The 2025 and 2026 honorees reflect a longstanding tradition of volunteerism, civic engagement, and public service.
By Jason C. Klose
Created in 1975 by the family of the late Sy Barash, a beloved State College businessman and philanthropist in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the Barash Award for Human Service honors a full-time member of the faculty, staff or student body on the Penn State University Park campus who, apart from their regular responsibilities, has contributed the most to public service or the welfare of others.
2025 Honoree Katie O’Toole Combines Journalism, Teaching, and Volunteer Service
The 2025 recipient of the Barash Award for Human Service is Katie O’Toole, assistant teaching professor of journalism in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. O’Toole’s work spans community engagement, public media, and local journalism initiatives.
O’Toole began teaching at Penn State later in life, following a 26-year career in media that encompassed newspapers, radio, television, and the internet. For most of those years, O’Toole worked at Penn State Public Broadcasting, where her main job was writing, hosting, and co-producing a children’s current events program, “What’s In the News,” which was carried around the country and used primarily in upper elementary school classrooms by social studies teachers.
“When ‘What’s in the News’ ended its almost four-decade run in 2005, I decided to go back to school full time to finish up a master’s degree that I had worked on sporadically throughout my television career and to continue to a doctoral degree in mass communications,” she says. “It was as a Ph.D. student that I discovered my love of teaching.”
O’Toole taught an upper-level media history class for several years as an adjunct professor and started working full-time in 2016, teaching broadcast reporting and international reporting, and eventually developing a podcasting class.
“I taught myself to podcast by creating ‘Dead Centre,’ a podcast about local history that I produced for the Centre County Historical Society,” she says.
O’Toole is currently a member of WPSU’s Board of Representatives which is supporting the planned transfer of WPSU’s broadcast license to WHYY.
“The board is committed to preserving and strengthening free public media that is locally responsive to a Central and Northern Pennsylvania audience, and the partnership with WHYY gives us a wonderful opportunity to do that,” she says.
One of the ways O’Toole has been able to merge her love of teaching and her commitment to public media is through a podcasting class assignment in which her students create “audio postcards.”
“They interview interesting people throughout the area and work with WPSU’s news director, Emily Reddy, to polish the interviews and sound for broadcast,” she says. “It feels like such a ‘full-circle’ moment to hear my students’ work carried on my old station!”
O’Toole was nominated for the Barash Award by former Bellisario College of Communications Dean Marie Hardin. She had no inkling that Hardin had nominated her.
“She and several of my colleagues contributed letters supporting the nomination, as did the executive director and CEO of two of the organizations I volunteer with,” O’Toole says. “Then I received an email from the executive assistant to the vice president for human resources to tell me that she would like to schedule a meeting. I panicked briefly, but it turned out to be a meeting to deliver some good news.”
For O’Toole, the selection was overwhelming and very unexpected, particularly since she had won the award once before in 2002. At that time, she was volunteering with entirely different groups such as Schlow Library, Lemont Elementary School, Pioneer Basketball, Centre Soccer, the Second Mile, and other organizations that reflected where she was at that point in her life, raising six kids.
“The reason that the 2025 award was extra special is that the late Mimi Barash had become my friend and mentor,” she says. “Seemingly every volunteer in Centre County eventually got to know her, because she was everywhere and supported every good cause. She was a role model for me.”
As soon as O’Toole got word of the award, she scheduled a visit with Barash so she could share the news.
“Later, when I received the beautiful plaque with Sy Barash’s image in relief, I visited her again to show her,” she says. “She nodded and smiled approvingly. It was the last time I saw her before she died.”
O’Toole is humble about her contributions, as she believes every volunteer effort she makes is to support the people who actually do the work.
“In most cases, that means helping to raise financial support that supports other people and organizations to do the heavy lifting,” she says.
“For example, I volunteered for 25 years for the Mid-State Literacy Council’s annual Spelling Bee. It’s their largest fundraiser of the year, and it helps their small staff have an outsized impact on people in our community in need of literacy skills.”
Another way O’Toole tries to support residents is by using her communications skills to help publicize the efforts and important projects of others. One example is the annual awards program of the Centre County Historical Society, which celebrates the people and organizations in the community that are helping to preserve and promote our local heritage.
“I work with Executive Director Mary Sorensen and others to create the recognition event,” she says. “In the process, I interview each of the award winners, and I’m always humbled and amazed at the countless hours that people pour into passion projects that make the entire community better.”
O’Toole’s current volunteer efforts are heavily focused on media and communications, including working with WPSU and with Spotlight PA, an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom devoted to coverage of state government and statewide issues and committed to serving the public interest.
“I’m convinced that public service journalism is critical to a healthy democracy,” she says. “So I’m enormously grateful that we have been able to support a State College bureau like Spotlight PA.”
O’Toole was the 50th annual recipient of the Barash Award, and she hopes it will continue for at least another 50 years.
“We are blessed to live in a community with so many educational, cultural, and athletic resources, and a social safety net to help those who need it,” she says. “I’m grateful to every volunteer that helps to keep those organizations operating.”
2026 Honoree Wael Jabr Strengthens Communities Through Service Rooted in Dignity
Wael Jabr, associate professor of supply chain and information systems in the Smeal College of Business at Penn State, is the 2026 recipient of the Barash Award for Human Service. Jabr is recognized for his work through the One Hand Foundation and broader service efforts.
“I teach at Smeal, mostly about how technology, including data, platforms, and AI, is changing the way organizations work and the way people make decisions,” he says.
Jabr’s research lives in that same space: digital transformation, online platforms, and what happens when people and AI work together.
“To me, the academic work and the service work are not really separate,” he says. “Both are about trying to understand systems and helping people find their way through them.”
A lot of Jabr’s service happens through the One Hand Foundation, which he started with two other friends in State College to meet practical needs in central Pennsylvania. The foundation runs food distributions, partners on mobile clinics, holds wellness programs, does back-to-school events, and plans socials for seniors. Jabr also works with the Mid-State Literacy Council and a number of groups around the region.
“Different programs, different days — but the goal is always the same: to help people feel seen, supported and not alone, with dignity at the center,” Jabr says. “That commitment is also deeply connected to my Muslim faith, which teaches that serving others is one of the ways we live out our responsibility to God and to our neighbors.”
Jabr’s nomination focused on the community service work he’s been a part of across the region, much of it through the One Hand Foundation. Among those highlighted by the nominators were the monthly food hub in State College and food distribution in Clearfield, mobile health clinics the foundation runs with the Penn State College of Medicine, wellness fairs, spring socials, back-to-school events in Philipsburg, visits to the Centre County Correctional Facility, literacy work including AI programming for senior citizens, and the relationships they’ve built with public safety and community organizations.
“What’s striking is that the work is done by volunteers, donors, students, families, and partners,” Jabr says. “A lot of people who, over the last couple of years, have chosen to show up for each other.”
As the recipient of this year’s Barash Award, Jabr’s thoughts turned to all the people whose work the award was really recognizing.
“Community service isn’t something you do alone,” he says. “It happens through relationships and through people being willing to show up.”
What also mattered to Jabr was that the honor came from Penn State, the institution that’s been his academic home.
“Being recognized for work outside of teaching and research was a reminder that those parts of life don’t have to live in separate boxes — they feed each other,” he says. “I take it as both an honor and a responsibility, and a reminder to keep going, sincerely and steadily.”
Jabr says he’d like to think the impact he has made in the Centre County region through his work has been both practical and personal. On the practical side, families have received food, school supplies, health screenings, wellness resources, literacy help, and community programs they might not have had otherwise.
“At One Hand, we try to design what we do to be low-cost but high-impact, meeting immediate needs while keeping each person’s dignity at the center,” he says. “For example, a back-to-school supplies event is transformed into a free shopping experience rather than a handout.”
But Jabr believes the deeper impact has less to do with what they hand out and more to do with how it lands.
“A food box, a free clinic, a senior social, or a visit to someone who’s incarcerated says something beyond ‘here is help,’” he says. “It says, ‘We remember you, you matter to this community, and you belong.’”
Going forward, Jabr would like to keep expanding the partnerships with Penn State, local nonprofits, faith communities, schools, health providers, and civic groups.
“The needs in Centre County are connected — food, health, education, transportation, isolation, and belonging are tied together,” he says. “You can’t really address one without touching the others. The more we work across organizations, the more we can build something that lasts and treats people with respect.”
Jabr says he hopes the Barash Award keeps finding the people who serve quietly, as every community depends on those people — the people who notice what’s needed and just respond.
“They build bridges between Penn State and neighborhoods or communities that may not always feel connected to it,” he adds. “That kind of work doesn’t ask for attention, and the award gives it some.”
Jabr also hopes that service continues to be defined broadly.
“It happens through nonprofits and schools, through faith communities, public health, literacy programs, civic engagement, and countless smaller, informal acts of care that never have a label,” he says. “By recognizing the full range of that work, the Barash Award does more than honor individuals — it honors an approach of community-wide support.”
For Jabr, this is the question the award should lead us to ask ourselves.
“What can I do with the time, skills, and relationships I already have to make life a little better for someone else?” he asks. “When more people ask that question, both Penn State and Centre County become stronger places.” T&G
Jason C. Klose is a Central PA Arts & Entertainment writer.
