Meet the Staff

Heidi G. Malin joined PGSS Campaign, Inc. as the Executive Director in June 2015, bringing 20 years of unique knowledge and experience to PGSS. She has worked with several private schools, serving in both alumni relations and development professional roles. Our board of directors is excited to have her expertise in building alumni community and fundraising programs. We are optimistic that her leadership and ideas, including our new Class Agent program, will help us reach our goal of fifty percent alumni participation within the next few years.

Heidi holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in nonprofit management from Case Western Reserve University’s Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations. She was approved as a Certified Fund Raising Executive in 2003 and has raised over $11.4 million for nonprofit organizations throughout Anchorage, Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, and Western Pennsylvania.

Heidi and her husband, John Buckshaw, reside in Indiana County, PA.

Barry Luokkala is a Teaching Professor and Director of Undergraduate Laboratories in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University, and Program Director of the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Sciences. He also serves as editor of the physics alumni newsletter, INTER*ACTIONS, and as curator of the Victor Bearg Physics Museum.

As a member of the faculty at Carnegie Mellon, Luokkala has done much to shape the introductory experimental physics course into its present form and has created a new laboratory course for students in the pre-health professions. He also created a seminar course for first-year students in the Mellon College of Science, on the subject of science and science fiction, and has been invited to speak on several occasions on various aspects of science fiction. He has been instrumental in the design of new undergraduate science laboratories, which were completed at Carnegie Mellon in 2002. In response to popular demand, he created a full-semester version of his course on science and science fiction, which attracts students from the fine arts and humanities, as well as from the sciences and engineering. He recently published a textbook for the course, Exploring Science Through Science Fiction (Springer 2014).

Luokkala has been involved in numerous outreach activities to promote science education, several of which are aimed at women and under-represented minorities. In addition, he has done consulting work for such diverse institutions as the University of Pittsburgh, Chatham College, Carnegie Mellon’s School of Art and School of Drama, McGraw Hill, Academic Press, Oxford University Press, and the BBC.

Melissa joined the PGSS Program in 2013.