News Archives

At Work with...Mel Garcia and Johnny Rodriquez

No good reason for health inequities

Ethical failure was blamed for the nation’s uninsured at a conference titled “Toward Health Equity.” Sponsored by the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, the May 10 forum gathered Penn health experts as well as political leaders. Health care expert Mark Pauly said money, or the lack thereof, was not the real problem because the actual cost of covering the uninsured is “peanuts.” “The real problem is political will, not economics,” said Pauly, Bendheim Professor at the Wharton School and chair of Health Care Systems.

Staff Q&A: Afi Roberson

There’s a wisecrack that circulates on many college campuses that goes something like this: The junior faculty are allowed to touch the robe of God. The senior faculty get to talk to God. The dean sits at the right hand of God. And the secretary is God. “Sounds good to me,” Afi Roberson (G’95) said of the joke.

Penn Undergraduate Thesis Exhibition Goes SoHo

PHILADELPHIA -- Some artists dream of having their work displayed in an illustrious gallery in New York City. For a group of University of Pennsylvania undergraduate fine-art students this is becoming a reality. An opening reception on June 6 will present the "2002 Senior Thesis Exhibition, Undergraduate Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania" at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery at 141 Prince Street in New York. The show runs through June 19.

Penn Historian Adds New Dimension to Modern Era: A Distinctive 'Soundscape' Shaped by Technology

PHILADELPHIA – "Modernism" calls to mind the literature of Joyce, the art of Picasso, the music of Stravinsky, the architecture of Le Corbusier. A new book by a University of Pennsylvania historian suggests that the new "soundscape" that emerged between 1900 and 1933 – an aural environment shaped by technologies such as acoustical tiles, public address systems and microphones – represents an equally distinctive facet of the modern era.

Study Finds Cognitive Therapy at Least as Effective as Drugs in Long-Term Treatment of Severe Depression

PHILADELPHIA – A new study indicates that cognitive therapy is at least as effective as medication for long-term treatment of severe depression, and it is less expensive. The findings, by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University, undercut opinions now held by many in the psychiatric profession.Principal investigators Robert J. DeRubeis of Penn and Steven D. Hollon of Vanderbilt and their colleagues will present the work Thursday, May 23 at the annual conference of the American Psychiatric Association in Philadelphia.

"At the Cutting Edge: The State of the Art Quilt " at the Arthur Ross Gallery

WHO: Philadelphia artists Cindy Friedman, Amy Orr, Leslie Pontz, Emily Richardson, Lonni Rossi and Deborah SchwartzmanWHAT: "At the Cutting Edge: The State of the Art Quilt" exhibitionWHERE: Arthur Ross Gallery, Furness Library Building, University of Pennsylvania, 220 S. 34th Street.WHEN: June 15 through July 28, 2002.

Scientists Find a Gene That's Key to Cloning Success but Also Hints at Serious Hurdles to Reproductive Cloning

PHILADELPHIA – Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have found that the activity of a single gene is a powerful predictor of whether newly cloned mammalian embryos will survive and thrive, but the gene's sporadic expression in cloned mouse embryos casts fresh doubt on prospects for reproductive human cloning.The findings, by a team led by K. John McLaughlin and Hans R. Schöler of Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine, are described in the May 15 issue of the journal Genes & Development.

Jim Lehrer's Commencement Address to the 246th Graduating Class of the University of Pennsylvania

Thank you very much. It is a supreme honor and pleasure to be with all of you here this morning, in the Pennsylvania sunshine. I am most particularly pleased to be honored in the same breath with Joan Ganz Cooney, Eric Hobsbawm, Irwin Jacobs, Richard E. Smalley, and all of you, our sister and brother classmates in the class of 2002. If we are in fact known by the company we keep, I know I will never do any better than this.

Michael Eric Dyson Named to Faculty at Penn

PHILADELPHIA -- The University of Pennsylvania has announced the appointment of Michael Eric Dyson as Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities. Dyson, 43, is currently the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Professor and Professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University. He has taught at the Chicago Theological Seminary, the University of North Carolina, and Columbia and Brown universities. At Penn, he will teach courses in the Religious Studies department and in the Afro-American Studies program.