Pennsylvania State University-Penn State DuBois issued the following announcement on May 23.
Even before taking the reins as Penn State’s 19th president this month, Neeli Bendapudi spent much of the spring traveling across the commonwealth on her listening tour of the University’s campuses.
Bendapudi said the listening tour provided her with a stronger sense of Penn State’s land-grant mission and the campuses as engines of economic development in their regions. “If you think about the land-grant mission and the promise of social mobility, the campuses show that in true color,” she said. “It’s palpable when you’re on the various campuses — the access, the affordability, the promise.”
The president added that seeing many of the campuses up close helped demonstrate to her the impact the Commonwealth Campuses have on the economies of their local communities and the surrounding regions, ranging from educating and keeping local talent at home, to promoting and supporting entrepreneurship and innovation through Invent Penn State’s free statewide LaunchBox and Innovation Hub Network.
“I always knew the campuses mattered to the communities, but it was so gratifying to see the advisory boards, the donors, the local government representatives show up and exhibit the pride they have in their campuses,” she said.
Bendapudi also remarked about the close-knit nature of each campus. “You can see the sense of community at these campuses,” she said. “The students talked about the support they get from the faculty and staff, they really know one another. Chancellors talked about the relationships they’ve built where they check on the students, but it’s not just how they are doing in the classroom, but how they are doing with the pressures of COVID, what’s happening with their families and so on.”
Original source can be found here.
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