UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Gene and Roz Chaiken have spent decades investing in Penn State students, creating endowed scholarships and centers to support learners’ success. As the spring 2026 semester drew to a close, the Chaikens heard from students about exactly how the couple’s far-reaching philanthropy has made an impact.
The couple joined a recent virtual celebration for the Penn State World Campus peer guide program, housed within its Roz and Gene Chaiken Center for Student Success, the first named center in World Campus history.
The World Campus center is part of a 2024 gift that expanded the Chaikens' investment in student success across Penn State. The gift added centers at Penn State Abington and in the College of Information Sciences and Technology and allowed for a University-wide center at University Park — building on the original Roz and Gene Chaiken Center for Student Success, established in the College of the Liberal Arts in 2021. Together, the five centers promote academic, personal and professional success through peer mentoring, community-building and partnerships.
The peer guide program connects experienced World Campus undergraduate students with those who are new to online learning, such as adult learners and members of the military. The guides offer support related to the demands of balancing course work with careers, military service and family responsibilities. The students mentored by the peer guides have said the connections they formed have helped them to thrive during their Penn State education online.
Dawn Coder, acting associate vice provost for Online Education, Student Engagement, and the World Campus Chaiken Center for Student Success director, has seen what it means for online students to have someone genuinely in their corner.
“Our peer guides are just such caring, compassionate people,” Coder said. “You really do build a sense of community and belonging with our students — and I think that's really, really important.”
Peer guide Kaitlyn Casagrande has assisted more than 300 students during her time in the program, including a woman who had been away from college for more than 30 years and who was ready to leave over a challenge. After hours on Zoom talking it through with Casagrande, the student stayed. Casagrande said she watched the student continue her studies and finish strong.
"My favorite part about being a peer guide is providing support and making a meaningful difference in students' lives," said Casagrande, who graduated in May with bachelor’s degrees in psychology and criminal justice. "I've seen so many students grow into leadership positions themselves."
Sometimes, the difference a peer guide makes has nothing to do with course work. When peer guide Anthony Farless, a Navy veteran, finally connected with a recently separated service member who had gone quiet, they spent more than an hour on Zoom just talking. The student had gone from being surrounded by fellow service members every day to navigating college on his own, and he just needed someone to be present, said Rose Petrunyak, a peer guide supervisor who shared the story at the celebration.
"For that student, just having a human being there to talk to made all the difference," Petrunyak said.
The work shapes the peer guides themselves as much as the students they serve. Jillian Platzer, who took a 15-year break from college and enrolled in a bachelor’s of psychology program through World Campus, brought her own experience navigating higher education as an adult back to the students she supported.
"It was really fulfilling to be able to help other people do that as well," Platzer said.
Zabdiel Dinarte was a peer guide who graduated last fall with a degree in international politics and is now headed to Georgetown University for graduate school. For him, the program offered something unexpected: a community that ran in both directions.
"It's not just one way of supporting new students," Dinarte said. "When you have that engagement, they also check in on you."
Gene Chaiken told the peer guides that what he and Roz witnessed only deepened their conviction that Penn State World Campus was exactly the right place for their investment.
"One of the reasons Roz and I were interested in World Campus is because it is the world’s campus — and it needs to have that feeling of being connected," Chaiken said. "Listening to you today only reinforces what we did."
He left the peer guides with the same words that have guided the couple’s philanthropy.
"Helping other people is a privilege, not a chore, and what you're doing is exactly that,” Chaiken said. “It's easy to sit back in the crowd. It's tougher to walk to the front. Congratulations to all of you."
Donors like the Chaikens 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 communities across the commonwealth and around the world. Learn more by visiting raise.psu.edu.