How to keep Views argument results in panels display
Ok, I think I have this sorted out but wouldn't mind some advice if I went about it the wrong way.  To recap, the goal was to have a list of previous programs sorted by year and have that results page stay within the layout set in Panels. 

Within Views


Create a Content Pane to filter out only the programs content type with the Argument set to display a 'Summary, sorted descending' based on the year of the program.  This will be used to display just the years of the previous programs in a list and will be added to main Programs page.
Create a Page to filter out only the programs content type with the same Arguments.  Set the path of this page to 'programs/previous'.  This will be used to view the actual results of the list created above.


Within Panels


Create a new Page with the Path set to 'programs/previous/%view'.  In the Arguments section, set it to Managed Page.  In the Content section add the page created within Views and make sure the Send Arguments option is checked.
Within Node Template (which controls the main layout of the entire site), add the Content Pane to the Programs page.


Therefore, when a visitor goes to the main Programs page ('/programs'), they will see a list of the previous programs in the right hand corner and clicking on each one will bring them to the appropriate page (such as '/programs/previous/2001') while keeping everything in Panels.  

I'm a little confused as to how all works (for instance, how does the Content Pane inherit the '/programs/previous' path from the Page?) but am glad it works as planned.  Hope this helps others and please don't hesitate to let me know if I could have achieved this in a simpler way! 

Bob