UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Lee Ahern, an associate professor of advertising/public relations in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, is the recipient of the 2026 Teaching and Learning with Technology Impact Award.
The award celebrates the accomplishments of faculty members whose work transforms education through the use of technology, and is given in recognition of excellence represented by a single contribution or series of contributions.
Nominators said Ahern’s vision, leadership, innovation and commitment to technology-enhanced learning has transformed the experiences for thousands of students at Penn State.
“My philosophy of using technology in education starts with a simple premise: tools don’t transform learning — students and teachers do,” Ahern said. “Technology becomes innovative only when it deepens how students think, make meaning and explain their decisions. In applied media fields like digital advertising and analytics, technology should sharpen a student’s ability to reason through systems, interpret data, and communicate impact, not just complete tasks inside a platform.”
Ahern developed and oversees the digital media trends and analytics minor, which is now the largest minor at Penn State. In 2016, Ahern saw a growing need for students to develop fluency in emerging digital tools such as large language models.
“Nearly a decade later, the minor stands as a model of forward‑thinking curriculum design — one that has graduated more than 1,400 students from 71 majors and currently enrolls over 500 more,” a nominator said. “This growth is not accidental; it is the direct result of Ahern’s ability to identify industry shifts early and translate them into meaningful, accessible learning experiences.”
Ahern doesn’t just show his students digital tools, he immerses them in the technology. For his capstone digital campaigns course, students follow a professional workflow as they develop marketing campaigns that use real-world platforms such as Google Ads, Google Analytics, Swipe Pages, tracking URLs and a suite of AI-driven tools. Students build campaigns using automated tools for keyword generation, optimization features and data-driven modeling. Then they evaluate their results using analytics and algorithmic tools. They also consider the ethical implications of using AI in marketing.
It’s a chance for students to show a mastery of all the tools they learned through the minor as they develop a digital advertising campaign. Students are provided a client and an objective. From there, they create a call to action and a strategy for advancing the campaign.
“In an era defined by rapid technological change, Ahern has created a learning environment where students are not merely keeping up, they are confidently stepping ahead,” a nominator said. “His teaching exemplifies the transformative potential of technology when paired with thoughtful pedagogy, and his service has had a measurable, lasting impact on student learning across the University.”