MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — Every Wednesday afternoon, students fill the Gallery Lounge in Penn State Harrisburg’s Olmsted Building. Here, during meetings of the Multicultural Academic Excellence Program, they share a meal, learn about campus resources or career topics, and are free to talk about whatever is on their minds.
Second-year student Sabine Kabuika, who regularly attends, said she feels like students can talk about whatever they need to — even uncomfortable topics — during the sessions.
“It’s a friendly, almost family-[oriented] environment,” she said.
For more than three decades, Penn State Harrisburg’s Multicultural Academic Excellence Program, better known as MAEP, has served as a place for students to expand their horizons, meet new people, learn about academic or professional topics, and simply be themselves without judgment.
MAEP was founded by Felicia Brown-Haywood, who retired from Penn State Harrisburg in 2019 as director of the Office of Student Affairs and Engagement. She said the program was originally established as a retention and cross-cultural initiative for first-generation students and students belonging to various cultural identity groups such as Black, Latino, Native American, and Asian American.