February 22, 2022 Volume 68 Issue 24

On February 14, the University of Pennsylvania announced the Leonard A. Lauder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Program, which will recruit and prepare a diverse cadre of expert nurse practitioners to provide primary care to individuals and families in underserved communities across the U.S. The $125 million donation by Leonard A. Lauder, Chairman Emeritus of the Estée Lauder Companies, to create this first-of-its-kind, tuition-free program is the largest gift ever to an American nursing school. Mr. Lauder is a Penn alumnus. The gift comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the nation’s acute shortage of primary care providers and persisting inequities in access to quality healthcare.

“This is the most timely and consequential gift not only for our university but for our country. It is unprecedented in its potential to address America’s most critical need of providing primary health care to all who currently lack it by investing in nurses,” said former Penn President Amy Gutmann.

“Growing the number of nurse practitioners who are prepared and committed to working in underserved areas is the most practical and inspiring way to ensuring a healthier country. I am grateful and honored that Leonard would make this gift to Penn Nursing, and thrilled to know that it will have an immediate impact that will last far into the future.”

Nurse practitioners are leaders on the front lines of care, a role never more important as Americans confront a primary healthcare shortage in their communities. With their advanced clinical training and graduate education, nurse practitioners have the knowledge and skill to supervise and manage critical aspects of care in a decision-making capacity, from patient diagnosis, to ordering and interpreting tests, to prescribing medication. Nurse practitioners deliver high-quality primary care to people of all ages, including treating common illnesses, managing chronic conditions, and providing preventive care that helps patients stay healthy.

Nurse practitioners are also able to take on key leadership roles, from managing and operating walk-in or community clinics to leading interdisciplinary teams within health systems. The new program will better the lives of patients and communities most in need, while providing a pathway for the many nurses interested in advanced education who may not otherwise have the means to pursue it.

The program:

• Structure: Leonard A. Lauder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Fellows will enroll full-time in a two-year, rigorous Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Program at Penn Nursing.
• Community Practice: Fellows will complete at least 50 percent of their clinical education at community partner sites and/or comparable sites that provide direct patient care, an invaluable experience that will prepare fellows to meet the complex needs of patients and families throughout their careers. Every fellow will be expected to commit to practice or service in an underserved community for two years after graduation.
• Recruitment: Penn Nursing will select 10 fellows to begin classes this fall, growing the program enrollment through 2026 when it will reach its annual target enrollment of 40 fellows, continuing in perpetuity. By 2027, the program will have enrolled 140 excellent nurse practitioner students.  Fellows will need to show a commitment to working in underserved communities, where they are needed most, and to promoting health equity.
• Tuition: All participants in the program will enter the workforce free of graduate school debt, receiving student aid to cover their tuition and fees and thereby eliminating any potential financial barriers for nurses and others who wish to enroll. Fellows with greater financial need will also receive stipends to help with living expenses.
• Program Leadership: Penn Nursing will name the first endowed Leonard A. Lauder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Professor, who will oversee curriculum innovation, support of community sites, and program implementation.
• Penn Community Partnership: Penn Nursing will provide support for select community partner sites to support the clinical education of fellows while providing professional development and networking opportunities and access to school and university resources.

“Penn Nursing has a long history of advancing science, promoting equity, practice excellence, and preparing leaders,” said Penn Nursing Dean Antonia Villarruel. “That’s why Mr. Lauder’s gift is so meaningful. The synergy between Penn Nursing and the program will improve the health of underserved patients and families, by uniquely preparing primary care nurse practitioners, who will work with them in their communities. The sustained investment in the education and careers of primary care nurse practitioners and communities is unprecedented. We are excited by the opportunity to lead this important program and to extend its impact beyond Penn Nursing. We are deeply grateful to Mr. Lauder for recognizing and investing in this critical need, and for partnering with us in this ambitious endeavor.”

Stephen P. Fera, Executive Vice President of Independence Blue Cross, which is one of the community partners that will be involved in the new initiative, noted that nurse practitioners are key to improving individual and community care. Said Mr. Fera: “Bolstering the nurse practitioner workforce is a means to improve access to care and strengthen the health care safety net provided by health centers. This is a key priority of the Independence Blue Cross Foundation and our partnership with Penn Nursing has been synergistic in efforts to prepare nurses to work in community-based settings. The program will build and strengthen our individual and collective efforts toward improving the health and well-being of communities.”

“Now more than ever, the country needs greater and more equitable access to quality primary care—and highly-skilled nurse practitioners are the key to making that happen,” said Leonard A. Lauder. “The program will ensure that more Americans receive the essential health care services that everyone deserves, and I’m so pleased to be working with Penn Nursing on this initiative. I look forward to welcoming our first class of future nurse practitioners this fall. I know their expertise will be matched only by their commitment to serving our communities.”

On February 17, the University of Pennsylvania announced a $25 million gift from James Joo-Jin Kim, W’59, G’61, GR’63, and Agnes Kim, and the James and Agnes Kim Family Foundation, supporting a range of initiatives at Penn. The largest portion of the multifaceted commitment will create the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies at Penn Arts & Sciences. 

The gift also creates the Kim Family Neurovascular Surgery Program at Penn Medicine and the Kim Korean Studies Fund at the Joseph H. Lauder Institute for Management & International Studies, with additional support for the Dean’s Discretionary Fund at the Wharton School. 

“James Joo-Jin Kim is an unwavering friend of Penn and a true University citizen,” said Penn Interim President Wendell Pritchett. “I am thrilled to thank the Kim family for this momentous commitment, which exemplifies Jim’s legacy as an unparalleled champion of Korean studies at Penn while offering crucial support for the Wharton School and helping to build a premier program in the vital medical field of neurovascular surgery.”  

“It is with great pride that our family gives this gift to the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Medicine,” said Mr. Kim. “As a young immigrant arriving to the United States from Korea, the University provided me with a world-class education while instilling in me an unwavering work ethic. The knowledge and character I gained at Penn helped to pave the road to my success, and I hope this gift helps to pave that road for others.” 

The James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies

Building on his longstanding support, James Joo-Jin Kim endowed the James Joo-Jin Kim Program in Korean Studies at Penn Arts & Sciences in 2011, putting Penn in the top echelon of universities offering programs in Korean studies. This new commitment will establish an academic center that will provide long-term support for academic and community-focused activities.  

“The newly created James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies will advance the study of Korea and its expanding role in the world and will elevate Korean Studies at Penn and cement its prominence with our academic peers and in the larger community,” said Steven J. Fluharty, Dean of the Penn Arts & Sciences and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor. “Through this generous gift, we are well positioned to support excellence among our current faculty, recruit top Korean studies scholars in the future, expand opportunities for students interested in the study of Korea, and make significant contributions to the field in perpetuity.” 

“The popularity of Korean music, movies, and television shows has grown global interest in Korean culture and society, providing a unique opportunity for advancing transformative Korean studies,” said Hyunjoon Park, Korea Foundation Professor of Sociology and Director of the James Joo-Jin Kim Program in Korean Studies. “The establishment of the Kim Center will magnify interdisciplinary teaching and research that integrate social scientific and humanistic approaches and embrace comparative perspectives that connect Korea to broad global communities in addressing worldwide challenges such as inequality, climate change, migration, and pandemics.”  

In addition to expanding the Center’s existing physical space on campus, the Kim family’s gift will endow a professorship, launch a global conference on Korea, create fellowship opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, and sponsor a global forum that will connect Kim Center scholars with Korean alumni and parents. 

“We will devote considerable energy and concerted efforts to collaborate with local communities in Philadelphia. One new project, ‘Koreans in Philadelphia,’ will involve research and cultural events to highlight the legacies and achievements of the Korean-American community in the region,” said Park. “We also hope to work closely with local public K-12 schools to develop curricula and cultural awareness of contemporary and historical Korea. We are excited about all of the great opportunities arising thanks to the Kim family.”

“Continued investment in the field of Korean Studies through the creation of the Kim Center, in conjunction with programs at the Lauder Institute and the Wharton School, is critical in solidifying the relevance of Korean studies at the University and beyond,” said Mr. Kim, “We look forward to the positive impact the Kim Center will have both on and off campus.”

The Kim Family Neurovascular Surgery Program at Penn Medicine

The Kim family’s gift will also launch the Kim Family Neurovascular Surgery Program at Penn Medicine. This funding will allow the Department of Neurosurgery to establish a comprehensive platform for the development of new technologies for treating neurovascular disorders—including strokes, brain hemorrhages, aneurysms, and cerebral vascular malformations—from initial design to translation into patient care. The program will ultimately improve the lives of patients with these life-altering medical conditions.  

“We are tremendously fortunate to have visionary donors like James Joo-Jin Kim and his family, and the establishment of the Kim Family Neurovascular Surgery Program is a powerful demonstration of their commitment to advancing health care,” said J. Larry Jameson, Executive Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System and Dean of the Perelman School of Medicine. “With the leadership of Dr. Daniel Yoshor and the department’s brilliant faculty, the Kim Family Program promises to make Penn Medicine a national destination for neurovascular treatment.” 

The Kim Family Program will include a neurovascular innovation lab that will develop novel technologies to treat disorders involving the blood vessels in the brain, as well as approaches for preserving or restoring neurological function that is lost after stroke or brain hemorrhage. Designed to leverage Penn’s expertise in neurosciences, engineering, robotics, nanotechnology, and cellular and molecular biology, the program will provide funding for research with the aim of preventing or lessening the consequences of neurovascular disorders and improving patients’ quality of life. Moreover, this gift will secure an endowed professorship in cerebrovascular surgery, ensuring that Penn Medicine can recruit and retain top talent and expand its impact on health care regionally, nationally, and globally.

 “I am so grateful to Jim, Agnes, and Susan Kim for their vision and generosity,” said Daniel Yoshor, the Charles Harrison Frazier Professor and Chair of the department of neurosurgery at the Perelman School of Medicine. “The new Kim Family Neurovascular Surgery Program will allow us to build upon existing strengths at Penn and create much-needed improvements in outcomes for patients. The Kims truly understand the great power that technology has to improve people’s lives, and I am proud to have them as partners and trusted advisors.” 

“We are excited that our gift to Penn Medicine’s Neurovascular Surgery program will enable Penn Medicine to continue to make technological and medical advancements that will improve patients’ quality of life,” said Mr. Kim. “The creation of the cerebrovascular surgery professorship will attract top talent, further strengthening this program.  We look forward to all the innovative changes coming in the future.”

The Kim Korean Studies Fund at the Lauder Institute  

Another portion of this gift will establish the Kim Korean Studies Fund at the Joseph H. Lauder Institute for Management & International Studies. The Lauder Institute’s innovative M.B.A./M.A. joint-degree program combines a top-ranked business program with intercultural leadership skills, interdisciplinary coursework, language studies, and research.

The Kim Korean Studies Fund enables Lauder to support a growing number of students who wish to take part in three distinctive immersion programs: the Korean Language and Culture Track, the East Asia Regional Immersion, and the Global Knowledge Lab. 

“Students develop a global mindset through Lauder’s innovative curriculum, and will do even more thanks to the Kim family’s generous gift,” said Martine Haas, Anthony L. Davis Director of the Lauder Institute and Lauder Chair Professor at the Wharton School. “We are incredibly grateful to have resources to delve into Korean language, culture, history, economics, and politics on campus in Philadelphia, as well as through our unique immersive experiences in Seoul and the East Asia region, which enable Lauder students to gain a deeper understanding of Korea’s importance in East Asia and around the world.”  

Wharton Dean’s Discretionary Fund

Finally, Mr. Kim’s commitment will support the Wharton Dean’s Discretionary Fund, providing crucial resources Erika James, Dean of the Wharton School, can use to explore new opportunities to enhance academic and co-curricular programming and respond to emerging needs or challenges.  

“Jim epitomizes leadership and service, and his contributions to his alma mater have left a lasting impression across Penn’s campus,” said Dean Erika James. “His newest gift of discretionary resources is an extension of his trust in the School today and his investment in Wharton’s future, one that allows the School to remain forward-thinking and evolve to meet the needs of students and prepare them for success in a rapidly changing global business environment. I am truly grateful for Jim’s generosity, extending his longstanding history of support, and for his shared belief in our mission and vision for the future.” 

James Joo-Jin Kim is Executive Chairman of Amkor Technology, one of the world’s largest providers of outsourced (OSAT) semiconductor packaging, design, and test service. Mr. Kim graduated from the Wharton School with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1959, earning a master’s degree in economics from Penn Arts & Sciences in 1961. He is an Emeritus Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, a member of the Lauder Institute Board of Governors, and a former member of the Penn Arts & Sciences Advisory Board and the Wharton Executive Board for Asia. In addition to leadership support for the James Joo-Jin Kim Program in Korean Studies, his past philanthropy to Penn includes the James Joo-Jin Kim Professorship in Economics at Penn Arts & Sciences, the James Joo-Jin Kim Professorship at the Wharton School, and consistent support for The Penn Fund and The Wharton Fund.  

On February 15, University of Pennsylvania Interim President Wendell Pritchett and Interim Provost Beth Winkelstein announced the appointment of Lance Freeman as the University of Pennsylvania’s 29th Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor.

Dr. Freeman, one of the world’s leading scholars of urban housing and gentrification, is the James W. Effron University Professor, with joint appointments in the department of city and regional planning in the Stuart Weitzman School of Design and the department of sociology in the School of Arts & Sciences.

“Lance Freeman exemplifies the vision of our Penn Integrates Knowledge program, which seeks to harness the tools of multiple disciplines and professions to understand and address complicated social and societal questions,” said Dr. Pritchett. “Dr. Freeman elegantly blends methods from economics, sociology, urban studies, and city planning to improve understanding of challenging issues like affordable housing, gentrification, and stratification in housing markets. His award-winning work resonates far beyond academe and has shaped decisions by policymakers and courts around the nation and the world. As we continue to confront historical and continuing inequity in society, Dr. Freeman’s scholarship takes on ever-increasing importance in helping provide knowledge- and evidence-based solutions in oftentimes fractious debates over community development and housing policy.”

Dr. Freeman, who most recently was a professor in the urban planning program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University, spent the 2020-2021 academic year at Penn as the Provost’s Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellow. He is the author of A Haven and a Hell: The Ghetto in Black America (Columbia University Press, 2019), which won the 2020 Distinguished Book Award from Columbia University Press, and There Goes the ‘Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up (Temple University Press, 2006), which won the 2007 Best Book Award from the Urban Affairs Association. He is also the author of dozens of scholarly articles and book chapters about such critical issues as housing policy, urban poverty, neighborhood change, and residential segregation.

He served from 2010 to 2015 as director of the urban planning program at Columbia and from 2015 to 2018 as editor-in-chief of City and Community, the official journal of the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. He has served on the editorial boards of the Urban Affairs Review, Journal of the American Planning Association, and Journal of Planning Education and Research, among numerous others, and has appeared in and written for a wide range of popular media, including NPR, MSNBC, CNN, the BBC, and The Washington Post. He has been a city planner in the New York Housing Authority, a budget analyst in the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, a community developer in North Carolina, and a postdoctoral fellow in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). His research has been supported by HUD, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Science Foundation, and the Brookings Institution, among others. He received a PhD and MCRP in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a bachelor of science from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

“Lance Freeman’s pathbreaking research exemplifies our deepest campus-wide commitments: to bring together multiple disciplines in creative new ways and then to use those new ideas to address our most urgent real-world challenges,” said Dr. Winkelstein. “He has already had a powerful impact on our campus as the Provost’s Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellow, and we are delighted to welcome him back to continue his work as our newest Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor.”

The Penn Integrates Knowledge program was launched in 2005 as a university-wide initiative to recruit exceptional faculty members whose research and teaching exemplify the integration of knowledge across disciplines and who are appointed in at least two schools at Penn.

The James W. Effron University Professorship was established in 2005 through a gift of Craig W. Effron, a 1981 Penn graduate. Craig Effron is a founding partner of Scoggin Capital Management, a hedge fund in New York City. The professorship is named in honor of his late father.

February 15, 2022

We are very pleased to update you about positive trends in the COVID-19 situation on campus. The campus positivity rate, as posted on the University Dashboard today, is now 1.8%, including a dramatic one-week decrease among undergraduate students to 2.99% and a remarkable 0.84% rate among graduate and professional students.

As a result, we are now lifting the restrictions on social gatherings that were implemented temporarily on January 12. Indoor gatherings are now fully permitted, assuming that they follow current Public Health Guidance, and can include food and drink. Students can now resume social event registration for events with alcohol and/or events held at third-party venues.

We are enormously grateful to every member of our community for your partnership, resilience, and flexibility. We also remind all students of the ongoing competitions for testing and documentation participation for both undergraduate and graduate/professional students that will run through the end of this month.

We will continue to keep you updated, as we continue to monitor the data trends across our campus and our region.

—Wendell Pritchett, Interim President
—Beth Winkelstein, Interim Provost
—Craig Carnaroli, Senior Executive Vice President
—J. Larry Jameson, Executive Vice President for the Health System

Annenberg School for Communication Dean John L. Jackson, Jr. has announced that Professor Emily Falk has been named the new Associate Dean of Research for the Annenberg School. Held by a member of the standing faculty, the role was created in 2019 to oversee all school-based centers and develop strategies for expanding the school’s research infrastructure.

Barbie Zelizer had been serving in this capacity since the position’s creation. Under her tenure, the school’s centers increased their collaboration on events and speakers. Dr. Zelizer also helped organize support for the school’s postdoctoral fellows, centers, and other research entities.

Dr. Falk, who is a professor of communication, psychology, and marketing at the Annenberg School, studies behavior change and persuasion, with a particular focus on how the brain processes messages, which helps to tell us what makes communication efforts more or less effective. She is also director of Annenberg’s Communication Neuroscience Lab, a distinguished fellow of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and a Provost’s Fellow at the Netter Center for Community Partnerships.

Dr. Falk is looking forward to working with Annenberg’s staff, faculty, students, and community partners, as well as other departments throughout the university, and partners beyond the academy to support a broad and evolving range of scholarship.

“As the school’s founder Walter Annenberg asserted, ‘Every human advancement or reversal can be understood through communication,’” said Dr. Falk. “Annenberg’s faculty, students, staff and community partners are addressing many of society’s most pressing problems, and pushing the frontiers of how we create scholarship that matters. I see this role as an amazing opportunity to support the brilliant, creative, and impactful research that is already happening, and expand the pie even further.”

“Emily runs an active research lab whose work directly translates into helping people lead healthier and happier lives,” said Dean Jackson. “Her experience running large and collaborative grant-funded studies as well as her commitment to mentoring other scholars make her an ideal candidate to build the school’s research infrastructure and expand opportunities for both students and faculty.”

Sigal Goland Barsade, a pioneering researcher of social dynamics in office settings and the Joseph Frank Bernstein Professor in the Wharton School’s department of management, passed away on February 6 of complications from glioblastoma. She was 56.

Born in Haifa, Israel, Dr. Barsade was the daughter of an engineer for Boeing and a software engineer. When she was 3, her family moved to Los Angeles, and Dr. Barsade spent most of her childhood in California. She graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1986 with a BA in psychology, then obtained a PhD in organizational behavior from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1994. After graduating, she joined the faculty of Yale School of Management, first as an assistant professor, then as an associate professor. Dr. Barsade came to Penn in 2003 as an associate professor in management, then was promoted to full professor six years later. At Penn, she served on the Faculty Senate (chairing the Senate Committee on Faculty and the Administration from 2011 to 2012) and the University Council, and in 2020 was one of a lively cast of guest lecturers who taught a course about the economic impacts of COVID-19. In 2017 and 2020, she earned the Wharton School’s Excellence in Teaching Award. “Her ability to read the room stemmed from her use of what she studied in terms of emotional intelligence, and that helped her to be a better teacher,” said Wharton Deputy Dean Nancy Rothbard, a former colleague of Dr. Barsade. “She had incredibly high standards for scholarship, for education, for everything.”

While at Yale and Penn, Dr. Barsade conducted groundbreaking research that reframed emotions as a vital part of work-related human behavior. “For a long time, emotions were viewed as noise, a nuisance, something to be ignored,” she told MIT Sloan Management Review in 2020. “But one thing we now know after more than a quarter-century of research is that emotions are not noise—rather, they are data. They reveal not just how people feel, but also what they think and how they will behave.” She focused on emotional intelligence, organizational culture, unconscious bias, teamwork, leadership and organizational change, and published over 30 scholarly articles about her research. Her findings had a profound influence on office culture, for instance, that having a friend in the office boosts productivity, and that positive and negative emotions are contagious. She emphasized the importance of negative emotions as a catalyst for change, and contributed to what is now a widely-held view that even if an employee is perfectly qualified on paper, they might not match a workplace’s emotional culture. Dr. Barsade pioneered research on the affective revolution, which is the study of how emotions shape workplace culture and influence the performance of both individual employees and teams.

Dr. Barsade was renowned for her findings and for the quality of her research. “She was the epitome of a high-quality scientist,” said Angela Duckworth, Dr. Barsade’s former colleague at Wharton. “Everything she did was a gem.” She was renowned throughout the academic community. She served on the editorial boards of the Administrative Science Quarterly, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Organization Science, and held several administrative positions with the Academy of Management during the 2010s. Dr. Barsade was a sought-after consultant and worked with high-profile firms like Coca Cola, Google, Comcast, Office Depot, Penske, and the NBA to help foster a friendly and productive workplace environment. Her work was often cited in mainstream media, and in 2021, she led a task force to harness behavioral science to try to boost vaccination rates.

“Sigal’s contributions to academia and the business world cannot be overstated. She encouraged business leaders to think differently and widen their beliefs about what matters in the workplace,” said Wharton Dean Erika James in an online tribute. “She touched so many lives during her nearly two decades at Wharton, and she is dearly missed.”

Dr. Barsade is survived by her husband, Jonathan; her parents; her brother, Yaron; her daughters, Sivahn and Maayan; and her son, Itai.

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To Report A Death

Almanac appreciates being informed of the deaths of current and former faculty and staff members, students and other members of the University community. Call (215) 898-5274 or email almanac@upenn.edu. 

However, notices of alumni deaths should be directed to the Alumni Records Office at Suite 300, 2929 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA, (215) 898-8136 or record@ben.dev.upenn.edu.

Faculty Senate Executive Committee Actions
Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Report from the Senate Tri-Chairs.  Faculty Senate Chair William Braham reported on the following matters:

• All faculty are reminded to submit their COVID vaccine and booster status into Workday.
• The May 11, 2022, SEC meeting will be held in-person followed by a reception and will follow all COVID protocols in place at that time.
• The "faculty pledge"  is still accepting individual signatures. The pledge asks faculty members to make individual commitments to addressing the climate emergency.
• On February 26, 3:00pm ET, TIAA will host a 30-minute webinar on personal environmental, social, and governance investing strategies for individual faculty. Advance registration is required.
• A petition from faculty calling upon Penn to mitigate the perceived harms done by the US Department of Justice’s China Initiative has been submitted.  Vice Provost for Research Dawn Bonnell will meet with the lead petitioners to inform them about steps Penn is taking to address these concerns and to assist with related matters.
• The Provost’s recommendation of “online interludes” was commended by the Tri-Chairs as an approach to respond quickly to public safety concerns arising from the ongoing pandemic. The Vice Provost for Faculty Newsletter, distributed on February 8, 2022, states: “Please remember that faculty may take an online interlude if they need to quarantine and are well enough to teach, or if high student absenteeism reduces the merits of in-person instruction. For questions about technology options, instructors should talk to their local IT support provider. The Center for Teaching and Learning offers strategies to help students stay on track if they must miss class and other resources for teaching in this current time. The Provost Office’s FAQs for Instructors for Spring 2022 addresses questions on masks, attendance, and other topics. Refer to Penn Cares to schedule a COVID test or see the latest public health guidance.”

Update from the Office of the Provost.  Interim Provost Beth Winkelstein expressed her appreciation for the Faculty Senate leadership and its partnership in navigating the many and varied challenges to research and teaching resulting from the pandemic.  She briefed SEC members on the latest Spring Semester 2022 guidance, including COVID testing requirements and incentives for continued COVID testing.  Provost Winkelstein spoke about the need for continued communication to and from and support for faculty during the upcoming transitions back to campus and through expected leadership transitions, including that of the President.   She recognized that some faculty members have scholarship and research that have not resumed at full capacity because of travel or other limitations and sought feedback on how the Office of the Provost could support faculty in those situations.

Faculty Senate Seminar: “The Limits of Free Speech, Conduct, and Academic Freedom in a System of Faculty Tenure, Diversity, and Inclusion: A Proposed Framework”.  At 4:00 p.m. ET, a Faculty Senate Seminar was held virtually and open to all Standing Faculty, of which an archived recording is available on the Faculty Senate website.  

Our March AT PENN calendar is live now! Click here to view a web version, or download a printable PDF of the calendar here.

As always, to submit an event for a future calendar or update, send the salient details to almanac@upenn.edu.

University of Pennsylvania Police Department Crime Report

Below are the Crimes Against Persons, Crimes Against Society and Crimes Against Property from the campus report for February 7-13, 2022. 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 February 7-13, 2022. 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.

18th District

Below are the Crimes Against Persons from the 18th District: 8 incidents (4 assaults, 2 robberies, 1 aggravated assault, and 1 indecent assault) were reported for February 7-13, 2022 by the 18^th District, covering the Schuylkill River to 49th St & Market St to Woodland Avenue.

Philadelphia City Wage Tax Refund forms are now available on the City of Philadelphia website. Employees claiming a Philadelphia City Wage Tax Refund should complete only one of the following forms:

• 2021 COVID EZ Request
• 2021 Time Worked Outside of Philadelphia

To request a refund, you will need to complete the applicable online form and submit a copy of your W-2 and an Employer Certification on University letterhead with the exact dates you were required to work outside the city. If you are submitting a Time Worked Outside of Philadelphia form, you may also be asked to include a copy of your Telework Agreement, if applicable. The Division of Finance website has guidance for supervisors who are asked to provide Employer Certification. The city has also posted additional information on its blog.

Any refund claim must be filed within three years of the date the tax was paid or due, whichever date is later.

—Office of Corporate Tax, Compliance, and Payroll

Dear Penn Community,

The Netter Center for Community Partnerships would like to announce the following upcoming volunteer opportunities. 

Change Drive: March 7-21. This is a non-tuition scholarship donation given to graduating high school students accepted at an accredited college or university. The program has been in existence for over 20 years and has made a difference in many students’ lives. 

The program name was changed to the Marie K. Bogle Scholarship in 2017. Students have used the funds to buy books and the many other items needed to make a home away from home. 

For more information, visit: http://www.nettercenter.upenn.edu/what-we-do/programs/penn-volunteers-public-service-penn-vips/marie-k-bogle-scholarship-sponsored.

Career Buddies. Volunteer to provide support to graduates of the University Assisted Community Schools Nights Professional Development Program. Local members of the community will undertake classes in resume writing, interviewing techniques, time management, customer service, and more in preparation for job hunting.

Career Coach Buddies will be assigned a participant and will work virtually with them over a 3 month period by being encouraging, suggesting resources, doing follow-up, and being a friend. Buddies will make one weekly contact with assigned participant.

Join Penn VIPS Dropsite 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
• Change Drive: March

Donations can be taken to the following sites coordinated by the Dropsite Committee:

Reorganizing? Do you have furniture no longer needed by your department? Local nonprofits are in need of your items! Do you have any computers to donate? Had a conference? Do you have left-over bags, tee-shirts, tchotchkes? Need to empty out your storage space?

Please donate them to Penn VIPS. We will put them to great use by donating them to community members, and many of the students we work with and also use them to thank our many volunteers.

UACS Nights. Teach adult learners about your area of expertise. Teach resume writing, interviewing skills, computers, employment prep, dance, cooking, and or a subject you are passionate about. 

Teach once a week for a one or two hour period for four to six weeks. We also welcome classes that can be taught in one session.

Classes are held on Tuesdays and/or Thursdays from 6 p.m.-8 p.m. at West Philadelphia High School on Tuesdays and West Catholic High School on Thursdays.

Create your own volunteer activity. Would you and your colleagues or friends like to participate in a volunteer activity?  Penn VIPS is happy to connect you to an activity or help you develop one of your own.

Contact Isabel Sampson-Mapp  at (215) 898-2020 or e-mail: sammapp@pobox.upenn.edu for additional information, to volunteer for a program, and/or to make a donation.

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

Carlo Siracusa

Just a few years ago, I was skeptical about online teaching. I was not convinced that students could learn effectively online. In particular, I thought that they could not learn how to effectively diagnose and communicate with clients (pets’ owners), and practice the critical thinking skills that are essential for clinical work. I also feared that I would lose the pleasure of working with students. However, both by developing courses that are purposely online and by leading courses that had to go online because of the pandemic, I’ve found that using online discussion boards prepares students effectively for the type of critical thinking they need and allows me to know them as well as or better than in in-person classes.

My attitude toward teaching online changed when, defeating my initial skepticism, I developed an online certificate program with a group of inspired colleagues. Within this program, I teach the online course Fundamentals of Animal Behavior (FoAB) that reviews principles of animal behavior and their application to animal welfare in a non-clinical setting. In this course, I first got the chance to experiment the use of online discussion boards to talk about controversial topics with the students. 

The FoAB course is published in the learning management system Canvas, and is composed of weekly modules populated with videos on core theoretical concepts and recommended literature to review. Among the assignments, the students have to attend a synchronous review session via Zoom and participate in a weekly asynchronous discussion board on a controversial topic (e.g. the validity of behavioral testing in laboratory animals). The students have to follow the discussion throughout the week, post an original contribution using a maximum of 250 words, and comment at least once on the post of a classmate. The students’ statements must be meaningful, critical, and supported with references to published literature. The main teaching goal for the discussion boards of the FoAB course is practicing critical thinking and teamwork. 

It is interesting to note that the students of the FoAB course complete all the activities remotely and never meet in person with each other or with the instructors. Therefore, I was surprised at first to see how much the students and the instructor behaved as a bonded community during both the synchronous sessions and the asynchronous discussions. The asynchronous discussion boards specifically are developed during the entire weekly module and do not suffer from the time constraints of an hourly synchronous session. They permit all members of the group to observe and review multiple exchanges and intervene when desired. At the end of the 7th week of my first online course, I knew the skills of the FoAB students better than those of my pre-clinical students in the “traditional” Veterinary Medicine doctoral degree, to whom I teach clinical animal behavior in person for a longer time. 

Even after having accumulated this anecdotal evidence on the effectiveness of online learning, I did not want to give up the pleasure of interacting in-person with my pre-clinical veterinary students. However, the pleasure of in-person teaching did not last long because the coronavirus pandemic made its appearance. My experience with online learning could have come in handy at that point, but I still saw some obstacles in adapting what I had learned working online with a class of 20 FoAB students to a large class of 130 veterinary students. First, I needed to adapt the content of a live lecture of 50 minutes into video lectures of 10-15 minutes and readings for self-study. Second, I needed to determine if synchronous and asynchronous interactions were suitable for and beneficial to the large class. Third, I needed to decide how to assess the students’ learning and skills. For this purpose, I had traditionally used a final examination with multiple-choice questions on real-life clinical cases presented to the students via text and videos.

After a thorough analysis, I decided to apply what I learned teaching the online FoAB course to my nine-hour Clinical Animal Behavior course. I rearranged the content of the lectures and the examination across seven weekly modules. To replace the original lectures, I created two to three weekly short video lectures and selected reading materials. I replaced the final examination with seven asynchronous discussion boards of clinical cases, one for each module. Based on my previous favorable experience with the discussion boards and considering the large size of the class, I decided to not include synchronous sessions in this course. 

The discussion boards were built to be the main learning tool in the course and to test knowledge, critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and teamwork. Clinical reasoning is the ability of the students to extrapolate and organize relevant information from the patient’s history and examination, and then use it to reach a diagnosis and to create a treatment plan. With these goals in mind, I presented the students with a clinical case for which I provided the history and a description of the clinical examination. I divided the class into four groups and asked all the students to contribute to the discussion of the case. Within their group, each student needed to write a post of up to 250 words and could add a second post on a voluntary basis, after all of their colleagues had posted at least once. Each participant had to follow up on the comments of the other students to build communally the analysis and treatment of the assigned case. 

I have now used this format for two consecutive years of teaching the Clinical Animal Behavior course online. Hearing the students’ comments from the first year, I divided the class into smaller discussion groups of 10 students in the second year. Moreover, I had the chance to observe the students from the first year transitioning to clinical rotations with patient-side activities, during which they have to apply the skills learned in the behavior course. Based on preliminary observations, I saw that the students who participated in the clinical discussion boards performed better in their patient-side activities than students taught in a traditional way. This experience further grew my belief that online discussion boards are effective for refining critical thinking and teamwork skills. I also witnessed how the discussion of clinical cases through structured online discussion boards is ideal to practice clinical reasoning and prepare the students for patient-side clinical activities. 

I believe that the same structured discussion boards could be implemented outside of an online environment with comparable benefits. For this reason, I plan to use structured discussion boards from now on, in whatever mode I teach. Online learning comes, in fact, with its own challenges. The main challenge that I experienced is the amount of time needed to develop and teach an online course. Among the most time-consuming activities are recording the video lectures, moderating the discussion boards, and reviewing all the assignments. All this may be particularly difficult for faculty members who, like me, have clinical duties assigned. Nevertheless, my skepticism about online learning has dissipated and I have become an advocate of structured discussion boards when teaching my students!

Carlo Siracusa is an associate professor of clinical behavior medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. 

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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.