The Class of 2023 marked their official rise to senior status by celebrating Hey Day, complete with red T-shirts, mock straw hats, and canes. “I’ve been saying since high school that 2023 is the best class, but when I think about how much we’ve adapted and how much we’ve been able to change to the circumstances, it just gives me so much hope for the future,” said Sebri Nurahmed, a rising senior in the Wharton School. “Everybody is still ambitious, nobody is burnt out, and we’re ready to leave our mark on this campus.”
Six teams of seniors and December 2021 graduates were awarded the 2022 President’s Engagement, Innovation, and Sustainability Prizes. Among some of the projects are a hub that centralizes support for student social entrepreneurs, an initiative to increase resilience across the health care supply chain, and a nonprofit that reimagines nutritional assistance and promotes health equity. Each prize-winning project receives $100,000 and a $50,000 living stipend per team member.
At the 2022 Silfen Forum, Interim Penn President Wendell Pritchett spoke with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns in a wide-ranging discussion about Burns’ new documentary on Benjamin Franklin. The conversation was introduced by John L. Jackson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication.
Representatives from the Henry C. Lea Elementary School, Penn, the Graduate School of Education, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, and the School District of Philadelphia came together to formalize Penn’s $4.1 million commitment to supporting the West Philadelphia K-8 school. “I came here seven years ago in large part because of the chance to lead a school of education that had a long history of working so closely and deeply with Philadelphia public schools,” said GSE Dean Pam Grossman. “I’m excited to work together with all of you—to see all of the things the students, families, and members of the Lea community are able to accomplish.”
The Class of 2024 celebrated U-Night, an occasion for rising juniors. It was the first in-person celebration of the event in two years. “As impressive, memorable, and crazy your first two years have been, the best is yet to come,” said Interim Penn President Wendell Pritchett. “You can be mentors. Behind you are the days of learning the ropes. You know yourselves better than ever. We think the world of you. Congratulations to the Class of 2024.”
Frank Dolan, director of the Penn Relays, spoke with Penn Today about the return of the Relays and what makes them so special. “One of things that’s so unique about the meet is it brings all different age groups,” Dolan says. “You have kids from youth-level runners, to high school, to college, to pro, to masters. You have every event possible—field events and running—so it’s really the celebration of [track & field/cross country] at all levels.”
Among Penn’s 2022 Guggenheim Fellows are Daniel Barber in the Weitzman School of Design and Kimberly Bowes, Guthrie Ramsey, and Paul Saint-Amour in the School of Arts & Sciences. They were among 180 chosen from nearly 2,500 applicants in 51 scholarly disciplines.
A construction project connecting and expanding two adjacent 1965 Graduate School of Education buildings broke ground. “It was clear that our 1965 building with its small classrooms and limited student space no longer matched the great ambitions of Penn GSE,” said GSE Dean Pam Grossman. “The expansion is going to create cutting-edge learning spaces for our students—and fulfills our vision of a ‘One Penn GSE’ by bringing our community together in a single building here in the heart of the University of Pennsylvania campus, where our students, faculty, and staff can collaborate in new ways.”
A gift from Aedas, a global architecture and design firm, will establish a fellowship for Stuart Weitzman School of Design students who are interested in working in Asia. The gift was spearheaded by Andy Wen, a 1990 graduate from the Weitzman School and current Global Design Principal for Aedas in China. “Fellowships and internships are essential to giving our graduates abundant choices when they enter the professions,” says Fritz Steiner, dean and Paley Professor at the Weitzman School of Design.
A $17.5 million gift from Wharton alumnus Jay Alix will support the construction of a new indoor track & field facility on the southeast corner of campus. “The new track & field center will have a dramatic impact on Penn’s program, enhancing our ability to recruit and develop scholar-athletes into leaders on and off the field,” said Interim Penn President Wendell Pritchett.
Vice Provost for Faculty Laura Perna, Interim Provost Beth Winkelstein, and Interim President Wendell Pritchett hosted the “Mid-career Faculty of Color Virtual Symposium,” held online on April 14. They discussed the challenges mid-career faculty of color experience on the path to full professorship and how universities can enable them to thrive. “One of the critical phases of any faculty member’s career, especially for faculty of color, is the career transition,” remarked Pritchett. “Having a strong peer network at that stage is important—having people who know you, who understand you, and can give you both the support and the pats on the back that are necessary—but also the questions, the honest conversation, is really important.”
Rishi Goel, a second-year student in the Perelman School of Medicine, and Kingson Lin, who graduated with his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the School of Arts & Sciences in 2017, received a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. The fellowship provides graduate school funding for immigrants and children of immigrants to the United States; they are among 30 chosen from 1,800 applicants.
Tangen Hall, home to Venture Lab, is likened to a toolbox for Penn students and alumni and has become ever more activated since opening last year. Among its unique offerings is the Digital Realization Lab. “The Digital Realization Lab is something that engineering students have always wanted to see come to life at the University,” says Taylor Caputo, director of the engineering studios at Venture Lab. “Our space contains the only in-house spray painting station for students to decorate and design their prototypes and our laser cutters have been used for a variety of wood, soft metals, and plastics.”
At the Quaker’s Choice Awards at the Palestra, Penn Athletics presented its major intercollegiate senior awards to five student-athletes: Kristina Khaw, Sam Handley, Theo Lenz, Gracyn Banks, and Nikola Kovacikova.
Current and former Du Bois College House residents came together on April 1 to celebrate the college house’s 50th anniversary, marked with spoken word performances, food, and swag. “It’s most fitting that you named this celebration a ‘family reunion,’” said Interim Penn President Wendell Pritchett, speaking to the crowd. “Like a family, you have worked hard to arrive here together. Over generations, students have put in the sweat, equity, resilience, persistence, the hard work, the joy, and the excellence that so distinguishes Du Bois College House.”
In a Q&A at Perry World House with the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Trudy Rubin, Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, spoke about the conflict in Ukraine and the repercussions of a Ukraine failure. “Putin will not stop,” he said, adding, “I have no doubt that if Ukraine fails, Putin won’t be satisfied, and a small NATO country will be attacked.”
A brand-new course taught by Liliane Weissberg of the School of Arts & Sciences, Inside the Archive was designed to educate and inspire the next generation of scholars working with and in archives. “For me, it’s useful to think about what texts archivists are reading in their preparation for the vocation, and I think it’s a useful class to prepare myself for understanding ‘What’s the purpose of an archivist?’” says Kurt Ro, a graduate student who studies Roman art. “Especially in this digital age.”
Postdoc Lacey Wade, in a controlled experiment, confirmed that subconscious imitation of accents occur when speaking with others who use one—a linguistics concept known as convergence. Prior theories on the subject were anecdotal. “People can build off this and ask a whole new set of questions about other ways expectations drive speech,” Wade says.
Two papers led by a group at Penn explored how factors such as household income, building age, building code violations, proximity to former lead smelters, and other factors align with lead-toxicity risk, as evidenced by elevated blood-lead levels in children 6 years old and younger and lead content in soil samples around Philadelphia. The studies showed the elevated blood-lead levels disproportionately fall on children of color and poorer communities in the city.
In USA Today, Tobias Barrington Wolff of the Law School was quoted about so-called “Don’t Say Gay” and other copycat laws that are gaining traction in state legislatures. When it comes to education laws, Wolff says, "the state has broad leeway in choosing its own curriculum, even if it chooses an approach that fosters ignorance. Parents of trans, gay, lesbian and bisexual young people should be very concerned."
