Penn State will distribute $1.2 million in student-parent child-care subsidies during the next four years. The subsidies generate from a new grant the University received from the U.S. Department of Education. Penn State was awarded the maximum amount possible under the federal Child Care Access Means Parents in School program. The University will receive $300,000 per year for four years. The new funding represents an $80,000 increase over an existing grant that expired Sept. 30. Child-care subsidies will be distributed to student parents at all Penn State locations. As required by the Department of Education, priority will be given to student parents who receive federal Pell Grants. Students who do not receive Pell Grants can apply for future subsidy distributions.
More than a quarter of a million subscribers receive news about Penn State in their e-mail boxes through the Penn State Newswire, the companion Penn State Live Web site receives nearly 10,000 hits a day from people seeking information about the University, and RSS feeds deliver much of the same information directly to news Web sites and individual subscribers. Now, the Department of Public Information has launched the Penn State news widget. Anyone who uses an Apple computer loaded with the OSX 10.4 (Tiger) operating system can get Penn State news delivered right to the desktop with the new Penn State Live widget. Widgets, which are mini-applications that perform common tasks and provide fast access to information, run through the operating system's Dashboard feature. The Penn State Live widget gives users the most recent Penn State headlines automatically. The headlines then link directly to the full stories on the Penn State Live Web site.