Coffee, Conversation, and the Places That Keep Us Coming Back
On Calder Way in downtown State College, tucked down a flight of steps, W.C. Clarke’s Cheese Shoppe and Coffee Roasters is easy to miss if you don’t know where to look. Inside, dozens of varieties of cheese sit alongside an extensive selection of coffees, teas, and local products, a combination that works surprisingly well. The shop has been part of the State College rhythm for decades, and on most days you’ll find a group of regulars out front, settled in like they’ve never been anywhere else.
That’s the heart of a third place. A third place isn’t where you go to get something done. It’s where you go to be around people, with nowhere else you’d rather be.
This Week Around Happy Valley: Outdoor Concerts, WE ARE Weekend, and Get to East End Social
The final full week of June brings extra people into Happy Valley, with Penn State alumni returning for WE ARE Weekend and incoming first-year students and their families beginning to arrive for summer session.
You’ll also find plenty of outdoor programs, family activities and music on the calendar. And, if you haven’t checked it out yet, make time to enjoy East End Social while you can!
The Real-World Learning Laboratories
I spent my career as an engineer, and engineers are trained to ask a simple question before doing anything else: what is the system actually producing?
Not what the brochure says it produces. Not what the org chart implies it should produce. What measurable output leaves the system and enters the world?
Apply that question to a university and the conventional answer is credentials. Degrees, transcripts, certificates. The assumption has been that employers want proof of knowledge, and the university’s job is to certify that knowledge has been transferred.
But credentials are not the product.
Happy Valley Hacks
Twelve of us met at Pine Grove Hall on Sunday, June 7, and turned a regular summer evening into a shared Happy Valley story session. We ate, talked, and covered the walls with tip cards spelling out specific summer routines people already use in this place.
The Future Belongs to Places Where People Belong
“You better learn it fast, you better learn it young… ’cause someday never comes.”
Creedence Clearwater Revival, 1972
So went the lyrics composed back during another era of rapid change and political upheaval; if only they were true. Throughout our society (and around the world really), including here in our lovely little (though less “little” than it once was) college town, people are reckoning with challenges that had always felt like problems we might have to face someday.
Well, “someday,” which for years and even decades felt more abstract than real, is now visible on the horizon.
The Age of Human Capital
Every generation believes it is living through a period of extraordinary change.
The Industrial Revolution transformed work. Electrification transformed industry. Automobiles transformed transportation. Computers transformed information. The internet transformed communication.
Today, artificial intelligence has become the latest technology prompting predictions about the future.
This Week Around Happy Valley: Juneteenth Celebrations and Summer Officially Arrives
Summer officially arrives this Sunday, so for once it’s not just a feeling, it’s on the calendar. Whether you want to spend the weekend listening to live music outside, taking the kids down to Bellefonte, marking Juneteenth with the community, or just finding an excuse to get out of the house, there’s a lot to choose from.
Here are some of the highlights happening around the area this week.
A New Chapter for Connect Happy Valley
For the past several years, Connect Happy Valley has been telling the stories of the people, places, events, nonprofits, traditions, and businesses that make this region special. Along the way, we’ve learned something important. People aren’t looking for more information. They’re looking for help discovering what matters. They’re looking for places worth visiting. Events worth […]
The Future Belongs to Those Who Know Where to Put the X
Over the past year, we have watched a curious phenomenon unfold on college campuses and throughout society. Graduation ceremonies that were once straightforward celebrations have occasionally become stages for frustration. Students have booed commencement speakers. Faculty members openly debate the future of higher education. Parents question whether the cost of a degree still makes sense. Employers wonder whether traditional credentials remain reliable indicators of readiness for an increasingly uncertain future.
