Pearl Gluck, the Penn State faculty member who serves as the Centre Film Festival’s artistic director and cofounder, helps drive the seven-year-old festival’s impact largely as a matchmaker — combining an educational and informational foundation with a collaborative, entertaining and fun approach during the weeklong festival.
As the 2025-26 Penn State Laureate, filmmaker and associate professor Pearl Gluck is traveling across the commonwealth to share her films and examine how storytelling lives within communities — not only in places, but through the people who care for them: archivists, artists, educators, librarians, museum guides and local historians who serve as keepers of cultural memory.
Ben Bass, a third-year business major and member of Penn State Brandywine’s basketball team, remains dedicated to perfecting his performance on the court while also sharpening his academic skills off the court — most notably, his ability to understand three languages.
Third-year engineering student Giovanni Hernandez-Rios, right, received the Mueser Rutledge Wentworth and Johnston Scholarship from the New York City Post Scholarship Fund. Hernandez-Rios was nominated for the scholarship by Nasibeh Zohrabi, left, assistant professor of engineering at Penn State Brandywine.
