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David B. Roth: Director of New Penn Center for Precision Medicine

David RothDavid B. Roth, Simon Flexner Professor and chair of pathology & laboratory medicine, has been appointed director of the new Penn Center for Precision Medicine, a greatly expanded effort for Penn Medicine in this burgeoning field. In his new role, he will lead efforts to accelerate the implementation of precision medicine into clinical care. Dr. Roth is an internationally recognized expert in DNA repair and mechanisms of programmed gene rearrangements during immune cell maturation.

Dr. Roth, who will remain chair of the department, will work with senior leaders at Penn Medicine to develop a strategic plan to better integrate academic research with clinical operation in this field. “By leveraging our many strengths in biomedical research and developing synergies with our clinical programs, a primary goal of the new center is to create and implement precision medicine-based clinical care pathways embedded in systems of care,” Dr. Roth said.

“In the era of precision medicine, innovative, multidisciplinary approaches will transform Penn Medicine’s clinical care, shortening the pathway from initial accurate diagnosis to highly individualized therapy,” said J. Larry Jameson, dean of the Perelman School of Medicine and executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System.

For example, recent advances in genomic medicine revealed that adenocarcinoma of the lung, once regarded as a single entity based on its appearance under the microscope, is actually a group of distinct disorders, each with characteristic molecular drivers. This knowledge allows oncologists to use more tailored therapies to treat people. “In addition to cancer, we’re using precision medicine approaches to diagnose and treat a wide variety of disorders, ranging from preterm birth to cardiovascular disease,” Dr. Roth said.

Under his leadership, the new center will implement demonstration projects to bring precision medicine into routine health system operations and measure their impact. A dedicated analytics team will capture data on both medical and economic outcomes. The center will also play an important role as a technical resource and coordinator for external grant applications on precision medicine.

Dennis Culhane and John Fantuzzo: $1.9 Million Grants for Evidence-based Policy and Integrated Data

Dennis Culhane           John FantuzzoTwo recent grants, totaling nearly $2 million, have been awarded to University of Pennsylvania professors Dennis Culhane and John Fantuzzo, enabling the continued development and expanded use of Integrated Data Systems, or IDS, for evidence-based policymaking through the Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy, or AISP, initiative.

IDS link existing administrative data across multiple agencies and community providers to improve programs and policies through evidence-based collaboration. IDS help leaders and researchers evaluate what works, what doesn’t and how social problems can be effectively solved to meet the needs of families and individuals.

The grants came this year from both the Laura and John Arnold Foundation­—$1.1 million—and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation—$800,000.

The MacArthur Foundation has been a longtime supporter of AISP and has contributed more than $5 million to the initiative since 2008. This is the first time AISP has received funding from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

“MacArthur continues to generously support our work in the development, use and innovation of IDS,” said Dr. Fantuzzo, the Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations in Penn’s Graduate School of Education. “Through this most recent grant, we will be able to implement a training and technical assistance system to benefit states and counties that are developing IDS, create and test a model of IDS use for randomized control trials and generate recommendations for continued innovations in the field by establishing the AISP Research Consortium.”

With additional funding from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, a team led by Dr. Fantuzzo and Dr. Culhane, the Dana and Andrew Stone Chair in Social Policy in the School of Social Policy & Practice, will embark on “AISP Innovation.” The new initiative will enable AISP to refine and test a more efficient, secure and effective approach to IDS for state and local governments.

“Our intent is to generate uniform standards of best practices for the most challenging aspects of operating an IDS,” Dr. Culhane said.

Through a comprehensive 2013 study, Dr. Culhane and Dr. Fantuzzo identified the main barriers faced by states and counties with existing IDS. Challenges include agency concerns about data security as well as the time-consuming processes required to secure the legal agreements and the cumbersome contract procurements necessary to get the work done. Leadership also needs an effective data infrastructure with state-of-the-art technology tools that can link multiple data sources over time, store and update linkage keys and extract cohorts for research and analysis.

To further improve data security but maintain access, a secure system is also needed for remote analysis of data. By addressing these needs, AISP Innovation aims to eliminate obstacles and help government more quickly determine what works, for whom and at what cost.

As the concept continues to emerge, the benefits of IDS are expanding and can be pivotal in tracking and improving programs and policies, such as those for juvenile and adult justice, homelessness, health care, education, assisted housing, workforce development and child-welfare services. Thirteen jurisdictions, comprising 26 percent of the United States population, currently maintain an IDS.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation initially funded the AISP project through a series of grants to Dr. Culhane and Dr. Fantuzzo. More information about AISP is available at www.aisp.upenn.edu and the Understanding Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy animation.

Penn's Grad School Rankings 2017

Penn’s Grad School Rankings 2017

Each year, US News & World Report ranks graduate and professional schools in business, medicine, education, law, engineering and nursing. Five of Penn’s schools are in the top ten list.

In the latest rankings (2017), Penn’s School of Nursing is at #2 among master’s programs in nursing. The Perelman School of Medicine moves up to #3 among top medical schools for research, tied with the University of California-San Francisco and Johns Hopkins University, and moves up to #11 among top medical schools for primary care in another three-way tie with the University of Colorado and the University of Pittsburgh. The Wharton School drops to #4 among MBA programs. The Graduate School of Education moves up to #6, while  Penn Law remains at #7. Penn’s School of Engineering & Applied Science remains at #19 in a tie with Northwestern University.

US News does not rank all schools every year, nor does it rank Arts & Sciences as a unit; however, it ranks selected individual disciplines.

Excerpts of the annual rankings of America’s Best Graduate Schools are in the magazine. The complete survey is in the newsstand book, Best Grad Schools. For more on the rankings, see www.usnews.com

Magida Phillips: Senior Director, Business Services’ IT

Magida PhillipsThe Business Services Division (BSD) announced the recent appointment of Magida Phillips as its senior director, Information Technology. Ms. Phillips will be responsible for the oversight, direction and leadership of all aspects related to technology and systems infrastructure for Penn’s Business Services Division. She will also be accountable for the comprehensive management of all divisional technical operations, including oversight of the Division’s IT Support team, project managers, third-party vendor relationships and other BSD IT managerial staff.

A Penn alumna, Ms. Phillips is a familiar face among Penn’s IT circles. She began her career at Penn in 1986 and has held positions of increasing responsibility within the Division of Information Systems & Computing (ISC). As a senior IT project leader, she led the LAN Technology Services team, where her accomplishments included developing a firewall consulting service to support schools and centers across the University and rolling out a new VPN service to provide secure remote access to Penn resources. As an IT technical director, she worked closely with campus IT leaders and was instrumental in deploying new University-wide technology services such as Secure Remote Backup, Digital Signage, 1st Generation Virtual Desktop and Penn Endpoint Management. Most recently, as ISC’s director, Client Engagement, Ms. Phillips worked with the IT leaders across campus to identify their organizations’ current and future technology needs.

Ms. Phillips earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration from Penn in 1986.

Elaine Papas Varas: University Director of Financial Aid

Elaine Papas VarasThe University of Pennsylvania has named Elaine Papas Varas as the University director of financial aid. Her appointment will be effective March 28, and is the result of a nationwide search. The announcement was made by Michelle H. Brown-Nevers, associate vice president for student registration & financial services. 

Ms. Varas comes to Penn with more than 30 years of experience in financial aid, most recently serving as senior executive director of student financial aid at Drexel University. Prior to joining Drexel, she worked for many years as a university director of student financial aid for Rutgers University Biomedical Health Sciences and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ).x During her tenure at UMDNJ she served as director of the New Jersey Loan Redemption Program and doubled funding support for medically underserved communities. She facilitated federal funding integration of a merger of three state schools and established a nationally recognized Financial Literacy Program.

Her leadership in the field has been acknowledged on a regional and national level, with a gubernatorial appointment to New Jersey’s Board of Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and with her selection as a negotiator with the Department of Education. 

“We are excited about Elaine’s commitment to educational access and look forward to her expertise to build upon the success of Penn’s distinctive financial aid program,” Ms. Brown-Nevers said. “She has a proven track record as an innovative leader, possesses a breadth of knowledge and experience and will bring a collaborative approach to enhance the work that we do in support of students and families.”

Ms. Varas received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Wheaton College and completed graduate coursework in higher education at Rutgers and Columbia University. 

At Penn, Ms. Varas will oversee the effective administration of Title IV and Penn’s student financial aid programs amounting to nearly $500 million annually, of which more than $200 million is dedicated to grants for undergraduate students.

Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Diseases Pilot and Feasibility Grant Program 2016: May 16

Purpose and Research Focus

The purpose of Penn’s Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Diseases is to unite investigators with interests in digestive and liver physiology and disease and to stimulate others in the biomedical community to enter this area of research. One of the most important aspects of this effort is the funding of Pilot/Feasibility Projects.

The Pilot/Feasibility Project should be related to the focus of the Center, which encompasses molecular studies on the biology or disease of the alimentary tract, pancreas and liver. Relevant investigations include those in developmental biology, nutrition, regulation of gene expression, growth, differentiation and carcinogenesis, the biology of stem cells, molecular genetics, gene therapy and immunology, including growth factors and cytokines.

Eligibility

All faculty members of the University scientific community who meet the eligibility requirements below are invited to submit proposals. Applicants must be a US citizen or have a permanent visa.

1. New investigators who have never held extramural support (R01 and P01).

2. Established investigators in other areas of biomedical research who wish to apply their expertise to a problem in digestive and liver disease.

3. Established digestive and liver investigators who wish to study an area that represents a significant departure from currently funded work.

4. Pilot project awardees are eligible for two years of funding; renewals are evaluated competitively.

Proposal Preparation

1. Submit documents through the online form located at the bottom of the Pilot and Feasibility Grant Program webpage: https://www.med.upenn.edu/molecular/pilotproject.shtml Complete proposals are due by Monday, May 16.

2. Format

•    Cover page: includes abstract of up to 250 words and list of approved or pending IACUC/IRB protocols.

•    NIH biographical sketch.

•    NIH other support.

•    Budget and justification: one year, $20,000, one page only.

•    Background, preliminary results, estimated core usage, research plan and future directions; up to four pages total.

•    Senior investigators should indicate how this project represents a new direction in their research.

•    References: one page only.

•    Appendix: pertaining to preliminary data only, no reprints.

For additional information, please contact: Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Diseases, tel: (215) 573-4264, fax: (215) 898-0573 or email: kimmeyer@upenn.edu

Penn Libraries’ Launch of The Daily Pennsylvanian Digital Archives

It’s fascinating to see a University change as the world around it changes, and the public will soon be able to navigate Penn’s transformation through the pages of The Daily Pennsylvanian—from anywhere in the world. The Penn Libraries recently launched the first edition of the ongoing project, The Daily Pennsylvanian Digital Archives, a collection of more than 40 years worth of digitized, searchable issues of the newspaper. The project was spearheaded by David McKnight and Jessica Dummer of the Penn Libraries’ Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts and follows Penn’s history as told through the eyes of its students, creating a unique lens for students and scholars to study Penn’s rich history.

In addition to its scholarly value, this archive holds particular interest for the Penn alumni community, offering them a new, dynamic way to relive their Penn experiences. This desire to provide a fresh reconnection with Penn spurred Penn Libraries Overseer Edward P. Mally, W’83, and his wife, Julia Lang Mally, W’83, to generously donate the seed money for this extensive project. Inspired by the idea of rediscovering Penn through The Daily Pennsylvanian, this initial gift was followed by donations from Eric D. Brotman, C’94, and the Class of 1979. Mr. Brotman counts the memories he has from working on The Daily Pennsylvanian among the best of his entire career and feels that the archive is “like discovering a long-lost diary of [his] time on campus.”

At this time, the Libraries are providing access to a 40-year portion of the project on The Daily Pennsylvanian Digital Archives website, but they are still seeking funding to make a full virtual facsimile of The Daily Pennsylvanian available. If you are interested in learning more about how you can help make all 24,700 issues available online, please contact Allison Chiacchiere at the Penn Libraries’ Advancement Office at aleib@upenn.edu

See the archive at: http://dparchives.library.upenn.edu/

Launch of Digital Library of Northern Thai Manuscripts

caption: Manuscript repository: A traditional wooden ho tai or manuscript repository. Vat Canthasalo, Ban Nong Lam Can, Camphon District, Savannakhet Province, 1994.

Working with the National Library of Laos, Penn professor Justin McDaniel, chair of the department of religious studies, has launched the Digital Library of Northern Thai Manuscripts at http://lannamanuscripts.net as a resource for the study of traditional literature from this region. At present, the digital library contains images of over 4,200 manuscripts that can be searched and viewed online or freely downloaded, and to which more manuscripts will be added.

The database contains four collections: digitized microfilms from the Preservation of Northern Thai Manuscripts Project (with permission of Chiang Mai University Library), digitized microfilms and also handwritten copies of manuscripts made in the early 1970s during research conducted by Harald Hundius, and directly digitized manuscripts made during the current digital library project.

All digitization was funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. The digital library project was funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

The project was implemented by the National Library of Laos, based on the existing Digital Library of Lao Manuscripts (http://laomanuscripts.net).

Governance

Faculty Senate Executive Committee Actions Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Chair’s Report. Faculty Senate Chair Reed Pyeritz reported that the annual Faculty Senate Symposium is scheduled for April 6, at 4 p.m., in Houston Hall’s Hall of Flags: “The Role of the Faculty in the Evolution of US Research Universities” with a number of senior university leaders from around the region (see below). All members of the University community are welcome to participate; SEC members are encouraged to invite their colleagues.   

Past Chair’s Report. Faculty Senate Past Chair Claire Finkelstein reported that the Campaign for Community Steering Committee has increased the small grant award maximum from $1,500 to $3,000, and the deadline has been extended to April 15, 2016, for events through June 30, 2016. A few major grants valued up to $10,000 will also be rewarded to address “difficult interactions on campus.”  The grant program is expected to continue during the upcoming academic year.

Update from the Office of the Vice President for Public Safety. Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush reported that crime within the Penn “Patrol Zone” has dropped 59% since 1996, while retail, residential and institutional space has increased significantly since then. The Division of Public Safety follows a crisis management plan that includes a network of emergency alert systems, called UPennAlert; faculty and staff may choose to opt out of this program. The Penn “Rave Guardian” Safety App, available at no cost, allows Public Safety to geolocate phones and contact emergency services in times of distress. She described the work of the Alcohol Task Force and Mental Health Task Force and noted that the HELP line (215-898-HELP) may be reached 24/7 for any campus-related reason.

Update from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research. Vice Provost for Research Dawn Bonnell reported that research awards at Penn have increased by 61% since 2000, and industry-sponsored research has doubled relative to the total percentage since then. There are approximately two dozen faculty conflict of interest disclosures every year, of which most are handled administratively and determined not to have a conflict. Others are handled by an expedited review, and only 9% of disclosures go before the Conflict of Interest Steering Committee for in-depth review. To reduce administrative burdens associated with research, the Office is working to develop a single portal in which all faculty may input information for all programs, track agreements and approvals, and allow for cross-population of data into parallel external systems. Input from faculty and administrative stakeholders is being solicited as this system is developed. “Pennovation” is  a key focus of the Office, which includes the Penn Center for Innovation (which facilitates commercial partnerships with Penn), Pennovation Works (a Penn real estate project that develops new research facilities) and the Pennovation Center (an incubator for start-up companies).

Features

Commemorating Women's History Month at Penn

By 1930, the women at the University of Pennsylvania were competing in an ever-growing variety of sports, coached by a growing staff of instructors: basketball, fencing, hockey, riflery and swimming, as well as the minor sports of archery, baseball, horseback riding, tennis and track. In 1925, the women’s tennis courts were replaced by Bennett Hall as the main building for Penn’s College for Women, and on the third floor of this new building was a gymnasium for women.

In 1952, some 203 years after Benjamin Franklin organized the first Trustees and 25 years after the Trustees were divided into three classes—Life, Term and Alumni Trustees—a woman was elected one of the Term Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1976, 100 years after women first enrolled in the College as “special students,” the University had become fully co-educational.     

In 1983, the first Penn woman recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship was named.

In 1993, Claire Fagin was appointed to a one-year term as interim president and chief executive, the first woman to serve as Penn’s chief executive.

Judith Seitz Rodin became the first Penn alumna, C’66, to serve as Penn’s president, 1994-2004, and the first woman to serve as president of an Ivy League institution.

caption: In 1914, the University of Pennsylvania’s department of medicine granted Miss Gault permission to take a course, “Dietetics of Sick,” from February-June 1914. This admission ticket for one of the first lectures for women was signed by Dean William Pepper, son of Penn’s 11th Provost.
caption: Five women students in togas in front of the stainless steel Peace Symbol sculpture at Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, on March 17, 1970, during a Penn student protest promoting the Women’s Liberation Movement.
caption: Girls diving into swimming pool, appeared as cover of the sports section of the 1951 Women’s Record (the Penn women’s yearbook).
caption: Women and coaches on the Schuylkill River, with the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the background, in 1935 on the first day women were allowed to row.
caption: Betty Funston, BFA in education, 1931, captain of the University of Pennsylvania’s Freshman Girl Sharpshooters, a.k.a. the Rifle Team, 1927-1928, practicing before a match.
caption: Women’s archery practice session in 1938; Virginia Wingert removing arrows from target.
caption: Women fencers at an Eastern Pennsylvania Division Tournament, in Bennett Hall in April 1928.
caption: Ivy Day, May 9, 1942, planting ceremonies, senior class women at Bennett Hall Triangle (left to right): Betty Bennett, Helen Morris, Marjorie Dackerman, Mildred Campbell, Doris H. Stevens (class president), Barbara Wischan (retiring president of Women’s Student Government Association), Doris Favor, Patricia Selig and Dorothy Worthington.
caption: Penn Relays, April 1980, high school competitors running on Franklin Field as part of the women’s relay portion of the annual competition.
caption: Women students having imprints made of their feet, on February 17, 1927, in Bennett Hall gymnasium as part of physical education, “In order that defects may be detected and corrected.”
caption: Ready for the Pirate’s Ball, Penn women in pirate costumes, November 5, 1939 (left to right): Beverly Coffman, M. Bernice Leftwich and Elizabeth Simmons Hill.
caption: Women’s bowling team, March 29, 1945, (left to right): Catherine Eni, Emily Cerceo, Virginia Hertweck, Jane Miller and Nancy Winfrey.
caption: Frances Bilas and Elizabeth Jennings, two of the women programmers, in front of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (known as ENIAC) circa 1946. ENIAC was developed at Penn’s Moore School, 1943-1945.

Events

The Role of Faculty in the Evolution of US Research Universities: A Conversation with University Presidents

University of Pennsylvania Faculty Senate Symposium

Wednesday, April 6, 2016, 4-6 p.m., Reception to follow

Hall of Flags, Houston Hall (Perelman Quadrangle)

Since 1952, the Faculty Senate at Penn has served as the representative voice for full-time teaching faculty. As an institution, Penn embraces a vision of shared governance in which the faculty is regularly consulted on academic issues and in which faculty views can influence university policies.

A 2013 issue of Peer Review (published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities) examines faculty roles within the university. David Paris writes that the “traditional faculty situation” is “disappearing;” instead “many of the things faculty members used to do—course design, selection of materials, creation of assignments and assessment—are increasingly being organized by administrators and specialists and then turned over to often peripatetic adjuncts.” Roger Benjamin cites the increasing fragmentation of the faculty within universities (and their isolation within their various schools and departments) as having weakened shared governance ideals on which the university systems were formed. Further, Trusteeship magazine recommends that effective shared governance requires periodic assessment of its current state and creation of action plans for improvement.

The purpose of this Symposium is to foster a discussion about the novel stresses to their traditional missions that leading American universities currently face. The panelists will share their perspectives both as leaders of major research universities and as esteemed academicians.

Panelists:

John L. Anderson, former president, Illinois Institute of Technology;

    former provost, Case Western Reserve University.

Nancy Cantor, chancellor, Rutgers-Newark; former chancellor, Syracuse University.

Teresa A. Sullivan, president, University of Virginia; former provost, University of Michigan.

Moderator:

Reed E. Pyeritz, William Smilow Professor of Medicine and professor of genetics;          chair of the Faculty Senate.

Penn's Tree Campus USA Celebration

For the 7th straight year, Penn is being recognized as a Tree Campus USA. This consistent recognition from the Arbor Day Foundation affirms Penn’s commitment to campus tree management, fostering healthy urban forests, community outreach and the engagement of the student population in these endeavors. The recognition is awarded in the spring of the year subsequent to the year being recognized. Announcement of the 2015 recognition will be made on Earth Day, Friday, April 22, to mark Penn’s commitment to the environment.

These are some of the events that will comprise Penn’s Tree Campus USA Celebration:

Diversion of cardboard waste from campus for use in expansion of Penn Park Orchard began earlier this month. Urban Park staff diverts bulk cardboard from campus to use for sheet mulching, which will create a rich organic gardening bed. Cardboard and compost are laid directly on top of grass, suppressing weed growth, while decomposing within a few months. The garden bed will be ready for expansion of the Penn Park Orchard into a fully functioning food forest by fall 2016. A food forest is a healthy ecosystem that mimics natural systems by taking advantage of every plant layer, including fruit trees and shrubs, berries, vines, perennial flowers and groundcover. This is in partnership with Henry Got Compost, a Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences composting operation, which makes organic compost by mixing Philadelphia Zoo herbivore waste, Weaver’s Way Food co-op vegetable scraps, and Henry Got Crops, Saul CSA, green waste.

Penn Park Orchard Planting will begin on March 31. Staff of FRES University Landscape Architect will collaborate with the Philadelphia Orchard Project (POP), Urban Park staff, and the broader Penn community to expand the Penn Park Orchard established in fall 2014. They will plant additional fruit trees, fruiting vines, shrubs and berries to begin the transformation into a fully functioning food forest by this fall. Some of the plants include strawberries, hardy kiwi and grape vines. As part of the collaboration with POP on this event, it will be open to Penn volunteers. To volunteer: http://www.phillyorchards.org/volunteer/schedule/

Penn’s 30x30 Challenge, April 1-30, is sponsored by Penn’s Green Campus Partnership. It is a campus-wide challenge open to all Penn staff and faculty to spend at least 30 minutes outdoors each day of April: bit.ly/30x30signups

Registration for Creating Canopy opens the week of April 4. This is the 4th year for this program, this year in partnership with the Morris Arboretum and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation. Free yard trees will be given to University and UPHS employees who are homeowners in Philadelphia as well as the suburbs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. A variety of large and small, shade and flowering trees will be available through pre-registration on the Green Campus Partnership website. The registration deadline is April 29. All tree species are first-come, first-served.

The Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival at Morris Arboretum will take place April 9 and April 16. Morris Arboretum will offer free shuttle bus transportation from campus for current Penn students to attend the Cherry Blossom Festival. To register:  http://www.business-services.upenn.edu/arboretum/yourArboretum.shtml

Cherry Blossom tree.The history of the Morris Arboretum is rich with Japanese influences. Experience the beauty of the Arboretum’s cherry tree collection in bloom. Both Saturdays—April 9 and 16—will feature traditional Japanese cultural activities. Visitors are invited to discover and appreciate the variety of cherry species planted throughout the Arboretum. They expect that some of the earliest cherries, such as the Okame, could be blooming by April 9. The later blooming cherries, including Higan and Yoshino, could be in bloom by April 16. Morris Arboretum is generally about 8-10 days behind DC. To learn more about official bloom times, refer to the National Park Service’s website for DC: www.nps.gov/cherry/cherry-blossom-bloom.htm

Close up of Cherry Blossom tree.

Levin Family Dean’s Forum Puts a Spotlight on Social Change: March 30

The Oscar-winning movie Spotlight will be the focus of the 2016 Levin Family Dean’s Forum, “How Hollywood is Spotlighting Social Change: A Conversation with Spotlight Director/Screenwriter Tom McCarthy and Producer/Screenwriter Josh Singer.” The Dean’s Forum will take place on Wednesday, March 30, at 4:30 p.m. in the Zellerbach Theatre at the Annenberg Center. The event is free and open to the public.

The transformational movie Spotlight—winner of this year’s Academy Awards for best picture and best original screenplay—tells the story of the Boston Globe team that exposed the Roman Catholic Church’s cover-up of the sexual abuse of children by priests. Tom McCarthy, who directed and co-wrote the screenplay for Spotlight, and producer and co-writer Josh Singer will discuss the film and how they approached telling this story.

Their remarks will be followed by a faculty panel moderated by Marci Hamilton, Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Cardozo Law School, visiting fellow with the Penn Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PPRUCS) and author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children. Other members of the panel are Steven Berkowitz, associate professor of clinical psychiatry and director of the Penn Center for Youth and Family Trauma Response and Recovery, and Peter Decherney, professor of English and cinema studies.

For more information, please visit: www.sas.upenn.edu/spotlight-forum

Update: March at Penn

LOCATION Change

23        Sex and Jewelry in Cross-Cultural Mythology; Wendy Doniger, University of Chicago Divinity School; 5 p.m.; fl. 6, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library (PHF).

Film

23        Food Justice Movie Night: East of Salinas; 6 p.m.; The Rotunda (AUNI; The Netter Center).

Talks

23        Annotating Dante: Tassoni and Speroni; Peter Lesnik, Italian studies; 5:30 p.m.; Henry Charles Lea Room, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library (Italian Studies).    

    Shared Prosperity in America’s Communities; Patrick Harker, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and panelists; 5:30 p.m., Kleinman Center Forum, 2nd fl., Fisher Fine Arts (PennIUR).

24        From Extinct Monsters to Deep Time: The Ethnography of the Smithsonian’s Dinosaur Exhibitions; Diana Marsh, American Philosophical Society Museum; 12:30 p.m.; Penn Museum (Museum).

28        Great Pompeii Project: New Life for the Dead City; Massimo Osanna, University of Basilicata; 6 p.m.; Penn Museum (Penn Museum; Center for Ancient Studies; Classical Studies; History of Art).

29        History of Emotions Lecture: Modernity, Discipline and Emotions; Margrit Pernau, Max Planck Institute; 4:30 p.m.; rm. 826, Williams Hall (South Asia Center).

Research Supplier Show: March 31

The always popular Research Supplier Show, hosted by Penn Purchasing Services, will take place on Thursday, March 31 from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. in the Hall of Flags at Houston Hall. Celebrating Penn’s Year of Discovery, attendees will have the opportunity to explore what new options and opportunities are available from over 40 suppliers. These exhibitors represent categories such as health and life sciences, medical equipment and support services necessary to ensure that laboratories are operating at optimum efficiency.

Make plans now to attend the show. Lunch will be served. For more information and to preregister, visit www.upenn.edu/purchasing/show16

Controlled Substances Disposal Event: May 25

The Office of Environmental Health & Radiation Safety (EHRS) and the Office of Animal Welfare (OAW) will host an event to facilitate the disposal of registrants’ outdated and unwanted controlled substances. The event is scheduled for May 25, from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. in conference room 104 Stellar-Chance of PSOM. The event is free of charge but you must register by submitting an electronic drug transfer form one week prior to the event. Additional information about the event and transfer forms can be found at the EHRS website: http://www.ehrs.upenn.edu/media_files/docs/pdf/controlledsubstancesevent2_2016.pdf

Contact Jim Crumley at (215) 746-5036 or jcrumley@ehrs.upenn.edu with questions.

Bulletins

More Secure Credit Cards: It’s in the Chip

One Step Ahead logo.You may be aware of recent hoopla surrounding new “chip” credit cards, or maybe you might have received one from your bank. But what does this mean?

In America, the credit and debit card industry is moving away from magnetic stripe cards to a newer EMV or “chip” card, though other markets like Europe have been using these cards for years. EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa—three major issuers) cards contain integrated circuitry or a chip that stores account information, though they also have magnetic stripes for backward compatibility with older point-of-sale (POS) terminals. Chip cards are more secure because it is much harder to clone the account information versus old-style magnetic stripe cards.

Chip cards come in two flavors: chip + signature and chip + PIN. Chip + signature transactions still require your signature either on a paper slip or on a POS terminal screen, and are much more commonly issued in America. The rarer (in America) Chip + PIN card requires the entry of a PIN on the POS terminal—the transaction process is somewhat akin to entering a PIN for ATMs.

In October 2015, liability for fraudulent credit card transactions transferred from card issuers to merchants if they did not install terminals capable of processing chip transactions. This is the reason card issuers began issuing chip cards to consumers. Chip cards make it harder for thieves to steal account information but they do not guard against hacked store account databases.

Despite the introduction of chip cards, many merchants have not upgraded their terminals. The next time you’re in a store and unsure which method to use, try swiping your card first. If you need to dip, which means inserting your card into the terminal, push your card chip first into the bottom of the terminal and keep it there until the screen tells you to remove the card. Enter your PIN if you’re directed to do so. Soon, you’ll be doing more dipping and less swiping as merchants replace their POS systems.

Penn Volunteer Opportunities

Dear Penn Community,

Camp AmeriKids, a summer camp for children living with the challenges of HIV/AIDS and sickle cell disease, is looking for caring, responsible, energetic and fun counselors for its 2016 season. A volunteer counselor team is responsible for the 24-hour supervision of a cabin and maintains a camper to counselor ratio of about 2 to 1. Counselors spend each day of the one-week camp session with their cabin group as they rotate through a schedule of activities and participate in new and exciting workshops provided by the program staff. The cabin counselor’s enthusiastic participation in all aspects of camp, from meals and activities to nightly special events and cabin chats, is crucial in creating a memorable camp experience for campers. Counselors are expected to be role models and sources of energy and ideas, and are a key part of the Camp AmeriKids community. Room & board in Warwick, New York, is provided. Volunteers can apply for one or both of the following sessions: Session One: July 25-August 1; Session Two: August 6-13.

Applications are available online at www.elm-project.org

Call (203) 658-9671 or email equiroz@elm-project.org if you are interested in more information.

Join Penn VIPS Drives Committee: Penn volunteers provide a drop-off location to collect the many donated items we receive during our annual drives. A variety of drives are conducted during the course of the year to partner with and help support local schools, families and agencies. Dropsite volunteers are located throughout campus. Volunteers post the events, set up collection sites and help select the recipients for the donations. They also participate in an annual thank you luncheon.

Drives are held during the following times: School Supplies Drive: August; Food Drive: November; Gift/Toy Drive: December; Coat Drive: December; Change Drive: March.

Contact Isabel Mapp at sammapp@pobox.upenn.edu for additional info.

—Isabel Mapp, Associate Director, Netter Center for Community Partnerships

Talk About Teaching & Learning

The End of the Lecture?

This is a challenging environment for the lecture. In recent years, we have seen a welcome degree of ferment and experimentation in teaching, mostly using technology. As innovators make their cases for this or that new way, they often find it useful to push back against the old. And when something is needed to push back against, it’s usually the lecture that comes into their sights. In an OpEd in the New York Times last fall, Eric Mazur, a Harvard physicist, was quoted as saying, “it’s almost unethical to be lecturing.” Unethical. That’s pretty strong beer.

I take the opposite view. The right lesson to draw from this wide range of experiments is that the long-form presentation of an expert’s synthetic thinking remains as important to the craft of teaching as it has always been. I’ll start with the disclaimer that I am committed to experimenting with online teaching, and have been doing so for 15 years now (since back when we were broadcasting Real Video and had an 800 call-in line); but I am not within the camp that thinks, “This Changes Everything.” It changes some things. MOOCs, for example, have raised the level of interest and scrutiny on teaching well beyond the historical mean; they provide us with an unprecedented tool to disseminate knowledge; and they may even help remediate, on the margins, the harsher aspects of the larger public imagination of what it is we do in here, by making public a reasonable facsimile of it. In addition to these points on the positive side of the ledger, though, I can pretty well attest that there is no particular fairy dust that this medium sprinkles over its content. If live lectures aren’t working, putting them online won’t make them better.

And more to the point, online classes, in most cases, still rely on good lecturing. But, some will ask, isn’t the point of online teaching to make the experience more “interactive”? In my view this is widely oversold. Interactive compared with what? Surely with television, in comparison to which the label got stuck to the internet in the first place, but much less so when lined up against live, face-to-face classroom experiences. And the interactive mechanisms—chat rooms, polls and quizzes—are each focused, nearly always, on content of a type familiar to us all. Students in such courses typically spend most of their time “interacting” over some mix of independent readings and, yes indeed, a lecture —a long-form presentation, now chunked into 5-7 minute pieces. I have no doubt that such courses stand or fall on the quality of these. The interactive tools will help when used with wisdom, and here the experimentation continues to find what works and what doesn’t, but they are not the key feature of a successful class.

So what makes for a good lecture in this new environment? Let’s start with what it is not.

It should not be a summary of content. In fact, I don’t even think a lecture is mainly about conveying information. That’s what I would call a bad lecture. There are much more efficient and engaging ways for students to absorb information than having it told to them. (Reading comes to mind.) Further, mere “coverage” is not only boring in class, it produces a negative effect on work outside of it. It saps urgency from students’ independent work, where the majority of their advances will be made.

In contrast a good lecture should be designed to make a student work harder to prepare for the following one. It will motivate students to carry on the really hard, self-driven work of teaching themselves. It needs to transform data into knowledge by providing a synthesis and modeling for the students how to do it. It tailors the mass of information on a subject into a comprehensible narrative that picks and chooses, making judgments and subordinating some ideas to others. It animates the raw power of the fresh ideas it conveys. In other words, what makes a good lecture in these new formats is pretty much what makes a good lecture at all. Lectures have always been hard to do well, and we would benefit from more time spent working to improve them, something that will happen only by first resisting anti-lectureism, which, as a side effect, absolves us from the task.

But, some might claim that, in this age of technological wonder, the lecture faces another kind of impediment. This one starts with a vague and disquieting idea that our students are not those of yesteryear. Their habits, and some have even claimed, their cognitive capacities, have been changed so drastically by a technologically drenched environment, it is no longer viable to imagine that they could be moved by whatever good a lecture might aim to do. This is a capitulation argument, one that is heady for the reach of its claims. I’ve been taught of the brain’s remarkable plasticity, but jeez, really? Incapable of paying attention to a long-form presentation? If that’s at all true, the fate of the lecture is just the start of our problems.

Against this claim I’ll present another field report, this time from teaching face-to-face. When I lecture, I like walking around, and I can of course see what’s on students’ laptops. What I saw wasn’t all that surprising, although I confess to a little surprise at once seeing a live soccer game. What was more striking was that the students’ peripheral awareness was shrinking until there was not even enough left for them to realize that I could see the screens too. Even when I was standing right behind them.  This led to an ah-ha moment.

I hypothesized that it wasn’t the wiring of their cortexes that had changed, it was the presence of the devices in front of them; so I experimented with a laptop-free classroom in my live lectures. Steeling for pushback, I did my best to explain that if they were taking the right amount of notes, with pencil and paper, it would take them 15 minutes that evening to transcribe them to their hard drives. A little tedious, but also a good review. And in the meantime they would have some peace and quiet, during in-class time, to do different kinds of thinking. The expected pushback really never came. In fact, when I made my announcement, the students looked like I used to feel at the beginning of a flight when the cabin doors closed, at least before planes had wi-fi. According to their own reporting, at the end of the semester, fully 74% of my students thought the no laptop policy either increased or very much increased what they learned, and only 9% found it really annoying. I ask a similar question about the lectures themselves, and since this policy, the rating for “amount learned” there has gone up too.

These experiences, and others like them, make me think the lecture is alive and well. As we move more deeply into the next stages of experimentation, as we should, we would do well to take down this particular straw man; and direct our energies instead to making lectures better. Ideas, at least if they’re any good, take a while to get across. It’s not just inertia that keeps the lecture alive. For data to become knowledge, it needs synthesis. This is hard to do; there’s no better way I know to teach it than lecturing.

Peter T. Struck is the Evan C Thompson Term Chair for Excellence in Teaching and an associate professor of classical studies. He received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2004 and the SAS Dean’s Award for Innovation in Teaching in 2013. Below is a link to his whole “Evan C Thompson Forum on Teaching Excellence 2015” talk:

http://www.upenn.edu/ctl//programs_services/faculty_programs/the_evan_c_thompson_forum_on_teaching_excellence/

 

This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching. 

See https://almanac.upenn.edu/talk-about-teaching-and-learning-archive for previous essays.

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