Dolores Albarracín was appointed the new director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC). Albarracín is a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with appointments in the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Arts & Sciences. “There is no scholar in the country more qualified to direct the policy center at this time than Dolores Albarracín,” says outgoing inaugural director Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Jamieson will take on the title of director emerita and continue to supervise several research areas at APPC.
Nicholas Dockery, a retired U.S. Army major and a student in Penn’s MBA Program for Executives in the Wharton School, was awarded a Medal of Honor for his actions in Afghanistan in 2012. The honor was first awarded in 1862 and has been conferred upon approximately 3,500 recipients. (Image: Christopher Kaufmann)
The U.S. National Science Foundation AI Institute for Human-AI Cooperation launched with a $21.5 million, five-year award. The institute will work with AI to accelerate patients’ recovery in physical therapy and focus on continual learning, multimodal AI, and human-AI collaboration. Penn will partner with the University of Delaware, who will lead the effort, and join other collaborators that include Delaware State University, Princeton, and the University of Florida.
A long-term follow-up from one of the earliest CAR T cell therapy clinical trials shows potential cures in more than one-third of patients with large B-cell lymphoma treated at Penn Medicine. “As oncologists, we use the word ‘cure’ with great care, but I am increasingly confident that CAR T cell therapy has the potential to cure a meaningful number of patients with B-cell lymphomas,” says senior author Stephen J. Schuster, the Robert and Margarita Louis-Dreyfus Professor in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Lymphoma Clinical Care and Research and director of Penn’s Lymphoma Program. (Image: Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library via Getty Images)
The ongoing Algebra 1 Fellowship, a research-informed support fellowship for math educators, is one of numerous partnerships Penn’s Graduate School of Education has with the School of District of Philadelphia. “We are working toward greater coherence and strategic support in our ongoing work with the school district,” says Katharine Strunk, dean of Penn GSE. “This kind of co-constructed, partnership-driven work is based on a deep and growing trust between SDP and GSE, one that truly allows us to understand and expand on the tremendous assets the district brings to the conversation.”
Timed with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Penn Today featured stories that bring to life the pivotal era of the American Revolution, highlighting the nation’s founding, the development of its political and cultural identity, and the role of Penn founder and Declaration signer Benjamin Franklin in making history.
In a video, Penn is highlighted as a place of historic firsts in celebration of 250 years of American independence and the revolutionary spirit that drives Penn forward.
More than a singular moment, America 250 at Penn is represented through the end of the year by ongoing exhibits, 250-themed fall courses, printing sessions with Common Press, and more. (Image: Franziska Spiecker/picture-alliance/dpa via AP Images)
Alumni from a range of graduating classes joined “Revolution at Penn?” exhibit curators Jim Duffin and John Pollack for a walking tour of Penn’s earliest history in Philadelphia’s Old City.
In the Francis Hopkinson Collections at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts is a rare broadside of “An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1788,” written by 1757 Penn graduate and Declaration of Independence signer Francis Hopkinson. The broadside was distributed at the 1788 “Grand Federal Procession,” attended by thousands in Philadelphia to celebrate the Fourth of July and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in Pennsylvania.
Penn Today spoke with historian Daniel Richter and philosopher Jennifer Morton, of the School of Arts & Sciences, and democratic governance expert Claire Finkelstein from Penn Carey Law, about the Declaration of Independence’s historical context, political ideas, and evolving legacy.
WXPN rolled out its Philly Anthems project, featuring original songs from a Philadelphia-based cohort of five seasoned and emerging musicians prompted by a timely theme: freedom. General Manager Roger LaMay called it a “great opportunity to both draw attention to the music happening now, but also the historical legacy of Philadelphia as a musical city.”
School of Arts & Sciences Ph.D. candidate Angelina Eimannsberger and Cheryl Krementz of Penn Business Services, who oversees the Penn Bookstore, offered thoughts on the concept of a “beach read.” “Because ‘beach read’ is such a permission to read something for fun, it gets feminized and criticized in the same way that romance and romantasy do,” says Eimannsberger, whose dissertation is titled “Trivial Pursuits: Women Readers, Material Feminism, and a New Life of Bookishness in the Twenty-First Century.”
Materials scientist Shu Yang, a professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, describes the attributes of sand—the second-most-used natural resource on the planet. Yang discussed how to make sturdier sandcastles, why sand can be found in phones, and why some sandy beaches feel different than others.
Ann Kuttner of the Department of the History of Art, alongside Ph.D. student Benjy Jude, spoke about portrayals of the sea in Roman art and 19th-century French seascapes. Kuttner says that art shapes conceptions of the sea “as a place of awe and wonder and pleasure,” as well as an appeal to imagine non-human inhabitants. (Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louis E. Stern Collection, 1963-181-21. https://www.philamuseum.org/objects/59527)
Emily Wilson, a professor of Classical Studies in the School of Arts & Sciences who published her own translation of “The Odyssey” in 2017, joined the New York Times’ “The Daily” to discuss the text and Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film adaptation.
For KCBS Radio in San Francisco, Emma Hart of the School of Arts & Sciences and Jonathan Zimmerman of the Graduate School of Education spoke about the history of the United States, including how it’s taught across the country and how we understand the North American colonies that would become the U.S.
In a report on how to stick with good habits, the BBC highlighted the research of Katy Milkman of the Wharton School, who remarked that temporal-based goal setting can be effective, but does not need to be tied to a new year. Meaningful dates, Milkman finds, could be anything ranging from the start of a new week to the start of a new academic term.
