November 5, 2019 Volume 66 Issue 12

Michael X. Delli Carpini has been named the inaugural faculty director and Leah Seppanen Anderson the inaugural executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s new Stavros Niarchos Foundation Paideia Program for Penn undergraduates. The announcement was made by Penn President Amy Gutmann and Provost Wendell Pritchett.

With a $6 million gift from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (Almanac March 19, 2019), the Paideia Program reimagines the ancient Greek ideal, Paideia—“education of the whole person”—for the 21st century and beyond, with courses focusing on wellness, service and citizenship. Paideia will place an emphasis on informed civil discourse and deliberation and will incorporate co-curricular experiences through which future civic leaders and members of local, national and global communities practice productively engaging across ideological divides. Paideia will begin as a five-year pilot program, building on and collaborating with existing programs and organizations on campus.

“Teaching the skills and habits of citizenship, service and wellness,” said President Gutmann, “remains among Penn’s and higher education’s highest callings. The Paideia Program at Penn will offer a unique, impactful and timely pedagogic approach to doing just this—educating the whole person—and there’s no one better suited to lead this effort than Michael Delli Carpini, himself a consummate Penn citizen and renowned scholar and teacher of public deliberation.

“With our new executive director, Leah Anderson, Michael will help Penn realize Paideia’s vision of educating young people to realize their potential as active and engaged members of society. We are enormously grateful to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation for their support of this transformative and exciting initiative and to Michael for his excellent work in building this nascent program. We look forward to formally launching Paideia this spring.”

Dr. Delli Carpini served as the Walter H. Annenberg Dean of Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication from 2003 to 2018. He is a world-renowned expert on the role of the citizen in democratic politics, especially the impact of new media and communication technologies on public opinion, political knowledge and political participation. A champion of interdisciplinary knowledge as dean of the Annenberg School, he established new research centers and working groups across such essential areas as global communication, media activism, health communication and communication neuroscience, while recruiting eminent faculty members in such disciplines as sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science and the history of science.

Dr. Anderson is currently associate director of the Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship at Princeton University. In this role, she collaborates with students and faculty across the university to connect their courses and research to the work of community organizations. She helped launch Princeton’s Service Focus initiative, which bridges service and learning in the first two years of the undergraduate experience and works closely with students to plan their community-engaged research, service and internship opportunities. She taught for 14 years as an associate and assistant professor of politics and international relations at Wheaton College, including three years as department chair, and earned a PhD in 2003 and an MA in 1999, both in political science, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned a BA summa cum laude in political science and history in 1995 from Wheaton College.

“Our outstanding Penn students are committed to having a positive influence on our global and local communities,” said Provost Pritchett. “The Paideia Program will provide students with the foundations necessary to ensure that they have deep and long-term impact through a wide range of educational and engagement activities, as well as exposure to the historical traditions of service and citizenship. In this way, under the exceptional leadership of Michael Delli Carpini and Leah Anderson, the Paideia Program will contribute greatly to Penn’s core mission to bring together education, innovation and impact.”

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, whose co-president Andreas Dracopoulos is a Penn graduate, is one of the world’s leading private, international philanthropic organizations, making grants in the areas of arts and culture, education, health and sports, and social welfare. Since 1996, the Foundation has committed more than $2.8 billion, through more than 4,500 grants to nonprofit organizations in 124 nations around the world. It funds organizations and projects worldwide that aim to achieve a broad, lasting and positive impact for society at large and that exhibit strong leadership and sound management. The Foundation also supports projects that facilitate the formation of public-private partnerships as an effective means for serving public welfare.

An international team of experts led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Glasgow has been awarded a $9.7 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and National Institute for Aging (NIA) to establish CONNECT-TBI—a program spanning 12 institutions that will study traumatic brain injury (TBI) and related neurodegenerative diseases.  

In the past decade, there has been increased concern and awareness regarding the late effects of TBI, specifically, the association between repetitive head impacts in contact sports and the risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and related dementia. However, other forms of progressive neuropathologies have been observed after TBI, prompting the CONNECT-TBI team to coin an umbrella term, TBI-related neurodegeneration, or “TReND,” of which CTE is one subtype.  

The progressive changes in TReND are found in the brains of people who have suffered repeated concussions and in some individuals with a history of a single severe traumatic brain injury. Symptoms of TReND are comparable to other neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and include memory loss, confusion and depression. However, much about TReND remains unknown. While an estimated five to 10 percent of AD and AD-related dementias (ADRD) are thought to result from these types of brain injuries, the field’s understanding of the mechanisms and processes of TReND is still in its infancy. 

To improve knowledge of TReND, CONNECT-TBI will form as a “center without walls”—a network of brain banks linked to comprehensive datasets of TBI and AD/ADRD cases. Penn serves as the home institution for the program, which combines expertise and archives from 12 institutions and 26 investigators. 

“There’s massive confusion around the term ‘CTE’ and little awareness of other forms of TReND. Much of the general public is under the impression that one concussion will automatically lead to cognitive decline, but none of this has been shown yet,” said principal investigator Douglas H. Smith, director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair and a professor of neurosurgery at Penn. “Right now, we’re only at the starting line with research on CTE and other forms of TReND. It’s time now to develop methods, with consensus and panels of experts, to identify all subtypes of TReND and their relative pathological progression.” 

The team will analyze the clinical data from the TBI and AD/ADRD cases, including diagnoses of amnestic mild cognitive impairment and various forms of dementia. Furthermore, the program will establish tissue donation protocols for ongoing sample enrollment. 

“With the confusion surrounding traumatic brain injury-associated neurodegeneration, we are taking a methodical approach to defining forms of TReND, including CTE. We want to get to the bottom of these pathologies and their implications for any neurocognitive changes,” Dr. Smith said.  

Co-PI William Stewart at the University of Glasgow and an adjunct associate professor of neurosurgery at Penn, agrees. “We expect CONNECT-TBI to deliver an unparalleled research resource, which will provide new insights for individuals who have suffered TBI, but have not previously had any information about their risk of developing TReND.” 

Penn investigators also include Edward B. Lee, John Q. Trojanowski, Victoria E. Johnson, Douglas J. Wiebe, Ramon R. Diaz-Arrastia and David F. Meaney. 

The Price Lab for Digital Humanities has been awarded a $2 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This is the second Mellon grant the Price Lab has received.

The Price Lab, based in Penn Arts & Sciences, is the center for the University’s initiatives in the digital humanities.

With the grant, the Lab will provide funds for project incubation, undergraduate and graduate summer fellowships, training in digital tools and methods, early-stage research, and an annual digital humanities seminar. The grant will also support educational programs, including the newly launched undergraduate minor and graduate certificate in digital humanities and a fellowship program for doctoral students.

Jim English, founding faculty director of the Price Lab and John Welsh Centennial Professor of English, said the new grant “will enable us to do some exciting and innovative things, including new ‘mid-doctoral’ fellowships for humanities grad students and pop-up labs for faculty just getting started in DH.” Stuart Varner, the Lab’s managing director, added that they will be supporting “larger-scale and more public-facing digital projects that engage with the wider Philadelphia community.”   

“The Price Lab exemplifies our commitment to exploring the human experience with all the tools of the liberal arts,” said Steven Fluharty, Dean and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience. “In the four years since the Lab was founded, students and faculty have done exciting work on projects as diverse as archaeological digs in Turkey to data mining texts from Early Modern India. I’m eager to see what the renewed support from the Mellon Foundation makes possible.”

The Price Lab was established in 2015 (Almanac February 10, 2015) with support from Michael Price (W’79), overseer and Power of Penn Arts & Sciences campaign chair, and Vikki Price.

The Faculty Award of Merit Presented by Penn Alumni was established in 2014 by Penn Alumni and the Office of the Provost. It is presented annually to an individual or group of collaborators that has made an outstanding contribution to alumni education and engagement at Penn by sharing their unique scholarship work with the alumni community. Special emphasis is placed on faculty members who go above and beyond the call of duty by engaging Penn alumni with the University as their intellectual home and educate the faculty community about the alumni engagement opportunities available to them. The 2019 honoree was Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, associate professor of history of art and affiliated faculty in Latin American and Latino studies, cinema studies, and gender, sexuality and women’s studies. 

The award consists of a formal citation and will be presented during the fall Alumni Award of Merit Gala.

All Penn faculty, staff and alumni are eligible to nominate a faculty member for this award. For more information about award criteria and eligibility, or to nominate a faculty member, visit www.alumni.upenn.edu/education

Nominations are due by February 29, 2020.

Section IV.3(c) of the Council bylaws provides that a University Council meeting “shall incorporate an open forum to which all members of the University community are invited and during which any member of the University community can direct questions to the Council.”

All members of the University community are invited to bring issues for discussion to the: 

University Council Open Forum 

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 4:40 p.m. 

Bodek Lounge, Houston Hall

Individuals who want to be assured of speaking at Open Forum must inform the Office of the University Secretary (ucouncil@pobox.upenn.edu) by 10 a.m. on Monday, November 18, 2019. Please indicate the topic you would like to discuss. 

Those who have not so informed the Office of the University Secretary will be permitted to speak only at the discretion of the moderator of University Council and in the event that time remains after the scheduled speakers.

Please see the format given below. Questions may be directed to the Office of the University Secretary at (215) 898-7005 or ucouncil@pobox.upenn.edu 

—Office of the University Secretary

Format for University Council’s Open Forum

December 4, 2019

The University Council will devote a substantial portion of its December 4, 2019, meeting to a public forum. The purpose of the Open Forum is to inform Council of issues important to the University’s general welfare and of the range of views held by members of the University. The forum is open to all members of the University community under the conditions set by the bylaws, following guidelines established by the Steering Committee of University Council: 

1. Any member of the University community who wishes to do so may attend the Council meeting.  Individuals who want to be assured of speaking at Council, however, must inform the Office of the University Secretary (ucouncil@pobox.upenn.edu) by 10 a.m. on Monday, November 18, 2019, indicating briefly the subject of their remarks. Those who have not so informed the Office of the University Secretary will be permitted to speak only at the discretion of the moderator of University Council and in the event that time remains after the scheduled speakers.
2. Speakers should expect to be limited to three minutes with the possibility of additional time in cases where members of Council engage the speakers with follow-up questions or remarks. The moderator may restrict repetition of views.
3. Following the deadline for speakers to sign up with the Office of the University Secretary, the chair of the Steering Committee and the moderator of University Council will structure the subject matter themes, speakers and times for the Open Forum session. In the event that there is not enough time available at the meeting to provide for all those who have requested to speak, the two officers may make selections which accommodate the broadest array of issues having important implications for Council’s work and represent the breadth of Council’s constituencies. The resulting order of Open Forum topics will be made available no later than the Tuesday before the meeting, to be published on the Office of the University Secretary website (https://secretary.upenn.edu/univ-council/open-forum) and, if deadline constraints allow, in Almanac.
4. Speakers’ statements should be framed to present policy issues and be directed to University Council as a body through the moderator. The moderator will have discretion to interrupt statements that are directed against persons and otherwise to maintain the decorum of the meeting, as provided for in the bylaws. In cases where questions or positions can be appropriately addressed by members of Council, or where a colloquy would seem to be productive given the time constraints of the meeting, the moderator may recognize members of Council to respond to speakers’ statements, with opportunities for follow-up by the speakers. 
5. Should the number of submitted topics of community-wide interest exceed what can be accommodated during a single Open Forum session, discussion will be allowed to continue at the following University Council meeting.

At the University Council meeting on October 23, the annual State of the University presentations were delivered. The Provost’s portion was introduced by Provost Wendell Pritchett and given by Vice Provost for Faculty Anita Allen, who talked about Building Faculty Leadership. Her portion is below. The President’s portion about the Climate Action and Sustainability Plan 3.0 was published last week (Almanac October 29, 2019).

Anita Allen: Thank you, Provost Pritchett and Dr. Gutmann. I am very pleased to work closely with Wendell Pritchett on reemphasizing and building our faculty development programs. We have at Penn an outstanding faculty of committed scholars, professional physicians, teachers and researchers; but they don’t just get that way by chance. We have to support their excellence through mentorship of younger faculty, and through providing our mid-career and senior faculty continuing opportunities to grow into well-rounded leaders. Our overarching goal is pretty clear, we want a great faculty for a great university. I note that one of our newest mentoring programs has been led by Professor Emily Steiner, who is on the podium today as UC Moderator. Dr. Steiner, along with her colleagues KC Tan from philosophy, and Heather Williams from English, created and led a program, supported by the Provost’s Office, called Humanities Network. This is a year-long program of mentoring for our faculty in the humanities in the School of Arts and Sciences. But, this kind of faculty-led and faculty-designed mentoring program is only one of the ways in which we work to develop a great faculty. 

So, what is the overall strategy for building a faculty of successful scholars and also leaders? Well, we start by making sure that we always assess the trends and the needs of successful teachers, scholars and professionals. Then, we build upon that by fostering an understanding of our expectations, our common shared values and the resources that are available at the University of Pennsylvania. Then, we top that by providing ample mentoring opportunities for individuals and by building communities through partnerships with our 12 schools. Next, we support promotion, tenure and retention. We spend a lot of time on hiring great faculty, on retaining superb faculty and on making sure faculty who have succeeded in the expectations of their disciplines are promoted in a timely fashion. Finally, the last step is that we cultivate skilled, inclusive leadership. With these successive steps I believe we can and have been moving the faculty development agenda forward. There are, however, some important challenges that we face as we try to develop our faculty. One challenge is to acquire a very fine sense of who our faculty are in order to improve their capacity to succeed and to lead. 

I have been committed, as vice provost for faculty, to trying to understand who we are as a faculty and the implications of our identities. We are a faculty that’s largely tenured, standing faculty, but the CE track, the Clinician Educator track, is catching up with the tenure track. The STEM faculty on campus far outnumber the non-STEM faculty on campus. The largest group of faculty are our full professors, with assistants and associates being lower in numbers. Thus, when you are trying to develop faculty at Penn, you’re trying to develop a faculty that is largely tenured, largely STEM and largely full professors. But we cannot neglect people who are not in those categories. 

Over 54 percent of our faculty are in the medical school. So, if you take the STEM faculty in the medical school, combine that with the STEM faculty in engineering, and the STEM faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences, you get a good chunk of the faculty who are STEM. We are very much a faculty involved in biomedical research and the basic sciences.  We have to reach people where they are. How do we connect with scientists, people who are STEM in their orientation, and move them along in their careers and also build leadership among those faculty? And how do we do the same for humanists and social scientists? 

We have 12 schools and 92 departments that are working with us on issues around development and mentorship. The faculty is changing in ways which also must be taken into account. So, not only are we dealing with a faculty that has the characteristics I just mentioned,  but we are also dealing with a faculty which since 2011 has 46 percent more Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans. A strong 14 percent of our standing faculty are now over 65, and we have, since 2011, 34 percent more minority faculty overall, 22 percent more women and 15 percent more non-standing faculty. Plus, we have more faculty who are self-identified as LGBT. In thinking about how we advance this great, diverse faculty, we have to be realistic and knowledgeable about the significance of who we are. Assessing who we are proves to be critical.  

So, how do we meet the challenges? We do so through strong leadership, starting with our president and provost, our most important guides; and our vice provosts, including Vice Provost Val Cade who is here at UC, and other top University leaders. We have 12 school deans who are partners, 92 departments chairs, 285 faculty vice deans and other faculty administrators, and three Faculty Senate tri-chairs. We have the Penn Forum for Women Faculty, the retired faculty (PASEF/ASEF), the University Council, and various cultural centers—all of them participate in efforts to reach all the faculty where they are and to build and grow all the faculty to become the best leaders, scholars and researchers they can possibly be. That’s what we are trying to do, that’s what we are largely succeeding in doing. 

Let me say a little bit about some of the specific programs Penn boasts.   They are far too numerous to list, I can give a quick overview. Some programs that are created by the University include: Penn Pathways, Humanities Network, and Penn Forum for Women Faculty. We have skills-focused workshops that my office facilitates, involving negotiations, mediation and op-ed writing. We have a SAS-based early career program that include the Humanities Network and an orientation program for all first- and second-year professors. The medical school has many programs including those that are a part of the advanced program: the Richards Society which is new for tenured-track medical school faculty, CE track faculty advancement initiatives that Lisa Bellini has been working on, the Edward Cooper Leadership Training Program, and FOCUS, which is an important and successful program for women leadership in medicine.  

These are some of the ways in which we help early and mid-career faculty to achieve their highest goals. What about senior faculty? We offer the Provost Leadership Academy which I’ll tell you about in a few minutes; we have individualized coaching now—faculty members who are leaders can get coached by individual coaches. We work with Wharton in providing coaching opportunities for our faculty. We offer the Penn Fellows program, which you probably know a lot about—these are mid-career faculty nominated by their deans and selected by the Provost’s Office to undergo special leadership training. We have new department chair training and diversity/implicit bias training for our faculty at all stages. We facilitate external opportunities, for example, the ACE program, and we have for our senior faculty, PASEF and ASEF. These are just some of the offerings for our mid-career and senior faculty. 

One of the biggest concerns when we think about building a diverse and inclusive faculty is providing faculty development programs that specifically target the problems of discrimination and implicit bias. What are our anti-discrimination and implicit bias programs? We have many of them—some of them are mandatory; some of them are not. We have for example, a mandatory training program for all members of school search committees; they must go through implicit bias training. We also have mandatory implicit bias training for our diversity search advisors. We have formal mentoring programs for junior faculty, and we host the Provost Leadership Academy, which includes modules on diversity and inclusion. Many departments and schools require implicit bias training not specifically mandated by the Provost’s Office. 

Penn has a number of lecture series that are run through the schools and through the University that are focused on diversity. For example, just a couple of days ago, my office hosted a wonderful Provost’s Diversity lecture delivered by Professor Michael Jones-Correa, who talked about the problems of borders: How do we define borders? What do borders mean? It was a good opportunity for our Latinx faculty community to share with the University as a whole some of the research and outreach that they’ve done. Professor Fernando Chang-Muy was also on the program to complement Professor Jones-Correa. We have visiting diversity faculty and artists on campus who present diversity and inclusion related projects and programs. We’re launching a new Program of Provost Visiting Faculty Fellows, who will be visiting professors, coming to the University, who will contribute perspectives on diversity and inclusion. The first one will be Dr. George Yancy, a philosopher who will be visiting from Emory University. Some of you might know his work from his New York Times columns on issues around race and diversity and inclusion. We’re doing all of these things and are experiencing success. The efforts we’ve had to make the faculty more diverse as part of our faculty development initiatives have been quite successful. We can boast it at a time when the faculty as a whole has grown by nine percent and the female standing faculty has grown by 22 percent (over the period of 2011 to 2018). The minority standing faculty has grown by 34 percent, the URM standing faculty by 46 percent, the female CE faculty by 18 percent and the female minority standing faculty by 42 percent. Objectively by the numbers and by Climate Survey data, we’re doing well in trying to make our faculty more diverse and address issues around diversity, inclusion, equity and anti-bias. 

Finally, one of the exciting initiatives we’ve undertaken to support our faculty leaders is to create something we call the Provost Leadership Academy. These are day-and-a-half retreats for our Penn Fellows and for our department chairs, faculty senior administrators. These members of our community gather for programs that are intended to help them grow as leaders. I want to say a little bit about the most recent faculty Leadership Academy which was held at the end of September, and the theme of it was Holistic Faculty Leadership. We are using this theme to address leadership that includes the whole person and that recognizes that being a faculty member and being a leader mean bringing all of your assets and resources to the community while also taking good care of yourself. The invited participants, again, were current Penn Fellows, our current department chairs and our current senior faculty administrators. We had programs that related to the things that make good leaders. Some of our faculty department chairs are hired from the outside of Penn in a national search for a department chair. They become department chairs to be professional department chairs. But some of our department chairs are essentially volunteers—people internal to Penn who are available, who will take the job for three or four years who may have no experience whatsoever dealing with budgets, difficult people or any of the other problems that go along with being a department chair. So we provide our department chairs, in these academies, with skills training. How do you manage people? How do you exercise your authority? How do you exercise your discretion? How do you build diverse teams? How do you manage your budgets and resources? How do you manage change? How do you manage time? How do you prioritize? 

We offer in our Academy a varied curriculum that takes advantage of our own community’s faculty and staff talent for workshop facilitators, but we also bring in facilitators from the outside. In our most recent Academy, Penn Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli, whom you heard from earlier, came and offered a course he called Penn 101, in which he described in great detail how Penn works. Many faculty leaders have never had the opportunity to hear from the University Executive Vice President about how the University operates. They learned a lot from Craig—he’s always a popular speaker at our events. We also had, from the outside this time, Professor Susan Fiske from Princeton University, who’s an expert on diversity and inclusion. We had a wonderful presentation by Dr. Jody Foster from PSOM, who talked about the work that led to her book, The Schmuck in My Office, which discusses how to effectively deal with difficult people at work. We held a very useful workshop by the renowned Professor Richard Shell from Wharton on negotiation. Negotiations are a very important part of being a leader—you have to know how to negotiate around policy issues but also around salaries and other resources as well. 

My office tries to be very creative in how we offer content to our faculty. We do not want to just lecture at them; we want to offer opportunities to practice negotiation, to practice how they would deal with difficult people, to practice how they would exercise their discretion. We also want to show them, through, for example, art, how they can appreciate the fact that people see the world differently. Indeed, we held a whole workshop on Visual Strategies Training. An expert who was a former museum curator came in and showed us a painting to think about. She had everyone describe what they saw in the painting. She used a Picasso painting (one of the Harlequin paintings) as the discussion text. It was fascinating how differently people saw the painting. A favorite remark was made by an orthopedic surgeon who looked at a gentleman in the painting who was standing in what I would call, from ballet, second position, and said, “That guy has hip displacement!” The session was an innovative way to show, through art, that the world can look differently to different people and that being a good leader means you have to appreciate the fact that people do see the world differently and know how to handle and manage the fact that we are different and observe differently. The feedback on the Provost’s Leadership Academy has been positive; faculty report the workshops do provide a needed opportunity to reflect and to stand back from usual duties to learn things of value. Some of the memorable comments on the evaluations have included, “I thought I was an awful negotiator and I really was. Now I have an idea of what to do.” Dean Jackson graciously submitted to a probing interview by me at the opening night of the last Leadership Academy. Dean Jackson spoke frankly in response to my questions about his career (Dean Jackson is here today at UC.). The faculty enjoyed the interview. They thought it was great to hear from Dean Jackson who spoke with nuance and wisdom his career as an anthropologist and dean of two Penn schools; and someone remarked, “Anita Allen is our Oprah Winfrey.” 

Six economics professors from Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences were awarded grants this year from the National Science Foundation, which funds research and education in science and engineering. The recipients and topics are:

Aislinn Bohren, associate professor of economics, and Annie Liang, assistant professor of economics, “Learning from Diverse Sources and Models.”

Harold Cole, professor of economics, and Guillermo Ordonez, associate professor of economics, “Sovereign Debt Auctions: Theory and Empirics.”

Dr. Ordonez “Financial Network Reactions to Regulations and Interventions.”

George Mailath, Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences, and Andrew Postlewaite, Harry P. Kamen Professor of Economics, “Signaling and Matching.”

John H. Holmes, professor of medical informatics in epidemiology in PSOM, was appointed for a second term as a member of the Health Informatics Accreditation Council of the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education. Chartered by the US Department of Education Council for Higher Education Accreditation, this council evaluates and accredits master’s degree programs in biomedical and health informatics, ensuring that they adhere to an accepted standard of competencies and learning outcomes. Dr. Holmes is an internationally recognized researcher and educator with a 20-year history in biomedical and health informatics education. In his role as a Councilor, he will join other informatics educators in reviewing applications for new and renewing master’s degree programs in informatics, setting national accreditation standards and overseeing site visitors who evaluate program candidates for accreditation. 

Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication doctoral candidate Soojong Kim has received a grant for $10,000 from the Waterhouse Family Institute (WFI) at Villanova University for a new study that investigates how polarized social networks and information flows affect the perceived credibility and virality of health misinformation. He hopes his study of misinformation on social media will pave the way for feasible and effective future interventions to curb the spread of health misinformation.

WFI research grants are given to scholars conducting the kinds of communication-focused research needed to engage the complexities of social justice.

This study is part of Mr. Kim’s dissertation, which examines how social identities within social networks influence the perception of bias and credibility in information. His dissertation also considers how social identities, such as race and political affiliation, within social networks affect the way individuals spread information.

In addition to the WFI grant, Mr. Kim’s dissertation is supported by a Russell Ackoff Doctoral Student Fellowship Award from Wharton and a research grant from MisinfoCon, one of the largest organizations of professionals in the misinformation and fact-checking field.

A former computer scientist, Mr. Kim studies computational social science, with a particular focus on information propagation, social influence and social networks.

Lea Ann Matura, associate professor in Penn Nursing’s biobehavioral health sciences, is one of eight winners of Bayer’s inaugural Pulmonary Hypertension Accelerated Bayer (PHAB) Awards. Dr. Matura will study alternative treatments, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Bright Light Therapy, to improve symptoms of PAH, including insomnia, fatigue and physical activity levels.

The PHAB Awards is a new US-based research grant program created to support clinical research in pulmonary hypertension (PH), with a focus on pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH). The recipients will receive a combined total of $1 million in grants over a two-year period, making the PHAB Awards one of the largest industry-funded grant programs focused on PAH and CTEPH in the United States. The award-winning research aims to fill gaps in knowledge about the treatment and management of PH, translate the use of existing therapies for new patient populations and predict surgical risk benefit. 

Annenberg School for Communication Lecturer Carlin Romano received one of this year’s two competitive Faculty Research Grants from the James Joo-Jin Kim Program in Korean Studies at Penn. The grant will fund a research trip to South Korea for Mr. Romano, who is writing a book about the force of traditional Asian thought traditions in our globalized world.

Robin Stevens, assistant professor in the department of family and community health at Penn Nursing, is this year’s recipient of the Early Career Award from the Public Health Education and Health Promotion Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA).

Dr. Stevens, who is also director of the Health Equity & Media Lab, is a health communication scholar focused on achieving health equity in African American and Latinx communities. She examines youth risk and health behavior in the context of the digital neighborhood. Dr. Stevens uses digital epidemiology to investigate social media’s effects on substance use, sexual risk behavior and mental health. Her community-engaged research seeks ways to use data science to improve the health and well-being of youth.

This award recognizes outstanding and promising contributions to the practice and profession of health education, health promotion and/or health communication. The recipient must be in the field fewer than 10 years since receiving a terminal master’s or doctoral degree. 

Penn is ranked #4—the same as it was in 2018 (Almanac November 6, 2018)—on Reuter’s annual list of most innovative universities. It cited the University’s research budget of $1.02 billion. Highlights it noted were 602 filed patents with a 30.9 percent rate of success. It called out specifically SEAS’ department of mechanical engineering and applied mechanics’ development of a way to “heal” metal at room temperature; utilizing metallic foams coated with an inert polymer, the process is modeled after the way bones repair themselves. The polymer then works as a protective mask for a low-energy, room-temperature electroplating technique that adds a new metal coating only where there was damage. The article also highlighted JPOD, Penn’s collaboration with Johnson & Johnson, located at the Pennovation Center where entrepreneurs can focus on developing new medical devices, pharmaceuticals, consumer and health technologies (Almanac November 6, 2018).  

For the seventh consecutive year, Penn Medicine’s Information Services (IS) have been recognized on the Healthcare’s Most Wired list compiled by CHIME (the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives). It is the 15th time overall that Penn Medicine IS has made the list that recognizes hospitals and health systems that embrace and maximize technology to support the delivery of care.

This year, Penn Medicine achieved Level 8 status; it is among the organizations that “have deployed technologies and strategies … to help them analyze their data and are starting to achieve meaningful clinical and efficiency outcomes,” according to the official designation.

Penn Medicine IS has taken a critical role in the research conducted by faculty in the health system, providing and supporting the technologies required to produce high-end, meaningful results. That includes the expansion and relaunch of the Penn Data Store, and it has been a key player in the expansion of precision medicine into patient care, helping to integrate things like genetic results into the electronic health record.

The CHIME recognition comes in the same year that Penn Medicine achieved the highest certification from HIMSS (the Health Information Management Systems Society) Analytics.

From his platform at the heart of the brand-new Sphinx Gallery, the Penn Museum’s 25,000-pound Sphinx of the Pharaoh Ramses II will welcome guests as they meander through the light-filled Main Entrance area, which features abundant seating, two new elevators, and new accessible restroom facilities. Serving as the Penn Museum’s “unofficial mascot” since its arrival in 1913, the Sphinx will make his much-anticipated return to the limelight—as the stunning centerpiece in the new Sphinx Gallery, right next to the new Main Entrance. The Opening Weekend special programs are included with Museum admission. Visitors can buy tickets in advance online at https://www.penn.museum/calendar/eventdetail/2240/opening-weekend-celebration to expedite their entry and save. Free for Museum members, PennCard holders, US active duty/reservist military personnel and veterans. Below: renderings of the new spaces.

On November 16-17, The ‘New’ Penn Museum will debut more than 10,000 square feet of completely reimagined spaces, including its new Sphinx Gallery, a suite of Africa Galleries, Mexico and Central America Gallery, the historic Harrison Auditorium, and its stunning new Main Entrance Hall. Part of the museum’s ongoing multi-million-dollar Building Transformation project (Almanac November 14, 2017), this reopening marks a pivotal moment for the Museum, which has become an internationally recognized cultural destination while staying true to its purpose as a teaching and research institution.

The 4,000-square-foot Africa Galleries showcase nearly 300 artifacts, addressing modern-day issues that surround the display of African art and material culture in the West. By tracing the paths of key objects from their African makers to the Museum, it is launching a critical conversation that will engage communities far and wide. From a dramatic Sowei mask worn exclusively by women in Sierra Leone and western Liberia to a soldier’s uniform from Sudan, remarkable objects mix with newly commissioned contemporary art works, presenting unforgettable stories of Africa and its contributions to the world.

The 2,000-square-foot Mexico and Central America Gallery highlights more than 250 objects that illustrate the artistic traditions of distinct cultures, as well as the Penn Museum’s innovative research throughout the region. Unique to this collection are its breathtaking sculptures, including an ancient statue of a Water Goddess—one of two known to exist in the world—along with four majestic Maya stone monuments, one of which helped researchers crack the code in deciphering Maya writing, and a giant stone conch shell that once stood in the capital of the Aztec Empire. 

The Museum is also expanding its Global Guides program, which hires and trains refugees and immigrants to conduct tours of the Museum’s galleries—bringing artifacts to life through their modern-day stories. Five new Global Guides from Mexico, Central America and Africa will join guides from Iraq and Syria who lead tours of the Middle East Galleries. Included with admission, Global Guides Tours have become one of the Museum’s unique experiences and are available Friday through Sunday.

In addition to its reimagined spaces, the Museum will unveil a fresh visual identity, which consists of a new logo, designed to connote openness. This new look further emphasizes its evolution from a university museum to a museum for everyone, welcoming guests with the message that the world is closer than you think at the new Penn Museum.

Special Programs Opening Weekend: November 16-17

Saturday Higlights include: 

• A special ceremony just before 10 a.m. outside the Main Entrance featuring energetic Aztec and West African dance performances by Ollin Yoliztli Calmecac and the Universal African Dance and Drum Ensemble. 
• Yoruban and Maya spiritual leaders will bless the new Africa Galleries and Mexico and Central America Gallery to mark their ceremonial openings
• Williams Director Julian Siggers will then welcome guests inside to meet the Sphinx and explore!
• Performances and demonstrations by Maya Awal, a multi-generational Guatemalan group that brings Maya traditions to life, including a sawdust carpet, back-weaving demonstrations and the marimba-filled Deer Dance.
• A talk in the Africa Galleries, organized by lead curator Tukufu Zuberi, with the curatorial advisory team to discuss the planning of the Galleries.
• Interactive storytelling with Keepers of the Culture. 
• “Meet the Experts.”
• Drumming performances, dynamic storytelling and artist talks.
• Activities that teach visitors how to write Maya glyphs and Egyptian hieroglyphs
• Daily Digs (15-minute conversations that allow visitors to “dig a little deeper” into one object).

Sunday Highlights include: 

• Performances by Troupe Da Da African Dance, a vibrant multi-generational group from the Philadelphia region.
• Aztec traditional dance and rituals by Philadelphia-based Ollin Yoliztli Calmecac. 
• Interactive storytelling with Keepers of the Culture. 
• Hands-on activities for the whole family, including craft activities and learning to write in ancient glyphs. 
• A talk by lead curator Simon Martin about key themes in the Mexico and Central America Gallery. 
• “Meet the Experts” in the galleries.
• The premier of a documentary on the making of the Africa Galleries by Dr. Zuberi, including interviews in Africa with museum directors and curators. 
• An Insta-Hunt Scavenger Hunt with prizes!

Lightbox Film Center

Tickets: $15/general, $13/seniors, $6/students and Lightbox members

11   Those Who Remained; Barnabas Toth, Hungary; 7 p.m. 

18   The Passengers; Ryan S. Porush, USA/Ethiopia; 7 p.m.

Correction: The Music in the Pavilion: Penn Sings Whitman concert will take place Friday, November 8 at 6 p.m. in the Class of 1978 Pavilion, Van Pelt. We regret the error. —Eds

AT PENN Deadlines 

The November AT PENN calendar is now available. The deadline for the December AT PENN calendar is November 11. The deadline for the weekly Update is the Monday prior to the week of the issue’s publication.

Upcoming at Slought

Penn Medicine Listening Lab: A storytelling initiative created by patients, caregivers, staff and providers that embraces power of listening as a form of care, now through November 22, 2020. 

The Kids Want Communism: A public conversation exploring the legacies and meaning of communism today, November 5, 6-8 p.m. 

The Palestinian Idea: A conversation with film and cultural theorist Greg Burris about film, media and the radical imagination, November 11, noon-1 p.m. 

Kim Kardashian is Dead!: Opening reception November 15, 6:30-8:30 p.m., for an exhibition with Idrani Pal-Chaudhuri exploring the intersection of fame, fantasy and issues of social justice and human rights, on display November 15-January 10. 

Information: https://slought.org/resources/

Penn’s Mission Continuity Program (MCP) recently announced the Penn Continuity Professional Certification (PCPC) program. The initiative’s goal is to enhance general knowledge about the field of continuity planning, in support of Penn’s Mission Continuity Program (MCP). It is open to all members of the MCP community (Penn staff who are not currently MCP community members can access the program, if space is available). 

Participants can receive credit towards the certification by taking both in-person training sessions and online modules. More information about the program will be available soon at www.upenn.edu/missioncontinuity  

The inaugural event will be held this Thursday, November 7, noon-1 p.m. in room 200, College Hall. The presenter, Mike Fink, Deputy Chief of Police, DPS, will discuss Responding to an Active Shooter on Campus.

Participants can register in Knowledge Link at https://knowledgelink.upenn.edu/  

Please send any questions or concerns to askmc@lists.upenn.edu

In partnership with the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS) at the University of Pennsylvania is pleased to announce the 12th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age.

The concept of linked open data is the holy grail of the digital humanities. Yet the problem of how to link information across platforms has existed since civilization began. As knowledge and learning expanded in premodern society, the problems associated with collecting, combining and disseminating information inspired new approaches to and technologies for the material text. In the internet age, we continue to grapple with the same problems and issues. While technologies have changed, the questions remain the same.

This year’s symposium explores the connections between historic and current approaches to data linkage in regard to manuscripts and manuscript research. This symposium, Hooking Up, addresses the topic from a variety of angles and considers how the manuscript book operates as a vehicle for information retrieval and dissemination—from the technology of the page and the textual apparatus of a book—to the library and finally, the internet. The speakers will also consider such questions as how medieval practices of memory shaped information retrieval and gathering, how the technology of the manuscript book—in all its many forms—facilitated or hindered information processing, how can medieval solutions inform modern technologies, and how do modern technologies illuminate medieval practices? 

The program will also feature sessions highlighting projects that are advancing linked data technologies for manuscript researchers, including the T-AP Digging Into Data Challenge project Mapping Manuscript Migrations.

The program will begin Thursday evening, November 21, 5 p.m., at the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Parkway Central Library, with introductions by Will Noel and Lynn Ransom, University of Pennsylvania and a keynote address on Creative Geometries: Hooking Up Data in the Middle Ages by Professor Mary Carruthers, New York University and All Souls College, Oxford University.

The symposium will continue Friday, November 22 with a Welcome and Opening Remarks by Constantia Constantinou, H. Carton Rogers III Vice Provost and Director of the Penn Libraries, and Lynn Ransom, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS). There will be numerous other speakers. The symposium will conclude on November 23 at the Kislak Center of Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania.

Registration is $35 ($10 for students with valid student ID). Online registration http://www.library.upenn.edu/about/exhibits-events/ljs-symposium12 closes Thursday, November 21 at noon. Walk-in registrations will be accepted for a fee of $45 ($15 for students with valid student ID) cash only.

The University of Pennsylvania Police Department Community Crime Report

Below are the Crimes Against Persons, Crimes Against Society and Crimes Against Property from the campus report for October 21-27, 2019. View prior weeks' reports. —Ed.

This summary is prepared by the Division of Public Safety and includes all criminal incidents reported and made known to the University Police Department for the dates of October 21-27 2019. The University Police actively patrol from Market St to Baltimore and from the Schuylkill River to 43rd St in conjunction with the Philadelphia Police. In this effort to provide you with a thorough and accurate report on public safety concerns, we hope that your increased awareness will lessen the opportunity for crime. For any concerns or suggestions regarding this report, please call the Division of Public Safety at (215) 898-4482.

18^th District

Below are the Crimes Against Persons from the 18th District: 7 incidents (2 robberies, 1 aggravated assault, 1 assault, 1 domestic assault, 1 indecent assault and 1 purse snatch) with no arrests were reported for October 21-27, 2019 by the 18th District covering the Schuylkill River to 49th Street & Market Street to Woodland Avenue.

Although Penn normally never stops operating, emergencies such as severe weather conditions may sometimes result in the cancellation of classes and/or the full or partial closure of certain areas of the University. Decisions affecting work schedules and class cancellation are made by the Executive Vice President in consultation with the Provost. The University will announce a closing or other modification of work schedules through the following means:

• The University’s emergency information number: (215) 898-6358 (MELT)
• Communications from the Division of Public Safety
• KYW News Radio (1060 AM)
• The UPennAlert Emergency Notification System (for University-related incidents and crises)

The University’s emergency radio identification code numbers (KYW News Radio) are “102” for day classes and schools/centers, and “2102” for evening classes. The message that accompanies the code number will provide the operating status of the University. Be sure to keep this information in a place you can easily access.

Even when Penn is officially closed due to an emergency, there are some essential services that must still be provided, such as Public Safety, Facilities and Penn Dining. Staff members in essential positions are still required to work as normally scheduled under these circumstances.

For more information on suspension of normal operations, visit https://www.hr.upenn.edu/policies-and-procedures/policy-manual/other-policies/suspension-of-normal-operations

—Division of Human Resources

Phishing is a topic covered by many of our One Step Ahead tips and frequently communicated to you by awareness materials from your Schools and Centers. Have you ever wondered which types of phishing attacks you are most likely to fall victim to?

To help answer this question, the ISC Office of Information Security (OIS) licensed the Proofpoint Security Education platform which offers education, assessment, reinforcement and measurement through a useful suite of training tools. Penn Schools and Centers will have the opportunity for opt-in access to this interactive training.  

Proofpoint Security Education offers the following educational process:

Educate—Provides participants with short, interactive videos that help them recognize various phishing messages and how to avoid each variation. 

Assess—Sends participants a simulated phishing email messages to evaluate their response to phishing attempts. In this phase, participants can self-assess their knowledge in recognizing phishing, either by reporting the email message or by not taking any action. 

Reinforce—Directs participants who respond to the simulated phishing message to a training page which identifies the clues that characterize the difference between a legitimate message and a phishing message.

Measure—Tracks participants’ recognition of phishing and their reporting of the simulated messages over a fixed time period, which will demonstrate the effectiveness of the training.

For information on Proofpoint Security Education and the training methodology, contact OIS at security@isc.upenn.edu 

For additional tips, see the One Step Ahead link on the Information Security website: https://www.isc.upenn.edu/security/news-alerts#One-Step-Ahead

Week Four Winners

Yards Brewing Co.—Gift Basket with assorted six-pack and two pint glasses, $30 gift card ($50 value): Norma Gerald, HUP

Business Services—Penn fashion scarf ($90 value): Mia Mitchell, HUP

HipCityVeg Marquis & Co—Gift card  ($50 value): Lengchu Shi, PSOM

Wawa—Gift Basket ($50 value): Janet Dwyer, President’s Office

Thermo Fisher Scientific—Gift card, Darden Restaurants ($50 value): Lauren Stasik, HUP

Philadelphia Eagles—Vinny Curry signed football ($60 value): Daniel Roberts, HUP

National Constitution Center—Four admission passes ($58 value): James Smolen, Penn Medicine

Penn Woods Winery—Wine tasting for four ($60 value): Earl Marsh, HUP

Visit http://pennsway.upenn.edu for more information about the raffle and making a pledge.