping hours at
night were in the teens, but it was still worth it.

The next day it was back to reality for every participant as everyone had to resume schoolwork. The difference, however, was that everyone had new friends to share a lifetime worth of memories with which had occurred in only one week. Some of the underclassmen are already looking forward to Brandywine’s next trip coming in 2017, and for the students who won’t be going on another study abroad trip, they’ll always have Paris.

By: Paul Alberici, Lion’s Eye Editor, paa5102@psu.edu

To say a lot has happened in my four years at Penn State is an understatement; I’ve never written a story for the paper in first person so this seems a little
odd.

The Lion’s Eye was the first group I got involved with on campus, so it’s only fitting this be one of the last things I do at Penn State.  I came to college not really knowing what to expect. I didn’t know what I was going to get involved with as far as groups or activities. I didn’t know if I was going to have a big new group of friends. I knew I was going to get involved in something, thanks to some advice from my guidance counselor at Marple Newtown, Karen Brodsky, but I didn’t know what.

I wasted no time getting involved though. At my freshman orientation, I was signed up by one of the communications professors, Karrie Bowen, to join this paper. I was especially interested when I found out I got credit for writing. Coming in with a focus on the journalism side of communication, I regretted not being involved in my high school paper and wanted to make sure I would not repeat this mistake in college.

Being on this paper has been amazing for a couple reasons. For one, it has given me a way to apply my interest in writing in a practical setting where I can earn credit towards graduation, while writing about things that interest me. It has taught me how to honor deadlines and practical skills for conducting interviews. I even got into the press box for the Blue & White game last year. But one of the most unexpected things to come out of being involved with The Lion’s Eye was my joining another group that would change my life. You guessed it — it was THON.

As hard as it is to believe, and some of my close friends and family know this, I joined THON by accident. I hardly knew what THON was prior to coming to Brandywine. I attended the first meeting mainly because my newspaper meeting was cancelled since the adviser of the paper was also the THON adviser, and I had some free time. With nothing else really going on that day, I figured “ehh, why not?” To this day, that has probably been my best accident.

After I saw the power and impact of THON my freshman year, I was hooked. I went on to be the group public relations captain, one of the two dancers who stood for 46 hours straight in THON 2015, and the group’s vice president during my senior year. It’s no secret that this group has meant a lot to me. We
have done so much good for so many incredible people. But this group has done something personal for me. It has given me a sense of being
part of something special that makes people’s lives better. I had the chance to make a difference and be somebody.

I’ve had so many opportunities here. I’ve traveled the world, attended leadership conferences, spoke at events and even went on the field of Beaver Stadium
for a football games. Why am I telling you all this? Because it shows I’ve made the most of my time here and really did what I wanted to do—reinvent myself. Knowing I wasn’t an outgoing leader when I was younger, I entered Brandywine with a desire to change that, and thanks to Penn State Brandywine,
both in and outside the classroom, I was able to become the leader I had hoped to be.

Now for anyone going through college now, I offer this advice: get involved and take advantage of every opportunity.  Keep an open mind to new experiences because you may not realize when you’ll find something that makes you feel like you truly belong. Also, do not let your schoolwork slip.  Never forget why you are really here—to get that degree.  Can the unknown be a scary, terrifying thing? Absolutely. Even though I was so sure I had made the right decision to attend this school, I was still nervous.

Looking back now, I’m glad I didn’t know. Going in with very few expectations made each experience that much more memorable. It’s amazing to think how
much people can change in college. Your college experience is what you put into it and I am very happy with what I’ve gotten out of it.  Thanks to my friends here who have always been there for me, I’ve gotten through a lot of rough spots. We laugh, we cry, we cheer, we fight and we comfort each other. There
is no disputing it, but we are family now and I couldn’t imagine life without them.

After all is said and done, and between the lessons I’ve learned in class, the relationships I’ve formed that will surpass graduation, and the experiences that I will remember for a life time, I can say. . .I am ready. . . I’m ready for the next chapter and will always be grateful for my time here. It has been an incredible run everyone!

Thanks for being a part of it.  WE ARE. . .GRADUATING!!