Donors create international travel endowment to honor lifelong friend, ag alumna

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In 1989, when Helen and Steve Schreiner arrived at their new apartment in Nashville, they discovered the landlord had forgotten to leave them a key. While waiting, their new neighbor, Marion Cullen, invited them in for a cup of coffee. That late night cup of coffee would lead to a friendship spanning decades and states.

In honor and memory of their dear friend, a Penn State alumna who died in 2022 at the age of 90, Helen and Steve Schreiner have created the Dr. Marion P. Cullen International Travel Endowment in Animal Science in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State. The endowment will provide scholarships for undergraduate students in animal science who have financial need and are participating in a study abroad experience.

“Today, animal agriculture is global enterprise,” said Adele Turzillo, professor and head of the Department of Animal Science. “Many of our graduates pursue industry careers with companies that have far-reaching impacts, and those who choose to manage farms will produce food that will support local, regional, and global markets. This endowment provides our students with the opportunity to meet people from different cultures, learn about other agricultural systems, and discover how U.S. agriculture contributes to the global food system.”

The Schreiners met Cullen when they moved to Nashville, where Steve attended graduate school and eventually received his doctorate in biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University. After that first cup of coffee, which the Schreiners say was the best cup of coffee they ever had, they spent many Friday nights with Cullen during their five years in Tennessee.

“We’d have fabulous dinner parties,” Helen Schreiner said. “We’d debate all the issues. We became very close friends during those five years. We were young and she had a lot of good wisdom to impart.”

Over the course of their more than three decades long friendship, Cullen shared a lot about her life with the couple, from her childhood through her years at Penn State and beyond.

“Marion grew up on a tiny dairy farm in the far southwest region of Pennsylvania, and her family was very poor,” Schreiner said. “But her parents were tremendous givers and often took in struggling kids. Marion attended school through the eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse before being bussed to the closest high school, which was across the state line in West Virginia.”

Cullen took time off after high school to save money to attend college. Thanks in part to a scholarship, she started at Penn State in 1950 to study animal husbandry. According to Helen, Cullen excelled at Penn State, earning a spot as the first woman on a livestock judging team on which she was the top-ranked individual at the Eastern States Exposition in 1953. She graduated magna cum laude in 1954.

Cullen went on to earn her master’s degree at Penn State, also in animal husbandry, studying biochemistry, energy metabolism and biostatistics, and her doctorate at UC Berkeley in biochemistry. She then completed a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, where she studied human cancer cells grown in vitro.

It was during her early years of employment that she traveled internationally for the first time. She eventually took a job in London that allowed her to travel all over Europe before she relocated to Nashville, where she worked in children’s nutrition in the WIC program (Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children), for more than 20 years.

“International travel was a bug she caught, and she was never cured,” Helen Schreiner said. “She traveled all her life, and her farthest trip, which was also her last, was to New Zealand when she was in her 80s.”

Despite no ties to Penn State — Helen graduated from Texas A&M University and Steve from Western New England University and Vanderbilt University — the Schreiners knew how much Penn State meant to Cullen, which is why they chose the University and the college to create an award in her memory.

“She never sought recognition and had a real humility about her, but she really was a trailblazer,” Helen Schreiner said. “She could’ve been a tenured professor earning accolades, but she always worked for children. Steve and I felt we wanted to memorialize the person she was so that her legacy would keep giving to young people. We wanted other people to know the story of Marion Cullen from Beaver County to inspire them and let them know they can achieve what she did and more.”

They opted to create an international travel scholarship with a $100,000 endowment because of Cullen’s passion for travel. While they build the endowment, they also are making annual gifts to support students now, and they are inviting other donors to support the fund. They chose the Department of Animal Science at Penn State because of the opportunities Cullen found in the department.

“She told us that traveling changed her, her view, and her life,” Helen Schreiner said. “She felt it was so important to understand other communities and other parts of the world. We wanted to provide the opportunity for students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to travel the opportunity to have a taste of what’s out there, to broaden their horizons and their community. We hope this will enhance the education of the next ‘Marion Cullen’ coming through the doors of Penn State.”

Donors like the Schreiners advance the University’s historic land-grant mission to serve and lead. Through philanthropy, alumni and friends are helping students to join the Penn State family and prepare for lifelong success; driving research, outreach and economic development that grow our shared strength and readiness for the future; and increasing the University’s impact for families, patients, and communications across the commonwealth and around the world. Learn more by visiting raise.psu.edu.