July 2008 Press Releases
Doylestown, PA -- (July 28, 2008) - Delaware Valley College has introduced a new major in Counseling Psychology and will begin offering the program this fall.
According to Dr. Allison Buskirk-Cohen, assistant professor of psychology, counseling psychology is one of the most popular fields in psychology. The need for counseling psychologists is growing because of increased demand for psychological services in schools, hospitals, social service agencies, mental health centers and substance-abuse treatment clinics. Often, however, in undergraduate programs, a student must major in general psychology before going on to graduate school to specialize in counseling psychology.
"We'll be one of the only undergraduate programs in the region to offer a major with the primary focus on counseling. We recognize that many graduates want to begin working in the field immediately following graduation, and a specialized major in counseling psychology provides these students the advanced training they'll need to immediately join the mental health profession," said Buskirk-Cohen. "The strength of our program is that students may choose to pursue an advanced degree, or they may seek immediate employment in the field."
Students will take a series of foundational courses in psychology, including counseling theories and techniques, multicultural issues, history and systems, statistics for research and methods of research as well as concentration courses in lifespan development, personality theories, measurements and assessments and abnormal psychology. Specialized electives include educational psychology, child development, adolescent psychology, substance use and abuse, developmental disabilities, marriage and family counseling and childhood psychopathology, among others.
Although Delaware Valley College has offered a psychology minor as part of its curriculum for some time, this is the first major in psychology offered by the school. "This program is already proving to be a popular major among DelVal students, with numerous current and incoming students already signing up for or changing their majors," according to Buskirk-Cohen. For more information about the new Counseling Psychology program at Delaware Valley College, contact Dr. Allison Buskirk-Cohen at 215-489-2234.
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Doylestown, PA -- (July 21, 2008) - Delaware Valley College Professor Rodney Gilbert and Director of MBA Program Tom Kennedy spoke on food traceability with the Bucks County Courier Times, a daily paper serving the Bucks and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, regions. The newspaper reaches approximately 43,000 daily subscribers.
Gilbert and Kennedy discussed Delaware Valley College's program to use new technology to help track the import process of Australian meat into the United States.
"Students and faculty will collect and record information from their own beef cows, now marked by yellow ID tags, to map out every point in their lives. That includes the animal's family lineage; what kind of grain it ate; whether it had its shots; when the vet came and why; who bought the cow; how the butcher processed the meat; and whether it was processed again by someone else.
'It's really exciting. This is really comprehensive,' said Kennedy, director of DelVal's Food and Agribusiness MBA program."
The traceability project aims to act as a preventive measure to track all steps of the food supply process. More attentive monitoring helps eliminate questions should a food-borne illness occur in any step of the process, from farm to table.
Feel free to read the full story on the Bucks County Courier Times website by clicking here. To learn more about Delaware Valley College's Livestock Science and Management Program, please visit the department's website by clicking here; to learn more about DelVal's Master of Business Administration in Food & Agribusiness, please visit the department's site by clicking here.
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Doylestown, PA -- (July 14, 2008) - As part of Delaware Valley College's strategic planning initiatives for the college's future, Dr. Joseph Brosnan has solicited the help of business, political and academic leaders nationally naming them to the college's new President's Advisory Council.
The group will advise the president and the Board of Trustees on strategic issues. They will develop ideas and offer guidance to strengthen the college within the context of its mission and traditions. The group recently met in New York City to discuss economic and population growth, college branding and marketing, strategic planning and institutional development.
Individuals named to the Delaware Valley College President's Advisory Council include former Pennsylvania Governor, Mark S. Schweiker, current President and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce; Donald D. Brown, Jr., Senior Partner with law firm Sprigel, Brown, Fichera & Cote, LLP in New York; W. Warner Burke, the Edward Lee Thorndike Professor of Psychology and Education and the Education Program Coordinator for Graduate Programs in Social-Organizational Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University; Iris Chen, President and CEO of the "I Have A Dream" Foundation," based in New York; Michael Gallis, Principal of Michael Gallis & Associates, a strategic planning and design firm in based in Charlotte, NC; Arthur Levine, President of The Woodrow Wilson Foundation, based in Princeton, NJ; James J. Linksz, President of Bucks County Community College; Michael Moss a member of the Bucks County Board and overall Managing Board of Team Capital Bank, a financial services group; Michael O'Connor, President and Founder of Independent Professional Services, Inc., a financial services company providing back office, benefits administration and contract and vendor management services in Doylestown; and Thomas W. Watson, former Vice Chairman of the Omnicom Group and current Dean of Omnicom University, graduate of the DelVal class of 1957 and founder of the College's Executive-in-Residence Program.
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Doylestown, PA -- (July 14, 2008) - Whitney Scott, of Winfield, PA, has been named manager of Delaware Valley College's Horticulture Production Unit and will begin his duties immediately.
In his new position, Scott will be responsible for assisting in the day-to-day operation of the DelVal Horticulture Production Unit. He will teach and manage undergraduate student employees, assist in activities in the orchards, vegetable plantings, cold storage, dry storage, equipment use and storage, harvesting and marketing. In addition, he will manage a greenhouse to grow vegetable plants for use on the farms and resale.
Scott is a third generation vegetable and fruit farmer. His family business included 60 acres of orchards and 45 acres of vegetables and brambles. Scott brings practical experience in vegetable and fruit production that he can share with undergraduate students majoring in DelVal horticulture programs. He has special expertise in producing strawberries, raspberries and hothouse tomatoes and is a member of the North American Strawberry Growers Association and Pennsylvania Vegetable Growers Association.
Scott owned and operated a mixed truck farm operation in Winfield, Snyder County, Pennsylvania, where he grew 14 varieties of strawberries and several varieties of sweet corn, raspberries, blackberries and vegetables. His products were marketed through a seasonal farm stand operated by his wife and family. In addition, he marketed his products at Harrisburg Farmers Market, Weis Supermarkets and produce auction houses. In addition to growing horticultural products, Scott raised thousands of broilers for Vineland Kosher Broiler.
"Whitney is keen on teaching students practical skills and approved production practices as they relate to their respective academic programs; he can communicate current knowledge of Pennsylvania fruit and vegetable farming as it relates to crop varieties, equipment, chemical supply and application, irrigation, frost protection, labor procurement and marketing," said Dr. James E. Diamond, Dean of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at DelVal.
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Doylestown, PA -- (July 10, 2008) - Matthew Levy of Perkasie, PA, has been promoted to assistant athletic director at Delaware Valley College. The long-time staffer assumes the role in addition to his current position as sports information director immediately.
Levy has been sports information director at Delaware Valley College since 1992, where he has publicized the college's 17 intercollegiate men's and women's sports. His responsibilities include serving as senior athletic communications officer by preparing news releases, game/match summaries and feature story information on athletes for regional media as well as managing the college's athletic website. In addition, Levy maintains athlete and team statistics for the NCAA and DelVal archives and supervises press box and scoring table activities for all DelVal home games.
In his new role, Levy will take on the added responsibilities of assisting the athletic director in providing leadership and direction for DelVal's athletes and teams and other administrative and personnel management responsibilities as well as ensuring ongoing compliance with college, conference and NCAA regulations.
During his DelVal career, Levy has received several awards from the College Sports Information Directors Association (CoSIDA) for his work, including first place and national finalist recognition for his 1995-1996 media guide wrestling season review story. Levy earned his bachelor's degree in communication with a minor in writing in 1991 from Western Maryland College (renamed McDaniel College.) Currently, Levy is studying to earn his master's degree in educational leadership from Delaware Valley College in 2009.
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Doylestown, PA -- (July 7, 2008) - Recognizing the need for ongoing development of methods to protect the nation's food supply and its role in educating the next generation of food industry leaders, Delaware Valley College has taken the lead academic role in an international trial. Participants aim to help food exporters in Australia track food from farms to supermarket shelves and food service outlets in the United States using specialized software and then creating a template to instruct graduate students and the industry in best practices along the supply chain.
Known as the International Food Chain Integrity and Traceability Project, the program is designed to review, develop and test supply chain documentation systems using specialized software to improve the quality, safety, security and business efficiency of food export supply chains. Overall, the goal is to investigate every aspect of the supply process from paddock to shop shelf and will involve Victorian, Australia producers of first beef and then dairy through to their commercial customers in Philadelphia and each regulator and transport and logistics supplier along the chain. Outcomes are designed to protect and enhance the Australian food export business, to protect and enhance food security in the US market and to increase international food chain efficiency.
ICON Global Link, a business management consultancy and IT solution provider specializing in software systems for managing risk across supply chains and specialising in bio-security, process management and regulatory reporting software, will test the electronic documentation system while working with all project participants and members of the supply chains, from growers, logistics specialists and transporters, to the ports of Melbourne and Philadelphia and commercial customers in US markets. Using ICON's software, risk is monitored in every node and process, enabling management of product integrity, pedigree, traceability and chain of custody.
Traceability is of great concern in the supply chain," said Thomas Kennedy, director of Delaware Valley College's MBA program and MBA in Food and Agribusiness. "Adopting software tracking protocols to increase the safety and security of our food is a priority, and our primary goal for participating in this project is to increase the knowledge of food safety and supply chain management among our students; they will need to understand these concepts in order to be leaders within the industry as well as develop richer curriculum by implementing software into the DelVal Food and Agribusiness MBA program."
According to Kennedy, the food chain is highly vulnerable. Current methods for managing risk in the chain are problematic and primarily manual, but software can help break the supply chain into pieces and combine the details of what happens in each piece to provide full visibility of the chain in order to pinpoint the gaps in safety and security. Though the record-keeping section of the nation's Bioterrorism Act already has larger companies doing a form of tracking, the International Food Chain Integrity and Traceability Project gets more detailed, more comprehensive and global. Every type of activity in every node of the supply chain is captured electronically and stored in databases to allow for quick backtracking in cases where the safety of a given food was in question.
"What we're doing is capturing information on every part of the supply chain all the way through to the consumer, investigating every imaginable input - from what the farmer is feeding cattle, where that feed came from, what shots the vet gave them, where the nearest water well is to the farm and so on" added Kennedy. "A system with that much information stored electronically will be invaluable should a safety issue occur."
"We are the only school in the US offering our students this comprehensive a scope in the area of traceability, but we feel it is an important component to the future of the ag business; our students must be well versed in it," said Kennedy. "We want to educate the next generation of food supply leaders with as many available tools and methodologies as are available. Our students will be at the forefront in using this software and will be highly valued employees and industry leaders as protocols for tracking within our food supply chain evolve."
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Doylestown, PA -- (July 6, 2008) - Chris Ochadlick, of Point Pleasant, PA, administrative assistant for the Mathematics and Liberal Arts Departments at Delaware Valley College, recently had a photograph published in the Summer 2008 issue of "Life Images." The issue is on sale now at Border's books.
The photo, titled "Front Row Seats," shows a set of three chairs in the foreground of Fairmount Lodge in Alberta, Canada. Ochadlick took the picture in August 2007 while on vacation with friends. This is her first published magazine piece, though she has previously published pieces with local newspapers.
For more than 30 years, Ochadlick has enjoyed self-taught film and digital photography and currently has six photographs on permanent display in the Shapiro Wing of the Joseph Krauskopf Memorial Library on Delaware Valley College's Doylestown campus.
A strong believer in composition, she frequently tells aspiring photographers "to take photographs as if they do not have an editing program."
"At this point, I'd say it's progressed to the point it's much more than a hobby," said Ochadlick of her long history with the medium. She advises beginning photographers to focus primarily on their area of interest. "It really comes across to the viewer and tells you much more about the person behind the camera."
Visitors are invited to view Ochadlick's works on permanent display at the Joseph Krauskopf Memorial Library. Ochadlick's works can also be seen until July 25 at the gallery at Mixed Media in Doylestown in their "40 Art 2008," exhibition. In addition, two of Ochadlick's works will be shown in the upcoming Tinicum Arts Festival at Tinicum Park, River Road, Erwinna on July 12 and 13.
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Doylestown, PA -- (July 3, 2008) - Delaware Valley College professor emeritus, Dr. Robert Berthold, Jr., of Doylestown, PA, has been selected to receive the 2008 Roger A. Morse Teaching/Extension Service/Regulatory Award from the Eastern Apicultural Society of North America and will accept the award during the Society's annual meeting in August in Murray, Kentucky.
The Roger A. Morse Outstanding Teaching/Extension Service/Regulatory Award is given annually to recognize an individual in teaching/extension or regulatory activity in the field of apiculture.
Berthold was nominated by former student, Marian R. Young, a 1980 graduate of DelVal and president of BrightFields, Inc., an environmental consulting and remediation services firm located in Wilmington, Delaware. In her letter nominating Berthold, Young identifies him as "an inspiring professor whose enthusiasm for insects and especially honeybees, instilled in me a strong desire to learn more and to become a beekeeper myself." She continues by describing Berthold's love of honeybees, which started at age 5, and describes his stellar career. "Through the teaching, mentoring and outreach activities during his 37-year career, Dr. Robert Berthold, Jr., has demonstrated excellence in the field of apiculture and has inspired, in his students, the love of honeybees and the mastery of the art and science of beekeeping."
"For more than three decades, Dr. Berthold has had a profound effect on many Delaware Valley College graduates and athletes and still, as professor emeritus, is enlightening and inspiring our current students," said Dr. James E. Diamond, dean of agriculture and environmental sciences.
Berthold joined the Delaware Valley College faculty in 1968 and was a professor of biology teaching courses in biology, invertebrate zoology, entomology and apiculture. In addition, during his time as a professor, he also served for more than 10 years as the Summer Bee Inspector for Southeastern Pennsylvania for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and ran Berthold Candle Molds Manufacturing, a producer of candle molds. He has been a member of the Eastern Apiculture Society since 1968 and has taught beekeeping short courses and judged honey shows at the local, county, state, regional and national levels. He wrote the book, "Beeswax Crafting," in 1993 and has produced many articles for the American Bee Journal and Gleanings in Bee Culture magazine.
In addition, he coached the men's and women's cross country teams for 37 years and is still an active cross country and 10K runner in about 20 events per year. He received the Distinguished Faculty Member Award in 1983. Today, Berthold is still teaching as professor emeritus at DelVal, is an active member of The Order of Masons and builds homes with Habitat for Humanity. Berthold earned his bachelor's degree in biology from Juniata College, his master's degree in entomology from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in apiculture from the Pennsylvania State University.