On Sept. 23, President Liz Magill guest hosted and curated a 13-song playlist for WXPN’s “Friday Morning Mixtape,” with Kristen Kurtis. “WXPN is a beloved service to many,” Magill said of the experience. “Being part of Friday’s program with Kristen was extraordinarily fun, and to experience firsthand the hard work and dedication of the WXPN team during the XPoNential Music Festival was remarkable. I am so proud of this organization and all it represents for music lovers, for Penn, and for Philadelphia.”
The Basser Center for BRCA at the Abramson Cancer Center announced a $55 million gift from alumni Mindy and Jon Gray to establish a new Basser Cancer Interception Institute. The institute aims to disrupt the timeline of cancer treatment by stopping cancer from developing at all, rather than reducing cancer risk through surgery or treating cancer once it’s visible. “Over the past 10 years, Basser has become the global epicenter for BRCA research, education, and testing,” said Susan Domchek, executive director of the Basser Center. “We now sit at an inflection point where we have the ability to revolutionize the timeline of cancer care.”
Penn President Liz Magill threw a ceremonial first pitch at the Sept. 10 Phillies game against the Washington Nationals, located at Citizens Bank Park. At least 2,000 Penn Medicine employees were in attendance to cheer her on.
A $50 million gift from Stewart and Judy Colton will accelerate the mission of the Colton Center for Autoimmunity at the Perelman School of Medicine, which unites research and patient care programs across Penn to advance autoimmune diagnoses, prognosis, and treatment. The Coltons established the Center in 2021 with a gift of $10 million. “The vision for the Colton Center is bold and boundless—it will be propelled not only by Penn’s own distinguished scientists, but through collaborations with researchers at other top institutions who are, together, committed to making a difference for those coping with autoimmune diseases,” said President Liz Magill.
Thanks to a new gift from Stuart Weitzman, the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts will receive a new multipurpose theatre, extending into the Annenberg Plaza and capable of seating 300-350 people. The Stuart Weitzman Theatre will feature a glass wall that opens to the plaza for indoor/outdoor performances and will meet student needs for performance and rehearsal space. “It’s no exaggeration to say that this gift will change everything,” said Christopher Gruits, executive and artistic director of Penn Live Arts.
Penn Leads the Vote organized on Sept. 20 to inform the Penn community about how to register to vote, check their registration status, and more. “What makes today so important is that the midterm elections are coming up,” said fourth-year political science major Nick Williams, who serves as director of PLTV. “It’s really important that Penn students are involved in not just federal elections but in every election. That is what Penn Leads the Vote preaches and that’s why we hold these drives every year.”
Through a Projects for Progress award and other University support, a team from Penn has collaborated with the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center and the Cobbs Creek community to promote equitable access to STEM education for residents of the neighborhood. “If we want to get students interested in STEM education, it has to be early,” says Ocek Eke, of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. “When you bring them here, in a place like Cobbs Creek, and they can run around the creek, get their feet all wet and muddy and look at the little fish that are swimming around and start asking questions—by having a place like this, we have the potential to not just raise awareness, but to spark curiosity.”
More than 100 students, faculty, and staff gathered in the ARCH building lobby to celebrate the reopening of the Arts Research and Cultural House. The building has been reimagined so that the entire building will now house La Casa Latina, Makuu: The Black Cultural Center, Natives at Penn, and the Pan-Asian American Community House, with common spaces and reservable rooms. “For us to be a great university, we must be a welcoming, inclusive, and equitable community,” President Liz Magill said at the event. “The reimagining of the ARCH building, so fully in step with this idea and so strongly guided by student input and student leadership, is a critical milestone on an ongoing journey we’re all working on. It embodies our efforts to make Penn a supportive place for our entire diverse community.”
Historian Simcha Gross, of the School of Arts & Sciences, and Harvard’s Rivka Elitzur-Leiman are studying ancient incantation bowls housed at the Penn Museum. Of the 2,500 incantation bowls that exist worldwide, 290 exist at Penn. The researchers hope to better understand the language behind the bowls and the materials they’re made from. “We’re finally beginning to move past this idea that magic is strange, this separate domain of life,” says Gross. “We’re also beginning to better understand that previous ideas that assumed that the bowls represent the interest of a lower, popular, or non-elite class of Jews, Christians, and others simply do not hold; the bowls were a surface on which scribes from a range of social, educational, and religious background wrote incantations.”
Among the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage’s 42 grants and fellowships announced were projects at the Institute of Contemporary Art and WXPN. The ICA was awarded $360,000 for an exhibition that will serve as a look back at the career of artist Carl Cheng; WXPN, which received $298,500, will partner with the Black Opry collective to support a Black Opry residency for five emerging Black Americana musicians. Also among Pew grant recipients this year is James Maurelle, a lecturer in undergraduate fine arts and design at the Weitzman School, as well as James Allister Sprang, an alumnus of the Weitzman School.
Sponsored by the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, the Fall Research Expo showcased the work of 409 student researchers inside Houston Hall. The expo began in 2007 with 18 posters on display and grew to a record 361 this year. “The overwhelming feeling I got was one of celebration and excitement, for the work that had gone into the research and presentations,” says Ann Vernon-Grey, CURF’s senior associate director of undergraduate research, “and of pride by the faculty members there, proud of their mentorship of these students who invested so much of themselves in these projects.”
The Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts celebrates its 50th anniversary this season. A retrospective in Penn Today looked back at the Center’s history of experimentation, inclusion, and collaboration. “The Annenberg is a regional treasure, a jewel in Penn’s crown,” says Anita Allen, former chair of the Provost’s arts committee. “It’s a place where one can aways find something magical and fascinating happening. Chris Gruits breathed new life into the Annenberg and is an apt leader to guide commencing the next 50 years.”
President Liz Magill and Alanna Shanahan, director of Athletics and Recreation, welcomed new and returning student-athletes at the Student-Athlete Kick-Off Picnic on Shoemaker Green. The jamboree is an opportunity for student-athletes to mingle with classmates competing in other sports, as well as coaches and administrators.
Perry World House’s 2022 Global Order Colloqium, in a series of panels featuring experts from government, media, and across the University, tackled a deep and far-reaching question: What does the future of globalization look like in a world that is increasingly fractured? For Ashok Kumar Mirpuri, Singapore’s ambassador to the U.S., he said some nations will have no choice but to continue with globalization. “Singapore is a country without any resources. We have to import our energy, we import our water, we import our food,” said Mirpuri. “When you tell us that we’re looking at a fractured world, a bifurcated world, that is not a happy outcome for us because every one of us, in all of Asia, want the people to be successful.”
President Liz Magill stopped by the kickoff event—“Chill with Magill”—for GradFest, a series of special programming for graduate and professional students. “I am grateful for the many ways that you are taking your precious time to help lead the graduate and professional student community, to help everyone feel at home, welcome, figure out how they can thrive here,” Magill said, speaking to a crowd that included leaders from the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly. “You are critical for that.”
The Penn Vet Working Dog Center celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The Center has graduated 131 dogs into careers in search and rescue, law enforcement, medical detection, and more. Founder and Director Cynthia Otto spoke at a celebration event, recalling the Center’s origins after her experience caring for working dogs after 9/11. “My 10 days with the team at Ground Zero reinforced the importance of these heroic canines and their impact of their presence on the morale of first responders,” said Otto.
For his pioneering role in the development of CAR T cell therapy for cancer, Carl June, the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy at the Perelman School of Medicine, was named a 2022 Keio Medical Science Prize Laureate. The award is from Japan’s oldest private university and recognizes researchers who’ve made an outstanding contribution to the fields of medicine or the life sciences.
President Liz Magill and Interim Provost Beth Winkelstein hosted the Welcome Reception and Resource Fair for new graduate and professional students, at the Annenberg Center Plaza. It’s one of the only major events that brings together students from all 12 schools to introduce them to campus resources and University leaders.
Penn Medicine will trial a new chewing gum designed by researchers in the School of Dental Medicine that uses innovative technology that’s engineered to contain ACE2, a protein found in human blood and saliva. The gum blocks the interaction of the chewer’s own ACE2 receptor and the viral spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. “This technology may have the ability to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and the flu as well as make it safer for dentists and other healthcare providers to provide care to patients who we know are infected,” says Mark Wolff, the Morton Amsterdam Dean of Penn Dental Medicine.
The University announced 27 2022 Presidential Fellows, with Fellows coming from nine schools at Penn that offer Ph.D. programs. They will receive a three-year fellowship that includes funds to support their research.
English Professor Jed Esty, in his new book “The Future of Decline: Anglo-American Culture at Its Limits,” poses the question “What does decline mean?” and uses decades of research on Great Britain’s decline to form an answer. “Simply put, from 1820 to 1920 Britain was the dominant power in the world. From 1920 to 2020 America was the dominant power in the world. Now we have to look from 2020 to the next 100 years, and it is going to be a different story,” Esty says.
In a Q&A, Morris Cohen of the Wharton School explained the significance of the CHIPS and Science Act, which invests $52 billion in domestic semiconductor manufacturing. “The argument is it creates high-paying advanced jobs in our economy,” Cohen says. “It also gives us security for sourcing critical inputs for many products, like automobiles, and has defense implications, because all defense products—airplanes, missiles, you name it—are heavy users of semiconductors.”
Five experts from the University contributed thoughts about the late Queen Elizabeth II’s legacy after a seven-decade reign. “Elizabeth II of England (Elizabeth I of Scotland) presided with dignity over the decolonization of the British Empire,” says Brendan O’Leary, Lauder Professor of Political Science in the School of Arts & Sciences. “Her son, Charles III, has a harder task: keeping together the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
