News Archives

Smooth-sailing careers with HR’s help...

The folks at Human Resources can shape you into the top-notch professional that you dream of being. Take advantage of these Learning and Education classes for your career. For course locations and more information, call 215-898-3400 or visit www.hr.upenn.edu/learning. Registration required for most programs. If Looks Could Kill

Pink-collar ghetto lives on

It’s been almost 40 years since the passage of equal rights and equal pay legislation, but women are still getting paid only three-fourths of what men get paid. This is just one of the many statistics featured in “A Change of Pace: Accelerating Women’s Progress,” a new report published by Penn’s Alice Paul Center for Research on Women and Gender in collaboration with Womens Way and Solutions for Progress, Inc.

“Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures. We should not let people die with their rights on.”

—Dennis Culhane, professor of social welfare policy, on laws that let police and city officials forcibly take homeless people off the streets when temperatures drop below freezing (The Boston Globe, Jan. 23)

Carol Bowers

Campus Buzz

Notes on a new camp: There’s a new addition to the wide array of summer camps on campus this year. PennKids, a day camp from the Department of Recreation, offers education, games and fun, plus swimming every day, for first through sixth graders. Each of the six one-week sessions, from June 23 to Aug. 1, is organized around a theme, such as animals, world cultures, creativity, water and the Olympics. Hot lunches are included as well, and early and late extended hours are also available. Sound interesting? There’s an information session on the camp Feb.

Reporter driven up a wall

Who hasn’t dreamt of clinging to overhangs a la Peter Parker and his alter ego Spider-Man? Well, now at Penn, mere mortals can have such thrills. I recently got a chance to flex my superhero muscles at the climbing wall of Penn’s spanking-new Pottruck Fitness Center. So, okay, you may not reach skyline heights, but with a 38-foot wall and a climbing rope, you can come pretty close.

Staff Q&A: John Shea

When John Shea (Gr’84) came to Penn to pursue a doctorate in English, he fully intended to pursue a career in academe, researching and teaching English literature. He ended up with a career in academe, and one involving English literature to boot. But the literature in question has turned out to be magazine and newspaper articles for Penn publications—first for The Pennsylvania Gazette, then for this newspaper’s predecessor, The Compass, and now for Penn Medicine and other periodicals produced by the Health System’s Office of Public Affairs.

Two decades, one work

BodyVox, the modern dance ensemble formed by Pilobolus and Momix alumni Ashley Roland and Jamey Hampton, has been around long enough for the founders to step back and look at how far they’ve come over the years. “Reverie,” which gets its first Philadelphia performance at a Penn Presents/Dance Celebration concert Feb. 25, is a distillation of two decades’ worth of BodyVox compositions. The eclectic, athletic works are set to music ranging from Puccini to Miles Davis to the Bulgarian Women’s Chorus, and include visually stunning costumes. —S.S.

Judge Rendell: To lead, get inside their heads

Judge Marjorie Rendell (CW’69) was on campus Feb. 4 to talk about leadership to a standing-room only crowd of College students who packed 3615 Locust Walk. She was the second speaker this semester in the ongoing series “Lessons in Leadership,” designed by the Fox Leadership Program to bring outstanding College alumni back to campus to discuss life, their career and what they’ve learned about leadership.

So it is written...

“Who Wrote (Down) the Qur’an?” is the question that five Islamic scholars will attempt to answer at a conference Friday, Feb. 21, from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Penn Humanities Forum, 3619 Locust Walk. Panelists from Canada, France and the United States will consider the physical process of collecting, writing and canonizing the earliest versions of the Qur’an, considered by Muslims to be the revealed word of God. Free, preregistration required: humanities@sas.upenn.edu or 215-898-8220.