Cindy Adams grew up in Lemont, a village nestled at the base of Mount Nittany. Like many "natives" of the Nittany Valley, she attended Penn State University where she earned a BS degree in Biology while completing research in the Food Science Department. After graduation, she went on to earn a MS degree in Nutritional Biochemistry at the main campus of Rutgers University in New Jersey where the was also trained to be a peer health educator. Her first full-time job after graduation was as a Community Health Educator in Morris County, New Jersey. She was responsible for developing health screenings and educational programing related to community health issues. This included running women's cancer screening programs, food handler courses and refreshers, the annual "Great American SmokeOut" and health fairs tailored to the needs of each municipality.

Later, Cindy moved to Easton and served as the first College Health Educator at Lafayette College where she trained and supervised college students interested in becoming peer health educators. Together we revived an umbrella program called SERCH (Students Educating on Responsible College Health) and expanded the program offerings to include engaging health promotion programs on topics such as alcohol, stress management, healthy sexuality and healthy eating available to all students at Lafayette. We also joined the BACCHUS/GAMMA Peer Education Network and started attending the regional conferences. Later, we even organized and hosted a regional conference at our campus for this network. This event was a great success attended by over 150 college health educators from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Ten years later, just after her first daughter was born, Cindy was hired to teach general biology and anatomy & physiology courses at Northampton Community College (NCC). At the request of the head of the Dental Hygiene Department in her second year at NCC, she developed and started teaching a Nutrition course for their students. The idea was empower the Dental Hygienists to share important tips for better eating while their clients were "in the chair."

Cindy was also one of the earliest adopters of online learning at NCC. She was so intrigued by the incredible potential of online education that she decided to pursue a PhD in Learning Sciences and Technology from nearby Lehigh University. She continued to teach online and in-person courses at NCC, while she created web quests as part of her PhD program (while co-raising two teenager girls!).

In 2015, she completed her PhD and was offered a job at Penn State World Campus which brought her back "home" to State College. Her parents were happy to have her back and she cooked and cared for them at their house several days a week.

Today, she works as a substitute teacher in her home school district, when she is not working at Abba Java Coffeehouse, hiking the trails around State College or playing pickle ball, her latest obsession!

Random Fact: I was born on my mother's 21st birthday, so my brother has always called me a "walking birthday present"