UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — As a land-grant institution, Penn State has focused on improving the lives of the people of Pennsylvania for generations since its inception in 1855. The philosophy and motivation behind this land-grant status — to empower and educate citizens for the greater good — has now expanded in scope. The University, in many ways, has expanded its land-grant ethos beyond the borders of Pennsylvania, becoming now a global land-grant university.

The University’s dedication to global engagement is clear in the fourth foundation of the University’s Strategic Plan, “Enhancing Global Engagement.” Penn State’s global activities are expansive, partnering with countless outside universities, institutions, industry actors, and international organizations focused in research, teaching and service for global impact.

Because of this, Penn State has been recognized as a leader in international spaces and has attracted high-achieving faculty dedicated to social and technological advancement on a global scale.

Two of these faculty — Osama Awadelkarim, professor of engineering science and mechanics and the director of the Center for Nanotechnology Education and Utilization in the College of Engineering, and Mark Brennan, professor of leadership and community development and director of graduate studies for education, development and community engagement in the College of Agricultural Sciences — hold the prestigious title of UNESCO chair.

What is a UNESCO chair?

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “seeks to build peace through international cooperation in education, sciences and culture,” according to the UNESCO website. Their programs, as most U.N. programs do, center around the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. The organization focuses on providing real and impactful opportunities for engagement and development in the areas of education, science, and culture to its 193 member countries.

UNESCO has developed a broad portfolio. For example, the organization designates certain locations as “UNESCO Heritage Sites,” therefore affording them protected status under international law. Granting UNESCO chair status to certain educators and researchers is another one of UNESCO’s activities. Being named a UNESCO chair is prestigious and impactful, and it is rare that two chairs are appointed at one institution, as is the case at Penn State.

A UNESCO chair provides opportunities for connection, funding and program support from UNESCO to create and implement programs on an international level. It is a way to provide opportunities for research to create impact on a broad scale in a short amount of time.

Penn State holds the honor of being one of two universities in the United States, along with the Universidad de Puerto Rico, that is home to two UNESCO chairs.

Both current Penn State chairs are engaged in highly impactful work — though their work differs greatly.

Penn State’s first UNESCO chair — Mark Brennan

Brennan has been working in Europe for over 25 years. His focus has been on community and community development, but in the mid-2000s he began to focus more on youth.

“I just sort of hit it off with some colleagues at the University of Galway in Ireland,” Brennan said. “So we were able to establish a Child and Family Research Center.”

This center put Brennan on UNESCO’s radar, and the organization granted a chair to the University of Galway in 2009. A few years later, the organization approached Brennan again, asking if Penn State would be interested in applying for a chair. Brennan was thrilled at the idea, and though it took a few years, Penn State was eventually awarded a UNESCO chair in 2012.

The umbrella of Brennan’s chair position is community development, with a strong focus on youth and youth development — in this case, youth meaning those between 15 and 25 years old. Over half of the world’s population is under 25 years of age, and nearly a third is under 15, according to Brennan — and the demographics are only going to continue to shift younger as time goes on.

“So we started thinking — in order to make communities sustainable, who are we missing from the table?” Brennan said. “The obvious answer was the youth.”

Over the years of being involved with UNESCO, Brennan and his colleagues have worked on a variety of things. When youth extremist attacks occurred — for example, the Charlie Hebdo attack in the mid-2010s — Brennan’s team was tapped by certain government officials internationally to look into youth extremism.

“We had to do a lot of education,” Brennan said. “Governments feared that all youth were just a click away — but that’s not the case. It’s a very small subset of youth.”

Brennan also creates programs that engage youth and give them ownership, such as developing their own research project or helping to rewrite a “boring” graduate school course with more relevant and interesting language. During the pandemic, Brennan and his team started a project to help youth think through the implications of COVID-19, to great interest.

“We put out a call for the program on Thursday, and by Sunday we had 7,000 applicants,” he said. “We ended up creating over 30 teams through 100 countries in the world. … We wanted to get real youth voices. They’ll say so many things to each other that they’ll never say to me. We miss so much, and the youth are on the ground 24/7.”

The most exciting new project Brennan is engaged in revolves around empathy education.

“It’s well known that empathy is integral in creating stable societies. It cuts down on hate speech and bullying and helps us see the other side,” he said. “But the really cool thing we found is that as empathy increases, academic performance increases, as well.”

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense.

“At first we thought — that’s a little weird. But if you have empathy, you can relate to people in stories, in history,” Brennan said. “And it’s very important for teachers, too, to be able to relate topics through empathy instead of just textbooks.”

Brennan views communities, especially the youth within those communities, as key to societal change.

“Anything that drives the human condition forward starts at a local level,” Brennan said. “We want to make sure our youth feel some ownership over that.”

Penn State’s second UNESCO chair — Osama Awadelkarim

Six years after Penn State’s first UNESCO chair was awarded, it received its second. As opposed to the social science focus of the first chair, this chair is focused on hard sciences and engineering — specifically, nanotechnology. Awadelkarim, the UNESCO Chair on Building Innovation and Manufacturing Capacities through Advanced Technology Education, makes it very clear, however, that the societal impact of this chair is just as great.

“Nanotechnology is now the basis for all technological advancement,” he said. “Everything from your phone, to your refrigerator, to diagnosis and treatment of many diseases — it is all nanotechnology.”

Awadelkarim’s journey to the UNESCO chair shares certain similarities with Brennan’s. He, too, spent many years working internationally, though he spent most of his time in the Middle East and North Africa. Awadelkarim worked for the State Department doing outreach for scientists and researchers and was even named a Jefferson Science Fellow.

“Since 2006, when I joined the State Department, I’ve been involved in educational collaborations,” he said. “I helped faculty and institutions in the Middle East and North Africa, and I always promoted technological curriculum, especially around nanotechnology.”

These connections he made through his work at the State Department led him to working with UNESCO and, eventually, applying for and receiving a UNESCO chair title. The chair’s focus in this case is enhancing scientific research and advancing technological capabilities within the workforce and industrial sectors of UNESCO member countries. Mostly, this is achieved through the development of educational curriculum, materials and workshops that are provided to various institutions. Awadelkarim works closely with the regional UNESCO office in Cairo, and has provided materials to undergraduates in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and many other Gulf countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Nanotechnology education is at the forefront of these efforts. These can be seen through initiatives such as NACK, the Nanotechnology Applications and Career Knowledge Network, which provides resources both in the U.S. and abroad; summer school programs offered through the chair; and various virtual webinars. In one program, Penn State’s CNEU leads a network of 28 labs distributed across the U.S. and provide remote access sessions to their nanotechnology equipment, allowing researchers within and outside of the United States to see it in action. In total, more than 500 sessions were held and over 11,000 people attended those sessions (mostly in the United States, but with some international participation).

CNEU also provides in-person and web-based live-streamed nanotechnology professional development workshops for educators and incumbent nano-manufacturing industry engineers and technicians. Several of these workshops were attended by participants from Africa, the Middle East, South America and Europe.

Awadelkarim involves the University in these efforts heavily, inviting students from abroad to attend Penn State for a semester or two to learn more about nanotechnology; working with certain African institutions and countries on a way for students to study nanotechnology at Penn State and have their degrees recognized; and giving professional development opportunities for researchers outside of Penn State.

Awadelkarim recognizes that different countries are at different stages of development, and not all may have the infrastructure for nanotechnology right now.

“In this case, we do our best to introduce the concepts of nanotechnology to students and give them whatever limited access we can to our equipment,” he said. “We try to share the wealth of knowledge that we know, and then we hope down the line, when tech becomes cheaper, they will have the workforce to try to implement the technology.”

“Education is the most important piece,” he added.

What’s next?

UNESCO chairs are awarded for four years, with the possibility of renewal at the end of the four-year period. So long as both sides are still interested and engaged, generally speaking, the chair is renewed. Brennan’s current term is up in 2024, while Awadelkarim’s chair has just been renewed and will last through at least 2026.

“I am hoping to use the increased mobility afforded after COVID-19 to make more connections and create more interest in the Middle East and North Africa,” Awadelkarim said.

He also recently was called upon as an expert witness on semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. by the House of Representatives and hopes to continue to spread the word about the importance of these materials.

“That is what is fueling this advancement in communication and AI, data, sciences — everything is energized or fueled by chips,” he said.

As for Brennan, his work continues in the community-building and youth development sphere, specifically in the realm of empathy education. He’s recently co-created a book — a collection of essays from Irish citizens on the power and importance of empathy. This includes celebrities such as Hozier, The Edge and Cillian Murphy, but also gathers perspectives from everyday Irish people. In all, the collection of essays numbers in the 80s. The book, titled “Ionbhá” (or “Empathy” in Gaelic) launched in Dublin on Oct. 8 and is available for purchase from Mercier Press.

“The work we do — Penn State and UNESCO — it’s applied research. I can do research today and have it implemented within two months. As researchers generally, we do great stuff and we hope people find it, but by the time that happens, sometimes it’s 10 years down the road,” Brennan said. “With this work, we can really facilitate some positive outcomes quickly and make things better for a lot of people.”

For more information on the UNESCO chairs, contact Brennan at mab187@psu.edu and Awadelkarim at ooa1@psu.edu.