The Innovators is a series about IUP students, faculty, and staff who are doing innovative things: new ideas, new ways of doing things, and new inventions.

Discovering New Species in Central America

A person in a brown vest and red had look over a fallen oak tree being loaded onto a transport vehicle.  The words Giving New Life to Oak Grove’s Fallen Trees are on top of the image.

Students join faculty in the field by traveling to Honduras to find new species of animals while honoring local populations and their customs. It’s a project that has led to the discovery of more than 20 new species.

Giving New Life to Oak Grove’s Fallen Trees

A person in a brown vest and red had look over a fallen oak tree being loaded onto a transport vehicle.  The words Giving New Life to Oak Grove’s Fallen Trees are on top of the image.

Fallen trees from the Oak Grove are sawed into boards and used in student art projects in the Wood Center. Students experience the complete process, from logs to finished art, thanks to IUP’s innovative woodworking program.

Engaging Young Writers with Digital Story Games

Engaging Young Writers with Digital Story Games

Young writers explore coding, storytelling, and decision making as they create stories with multiple pathways through the Digital Story Game Project. This project assists teachers with curriculum planning and promotes collaboration in the classroom.

Creating New Lab Experiences in Speech-Language Pathology

Speech-Language Pathology at IUP

While speech-language pathology programs typically focus on working with school children, IUP's program blends this emphasis with hands-on training for the healthcare side of the profession, thanks to a new lab.

Protecting Lungs from Nanoparticles

Cynthia Pugh

As the world continues to buy electronics and get rid of them, recycling their parts could potentially create 1.5 million jobs. An IUP student and her research is uncovering an unseen health hazard lurking inside electronics recycling facilities.

Measuring Freshness a Better Way

Greg Kenning

If you judge the freshness of milk by the sell-by date, a better measure may be coming soon. Gregory Kenning, IUP professor of physics, has developed a sensor that can mimic the decay of milk and other products. Simply scanning the sensor, if applied to the product's packaging, one day could provide ultimate insight into a product's remaining usable life.

Making a Better Wikipedia

Matthew Vetter

Matthew Vetter is an assistant professor of English who studies Wikipedia and uses it in his classroom.

He's found that asking students to write for Wikipedia increases their motivation and changes their attitudes about writing. And by teaching students how to edit Wikipedia, he empowers them to make Wikipedia better and more representative for everyone.

Creating Positive Experiences for Patients with Autism

Joann Migyanka

Joann Migyanka, a member of the Special Education faculty at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, has taken her groundbreaking program that assists emergency first responders to have successful encounters with people with autism spectrum disorder to a new community. She and colleagues have adapted what they know to provide training for the medical community.

Making Art While Serving

Tyler Stanton

Tyler Stanton is a maker. He's an MFA candidate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a Carpentry Masonry Specialist in the 377th Army Corp of Engineers.

Recently, he has blended these two aspects of his life by creating the Load-carrying Band-saw Tool Kit, "L.B.T.K.," a backpack tool kit for soldiers, complete with a band-saw and other tools to create artwork from materials found on location.