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Honors & Other Things |
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April 21, 2015, Volume 61, No. 31 |
Susan Davidson: TCPW-Provost Award
Mayor Michael Nutter & Renée Lewis Glover: Penn IUR Urban Leadership Awards
Morris Arboretum’s Out on a Limb: National 2015 Buildy Award
Hal Prince: Creative Spirit Award
Kathleen Stebe: Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars
2015 Guggenheim Fellowship Awards
Global Engagement Fund Awards
Susan Davidson: TCPW-Provost Award
Susan Davidson, Weiss Professor in Computer and Information Science, is the recipient of the Trustees’ Council of Penn Women (TCPW)-Provost Award for contributions to advancing the role of women in higher education and research at Penn. The TCPW Award recognizes undergraduate faculty advisors who have distinguished themselves in providing assistance and advice to their advisee students and who have made a significant impact on the academic experience of these students.
Dr. Davidson’s work lies in fundamental computer science as it is applied to biomedicine. Her research interests center on information modeling and management, databases, data integration and exchange, workflow systems, crowdsourcing, provenance tracking and management and data citation.
As the founder and chair of the Advancing Women in Engineering (AWE) Program, Dr. Davidson has addressed pipeline issues at the middle- and high-school levels and been an advocate for female faculty, graduate and undergraduate students within SEAS. She has also been instrumental in establishing degree programs in bioinformatics and computational biology at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels.
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Mayor Michael Nutter & Renée Lewis Glover: Penn IUR Urban Leadership Awards
The Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR) announced the recipients of its 11th annual Urban Leadership Awards, which recognize leaders who are guiding cities toward a sustainable and vibrant future. The Awards recognize the power that individuals can have in shaping cities throughout the United States and around the world.
The 2015 awardees are Michael A. Nutter, mayor, City of Philadelphia, and Renée Lewis Glover, chair, Board of Directors, Habitat for Humanity International and former president and CEO, Atlanta Housing Authority.
Penn IUR honored the work of these exceptional leaders recently at its 11th annual Urban Leadership Forum.
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Morris Arboretum’s Out on a Limb: National 2015 Buildy Award
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Out on a Limb—A Tree Adventure (above) at the Morris Arboretum gives visitors a bird’s-eye view, which has helped the Arboretum broaden its reach and increase attendance since it opened six years ago. It has now led the Arboretum to receive the Buildy Award. |
Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania was one of two recipients of the 2015 Building Museums “Buildy” Award in recognition of its exemplary accomplishment in leading an institution through the challenging process of creating new construction. Paul W. Meyer, the Arboretum’s executive director, received the award for the Arboretum last month at the Building Museums Symposium of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums.
Martha Morris, associate professor and assistant director of the museum studies program at George Washington University, who presented the award, said, “This award recognizes museum directors whose completed museum construction projects demonstrate high achievement in the principles espoused in the Building Museums Symposium: careful, creative planning and diligent implementation of construction—projects that lead to institutional transformation and sustainability.”
Mr. Meyer and architect Alan Metcalfe, of Metcalfe Architecture and Design (Philadelphia), were instrumental in creating Out on a Limb as an exhilarating open metal grating walkway 50 feet above the ground. It’s a structure that both respects the natural environment and draws visitors together in an intense, shared experience. Out on a Limb, at a cost of $2.5 million, was a relatively small investment for a large institution; but its impact has been significant. It increased attendance and membership by 30% the year it opened in 2009, and generated publicity that broadened the Arboretum’s reach.
“As we embark on spring in 2015, six years after Out on a Limb–A Tree Adventure opened, it’s exciting to see that we’ve been able to maintain and grow our levels of attendance and membership,” said Mr. Meyer. “In an age when children are barraged with electronic and social media, our ability to connect them with nature in a real and meaningful way is very much part of our mission at the Morris Arboretum.”
The idea for Out on a Limb was sparked when Mr. Meyer saw a mock-up of the tree canopy walk at Kew Gardens in London, when it was just a small, temporary test structure made of construction scaffolding. He immediately saw the potential of such an experience and came back to champion the creation of a similar structure. They were able to take advantage of sloping terrain to avoid the need for stairs and elevators that were eventually needed at Kew. They also added several exhibit elements: a giant bird’s nest and an enclosed pavilion along the walk. The excitement of being on an open metal grating walkway 50 feet above the ground naturally draws visitors together. But Out on a Limb has taken this a step further. Three segments of walkway are joined together with rope netting that forms huge hammocks. Visitors can walk, roll or tumble out onto this netting (called the Squirrel Scramble) and when they do, they instantly bond with the other ‘squirrel scramblers’ in an intense, shared experience. This project illustrates the value of bringing excitement to an educational mission.
The Buildy Award reflects new attitudes that are guiding the process of institutional growth and building design: respectful and appropriate attention to context, careful pre-planning to model business growth, engagement with user groups and the surrounding community, consideration of building impacts beyond the site boundaries, conservation of resources and planning for the future. Out on a Limb exemplifies these guidelines with success.
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Hal Prince: Creative Spirit Award
Harold (Hal) Prince, C’48, HON’71, winner of a record-setting 21 Tony Awards and arguably the best known Broadway musical producer of the past century, will soon add yet another major accolade to his already impressive résumé. On April 23, at a reception that will both honor his achievements and herald the premiere of the Pennsylvania Players’ performance of his award-winning musical LoveMusik, Penn President Amy Gutmann will present Mr. Prince with Penn Alumni’s Creative Spirit Award.
The Award, established in 2009, recognizes a member of the Penn community who has illustrated a lifelong commitment to the arts through philanthropic or volunteer support and/or outstanding personal achievements. Mr. Prince has been selected to receive the award because of his extraordinary dedication to artistic endeavors, his lasting impact on his creative field and for being regarded as an exemplary figure in the arts.
LoveMusik: April 23, 8 p.m.; April 24, 8:30 p.m.; & April 25, 1 p.m., 6 p.m. at the Harold Prince Theatre, Annenberg Center; $15; tickets: www.annenbergcenter.org
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Kathleen Stebe: Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars
Kathleen J. Stebe, the Richer and Elizabeth M. Goodwin Professor of Engineering & Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania, was one of 15 women and men who spent formative parts of their illustrious careers at Johns Hopkins who were recently inducted into Johns Hopkins’ Society of Scholars. The event was hosted by Hopkins President Ronald J. Daniels and Provost Robert C. Lieberman.
Dr. Stebe serves as deputy dean for research at Penn Engineering. A respected researcher, she focuses on capillary phenomena, assembly at interfaces and within complex fluids and interfacial flows, with particular emphasis on how surfactants can be used to direct stresses at interfaces and to alter drop breakup modes.
Following completion of her PhD in chemical engineering at the Levich Institute and a postdoctoral year at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, Dr. Stebe joined the department of chemical engineering at Hopkins, where she rose through the ranks to become a professor and department chair and received a Robert S. Pond Excellence in Teaching Award.
Dr. Stebe came to the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. She has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, was named a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and received the Frenkiel Award from the APS’ Division of Fluid Dynamics.
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2015 Guggenheim Fellowship Awards
Two University of Pennsylvania professors, one from the School of Arts & Sciences and one from the Law School, have been awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.
The two new Penn Guggenheim Fellows and their research areas are:
Kathleen M. Brown, professor of history, studying United States history.
Sarah (Sally) Barringer Gordon, Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and professor of history, studying constitutional studies.
The Guggenheim Foundation was established by former US Senator and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim as a memorial to their son, who died in 1922. Fellowships have been awarded annually since 1925.
For more see: http://www.gf.org/fellows/current
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Global Engagement Fund Awards
Penn Global is proud to announce 12 awards from the Global Engagement Fund for the 2015-2016 academic year. This fund is designed primarily to support projects that collaborate across Schools and disciplines, involve multiple faculty members, engage regions in which Penn has active academic partnerships and collaborative ventures and catalyze new research and engagement in a global context.
This year’s awards will support projects across Penn’s Schools and will provide the opportunity for undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staff to study, research or teach in Chile, China, India, Iraq, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Syria and Tanzania, as well as here in the United States. Below are the Global Engagement Fund Award recipients for 2015-2016:
• Linda Aiken (Nursing), Jere Behrman (SAS), Eileen Lake (Nursing), Matthew McHugh (Nursing), Herb Smith (SAS): Healthcare Workforce and Quality Outcomes: Lessons from Chile, United States and Europe
• Stephen Avery (PSOM): Establishment of Medical Physics Training Program in Tanzania
• Julie Davis (SAS), Fred Dickinson (SAS), David Spafford (SAS): Globalization through a Japanese Prism
• Feng Gai (SAS), Jeffery Saven (SAS), Arjun Yodh (SAS): Joint Symposium on Materials and Energy Research with Peking University of China
• Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher (GSE): Education for Refugees at the World’s Crossroads
• Songtao Shi (Dental), Syngcuk Kim (Dental): Functional Dental and Orofacial Tissue Reconstruction from Mesenchymal Stem Cells
• Richard Leventhal (SAS), Salam al Kuntar (Penn Museum), Brian Daniels (Penn Museum): Heritage Preservation Projects in Syria and Iraq
• Lisa Mitchell (SAS), Daud Ali (SAS), Raili Roy (SAS), Teren Sevea (SAS): C.U. in India and Southeast Asia
• Carol Muller (SAS): Seeing/Hearing South Africa: Penn Students at the National Arts Festival
• Kevin Platt (SAS), Monroe Price (Annenberg): Penn-EUSP ARCHES–American-Russian Collaborations in Higher Education
• Harvey Rubin (PSOM), Jianbo Shi (SEAS): Infant Facial Recognition for Vaccine Delivery Tracking
• Susan Wachter (Wharton), Daniel Raff (Wharton): Secular Real Estate Price Indices for Major Chinese Urban Areas
Longer descriptions of each project as well as more information about the Global Engagement Fund can be found at https://global.upenn.edu/gef
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Almanac -
April 21, 2015, Volume 61, No. 31
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