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Honors & Other Things

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May 22, 2012, Volume 58, No. 34

 

 

Spirit Award: Dr. Gutmann

Penn President Amy Gutmann was honored with the 2012 Woman of Spirit Award at the 10th annual Women Against MS (WAMS) Luncheon on May 8. In partnership with the Penn MS Center, the luncheon is held annually to unite the local community and gain support in the fight against MS, as well as to increase awareness about the disease and raise funds for research and philanthropy. The luncheon honors one local leader with the Woman of Spirit Award for positively impacting the local community.

National Humanities Center: Dr. Moreno

The National Humanities Center has appointed Dr. Jairo Moreno, an associate professor of music theory at the School of Arts & Sciences, to be a 2012-2013 Fellow. He is the 13th scholar from Penn to receive a fellowship from the Center. Dr. Moreno is among 33 from institutions in the United States and five foreign countries who will work on individual research projects and share ideas in seminars, lectures and conferences during the coming academic year at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC. He will work on his current project, Syncopated Modernities: Musical Latin Americanisms in the U.S., 1978-2008, an archival, critical and ethnographic study of music’s precarious share in political practices during late capitalism.

Travel Grant: Mr. Morse

Michael Morse (C’13) has won the Terry B. Heled Travel & Research Grant at the Kelly Writers House. Mr. Morse is majoring in political science with a minor in creative writing. 

Supported financially by this grant, Mr. Morse will travel to Berlin, Germany to research and write about the various forms of memorialization of the Holocaust. He will present his writing next fall at the Kelly Writers House.

AAP Medial: Dr. Rubenstein

RubensteinDr. Arthur H. Rubenstein, professor of medicine in the division of endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism, and former dean of the Perelman School of Medicine, was awarded the highest honor of the Association of American Physicians (AAP), the George M. Kober Medal, at the annual joint meeting of the AAP and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

Since 1925, AAP has bestowed the award for research in scientific medicine that rises to the highest level of achievement. Dr. Rubenstein and mentor Dr. Donald Steiner developed the first accurate way to measure insulin secretion in diabetic patients being treated with insulin derived from the pancreas of cattle or pigs. This method was key to the commercial production of human insulin for diabetics. Drs. Rubenstein and Steiner were part of a team that discovered the first case of diabetes caused by abnormal insulin.

Friars Senior Society Faculty Award

SilversteinDr. Kenneth Shropshire, David W. Hauck Professor and professor of legal studies and business ethics in the Wharton School, was presented the Friars Senior Society Faculty Award. This award is given to an outstanding Penn faculty member in recognition of not only their area of expertise, but their compassion for teaching and their relationships with their students.

A student commented, “Professor Shropshire has an incredible ability to engage and keep students interested, and from my experiences in his classes, more broadly, he has taught some of the most practical and valuable lessons and classes I’ve had during my time at Penn.”

Critical Language Scholarships

Six University of Pennsylvania students have been awarded US Department of State Critical Language Scholarships for study this summer. They are listed below along with the language they will study:

Colleen Daley, GEd’13, Arabic in Oman
Blake Harwood, C’15, Arabic in Tunisia
Bronwyn Koehl, C’12, Russian in Russia
Steven Lin, D’15, Japanese in Japan
Myra Siddiqui, C’12, Korean in South Korea
Lan Ngo, Gr’16, Chinese in China

The students will spend seven to 10 weeks in intensive language institutes. CLS Program participants are expected to apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers.   

College of Liberal & Professional Studies 2012 Awards

Faculty Awards

LPS Distinguished Teaching Award: Dr. Yvette Bordeaux was named director of the Professional Master’s Programs in Earth and Environmental Science in 2007. A graduate of the University of Rochester, she received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000. She has taught paleontology, environmental analysis, and courses on climate change. 

LPS Award of Distinction: During a long career at Penn, Dr. Alice Kelley has served as undergraduate chair in the department of English, in the VPUL’s Office as liaison to faculty encountering students with personal and academic troubles, and as assistant dean working with advisees from the College and from LPS. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Smith College and her PhD in English from the City University of New York as well as a master’s in counseling from Penn’s Graduate School of Education. 

Student Awards

Ronald J. Caridi Award: Elizabeth Sorel (Bachelor of Arts)

Linda Bowen Santoro Award: Thayne Dibble (Bachelor of Arts)

Association of Alumnae Continuing Education Award: Maura Collinsgru (Bachelor of Arts)

LPS Award for Academic Achievement in the Natural Sciences: Kylie Mitchell (Bachelor of Arts)

Dean’s Scholar: Michael King (Bachelor of Arts)

Dean’s Scholar: Caroline D’Angelo (Master of Environmental Studies)

Institute for Environmental Studies Award for Outstanding MSAG Student: Allison Tether (Master of Science in Applied Geoscience)

Institute for Environmental Studies Award for Outstanding MES Student: Dakota Dobyns (Master of Environmental Studies)

Sphinx Senior Society Honors

Luis Ernesto Del Valle, C'12, W'12, received a certificate and Sphinx figure as the first recipient of the Paul Miller Leadership Award presented by the Sphinx Senior Society.

The Sphinx Senior Society Board of Governors established the Paul Miller Leadership Award to honor the memory of the late Paul Miller, C'83, and a former Penn trustee (Almanac November 2, 2010).

Despite suffering from dwarfism, Paul Miller excelled in both campus and public service leadership as a former Sphinx Society Scribe and Mask & Wig performer, graduate of Harvard Law School, and later as an author of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and distinguished Commissioner on the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, 1994-2004."

Mr. Del Valle received the Paul Miller Leadership Award at the Annual Spring Banquet for his outstanding campus and public service leadership as co-chair of the Wharton Council, member of the Advisory Board of the Dean of Admissions and the Penn Arts Pre-Orientation Program, founding high school teacher of Penn's Financial Literacy Community Project, and organizer of the first Wharton 5K race for charity to benefit the Jericho Project, a group dedicated to ending homelessness.

In addition, Penn's Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli (W'85) was welcomed as the 2012 Honorary Sphinx Inductee.

The Sphinx Senior Society is the oldest honor society of the University of Pennsylvania.

Penn Golf Team Ivy Champs

The Penn men’s golf team won the Ivy League Championship last month. This is their first Ivy title since 2007 and the third in program history (the first came in 1998). The team represented the Ivy League at the NCAA regional level last week, where they placed 13th.

The Penn women’s golf team finished second at the Ivy League Championship behind Crimson University.

Fels National Public Policy Challenge

The Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania announced that team Kinvolved from New York University is the winner of the inaugural National Invitational Public Policy Challenge held last month at the National Constitution Center.

The winning proposal detailed a mobile app to empower caregivers of students in the New York City Department of Education with timely student attendance information to ensure that all children are present in school all day, every day. The proposal was presented by NYU team members Miriam Altman, Barrie Charney Golden and Alexandra Meis.

The Challenge, presented in celebration of Fels’ 75th anniversary year, is a student-led, public policy competition for undergraduate and graduate students from invited universities across the country. Each team presented a comprehensive policy proposal or civic campaign to address an issue specific to their university’s community, with topics including education, environment, and healthcare. The National Competition followed up on the success of Fels’ third annual Public Policy Challenge, open specifically to students at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). The winning team from the Public Policy Challenge, “Closing Schools, Opening Opportunities,” represented Penn in the National Competition (Almanac April 17, 2012).

Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students

MeleisThe awardees for this year’s Penn Prize for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching were honored at a reception on May 1. The 2012 awardees are:

Eram Alam (SAS, History & Sociology of Science)
Justin Berg (Wharton, Management)
Lindsey Fiorelli (SAS, Philosophy)
Yong-cheol Lee (SAS, Linguistics)
David Lonoff (SAS, Mathematics)
Suryun Rhee (SAS, Economics)
Nicholas Schneider (SEAS, Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics)
Brent Yorgey (SEAS, Computer & Information Science)
Christina Yiwei Zhang (Wharton, Applied Economics)
Yitao Zhang (SAS, Chemistry)

A Mother’s Honor: A Visiting Global Scholar

MeleisThe new Soad Hussein Hassan Visiting Global Scholar program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing honors the mother of Penn Nursing Dean Afaf I. Meleis. The visiting scholarship is funded through an endowment contribution from US Ambassador Martin J. Silverstein, GL’08, and Audrey J. Silverstein, C’82. Penn Nursing’s dean will name the Soad Hussein Hassan Visiting Global Scholar each year, creating a cadre of global scholars and experts who travel to Penn Nursing to take part in school-based programs, lectures, classes, and to collaborate with Penn Nursing’s faculty and students.

The gift is a tribute to both Dean Afaf I. Meleis and her mother, the late Dr. Soad Hussein Hassan. Dr. Hassan was a pioneer in global women’s health and nursing whose work in practice and academia broke boundaries in the Middle East and beyond for nurses and nursing education. A baccalaureate graduate of Syracuse University, she was the first nurse to earn a master’s degree in public health in her native Egypt and the first nurse to earn a doctorate at an Egyptian university.

Dr. Hassan established Maadrasit El Hakmaat Training School for Nurses, the first school separate from hospital auspices in the Middle East. Following a distinguished career at the University of Alexandria and other institutions, she continued to establish nursing schools across the Middle East.

Dr. Meleis, who dedicated her book, Theoretical Nursing, to her mother, described her as “a maverick—for exemplifying humanism and commitment, for encouraging feminism and autonomy, for accepting challenge and diversity, for tolerating rebellion, for sponsoring inquisitiveness, and for being my mother.” 

Wharton Venture Award

Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania announced the recipients of the 2012 Wharton Venture Award (WVA). The $10,000 award supports students financially over the summer so that they can concentrate on developing their own entrepreneurial ventures instead of pursuing traditional full-time internships. Since 2007, Wharton has granted over $300,000 for 28 awards to entrepreneurially-minded students to launch businesses.

The Wharton Venture Award recipients for Summer, 2012 are:

Samir Malik (W’13)—1DocWay.com: a marketplace connecting hospitals with underserved care facilities. They bring the doctor’s office online. See http://1docway.com/

Rajiv Mahale (W’13)—accessMD.com and Catalogue.com—(In a WVA first, Mr. Mahale made the finals with two different ventures. He has been offered one award to allocate across both businesses.) accessMD.com: offers patients and physicians across the globe a certified second opinion from one of the nation’s top 20 specialty hospitals. Catalogue.com: an online marketplace for professionally-curated interior design inspiration. For video see http://vimeo.com/38673477

Steve Lau and Jon Dussel (both W’13)—Cloudable.me: an intuitive online application focused on enabling simple social organization and sharing of everything on the Internet. See  www.cloudable.me/home.html

Deepa Gandhi (W’13)—Gold & Twine: monogrammed, luxury and quality handbags and accessories at mid-market price points.

Su Que “Kristy” Leong (W’13)—Grand Round Table: empowers medical practitioners to connect seamlessly with the expertise, experiences, and shared resources of their own medical communities on one simple-to-use platform. See http://grandroundtable.com/home_slideshow/941

Penn Medicine’s Big Idea

Sponsored by the newly formed UPHS Center for Innovation in Health Care Financing, Your Big Idea: Penn Medicine’s Innovation Tournament, sought ideas from Penn Medicine employees to improve the patient experience at Penn Medicine. The winners are:

Team Patient Services Kiosks—an interactive map of the hospital that would help staff find meeting locations, visitors find patients’ rooms, and help patients find where their appointments are located. It could also be used to post where certain presentations for the day are located, as well as show locations of the gift shop and cafeteria. The team members are Danielle Grant, CPUP; Beth Johnston, HUP; Beth Hoffman, CPUP; Fabian Marchal, CPUP; James Sampson, Presbyterian Medical Center; Leslie Allen, CPUP.

Team MyPenn Scheduler—an interactive website where patients can schedule appointments, register and fill out pre-visit questionnaires, print maps of the various campuses and directions to the hospitals, find out what they need to bring to their visit and find out about the provider they are going to see by reading a biosketch. They can also place themselves on a waiting list for a specific date and time and generate an email or text message reminder to stay on time. The team members are Paul Lanken, professor of medicine; Anna Bortnick, CPUP; Shivan Mehta, medicine; Karen Bowles, medicine.

For listing of the all the finalists, see http://bigidea.med.upenn.edu/finalists

Model Supervisor Award Winner

Patricia Rose,director of Career Services for University Life, was awarded the 2012 Model Supervisor Award at this year’s Models of Excellence Ceremony on April 24. She was honored for her outstanding supervisory skills, including her ability to build a collaborative and innovative workplace and serve as an inspiring role model for her eight employees. In honor of her strong leadership and managerial skills, she received a symbol of appreciation and a $500 cash award.

This year’s other Model Supervisor Award finalists were Maggie Krall, director of administration for the Perelman School of Medicine’s Combined Degree and Physician Scholar Programs, and Peter Schulman, executive director for the Positive Psychology Center in the School of Arts & Sciences. Both received a symbol of appreciation and a $250 cash award.

For more information and to learn how to nominate a colleague for a Model Supervisor Award, visit www.hr.upenn.edu/quality/models

Penn Tops EPA’s Green Power Challenge

For the fifth consecutive year, the University of Pennsylvania is the top winner of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s 2012 College University Green Power Challenge. In addition, more colleges and universities who are participating in the Challenge are located in Pennsylvania.

Penn beat out 72 other schools across the country by purchasing more than 200 million kilowatt hours (KWh) of green power, or 48 percent of its total power purchases.

Green power is generated from renewable resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, biogas, and low-impact hydropower. Penn’s green power use is equivalent to avoiding greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 27,000 passenger vehicles each year.

“By purchasing green power from renewable sources, these 17 Pennsylvania institutions are spurring the development of the nation’s green power market and reducing harmful air pollution,” said EPA’s mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin. “Their commitment to renewable energy, especially at the University of Pennsylvania, is contributing to the growth in green jobs and a green economy.”

The other 16 Green Power Partners in Pennsylvania are: Duquesne University in Pittsburgh; Dickinson College in Carlisle; Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster; Haverford College in Bryn Mawr; Swarthmore College in Swarthmore; Gettysburg College in Gettysburg; Philadelphia University in Philadelphia; Drexel University in Philadelphia; Juniata College in Huntingdon; Eastern University in St. Davids; Allegheny College in Meadville; Bucknell University in Lewisburg; Mercyhurst College in Erie; Chatham University and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh; and Marywood University in Scranton.
For more information see www.epa.gov/greenpower/initiatives/cu_challenge.htm

Penn Applauded for Outstanding Benefits

While many employers have struggled throughout the economic slowdown, Penn continues to stand out as a top workplace thanks to excellent benefits and exceptional work environment.

The University was recently featured in a spotlight brief in Computerworld Magazine’s 2012 Salary Survey for maintaining high-quality benefits—like diverse retirement plans, comprehensive health care options and valuable professional development resources—in the midst of the economic downturn. Penn was also commended for adding new benefits such as adoption assistance and backup care as part of the commitment to supporting worklife balance. Visit www.computerworld.com to read the article.

For a complete look at the rewards of working for Penn, visit the Human Resources website at www.hr.upenn.edu/jobs/bestemployer.aspx

—Division of Human Resources

More Sustainability Projects Piloted at Penn Through Green Fund Grants

The Penn Green Campus Partnership has awarded five Green Fund grants ranging from a comprehensive recycling center within the School of Engineering & Applied Science to a behavior-change project focusing on water conservation. This spring’s grants bring the total number of Green Fund projects to 41.

  • The School of Arts & Sciences will use its Green Fund grant to replace a 21-year-old, fossil-fuel-powered delivery van used for on-campus equipment pickups and deliveries with a Columbia ParCar Mega Van, an electric vehicle that will serve as a pilot for future additions to the School’s fleet.
  • The Ware College House hand-dryer comparison project suggests a potential for significant conservation and cost savings and will determine the feasibility of wide-scale hand-dryers use. The project will compare two market-leading hand dryers using data collected on energy consumption, sound and user feedback.
  • The School of Engineering & Applied Science received a Green Fund grant to establish a state-of-the-art recycling center which will provide areas to recycle compact fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs, ink and toner cartridges, hardcover books and bound materials, electronic waste, pens and markers, batteries, magazines and used paper towel composting.  With its de facto training program for housekeepers and maintenance staff, this project can be easily replicated across schools and centers.
  • Digital shower timers will be used in two college houses to discover the most effective behavior change messaging related to water conservation. Variable signage will be compared to determine the most effective timer and signage combination. The project leaders suggest the timers will not only save water energy, decreasing Penn’s water footprint, but will also encourage lifelong sustainable conservation policies.
  • The fifth project to be funded is the purchase of equipment to enhance Housekeeping’s green cleaning efforts. Twenty battery-operated totes will process tap water to a higher alkalinity, making it an effective cleaning agent. The Green Fund also approved funding for four machines that can strip any floor with only a water base. These machines will expand green cleaning practices across the campus.

 

Almanac - May 22, 2012, Volume 58, No. 34