News Archives

Campus Buzz

Calling all Cherry Garcia fans: Your fix of your favorite ice cream will be closer than ever starting in April. That goes for you too, Chunky Monkey junkies, because Ben & Jerry’s is coming to campus. The makers of Vermont’s finest all-natural ice cream will be setting up shop in the 40th Street space that housed Papaya King.

“They don’t put money into data collection. That’s considered pansy. That’s not what real men do.”

—Douglas Massey, codirector of Penn’s Mexican Migration Project, criticizing Congress for spending too much on the Border Patrol and too little on database systems for immigrants who enter with visas (The Boston Globe, Feb. 28)      

Macaroni and cheese, Faculty Club style

Dear Benny,One of my favorite dishes on the Faculty Club cafeteria menu is the macaroni and cheese. The creamy, tangy cheese sauce is absolutely to die for, and in my opinion, worth the membership fee all by itself. Is it possible to get the recipe? —Cheesehead Dear Wisconsinite, It took me some time, but patience pays off. Faculty Club Manager Natalka Swavely graciously shared with me Chef David Stoltzfus’ recipe, which I now share with you. Faculty Club Macaroni and CheeseServes 8

Panel: Schools need money, teachers

The air is thick with talk of education reform. States are tapping new revenue sources to reduce reliance on local property taxes. They are also trying to ensure that every school is adequately funded while grappling with inadequate revenue overall. And school districts wonder how best to spend that money, and which of the many education reforms being pushed actually work.

“Benefits for the Workplace of the Future”

The workforce of the future promises to be very different from that of the past. A generation ago, there were few workers over the age of 65, but in the future we will see many more employees remain on the job longer than ever before. At the same time, as global markets grow more closely integrated, companies are having to reinvent the workplace, which requires more skilled, more reliable, and more flexible employees.

Donald White

Dead civilizations aren’t really dead. Each generation reshapes them in part to reflect its own way of seeing the world and its people. It’s been nearly three generations since the University of Pennsylvania Museum’s collections of Roman, Greek and Etruscan objects received a reinterpretation. Professor of Classical Studies Donald White, the curator of the Museum’s Mediterranean section, has been in the field of archaeology for about two of those three generations, and has seen major transformations in both the field and the way the fruits of its research are displayed.

STAFF Q&A/David Micahnik

On a bulletin board in the fencing room deep in the bowels of Hutchinson Gym, there is a recent clipping from a British newspaper declaring that “Fencing is the hippest sport on the planet.” Fencing coach Dave Micahnik (C’59) couldn’t care less that zeitgeist maven Madonna has taken up the sport he has loved since his freshman year at Penn in 1955. Micahnik has devoted his life to passing on to successive generations the lessons he learned as a three-time Olympic fencer.

Law prof gets handed a labor football

This past January, while half the country was huddled around the TV watching the Super Bowl and scarfing down Buffalo wings, David Berger Professor of Law Stephen Burbank was in sunny San Diego, taking it all in live. “I attended as the guest of the NFL [National Football League] Players Association and the NFL Management Council,” he said. “I did not miss the commercials, or the weather in Philadelphia. It was 81, and I was happy to be sitting on the shady side of the stadium.”

Karen Kelley

Feeling tense? Sweat it out

The next time you’re feeling tense, skip the hot bubble bath and instead head straight for the nearest sweaty male. New research from George Preti and Charles Wysocki, adjunct professors in the Departments of Dermatology and Animal Biology respectively, has shown that women who sniff male underarm secretions feel more relaxed and less tense. Their findings, which will appear in a forthcoming issue of Biology of Reproduction, also showed that the length and timing of a woman’s menstrual cycle are altered by a whiff of that smelly stuff.