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Campus Buzz

Robert holds Cort: Producer Robert Cort C’68,G’70,WG’74 returned to his alma mater Feb. 18 to unveil his 52nd film, “Against the Ropes,” to an audience of undergraduates and film aficionados from the faculty, staff and community. He gave the film its East Coast premiere at The Bridge in part as a tribute to one of his academic mentors, History Professor Emeritus Lee Benson, who was in attendance.

UPHS applies Delta force to patient safety

The University of Pennsylvania Health System has opened a new front in the ongoing fight to ensure top quality health care: It has called in the Delta Team to provide reinforcements for patient safety. With nearly 100 members drawn from every area and level of Health System operations, the Delta Team will serve as peer educators, sharing information about best practices in patient safety after completing a one-year training program that began Feb. 5.

Staff Q&A: Larry Moses

By day, Larry Moses is the man with the booming voice and hearty laugh who leads diversity training for fraternities and sororities and advises the Bicultural Inter-Greek Council. When his workday is over, Moses transfers his boisterous personality to the Philadelphia-area stage, where he’s acted in close to 150 plays and directed more than 100, including “Purlie Victorious” for the Philadelphia Black Theater Festival in the mid-1980s, which was named one of the five best plays that year.

Healthy smiles all around

Mr. Deep Pockets

“You can afford Penn.” This simple message has been an integral part of the pitch Penn makes to potential applicants for decades. Director of Student Financial Aid William Schilling C’66’s mission is to make sure that statement is true for everyone who attends. Thus, it was music to his ears to hear that incoming University President Amy Gutmann intends to make financial aid a top priority of her administration. Like both Gutmann and President Judith Rodin CW’66, Schilling is a scholarship kid—his attendance at Penn was made possible by a generous financial aid package.

People's Choice: Oughta-be Oscars

In our lengthy search for Penn people to answer our question this issue—”What picture, actor or actress should have gotten an Oscar nomination but didn’t?”—we may have inadvertently stumbled across the reason why the ratings for the Academy Awards telecast keep dropping each year: It seems people aren’t going to see first-run films like they used to, at least not at Penn. We spoke with several respondents who confessed to not having seen any first-run films of late, and another, who wished to remain anonymous, said, “I just wait until they’re out on cable.”

Appointments

Laurie O. Robinson, a nationally known leader in criminal justice policy, has been named director of Penn’s new Master of Science Program in Criminology. Prior to her appointment at the University, Robinson worked for nearly three decades in criminal justice reform and innovation and worked as assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice. There, she oversaw the Office of Justice Programs from 1993 to 2000.

Kumanyika in middle of global food fight

Obesity is now a global health issue. According to the World Health Organization, the top 10 leading risk factors for death in 2000 included four directly connected to obesity—hypertension, cholesterol, high body mass index and physical inactivity. To tackle the problem, the WHO is launching a worldwide campaign against obesity. Its chief tool is a strategy to promote changes in diet and nutrition similar to what the U.S. Department of Agriculture has recommended for many years.

Penn Co-Sponsors Conference on Latin America

WHO: Greater Philadelphia Latin American Consortium, University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, University of DelawareWHAT: "Women in Action: Social Transformation in Latin America"WHEN: Feb. 26-27, 2004 WHERE:  Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa., University of Pennsylvania, PhiladelphiaWomen activists and scholars from Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Haiti and the United States will gather for a major international symposium to discuss the role of women as agents of social change in Latin America and the United States.

Amy Gutmann Elected President of the University of Pennsylvania

PHILADELPHIA -- Amy Gutmann, the Provost and Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, has been elected President of the University of Pennsylvania by Penn's Board of Trustees, James S. Riepe, chair of Penn's Trustees, announced today.Gutmann, 54, will succeed Judith Rodin on July 1, 2004.  Rodin announced last June that she planned to step down after serving as Penn's president since 1994.