New Conference Facility Honors Samuel P. “Pat” Black III
A longtime friend of Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, was honored today at the dedication of the college’s new Samuel P. “Pat” Black III Conference Center.
The Pat Black Conference Center, as it will be informally known, is a large lecture and conference facility that has been added to the north side of the college’s Research and Economic Development Center (REDC). The 201-seat tiered lecture hall is furnished for student and business use, offering power and data ports at each seat, wireless connectivity, amplified sound, and projectors that can simultaneously broadcast three different images to a spread screen covering the width of the facility. A touch screen in the conference center podium operates a DVD, VCR and computer. The center’s window coverings and lights also can be adjusted from the podium.
Pat Black is president of Samuel P. Black & Associates insurance agency and chairman of the investment firm Erie Management Group. In March 1998, a $20 million estate gift anonymously given by his late parents, insurance entrepreneur Samuel P. Black Jr. and his wife, Irene, endowed the college’s School of Business. In keeping with the couple’s wishes, the endowment’s source was not revealed until after their deaths, at which time the Penn State Board of Trustees voted to rename the college’s business school in the Blacks’ honor.
“Pat has a passion for Erie; a vision for this city’s future centered on the commercialization of emerging technologies,” Penn State Behrend Chancellor Jack Burke said. “Pat and the Black family invested in Erie and in Penn State Behrend through their transformational gift to our School of Business. The Pat Black Conference Center is another such investment.”
The REDC, which itself opened last August, houses both the college’s Sam and Irene Black School of Business and its School of Engineering, making Penn State Behrend one of the first colleges to seamlessly integrate business and engineering education under one roof. “The conference center was part of the original plan for the REDC, but had to be cut because of budget limitations,” John Magenau, director of the Black School of Business, said. “Fortunately, we were able to make it a late addition to the building through the flexibility Pat has given us in the use of the Black Endowment funds.”
The Pat Black Conference Center will be used primarily for regional and national conferences, and for upper-level business and engineering education. Over the next few months, the center is scheduled to host the college’s undergraduate and graduate admissions events, an Academic Sports League competition for high school students, the Western Pennsylvania Undergraduate Psychology Conference, the Richard J. Fasenmyer Engineering Design Conference, a workshop on globalization, and a three-day Society of Plastics Engineers conference on injection molding.
On Tuesday, the Sam and Irene Black School of Business was included for the fourth consecutive year on the “Best 290 Business Schools” list published by the New York-based education services company The Princeton Review. The Black School of Business offers one associate, nine baccalaureate and two graduate degree programs, as well as two certificates in financial planning and SAP. It is the only business school in the region accredited by AACSB International—The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the leading accrediting agency for bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs in business administration and accounting. For more information, visit behrend.psu.edu.