(Posted November 16, 2006)

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Pat Terenzini, a Penn State professor and an expert on how the college experience affects students, will give a lecture at Juniata College centering on that topic, "Our Myopic Thinking About How to Improve Undergraduate Education" at 7:30 p.m., Monday, Nov. 20 in Alumni Hall in the Brumbaugh Academic Center on the Juniata campus.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Terenzini will outline how colleges tend to focus on only a few factors when they try to enhance undergraduate learning. In his talk, Terenzini will address how colleges often underestimate the complexity of the different factors involved in undergraduate student learning. He will talk about how colleges can create programs and policies to enhance student learning and development.
Terenzini, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior Scientist in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Penn State, is co-author of the two-volume study "How College Affects Students," which was reprinted in 2005. The book is a synthesis of more than three decades of research on the impacts of the college experience on students.
His research includes influential studies on the effects of college on student learning and development, persistence, and educational attainment. He also has published research on the college experience and outcomes for low-income and first-generation college students.
He is a former editor-in-chief of New Directions for Institutional Research and is associate editor of Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research. He also is an editorial board member of The Review for Higher Education and a consulting editor for Research in Higher Education.
He received Penn State's College of Education Career Achievement Award in 2006. He earned a bachelor's degree in English from Dartmouth College and went on to earn a master's degree in English education from Harvard University. He earned a doctoral degree in higher education from Syracuse University. He started his professional career at Syracuse, making professional stops at the State University of New York at Albany and at the University of Georgia before joining the Penn State faculty in 1990.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.