Pennsylvania State University in the context of Penn State Dickinson Law

The Commonwealth System of Higher Education is a statutory designation by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that confers "state-related" status on four universities in Pennsylvania: Lincoln University, the Pennsylvania State University, Temple University, and the University of Pittsburgh. The designation establishes the schools as an "instrumentality of the commonwealth" and provides each university with annual, non-preferred financial appropriations in exchange offering tuition discounts to students who are residents of Pennsylvania and a minority state-representation on each school's board of trustees.

The universities remain legally separate and private entities, operating under their own charters, governed by independent boards of trustees, and with assets under their own ownership and control, thereby retaining much of the freedom and individuality of private institutions, both administratively and academically. It is the only public-private hybrid system of higher education of its particular type in the United States, although other schools, such as Cornell University, the University of Delaware, and Rutgers University, also have public-private partnerships of their own kind.

Michael Kulikowski (born September 3, 1970) is an American historian. He is a professor of history and classics and the head of the history department at Pennsylvania State University. Kulikowski specializes in the history of the western Mediterranean world of late antiquity. He is sometimes associated with the Toronto School of History and was a student of Walter Goffart.

Eugene N. Borza (March 3, 1935 – September 5, 2021) was a professor of ancient history at Pennsylvania State University, where he taught from 1964 until 1995.

Northumberland County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 91,647. Its county seat is Sunbury. The county is part of the Central region of the commonwealth.

The county was formed in 1772 from parts of Lancaster, Berks, Bedford, Cumberland, and Northampton Counties and named for the county of Northumberland in northern England. Northumberland County is a fifth class county according to the Pennsylvania's County Code. Northumberland County comprises the Sunbury, Pennsylvania Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the Bloomsburg-Berwick-Sunbury, PA Combined Statistical Area. Among its notable residents are Thomas L. Hamer, a Democratic member of Congress in the 1830s, and Joseph Priestley, the Enlightenment chemist and theologian, who left England in 1796 due to religious and political persecution and settled on the Susquehanna River. His former house, originally purchased by chemists from Pennsylvania State University after a colloquium that founded the American Chemical Society, is a historical museum.

Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, previously called the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer, is a NASA three-telescope space observatory for studying gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and monitoring the afterglow in X-ray, and UV/visible light at the location of a burst. It was launched on 20 November 2004, aboard a Delta II launch vehicle. Headed by principal investigator Neil Gehrels until his death in February 2017, the mission was developed in a joint partnership between Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and an international consortium from the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy. The mission is operated by Pennsylvania State University as part of NASA's Medium Explorer program (MIDEX).

The burst detection rate is 100 per year, with a sensitivity ~3 times fainter than the BATSE detector aboard the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. The Swift mission was launched with a nominal on-orbit lifetime of two years. Swift is a NASA MIDEX (medium-class Explorer) mission. It was the third to be launched, following IMAGE and WMAP.

Stanley O. Ikenberry (March 3, 1935 – April 1, 2025) was an American academic who served as the 14th president of the University of Illinois System from 1979 to 1995 and again as the 17th president on an interim basis in 2010. Ikenberry was responsible for a major consolidation of university campuses and new student initiatives.

As an undergraduate, Ikenberry attended Shepard College, where his father served as the president. He received his MA (1957) and PhD (1960) degrees from Michigan State University. Ikenberry started his career at Michigan State before serving as dean of the College of Human Resources and Education at West Virginia University and senior vice-president at Pennsylvania State University.

Kevin Luhman is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics from Pennsylvania State University who discovered both the third-closest stellar system, Luhman 16, and the fourth-closest stellar system, WISE 0855−0714, to the Sun. Both systems are composed of substellar objects (objects less massive than stars), falling into the category of brown dwarfs (Luhman 16) or even less massive objects (WISE 0855−0714) which are categorized as sub-brown dwarfs but also referred to as "free floating planets" or "planetary mass objects". WISE 0855−0714 (discovery published 2014) is the coldest massive object outside the Solar System that has been directly imaged.

Luhman 16 was named for its discoverer, following common practice for very nearby stars discovered in modern times.

State College is a borough and home rule municipality in Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is a college town, home to the University Park campus of The Pennsylvania State University.

State College is the largest designated borough in Pennsylvania. It is the principal borough of the six municipalities that make up the State College area, the largest settlement in Centre County and one of the principal cities of the greater State College-DuBois Combined Statistical Area with a combined population of 236,577 as of the 2010 U.S. census. In the 2010 census, the borough population was 42,034.