HEALTHCARE
Strong Medicine: Health System Cuts 1,700 After Record Deficit
“Our focus has been on making the changes that we must make within the institution to be successful—whatever the marketplace is," Dr. William N. Kelley, chief executive officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and dean of the Medical School, was saying. "While there are all kinds of external factors that have made matters difficult—and when they didn’t exist, we were going great —we can’t control the external world. But we can control our own organization. So we have got to do what it takes, with things we can control, to make sure that we’re functioning within the revenues that we have available." Continued...

HIGHER EDUCATION
Fighting Shadows with FIRE
According to Dr. Alan Charles Kors, the professor and undergraduate curriculum chair of history who recently co-founded the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the ultimate aim is to go out of business. Continued...

EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE
Gene-Therapy Researchers Probe Patient’s Death
Scientists have acknowledgedsome lapses in protocol during their recent gene-therapy experiment at Penn in which an 18-year-old man died, but they don’t believe those deviations were responsible for his death. Continued...

LECTURE
Color Blinders
Do successful blacks help the race or justify an oppressive system? That was the question posed by Derrick Bell, visiting professor at the New York University School of Law, in the 1999 Honorable A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Memorial Lecture, titled "Higginbotham’s Legacy: A Help or a Harm in the Racial Struggle?" Continued...

HIGHER EDUCATION
Study to Examine Minority Performance in the Academy
For the past three decades, Dr. Douglas S. Massey points out, colleges and universities have had mixed results in their efforts to recruit and retain minority candidates. There have been plenty of success stories, but the fact remains that—generally speaking—African Americans, Latinos and certain other minorities tend to drop out at higher rates than their white counterparts and generally "achieve at lower levels of distinction," as measured by the usual academic yardsticks. Even when such factors as SAT scores and family income are controlled for, the racial and ethnic disparities persist. No one really knows why. Continued...

APPOINTMENTS
Glandt Takes Over at SEAS
Dr. Eduardo D. Glandt GCh’75 Gr’77, the new dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, is a familiar face, being an alumnus, a distinguished member of the faculty and, most recently, the school’s interim dean. But in the rapidly-evolving field that his school represents, the chemical-engineering professor brings a certain dynamic fluidity to the post, as well as the ability to interface with multiple disciplines. Continued...

BRICKS AND MORTAR
And Then There Were Two …
“It’s not a joke to say that there are lessons to be learned from each of these," said Dr. David Brownlee, the art-history professor and director of the Office of College Houses and Academic Services, as he gave a guided tour of the six models submitted in the Hamilton Village Design Competition. Continued...

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