News Archives

People's Choice: Spine tinglers

- The Eighth Annual Writers Conference at the University of Pennsylvania brings writers together from throughout the region to explore topics and techniques in many fields of writing. The keynote speaker for the Nov. 9 conference is Ken Kalfus, author of the short story collections “Thirst” and “Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies.” Fee $150. Info/registration: www.upenn.edu/writconf or Nadia Daniel, 215-898-6479.

At Work With...Keith Whiteman

Wooten to Receive John Chancellor Award

PHILADELPHIA -- Jim Wooten, veteran ABC News foreign correspondent, has been named winner of the 2001 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism. The award, which carries a $25,000 honorarium, is presented annually to an individual whose work best exemplifies the journalistic standard of excellence set by NBC news correspondent and anchor John Chancellor. Chancellor was host of the "Today" show and anchored NBC's "Nightly News" during a career that spanned 43 years with the network.

Strategic threats discussed at forum

With defense against external threats high on the American agenda, a new interdisciplinary institute at Penn is helping policymakers identify and counter them. On Oct. 18, four faculty members associated with the Institute for Strategic Threat Analysis and Response (ISTAR) discussed some of those threats and how ISTAR could contribute to dealing with them. The discussion took place at an institute symposium, “Strategic Thinking: How Climate, Disease and Socio-Political Structures Become Strategic Threats,” held at the Annenberg Center.

Enhanced Treatment Capabilities Featured at Penn Dental School's New Schattner Center

WHO: Faculty, staff, students and alumni of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine will join Penn Trustees and invited guests to open the Schattner Center. WHAT: A dedication and tours of the newest building in the Dental School complex, the Schattner Center. The three-story, 70,000-square-foot building houses a new oral-surgery center, a new oral-medicine clinic for treating medically complex patients, a new admissions/emergency clinic and the campus locations of the Penn dental faculty practice.

Faculty Feature: Halls are alive with the sound of music lessons

Even though Penn’s Music Department offers no degrees in performance, its faculty are busy working to see that campus halls are alive with the sound of music. Leading the effort is Cristle Collins Judd. In addition to her appointment as associate professor of music and director of graduate studies, she also serves as the associate chair for performance, a new post in the department.

Halftime tunesmith

Hot drinks, cool cafés

The first cold snap—well, really the first not-200-degrees-in-the-shade-snap—brought memories of hot chocolate at the ice skating rink, warm cider at Halloween, and the steam on my face from mugs of hot coffee around early campfires on chilly mornings. Woah, Nellie. We’re in the middle of University Square, where the closest thing to a campfire is the Sterno under the s’mores at Cosí. The campus is a place that has more hot drink choices than all the ice skating rinks in Philadelphia combined.

The producers

The big screens at 40th and Walnut will light up for the public Friday, Nov. 8, just in time for date night. After two days of celebration and previews for invitees, The Bridge: Cinema De Lux, a cooperative venture between the University and National Amusements, will import here its West Coast, upscale take on going to the movies (see “Campus Buzz,” page 8). The theater is the linchpin for Omar Blake’s cosmopolitan vision for the revival of the 40th Street area as a commercial strip where campus and the neighborhood meet.

News briefs

Tarzan vs. Jane Men as Tarzans and women as Janes may not be too far off the mark. New findings from the Departments of Psychiatry and Epidemiology suggest that there may be a neurological basis for the cliché that men are more aggressive than women. In experiments using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, Penn scientists found that the relative size of the sections of the brain responsible for regulating aggression and monitoring behavior is larger in women than in men.