Pennsylvania State University in the context of "Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission"

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.