News Archives

Student Spotlight: Egg donation ethics study wins award

“I saw your ad in the Cornell Daily Sun, and I’d like to become an egg donor.” No, Andrea Gurmankin wasn’t really interested in donating her eggs though she would have been the perfect recruit—a young college female attending an Ivy League school. What she was really interested in was the quality of risk information provided to prospective egg donors.

Penn and Hong Kong Engineering Schools Form Alliance

PHILADELPHIA -- The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology School of Engineering and the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science will collaborate in their technology-management master programs. A newly signed agreement provides for student and faculty exchanges.

Ask Benny: About that Locust Walk bike-riding ban

Dear Benny, Is the ban on riding bicycles on Locust Walk during the hours of major pedestrian traffic ever enforced? I increasingly get the impression it is not. —Looking in All Directions

Crunch time

Spring suds shine

  The nectar of the gods? Michael Jackson would argue that beer deserves the sobriquet. Spring is here, which means our thoughts turn to beer.

“Heal the Pain, Comfort the Spirit: The Hows and Whys of Modern Pain Treatment”

Specialists estimate that as many as 60 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, and approximately 20 percent of the population in most developed countries reports having chronic pain. According to one study, chronic back pain alone afflicts more than 4 million Americans, and nearly 50 percent of these are disabled by it. Pain is the most frequent cause of disability in the United States, with as many as 50 million Americans on short- or long-term disability leave from work at any one time.

News briefs

Applicant deluge In response to layoffs and a decrease in hiring following the Sept. 11 tragedies, college graduates are postponing their entrance into the job market and are looking at places like Penn to further their education. Jane Austin, assistant dean for admissions at the Law School, said her office is exploring various means to handle the deluge of applicants. “We’ve hired some additional part-time staff and are using different means of receiving applications, like the Internet,” she said. Compared to last year, the Law School has seen a 30 percent rise.

Acquire skills here

Courses from Human Resources help you manage work and home-life issues. Three free programs Performance video Bring a brown bag to this lunch-hour video, “Discussing Performance,” showing how to improve the quality of performance discussions between staff members and their managers. The video, for employees at all levels, teaches how to tackle contentious issues and how to work collaboratively. - March 14, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., 3624 Market Street, Suite 1B South

“To put it bluntly, human cloning will turn out to be of interest only to the vain or the desperate, and companies know this.”

—Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics, on the commercial future of cloning (The New York Times, Feb. 15)

SAS meets IT in new classes

Students in the College of Arts and Sciences who wanted to learn computing skills used to get directed to the Engineering School’s program, where they would have to compete with students for whom information technology was a native language. “Students in Arts and Sciences feel it’s not a level playing field for them,” said Cecelia Buchanan, director of a new program, the Computing Certificate in Arts and Sciences. “Just going to the engineering building seems to be a hurdle.” The new program is helping SAS students cross the campus’ own digital divide.