Berks Students Share Knowledge in Asia
By: Jessica Didow
Two students traveled around the world to share the knowledge they gained at Penn State Berks with students and research colleagues in Asia. Nicole Legenski, a senior majoring in Electrical Engineering, spent her spring 2011 semester in Singapore facilitating a technology transfer from Penn State Berks to the National University of Singapore. Meanwhile, Christine James, who graduated from Penn State Berks in May 2011 with a baccalaureate degree in Global Studies and a minor in Professional Writing, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and is currently teaching English in Taiwan.
Legenski’s experience began with her National Science Foundation internship with Dr. Robert Forrey, Professor of Physics at Penn State Berks, during the summers of 2009 and 2010. Her internship included collaboration with a research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS). Researchers from NUS provided large amounts of chemistry data to Legenski for the purpose of developing atomic force fields to study novel materials, such as metallic glass.
“The force field provides a model of the chemical data and is an important input in molecular dynamics simulations” said Legenski. “Most simulations use simple force fields that are not very accurate. Our goal is to develop more reliable force fields so that the simulations are more reliable.”
Legenski and the rest of the research team published “Force Fields for Metallic Clusters and Nanoparticles” in the Journal of Computational Chemistry in March of 2011. Based on her work, Legenski was awarded the Outstanding Internship Award for the Science Division at Penn State Berks. This award is presented to an outstanding student who has demonstrated an integration of academic training and professional application through the internship experience.
Her internship led Legenski to spend her spring semester at the NUS, where she continued her education in Electrical Engineering and trained the host research team to use the codes that she and Forrey had developed.
“The graduate students and post-docs at NUS were ridiculously smart,” commented Legenski. “It was a great experience, and I was glad to be able to contribute.”
Legenski returned to Berks in the summer of 2011 to complete the research project and write her Schreyer’s Honors thesis with Forrey. She is currently a senior at University Park.
James was one of twenty-eight applicants out of 200 to be accepted in the English Teaching Assistantship Program in Taiwan. This program is designed to teach English as a Second Language to students around the world. Throughout the eleven months she will spend in Taiwan, she will be expected to work about thirty-five hours a week: twenty in the classroom and fifteen developing lesson plans and tutoring elementary students privately, working mostly with the students’ listening and comprehension skills.
With the encouragement and assistance of Dr. Sandy Feinstein, Honors Coordinator and Associate Professor of English at Penn State Berks, James applied to the Fulbright Program. After months of writing and editing her statement of purpose and personal statement with Feinstein, James submitted her application. The next step was a group interview with Berks faculty members including Feinstein; Dr. Randall Fegley, Global Studies Program Coordinator; and Dr. Malika Richards, Associate Professor of Management, who received a Fulbright grant in 2009 to lecture at Soochow University in Taiwan.
“I am excited to go abroad and teach the Taiwanese children not only English, but also about American culture,” commented James. “I would like to foster a relationship between American and Taiwanese students. It is needless to say that I feel so lucky to be able to participate in such an incredible experience.”
The Fulbright Program, which is sponsored by the US Department of State, is the flagship international educational exchange program and is designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.” It has provided nearly 300,000 participants—chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential—with the opportunity to study, teach, and conduct research; exchange ideas; and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.