News Archives

Rita Hodges of Penn’s Netter Center Coauthors Book on Future of University-Community Relationships

PHILADELPHIA – A new book, The Road Half Traveled: University Engagement at a Crossroads, provides a forward-thinking perspective on the future of university-community partnerships.  Coauthored by Rita Axelroth Hodges, assistant director at the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships, the book reviews the role universities have played as anchor institutions in their communities and mulls the new directions those relationships might take. 

Penn’s Ortner Center on Family Violence Releases “Violence Against Women” Report to the City

PHILADELPHIA -- Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Evelyn Jacobs Ortner Center on Family Violence and Philadelphia City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell have released a report assessing the city’s handing of domestic-violence cases and recommending improvements.

Q&A with Ira Harkavy

After Ira Harkavy had just finished his Ph.D. at Penn, his mentor in the history department, Lee Benson, delivered an address that called for practitioners in communities to work together with academics. It was a simple but powerful idea that took root in Harkavy’s imagination.

Penn Medicine: Parkinson's Disease Protein Causes Disease Spread and Neuron Death in Healthy Animals

PHILADELPHIA — Understanding how any disease progresses is one of the first and most important steps towards finding treatments to stop it. This has been the case for such brain-degenerating conditions as Alzheimer's disease. Now, after several years of incremental study, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania have been able to piece together important steps in how Parkinson’s disease (PD) spreads from cell to cell and leads to nerve cell death.

Taking note

Food for fines

Faculty and staff with library fines—take note. Through November, Penn Libraries is sponsoring the “Food for Fines” program to benefit Philabundance. For each item donated, $1 will be credited towards a library account, up to a maximum of $20. Credit cannot be applied to lost book replacement fees. Food donations will be collected at the Van Pelt Library Circulation Desk. Items should be non-perishable and packaged in boxes, cans, or plastic bottles.

The Shoah, remembered

The Shoah Foundation has its roots in Poland, once home to the largest Jewish community in Europe. Of the 3.3 million Jews who lived there before the Nazi invasion in 1939, 85 percent (more than 4 out of 5) were murdered during the Holocaust. While shooting the Academy Award-winning film “Schindler’s List” in Krakow in 1993, director Steven Spielberg was approached by scores of Holocaust survivors longing to share their stories.

Safe and sound

For the sixth year in a row, Penn was ranked No. 1 in safety and security in the higher education sector, according to Security Magazine’s “Security 500” list. “We are so grateful to be recognized for the sixth year in a row by Security Magazine, as the No. 1 Public Safety organization in the country within the University Market,” says Maureen S. Rush, vice president for public safety.

Penn Vet study of cat teeth could help humans

Cat owners, take note: If your pet appears to be in pain while eating, chewing or grooming and has a red, inflamed mouth, it may be suffering from a common condition called feline stomatitis.

Student Spotlight with Tania Chairez