Dr. David L. Soltz, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Central Washington University, has been selected to serve as the next president of Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Soltz will begin his tenure at Bloomsburg on January 7. He will replace Dr. Jessica S. Kozloff, who has served as the University's president since July 1994. Dr. Kozloff will retire at the end of the year. Soltz was named provost of Central Washington in August 2001. Previously, he served for five years as dean of the College of Natural and Social Sciences at California State University at Los Angeles. Details.
BU's music program has earned accreditation from the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM). The program is one of 617 programs accredited nationally. The accreditation process began five years ago and has been an ongoing process. Details.
BU freshman Jorge Maldonado is the only student in Pennsylvania and one of only 250 students from across the country to be awarded a scholarship through the Dell Scholars Program. The Dell Scholarship, funded through the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, is awarded to students with qualifying financial need who participate in a college readiness program. Since 2004, the foundation has provided more than $9 million in college scholarships to cover the costs of tuition, fees, books and room and board. Details.
The student representative on BU's Council of Trustees wants to make sure he stays involved. "There are really no set boundaries on how involved you can be and I want to be really hands-on," said James D'Amico, Mount Carmel, a senior majoring in elementary education. D'Amico was interviewed by a search and screen committee of nine individuals and then another interview by Judy Hample, chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, before he was appointed by Gov. Ed Rendell. Details.
Christopher Bevan, president of the Community Government Association at BU, came to the university with a plan to be involved in student government. "It turned out that my orientation workshop leader was the president of CGA so, when I asked him how to get involved, he showed me where to sign up," said Bevan. Bevan, a native of Nanticoke and a graduate of Greater Nanticoke High School, is a junior at BU majoring in history. Details.
David W. Klingerman Sr. of Bloomsburg is the newest member of Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania's Council of Trustees. Vice president of JDK Management Co., Klingerman oversees the operations of nursing facilities, hotels and restaurants, as well as land development. He has owned and operated nursing care and assisted living facilities in northeast Pennsylvania since 1981 and earned certification as a licensed nursing home administrator in 1983. Details.
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By day, she had a summer job as a bank teller. By night, she was bait for Internet sex predators. It wasn't your average summer internship.
But in the end, Felicia DiPrinzio (right), a computer forensics major from Bala Cynwyd, not only believed she'd accomplished something worthwhile, but was also hooked on a career in law enforcement. Her work while interning with the Briar Creek Police Department, near Berwick, led to the arrest of a Levittown man who struck up a chat room relationship with someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl. From Briar Creek, she watched on live webcam as police made the arrest.
For DiPrinzio, the experience concluded a sometimes uncertain path to discovering a meaningful career. She graduated from Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, with a vague interest in math and history; mathematics became her major because it was the first of the pair. When she decided to couple math with a degree in secondary education, however, she was foiled by the minimum-grade point average requirement.
"I was just two-hundredths of a point under the new requirement of 3.0, and even though I was in the 99th percentile on my Praxis exams, I couldn't get in," she said. She went on to get a bachelor of arts degree in mathematics and a job as a bank teller, but remained dissatisfied.
She had taken a basic computer forensics course, loved it, and it nagged at her. Then, a chance encounter with Scott Inch, professor of math, computer science and statistics, was the push she needed. DiPrinzio enrolled as a computer forensics major with a minor in criminal justice.
Her first degree provided most of the requirements for the second, especially the general education requirements. She needed only a year and a half to complete her second degree and, this time, the grades were much better. She leapt for an internship with Briar Creek Police but, when she got there, they had no active cases involving computer crime.
While talking about a network television series that catches Internet predators in sting operations, DiPrinzio and the Briar Creek Police hatched a plan to try their own. She became a 13-year-old girl named "Laura" and began cruising the chat rooms on the Internet.
"It wasn't easy," she said. She found 13-year-olds today to be much more mature than when she was that age and she had to pick up on their vernacular and poor spelling habits. "I finally found a little corner in my head where I could go" to be authentic, she said, but it took a toll. "I'd have to have long philosophical conversations with my boyfriend or just adult-level conversations with the police in the room" to maintain a sense of reality.
But she had no trouble encountering predators looking for both young girls and boys. At one point she was dealing with four - one in Pennsylvania, two from other states and one from Great Britain. To go after the last three would involve the FBI, so they focused on the predator in Pennsylvania and eventually got an arrest. The suspect faced more than 70 felony charges.
What she saw wasn't pretty. "It was very disturbing," she said of those "trolling for someone to sleep with." The children, she concluded, tend to be bored, lonely, unsupervised - all a bit sad - and the predators ranged from those looking for simple online encounters to those who actually want to meet.
And what she found in the law enforcement community was positive. "I used to have something of a lead-foot issue," she laughed, "and was terrified when I saw the flashing lights. But now I've seen what it's like on the other side of the flashing lights. They're really good people, with families, just doing their job."
Based on her internship experiences, DiPrinzio advises parents to "keep a dialog with your kids on what they're doing. Have conversations with them. Remind them never to give out personal information to strangers or meet them."
And to those contemplating crime with a computer? "Don't do it. You might get away with it for a little while, but eventually you'll be caught." The growing popularity and sophistication of computer forensics programs mean following trails that never disappear.
