08/28/08 5:00am
Despite the recent increase in graduate student stipends, Leslie Warden is still struggling to pay for out-of-print books that cost up to $300 for her dissertation research.
SASgov, the student government of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, will be hosting an essay competition to draw attention to the increasing costs of books.
05/16/08 5:00am
Legally Blonde was set at Harvard University, but its producer Marc Platt is a proud Penn alumnus.
Platt, a 1979 College graduate who is known for producing the Grammy-winning musical Wicked and the Legally Blonde movies, has been selected as the alumni graduation speaker for the College of Arts and Sciences.
04/24/08 5:00am
As universities across the country continue to introduce campus-wide Internet access, the University of Chicago Law School is doing the exact opposite.
The school recently announced plans to eliminate Internet access in most of its classrooms, but Penn has no plans to implement similar policies.
04/17/08 5:00am
Psychology has traditionally targeted mental illness, but Psychology professor Martin Seligman is trying to turn this focus to "mental wellness."
Seligman, who is considered the father of positive psychology and serves as the director of Penn Positive Psychology Center, continues to draw international attention to his theory of positive psychology.
04/10/08 5:00am
Classical Studies professor Ralph Rosen has been appointed the new Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences.
Rosen, who has been at Penn for the past 25 years, will be responsible for overseeing the School's doctoral programs, which enroll approximately 2,000 students.
04/03/08 5:00am
The Philosophy, Politics and Economics department is in the process of devising new courses for the major, although there will not be any significant changes in the core of the curriculum.
Cristina Bicchieri, director of the PPE department, said PPE faculty are working with several participating departments to expand the number of PPE course offerings, but she added that "nothing is written in stone" and said the exact details will not be available for a few more months.
04/01/08 5:00am
What is wrong with Penn's education, and how can it be fixed?
These are the questions the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education wants students to consider during its annual education week.
Wharton and College junior Zach Fuchs, chairman of SCUE, explained that education week, which runs from March 31 to April 4, will allow students to think critically about their education instead of just following the University curriculum.
03/27/08 5:00am
Last week's announcement that Logan Hall will be renamed Claudia Cohen Hall has raised a few eyebrows.
Penn faculty and students expressed surprise that historic buildings such as Logan Hall could be renamed after donors.
Logan Hall, named after one of Penn's founding trustees, will be renamed this summer after Claudia Cohen, an entertainment journalist and a 1972 College of Women graduate who passed away last summer.
03/24/08 5:00am
The quality of advisors can really make or break a student's college experience, according to a recent study.
A group of professors from Seton Hall University identified a mentoring gap between male and female chemistry students. Overall, male students were more likely than the female students to recall academic counseling and advice from their advisors as undergraduate and graduate students
Closing the mentor gap, according to the researchers and academic experts, could help encourage and retain more women in traditionally male dominated fields, such as engineering and the physical sciences.
03/19/08 5:00am
Logan Hall will be renamed Claudia Cohen Hall this summer in memory of 1972 College of Women graduate Claudia Cohen, who died in June 2007.
Cohen, a journalist who also served as an overseer of the School of Arts and Sciences, died of ovarian cancer at the age of 56.
02/29/08 5:00am
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation recently awarded a $750,000 grant to be given over the next six years to the School of Arts and Science's initiative to encourage Cross-Cultural Contact scholarship, the study of what happens when different cultures collide and coalesce.
02/21/08 5:00am
Sometimes it's better to be the math Olympiad winner than to be crowned homecoming queen.
The Benjamin Franklin Scholars program, which offers students access to Benjamin Franklin seminars, undergraduate research opportunities and a four-year advisor, will invite newly admitted high-school students to become scholars this spring, based primarily on students' academic standing.
02/06/08 5:00am
Despite living in China as a child, it wasn't until Zhi Geng returned as a study abroad student that she discovered her own jewel in the capital city: a small restaurant near the west gate of Beijing University that serves the most amazing chicken wings.
For the Wharton and College senior, spending a semester in Beijing allowed her to reconnect with her cultural roots, which she had few memories of as a child.
02/01/08 5:00am
A home in Pearlington, Miss. was sinking and Engineering graduate student Kyle Sirianno was determined to find out why.
He encountered the home - which had sunk by two inches because the septic tank underneath it was broken - while testing the quality of well water in Pearlington, an area still suffering from the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina.
01/25/08 5:00am
Though law-school applications are down recently, for some groups of applicants, the decline has more constant.
Minority enrollment has decreased in the past decade. First-year enrollments of African American and Mexican American students dropped from 3,937 in 1992 to 3,595 in 2005, according to a recent Columbia Law School study.
01/18/08 5:00am
After counseling teenagers in Belize and promoting HIV/AIDS awareness in Malawi, Peace Corps volunteers are getting a little help themselves.
Returning Peace Corps volunteers are recruited by universities and colleges participating in the Peace Corps Fellows/USA partner schools program, a national consortium of over 40 universities which offers returnees the opportunity to study in their programs at reduced tuition.
01/17/08 5:00am
As Grey's Anatomy draws more prospective doctors every year, Law and Order fans seem to be turning to other fields.
In a survey of 190 law schools conducted by Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, half of the schools reported a decline in applications during the past two years, with a 17.
12/06/07 5:00am
Instead of spending $40,000 a year, you can now take a course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for free from the comforts of your own home.
MIT has now made 90 percent of its courses available online, as part of the school's OpenCourseWare program, which began in 2000.
12/04/07 5:00am
Sometimes, it pays to try something different.
Since 2002, Arabic, Chinese and American Sign Language have become more popular than ever before as students have come to recognize their value in the job market.
Meanwhile, student enrollment in traditional language programs such as French and Spanish has remained steady.
11/16/07 5:00am
After dealing with GREs and job recruiters, students who graduate from Williams College will now have one less post-graduation concern.
Williams, one of the top liberal-arts colleges in the country, announced earlier this month that it is replacing all loans with grants for students applying for financial aid.
