Rene Portland was the head coach of the Penn State Lady Lions from 1980 to 2007, turning the team into a women’s basketball powerhouse. Under her leadership, the team won 606 games, earned their first Number 1 ranking, and reached their first Final Four. Rene (pronounced REE-NEE) Portland was the nickname and married name of […]
Hilda Patton Thompson was a passionate humanitarian who founded the State College chapter of the American Red Cross Motor Corps. She continued her work with the Red Cross, holding national leadership positions during World War I and World War II.
Horace Ashenfelter was a Penn State graduate, Olympic gold medalist, and world record holder in the 3,000-meter steeplechase. The Collegeville, Pennsylvania, native was a four-time All-American as a member of the Penn State track team and the two-mile NCAA national champion in 1949. Ashenfelter, then a field agent for the FBI, was the surprise winner […]
Philip Benner was an early business leader in Centre County who established the Rock Ironworks, one of the first iron forges in the county. Benner was born in Chester County in 1762 and served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. After the war, he operated an iron forge in Chester County. He married […]
Norwood H. “Barney” Ewell thrilled track spectators from State College to London’s Wembley Stadium, where he won three medals at the 1948 Olympics. At Penn State, Ewell’s career inspired action on racial equity, leading students, faculty, and administrators to fight segregation in intercollegiate sports.
Aaron Levy (1742-1815) was a Jewish immigrant who arrived in America from the Netherlands and donated land for a church and school in the Centre County village that became Aaronsburg in 1786. The goodwill behind the donation of the land to the group of German Christian immigrants who settled the community, along with a gift […]
John T. Biggers was a muralist, educator, and Penn State alumnus who dedicated his work to establishing a sense of African American identity and pride through art. His murals, portraying rural Black laborers, can be seen at Penn State in the Burrowes Building and the Paul Robeson Center. Born on April 13, 1924, in Gastonia, […]
Hugh Jesse Arnelle was a two-sport star at Penn State, a distinguished corporate lawyer, and the first Black trustee of the university. He served on the board for 45 years, becoming a trustee emeritus in 2014. Arnelle received Penn State’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2016.
Sherman Lutz was an aviator, flight instructor, and advocate of commercial flight in Centre County. In 1932, he built an airport in Boalsburg that was primarily a flight school where he supervised the first solo flights of 476 pilots.
Edwin Erle Sparks, Penn State’s eighth president, served from 1908 to 1920. Using his skills in outreach, he took advantage of the public’s growing appreciation for the value of Penn State programs to build the college’s popularity to levels never achieved before. Sparks was born in Newark, Ohio, in 1860 and earned a B.A. in […]