Unable to host their senior capstone showcase as an on-campus celebration of their work with family and friends in attendance, graduating students in the Graphic Design undergraduate program in the Stuckeman School at Penn State are turning to Instagram to highlight their design work in a creative way to an even larger potential audience during the week of May 4-8.

The Institutes of Energy and the Environment, in collaboration with Stewarding Our Planet's Resources, announced two separate community forums aimed at providing reports on existing energy and environmental activities and strategic opportunities as well as soliciting community input and recommendations for the future.

The recent business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders resulting from the coronavirus pandemic haven’t stopped a Penn State student artist from helping her peers show their work remotely after galleries closed across the United States.

A studio course for architecture and landscape architecture students in the Stuckeman School prepares students for the collaborative design process they will take part in once they begin careers in their respective fields by blurring the boundaries between the disciplines in the college setting.

A virtual Senior Week, the first "We Are Penn State Virtual 5K" and the College of Engineering's Learning Factory Capstone Design Showcase are among the virtual highlights at Penn State this weekend and next week.

Even before the recent news of the season’s first confirmed spotted lanternfly hatches in the Philadelphia region, homeowners in many parts of Pennsylvania were gearing up for their annual battle with the destructive pest.

Trees, shrubs and woody vines are among the top food sources for honey bees in urban environments, according to an international team of researchers. By using honey bees housed in rooftop apiaries in Philadelphia, the researchers identified the plant species from which the honey bees collected most of their food, and tracked how these food resources changed from spring to fall. The findings may be useful to homeowners, beekeepers and urban land managers who wish to sustain honey bees and other bee and pollinator species.

A $450,000 grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut Research will aid researchers in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences as they explore the potential to empower women farmers in northern Ghana through peanut production.

Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences is staying connected to alumni during the COVID-19 pandemic by moving its monthly Alumni Society board meetings and other alumni activities online.

A new online newsletter offered by Penn State Extension will give readers “the scoop” on the spotted lanternfly.

Wide-scale use of insecticide-treated bed nets has led to substantial declines in global incidences of malaria in recent years. As a result, mosquitos have been shifting their biting times to earlier in the evening and later in the morning. In a new study, an international team of researchers has found that mosquitoes are most likely to transmit malaria in the early evening, when people are exposed, then at midnight, when people are protected by bed nets, or in the morning. The findings may have implications for malaria prevention initiatives.

Gabriella Pinto provides a great example of what undergraduate research can do for a student. The Penn State food science major, who graduates this month, is headed for a good job armed with a wealth of experience and knowledge from her research, which gives her a leg up on her career.

Texas has become the first state to have its "alternate assessment aligned to modified academic-achievement standards" pass the U.S. Department of Education's peer-review process.

Test-based accountability has not generated the significant gains in student achievement that proponents intended, Helen F. Ladd contends.

States looking to renew NCLB waivers while they transition to new assessments ask to freeze school ratings in place for one year, the Education Department says.

Flawed achievement-gap targets in the state's NCLB flexibility waiver force a do-over and highlight complexities.

David Figlio and Eduwonkette discuss if today's testing and accountability policies accurately depict student performance and the size of the achievement

What should be included in a measure of school quality? If not by standardized test scores, how should we measure student achievement? Julian Vasquez Heilig and I each have some thoughts.

Federal law requires states to report student test scores in achievement levels, but leaders in the Golden State want to take a different approach.

A 10-year study by a blue-ribbon panel of scientists concludes that high-stakes testing and other accountability measures have largely failed to translate to real improvements in student achievement.

A 10-year study by a blue-ribbon panel of scientists concludes that high-stakes testing and other accountability measures have largely failed to translate to real improvements in student achievement.

Mostly, states are holding to a higher bar for student achievement than they did a decade ago. But Iowa, Texas, and Virginia continue to show large gaps between their state proficiency standards and NAEP's.

The Education Week Research Center looks at student scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress from 2003 to 2015, a period overlapping with the No Child Left Behind Act.

The U.S. Education Department says the states need more evidence to use the popular admissions test to measure high school achievement.

More than four years after the passage of ESSA, English-language-learner education policies across the country remain "disjointed and inaccessible," a new report concludes.

The U.S. tests its students more than most nations, but is the deluge of data providing the information schools need?

Helen Janc Malone introduces this week's blog theme, "accountability and assessment systems." She writes that at the heart of the current accountability debate is a fundamental question, What is the purpose of all the collected assessment data? Are they an end game or a starting point to educational

News.

If we continue to focus on student growth and improvement as learners, keep track of that progress, and watch its impact on standard test results, will we be able to know if what we are doing is helping students develop as learners and thinkers.

A new paper sketches out the landscape and tensions in civic education as philanthropies look for ways to support the field.

In number 10 in our countdown, I tried to offer a few thoughts to funders as they embraced new agendas and looked to avoid repeating yesterday's missteps.

Around the world, education is the largest recipient of philanthropic giving by a large margin, but in the United States, funders are moving away from investing in K-12 schools in favor of early childhood and higher education.

Funders have been both fast and thoughtful about how to work with national and local partners to listen to needs from the field, identify best practices, and deploy resources quickly, says Celine Coggins.

"This pandemic has given us an opportunity to think boldly about students' educational needs and how to creatively respond to them," says Katherine Haley.

"Folks in some foundations are quietly expressing frustration that they've been cautioned to stay in their lane and only fund things aligned with their pre-COVID strategy," says Stacey Childress.

Michelle R. Darnell, associate clinical professor in management and director of honor and integrity at Smeal, has been appointed as the inaugural director of the Tarriff Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility.

When Penn State students were faced with the unprecedented challenge of remote learning for the remainder of the spring semester in response to COVID-19, Orlando Acevedo saw an opportunity to connect his community by organizing a 9-week fitness challenge.

The Penn State Smeal College of Business has announced the recipients of its spring 2020 Senior Awards.

Two of Penn State’s most generous supporters and prominent alumni leaders have made a new commitment to support students impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. Helen S. Hintz, 1960, and Edward “Ed” R. Hintz, 1959, have directed $100,000 to the Student Care and Advocacy Emergency Fund.

The Penn State Smeal College of Business Center for the Business of Sustainability recently hosted the first in a series of virtual fireside discussions titled “The Impact of Coronavirus on Sustainability and Social Impact,” to explore how recent momentum in sustainability efforts has been altered.

Rachel Hooker, who will graduate May 9 with a 3.99 GPA in supply chain and information systems, has been selected as the Smeal College of Business’ spring 2020 supply chain and information systems student marshal.

Emilee Yaeger, an undergraduate student in the Science BS/MBA accelerated joint degree program, has been selected as the recipient of the 2019 Eberly College of Science Cooperative Education Student of the Year Award. The award recognizes the student’s academic achievements and contributions to the participating employer, the University, the community, and the field of cooperative education.

Jake Griggs, who will graduate Saturday with a 3.95 GPA with dual majors in management and political science, has been named Smeal’s spring 2020 management and organization student marshal.

In an effort to help mitigate the disruptive effects of the deadly COVID-19 virus, an interdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers are developing a novel methodology to analyze its spread and the impacts on policy to create better-prepared and more-resilient health care systems.

Penn State Health has appointed Don McKenna as president of Penn State Health Hampden Medical Center.

Penn State University Libraries has developed a curated guide to COVID-19 related resources for researchers, including ongoing research at Penn State.

With speed and ingenuity, more than 100 researchers across Penn State are shifting their research programs to address the COVID-19 crisis, thanks to funding from a seed grant initiative led by the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. In total, the initiative awarded $2.25 million to 47 teams of researchers from three campuses, 10 colleges and more than 25 departments.