From traveling the world to making a difference close to home, alumni of Centre County’s high schools are using the foundation built in school to carve out successful paths for themselves and help others along the way.
This year’s group of All-Star Alumni includes two Penn State grads who built successful companies, a world-traveling teacher, a scientist at the cutting edge of immunology research, and a winner of the prestigious MacArthur “genius” grant. Their careers rarely ended up how they thought they might in high school, but they all took paths to success.
Tom Bathgate
Bellefonte Area High School, Class of 1965
Occupation: CEO, PWI Engineering
Tom Bathgate built his company in the Philadelphia area, but will always call Centre County home. Over the course of his 40-year career, he’s led a successful engineering firm, traveled the world completing sustainable building projects, and given his time and money to support Penn State. Bathgate was born in Lock Haven but moved to a farm outside Howard when he was 8 years old. He was class president, captain of the Bellefonte High School football, wrestling and basketball teams, and a trumpet player in the school band. He fell in love with a cheerleader named Natalie Smith and they have been married for 50 years. The family’s roots go back to Lemont, where the family settled in the 1840s. Bathgate recalls spending time on his grandmother’s farm and developing an interest in agriculture in the process. Despite that inkling, he did not have a choice when it came to his major at Penn State.
“My dad was a tool and dye welder and all of his bosses were engineers so that was the path set out for my brother and I,” Bathgate says. “We were driven to work hard and get our studies done.”
Bathgate stayed involved with Penn State long after he graduated. He was the president of the Engineering Alumni Society and helped raise money for several development campaigns.
His latest project is a scholarship that veterans can use to supplement college expenses not covered by the GI Bill. Bathgate himself is a veteran; he was drafted to Vietnam after he graduated from Penn State in 1969.
Bathgate says his drive to serve comes out of a genuine desire to help others, not out of a desire to receive recognition himself.
“Penn State has thrown all kind of awards at me and said I’ve accomplished a lot,” Bathgate says. “That’s nice but it seems to me that trying to help others is just what you’re supposed to do.”
Bathgate has accomplished a lot in his professional career. He’s overseen thousands of architectural engineering projects around the world, traveling to 29 countries in the process.
His firm, PWI Engineering, specializes in sustainable building practices. While sustainability might be trendy now, Bathgate has been doing it since the 1970s, when he entered the job market in the midst of the 1973 oil embargo. PWI has helped entities from Exxon to Johns Hopkins University construct green buildings and renovate existing ones to make them more energy efficient.
“I fell into it and came out smelling like a rose,” Bathgate says. “One of our specialties is sustainable design and I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to countries all over the world helping businesses implement things like solar and wind energy systems.”
Closer to home, PWI was the lead on the Beaver Stadium expansion project in 2001. Bathgate bought a farm outside of Howard in the 1980s and raised his children, Meredith and Brad, there.
He hosted the Bellefonte Class of 1965’s 50th reunion at the farm and says he’s amazed by how much success his class has had over the years.
“It’s been really phenomenal the number of national level successes we’ve had from one class at Bellefonte,” Bathgate says.
Lyndsey Biddle
Penns Valley High School, Class of 2002
Occupation: English language tutor, Pearson Education, China
Lyndsey Biddle took her first trip abroad in high school and immediately fell in love with the idea of immersing herself in other cultures. She’s still nurturing that dream in Beijing, China.
Biddle was born and raised in Spring Mills and traveled to Spain with Tom Brubaker’s Spanish class during her sophomore year.
“From that trip to Spain, I knew I wanted to travel abroad,” Biddle says. “I became really interested in language and just thought it was fascinating being around so many different cultures.”
Biddle attended Juniata College and graduated with a degree in French. She studied abroad in France her junior year.
However, she did not initially pursue her love of language and culture at Juniata. In fact, she did just the opposite as a biochemistry major — a decision she would quickly come to regret, but one that led to the opportunity of a lifetime.
“After the first semester, I knew I didn’t want to work another day in a lab for the rest of my life,” Biddle says. “I started to panic and by chance got an email from one of the departments at the university that was looking for teachers to go abroad for China. I didn’t know anything about China or teaching but was confused and didn’t know what to do.”
Biddle took a semester off to spend six months teaching English in China and found her calling. In her current position at Pearson Education, she’s responsible for preparing adults for English language tests. Students watch Pearson’s videos and complete online lessons, and then meet with her for an in-person evaluation.
While the classes are taught entirely in English, Biddle says she speaks mostly Chinese outside of work. She took Chinese classes, but says she’s picked up just as much of the language from everyday life.
“You pick it up quickly, especially in the situations you run into a lot,” Biddle says. “For example, I work in a luxury shopping mall and the only affordable place to eat is Subway. If you go to that place every day, you quickly learn to order exactly what you want.”
Biddle’s family still lives in Penns Valley and, while she misses them, she says there’s not much that bothers her about living so far away from home. She was married in Thailand earlier this year and says she plans to stay in Beijing for the foreseeable future.
“China has a lot of opportunities,” she says. “If you want to start something or have your own business or have your own project, this is the place to do it.”
Corey Dillon
Bald Eagle Area High School, Class of 1992
Occupation: Founder, Interseeder Inc.; research farm manager, Penn State
Corey Dillon is proof that one does not need to move far away or have a big-shot title in order to make a difference. Dillon’s work, done right here in the Centre Region, is poised to change the farming industry around the world.
Dillon is part of a team that invented the Interseeder, a piece of equipment that allows farmers to plant cover crops during the growing season. By the time the harvest is over, the cover crops are well grown and can provide better protection during the winter months.
“A cover crop allows the soil to be covered and protected from wind, cold weather, and those types of things,” Dillon says. “It really pulls up all the nutrients left behind and holds them all in so that when you plant the next year, those nutrients are available to the new crop.”
The equipment is sold through a company called Interseeder Technologies, where Dillon does everything from sales to logistics. Interseeders have been sent all over the U.S. from the company’s Woodward headquarters, and Dillon has talked with potential buyers in England and South Africa.
“As far as the business goes, it’s amazing how you can manage things with technology,” Dillon says. “We can communicate with customers and solve problems without needing a brick and mortar storefront.”
Dillon grew up in Julian and became interested in farming when he started working for a potato farmer in middle school. He received a bachelor’s degree from Penn State and worked as an equipment fabricator for a few years before returning to pursue a master’s degree in agronomy, which is where the idea for the Interseeder was born.
He’s still connected to Penn State as a research farm manager in the Department of Plant Sciences. Part of that work involves introducing children to agriculture, something he’s passionate about doing.
At the end of April, he and his team hosted a two-day farming expo for high school students at the Ag Progress Days research facility that included a keynote address by U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson.
“The goal is for students to learn about how much technology there is in farming today,” Dillon says. “They don’t realize how sophisticated and advanced agriculture is today and all the career opportunities that are available that don’t involve working on a farm all day.”
Bill Thies
State College Area High School, Class of 1997
Occupation: Senior researcher, Microsoft Research India
Bill Thies is passionate about how technology can help improve the lives of those who might not have regular access to it. That passion was rewarded last year with a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, also known as a “genius grant.”
Thies is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research India. Rather than working on the next great Microsoft innovation, his research focuses on how technology can change humanity for the better.
“Microsoft is fully committed to pure, fundamental research that aims to contribute to society,” Thies says.
He is one of the founders of the 99Dots project. Billed as “Healthcare for the 99%,” it provides low-cost medication to tuberculosis patients and monitoring services for healthcare professionals to ensure that all doses are taken.
Patients call a number after completing each dose; the call is logged and tracked and real-time data is available to medical providers. Calls are free to make and both patients and supervisors receive reminders about missed doses.
Thies moved to India in 2008. Unlike Biddle, he did not have ambitions to live abroad but says, he has come to appreciate the opportunity it presents. He is able to test and deploy his ideas much more quickly than he would be able to in the U.S., and it’s easier for his work to have a global impact.
“Among my friends at the time I was probably least interested in traveling. I spent all four summers of undergrad living in my college dorm (at MIT) … I didn’t go anywhere,” Thies says. “India is an amazing place to work because you have companies like Microsoft that has resources of a world class research lab and on your doorstep you have people who are earning a dollar a day who are representative of a different population.”
Thies was part of the 2016 class of MacArthur Fellows, a program sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. He was one of 25 individuals around the world selected as a recipient last year and will receive $625,000 over the course of five years to use however he sees fit. He says he hasn’t yet decided how he will use the funds.
He was selected for the MacArthur Grant for the work on 99Dots, which has served more than 20,000 patients thus far and is poised to expand around the world. Thies says that rapid growth is due in part to the freedom he has with Microsoft and in India.
One example of that had to do with how phone calls are made and received in India. In order to place a call, a person must have credits available on their phone. Once 99Dots was deployed into the field, Thies and the team quickly realized that a different approach would be needed in order to keep the calls free.
“In retrospect it’s obvious to call a number you have to have a balance on your phone,” Thies says. “It’s a technical example, but those are the types of changes we had to make during those early pilots.”
Thies also works on the CGNet Swara project, a citizen journalism project that allows people in remote areas to call a hosted phone number and record stories to be shared with the world. These populations typically do not have access to social media and might not otherwise have their voices heard, Thies says.
“Medical problems, disease outbreaks, infrastructure issues … once those things are posted they get a lot of attention and sometimes the problems are solved,” Thies says. “These are big community problems that are being solved as a result of having an outlet where people can voice issues that matter to them.”
Joshua Yoder
Philipsburg-Osceola High School, Class of 1997
Occupation: Medical science liaison, Sanofi Pasteur
While Thies is improving access to healthcare abroad, Philipsburg-Osceola alumnus Joshua Yoder is working on medical innovation closer to home. Yoder’s focus is on immunology and infectious disease. As a medical science liaison for Sanofi Pasteur, he meets with doctors throughout Ohio, Michigan, and western Pennsylvania to let them know about the company’s latest innovations.
Sounds a little like a pharmaceutical sales rep, right? Yoder says that is a common misconception about his work. With a PhD from Harvard, his focus is strictly science, not sales.
“I’m literally a liaison between the company and the doctor,” Yoder says. “I am informing them about what new products are in the field and bringing their thoughts and opinions back to the company.”
Yoder grew up on a farm in Philipsburg and attended the Governor’s School for Agriculture Science when he was in high school. He initially thought his career might go in that direction, but he ended up working in a medical lab during his time at Penn State and became interested in immunology research. After graduating from Penn State, he searched for the best virology programs in the country and ended up at Harvard for his doctorate. He was initially apprehensive about moving to Boston from central Pennsylvania, but in retrospect is glad he had the opportunity to do so.
“Seeing how people think in different areas and different cultures … even if you only go away for a few years and come back, it’s invaluable to have broad perspective.”
Yoder was valedictorian of his class and also served as class president. He received Philipsburg-Osceola’s 2016 Distinguished Alumni Award and had the opportunity to speak to the school’s students. He told them about how his perception of success has changed since he was in school.
“When I was in high school, I thought success would bring you happiness and so I thought I wanted to be as successful as possible,” Yoder says. “I now know it’s the opposite and happiness leads to your success.”
Jenna Spinelle is a freelance writer and journalism instructor in State College.
