Reid R. Frazier has won a Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters’ award for excellence for “Public colleges, private money.” The story was done in collaboration with PublicSource and was broadcast on the Allegheny Front on Essential Public Radio.
As development of the Marcellus Shale spreads across Pennsylvania, Penn State University has taken a central role in doing research about the industry, from its economic impact to its geological properties.
Some of the research is paid for by companies extracting the gas, according to petroleum geologists who do the work. But the state-related university, which took in $214 million in taxpayer funding last year, declined to say how much individual companies spend or what the money pays for.