Pennsylvania state university

The Pennsylvania Humanities Council designated the year 1985 as "The Year of the Pennsylvania Writer." The PHC funded projects in eight locations throughout the Commonwealth to gain appreciation, understanding, and recognition for past and present Pennsylvania writers. The State College/University Park location held a two-stage conference and related events by five Centre County regional organizations.

Pennsylvania State University celebrated its centennial in 1955.

The Pennsylvania State University Professional Association (PSUPA) charged the university with attempting to create a company union from the Faculty Senate, and the PSUPA petitioned the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board to represent faculty and certain non-teaching professionals in collective bargaining. In the March 1977 election, the university faculty voted for no representation.

Continuing education courses were offered by various schools at Penn State as early as 1906. These were centralized in 1959 in the Continuing Education program. Offerings included credit, non-credit, training, and recreational classes at campuses, hospitals, and industrial locations. Continuing Education was renamed Continuing and Distance Education in 1994 with a new Department of Distance Education being created. Continuing and Distance Education separated in 1998 with Distance Education and the Department of Independent Learning combining to form World Campus. Continuing Education became its own outreach unit.

The Taiwan Teachers College was founded in 1946; at that time, it was the only institution in Taiwan devoted to training secondary school teachers. By 1953 the College was seen as a source of supplying secondary school teachers for both Taiwan and the mainland. S. Lewis Land, Head of the Department of Industrial Education at Penn State, recommended creating a program in which Taiwanese professors traveled to Penn State to study American classroom techniques; the program was designed to strengthen Taiwan's new vocational teacher education system. Two Taiwanese educators arrived in February of 1953 and studied in the Department of Industrial Education. They were followed in March of 1953 by Chen Lui, President of the Taiwan Teachers College, and Yu-Huan Wu, home economics teacher at the Second Provincial High School for Girls in Taipei. The Taiwan Teachers College became the National Taiwan Normal University in 1967.

The Summer Library School was established in 1911 to help public librarians in need of training who could not attend accredited library schools. Competition, lack of accreditation, and costs of paying faculty during inadequate enrollment forced the school to close in 1960.

Student activism at Penn State appeared in the early 1960s with the formation of groups concerned with the issues of anti-war (SENSE-Students for Peace, Student Peace Union, Coalition for Peace) and student freedom (Students for a Democratic Society, Student Committee to Reform the University).