I made this layout to replace an earlier layout that had been saved in flash. No, I don't know why the original designer (Amanda Caputo) made this decision, but it was a poor one. For starters, she saved it at such a low quality that the "movie" was permanently fuzzy, rendering the page completely inaccessible. Then, after leaving Penn State, she took all the original images with her! The task given to me in class was to recreate the original design as faithfully as possible. To do so, I used table code and images. I would have preferred to work completely in CSS, but it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to pull it off reliably in every browser.

Since I'm not the original designer of this layout, I cannot give permission for anyone to use it. However, you may still feel free to borrow ideas and inspiration from the look and feel of this page, hence the reason why I've posted it here, where it will be preserved.