Last week, I
had the opportunity to visit Pennsylvania State University to learn exactly
what a Nittany Lion is and to check out their awesome campus located in State
College. Penn State has 24 different campuses in cities across Pennsylvania and
their largest campus is called University Park, which is located in the city of
State College. University Park is home to 46,000 undergraduate students, including
11 current Visitation alumnae! The campus is an easy 3.5 hour drive from the DC
area and there is so much to see…..
My first
stop was to take a selfie with at the Nittany Lion Shrine.
It is a tradition
for students to pose with the Nittany Lion on graduation day. The word
“Nittany” comes from the Algonquin word Nit-A-Nee meaning “single mountain.”
The original inhabitants of the area used the word to describe one of the
mountains near the campus, which was at one time populated with mountain lions
(not anymore!) After checking out the shrine, I drove to see Beaver Stadium,
which is the second largest college football stadium in the country and seats
107,000 people. I can’t even imagine how exciting it would be to see a football
game there- the stadium is massive and fills to the brim on game days.
Walking
around downtown State College, I was amazed to see so many shops and
restaurants. The downtown area is directly across from campus so it was filled
with students at lunch time. There are plenty of places to pick up your
requisite Penn State gear!
Approximately
13,700 students live on campus and all first year students are required to live
on campus and are guaranteed housing. The campus is easily walkable but I
passed lots of buses, which would be great on particularly cold days. Even
though there are a lot of buildings and dorms, it is not that hard to walk from
one end of campus to another.
Penn State
offers more than 160 different majors, which are housed in the different
academic colleges. One of the most well-known academic colleges is the Smeal
College of Business. The business school building has state of the art
classrooms and a trading room, which allows students to experience hands-on,
real-time analysis of financial markets and manage an actual investment
portfolio through the Nittany Lion Fund.
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| Inside the Smeal College of Business |
While Penn State does offer some large
classes, 85 percent of first-year classes at University Park have 50 or fewer
students. As students being to take courses in their specific major, classes
get even smaller.
No visit to
Penn State is complete with a trip to the Berkey Creamery. In 1892, Penn State
began offering America’s first collegiate instruction in ice cream
manufacturing. The Creamery sells over 2.5 million ice cream cones each year
and it features a wide array of unique flavors.
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| YUM |
I tried the Berkey Brickle,
which is vanilla ice cream with a caramel swirl and pieces of peanut brickle-
it was delicious! Thankfully, I was told in advance that you are only allowed
to order one flavor of ice cream- you cannot mix and match. The only person
that was allowed to order more than one flavor at a time was President Clinton
during a visit to campus in 1996!
University
Park has so many resources available to undergraduate students.
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| Student Union. And Actual Students. |
Home to one of the biggest research libraries
in the country, as well as the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center, which is the
largest multi-faith centers in the country, and the student union building that
has offices for the more than 900 various student organizations, it is clear
that everything is done on a bigger scale at Penn State! After my visit, I can
definitely understand why our students love the university.
