Making a Commitment
to Residential Life

Now that the massive, four-year renovation of the Quadrangle has been completed, the University has received an $11.5 million commitment from Alan Hassenfeld C’70 and Jerome Fisher W’53 and his wife, Anne, to help pay for the Quad’s transformation into three College Houses. In recognition of their joint gift, one of the College Houses will be named Fisher-Hassenfeld College House, and the Memorial Tower Gate—dedicated to the memory of Pennsylvanians who died in the Spanish-American War—will be renamed Fisher-Hassenfeld Memorial Tower Gate.

Penn President Judith Rodin hailed the joint gift as a “magnificent investment in undergraduate life at Penn,” and predicted that “generations of students will share our gratitude for their generosity.”

The Quad Renewal Project was completed this past September, and the old dormitories—designed by Cope and Sewardson and built between 1895 and 1900—have been reconfigured to create spaces supporting College House life. They have new lobbies, computer labs, fitness rooms, music-practice rooms, lounges with kitchens, libraries and seminar rooms, and faculty master residences. The architectural features have been restored and the systems have been updated (including air-conditioning). The landscaping has also been enhanced. Fisher-Hassenfeld College House, in the oldest, westernmost part of the Quad, has undergone the most dramatic improvements, and now has extensive common spaces.

Building a Better Homepage

Penn’s Web site (www.upenn.edu) was cutting-edge when it launched five years ago, but “1997 in Internet time is ancient history,” says Deni Kasrel, the University’s manager of Web and publishing services. The site was overdue for a major renovation, and after eight months of work last spring and summer, it got one.

The result, launched at the start of the fall semester, offers a lot more than the online equivalent of a new coat of paint. Links have been streamlined and neatly organized, with clear descriptions of the information to be found at each. The static navy-blue background has been replaced with a design that features a large seasonal photo of College Green and the University’s recently redesigned logo, plus frequently updated links to news, Penn events, and photographs.

It is, in short, a lot more attractive and easy to use—a “window to the University,” as envisioned by Deutsch, Inc., a New York-based advertising agency, whose Web division collaborated on the project with the University. (Donald Deutsch W’79, chairman and CEO, donated the agency’s services to the project.)

“A lot of research was done on our side,” says Kasrel. Her department conducted interviews with administrators, trustees, faculty, staff, students, prospective students, alumni, and high-school guidance counselors to gain their impressions of Penn’s old homepage—and also received more than 2,000 responses to an online survey that asked Penn Web-users to discuss the pros and cons of the page. Finally, the University performed a competitive analysis of the homepages of the top 28 universities in the country, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report.

They found that Penn’s homepage design was primitive compared with those of its peer institutions, and it wasn’t particularly user-friendly—as evidenced by the fact that Penn’s Webmaster was unable to keep up with the constant flow of e-mails from dissatisfied surfers. Finally—and perhaps most important—the old page did not provide a clear representation of Penn to the outside world.

Response to the new site has been positive, both from within the University and outside. The number of e-mails received from dissatisfied users has been greatly reduced. “All in all,” says Kasrel, “it’s just a much more informative site.”

—Matthew Grady C’04