Hankin Lecture

The Hankin Distinguished Lecture series, hosted by Penn State’s residential construction program and the PHRC, was established in 2006 to honor the late Bernard Hankin and his family for their continuous and dedicated support of the residential construction program at Penn State. It brings world-class speakers to Penn State to address students, faculty, industry members and the public with thought-provoking topics and education related to the housing industry. The residential construction program and the PHRC are administered within Penn State’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering.

The lecture is free and open to the public. The 2026 Hankin Distinguished Lecture will be held on Nov. 11, 2026, at 4pm EST in Robb Hall of the Hintz Family Alumni Center at Penn State University Park with Todd Usher speaking on "Building Better, Doing Better–a Model for Client Delight." Read more about the lecture and this year's presenter.

The full length videos for previous lectures from 2007-present are available for online viewing with closed captioning below. 

Previous Hankin Lectures

• 2025 - Dennis Steigerwalt, president of the Housing Innovation Alliance, The Future of Housing is Now
• 2024 - Gene Myers, owner & chief sustainability officer of Thrive Home Builders, A Homebuilder's Journey to Carbon Neutral Construction
• 2023 - Theresa Weston, founder of The Holt Weston Consultancy and a building science research professional, Residential Innovation Challenges and Opportunities
• 2022 - Jack Hébert, founder of the Cold Climate Housing Research Center and senior research advisor at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Indigenous Wisdom and 21st Century Technology: Building Science from the Far North
• 2021 - Amanda L. Reddy, executive director of the National Center for Healthy Housing, Florence Nightingale Was Right: The Central Role of Housing for Ensuring Health and Well-Being in a Changing World
• 2020 - Brett C. Singer, staff scientist, head of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Systems and lead of the Indoor Environment Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Advances, Challenges, and Opportunities for Indoor Air Quality in U.S. Homes
• 2019 - Timothy McDonald, president and co-founder of Onion Flats LLC, Leverage Points: Climate Change and the Imperative of Affordable Housing
• 2018 - Carlos Martín, senior fellow in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, The Global Trends Shaping America’s Future Homebuilding
• 2017 - Peter Gluck, Founder and Principal of GLUCK+, It's All About Context
• 2016 - Sam Rashkin, Chief Architect for DOE, The Path to a Sustainable Future Begins with POWER WORDS
• 2015 - Dan Fulton, Retired CEO of Weyerhaeuser, Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up To Me: Waiting for the breakout in Household Formation that's needed to drive a sustainable housing recovery
  
• 2014 - Peter Yost, Vice President, Technical Services of BuildingGreen, LLC, The Art, the Science, and the Business of Sustainable Residential Construction
• 2013 - Kent Colton, President, The Colton Housing Group and Senior Scholar at the Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University, Framing the Future of Housing Finance: A Practical Guide to Reforming the System
• 2012 - Liza Bowles,  Executive Director of Newport Partners, Building Technology - Past, Present and Future
• 2011 - Frank Anton, Former Editor/Publisher of Builder Magazine and Chief Executive Officer, Hanley Wood LLC, Where Do We Go From Here or The Dumbbell Theory of Housing
• 2010 - Henry Cisneros, Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under President Clinton, The Nation's Cities and the American Future
• 2009 - Ron Jones, Internationally renowned pioneer of the green building movement and Founder of Green Builder, Green with an Attitude!
• 2008 - Nicolas Retsinas, Director, Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University, State of Affordable Housing
• 2007 - David Seiders, Chief Economist and Senior Staff Vice President - The National Association of Home Builders, Causes & Consequences of the Boom-Bust Housing Cycle in the U.S.
• 2006 - Peer Haller, Professor and Head Institute for Steel and Wood Construction Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, Advancement in Wood Construction - Examples from Practice and Research (full length video not available for this lecture)