Pearl Gluck, the Penn State faculty member who serves as the Centre Film Festival’s artistic director and cofounder, helps drive the seven-year-old festival’s impact largely as a matchmaker — combining an educational and informational foundation with a collaborative, entertaining and fun approach during the weeklong festival.
As the 2025-26 Penn State Laureate, filmmaker and associate professor Pearl Gluck is traveling across the commonwealth to share her films and examine how storytelling lives within communities — not only in places, but through the people who care for them: archivists, artists, educators, librarians, museum guides and local historians who serve as keepers of cultural memory.
Applications are now being accepted for the Steve A. Garban Grant-In-Aid, for children of Penn State technical service or staff employees. This grant-in-aid, awarded to one new first-year student, is intended to assist with room and board charges for two years, provided the student continues full-time enrollment at Penn State or Pennsylvania College of Technology, incurs on-campus room and board charges, and demonstrates academic success.
