4/16
Penn in the News
A round-up of Penn mentions in local, national, and international media.
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Penn In the News
ACT Scores Show a Smaller Share of Students Are ‘College-ready’
This year’s high school graduates were less likely to demonstrate college readiness on the ACT admission test than those who took the exam the year before, according to results made public Wednesday. ACT officials attributed the falling achievement levels to a rise in the number of students tested. Nearly 2.1 million graduating seniors took the ACT, the nation’s most widely used admission test, an all-time high. They amounted to about 64 percent of the class of 2016. An estimated 59 percent took the test in the previous class.
Penn In the News
University of Texas Students Find the Absurd in a New Gun Law
On the first day of classes at the University of Texas in this city that revels in its own oddball creativity, students protested a law allowing concealed handguns on state college campuses by carrying something they thought was just as ridiculous and out of place: Thousands of sex toys. “These laws won’t protect anyone. The campus doesn’t want them,” said an organizer of the protest, Jessica Jin. “It’s absurd. So, I thought, we have to fight absurdity with absurdity.” On Wednesday, Ms.
Penn In the News
Colleges Are Dropping Their SAT Subject Test Requirement
Students applying to some top New England colleges will have fewer tests to take, as a growing number of colleges will no longer require applicants to submit scores from SAT subject tests. In the past year, Amherst, Dartmouth, and Williams Colleges have dropped the subject test requirement, reports The Boston Globe. Columbia University first announced the new policy this spring after saying that the exams lend little insight into students’ readiness, and can be detrimental to low-income and minority students.
Penn In the News
Channeling Charles Siepmann for Public Media’s Future
Victor Pickard of the Annenberg School for Communication writes about the impact of scholar Charles Siepmann’s legacy on the public media’s future.
Penn In the News
Why 10 District Teachers Spent Their Summer Doing Grad-level STEM Research
Dan Ueda of the School of Engineering and Applied Science is highlighted for helping tailor the Research Experience for Teachers program to middle school STEM teachers.
Penn In the News
Search and Seizure
This fall, for the first time, fraternities and sororities at Indiana University must sign an agreement that would allow university employees, including police officers, to enter and search their houses whenever there is reason to suspect laws or university rules are being broken. The agreement is similar to those at many private universities.
Penn In the News
Graduate Students Clear Hurdle in Effort to Form Union
Punctuating a string of Obama-era moves to shore up labor rights and expand protections for workers, the National Labor Relations Board ruled Tuesday that students who work as teaching and research assistants at private universities have a federally backed right to unionize. The case arose from a petition filed by a group of graduate students at Columbia University, who are seeking to win recognition for a union that will allow them a say over such issues as the quality of their health insurance and the timeliness of stipend payments.
Penn In the News
Video: Zion Harvey: A Year After Double Hand Transplant 9-year-old ‘Can Do More Than I Imagined’
Scott Levin of the Perelman School of Medicine talks about the success and progress of Zion Harvey who received a double hand transplant.
Penn In the News
What Will College Be like for a Transgender Student in North Carolina?
Just a few days before North Carolina’s legislature passed House Bill 2, which requires people to use bathrooms that correspond to the gender listed on their birth certificates, Kaleb A. Lyda enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mr. Lyda, an incoming freshman, is a recipient of the prestigious Morehead-Cain scholarship, a four-year merit scholarship that covers full tuition, housing, student fees, books and supplies, and funds to travel. Born a female, he is a transgender man.
Penn In the News
American Jumper With High GQ (‘Grit Quotient’)
Angela Duckworth of the School of Arts & Sciences is cited for popularizing the term “grit.”