News Archives

Increase in Total Student Charges, Undergraduate Tuition Lowest in Three Decades at the University of Pennsylvania

PHILADELPHIA - Total student charges at the University of Pennsylvania will increase 3.7 percent for the 1999-2000 academic year, the lowest percentage increase in more than three decades, according to an announcement today (March 18) by President Judith Rodin. She said that tuition and fees for undergraduate students will increase 4.2 percent, from $23,254 to $24,230; average room and board will increase 2.2 percent, from $7,206 to $7,362. Total student charges will increase 3.7 percent, from $30,460 to $31,592.

The engineer that could

When Tony Alvarez (EAS'00) was a junior in high school, his girlfriend got pregnant. He had not been a stellar student up to that point, so his response was a little unusual. "I got serious about school," Alvarez says. "I had a lot of friends who were my same age that had kids, and they ended up dropping out of school and selling drugs and things like that, and I knew it was one of those two paths." The path he took was to Penn.

"Heliodorus: 'An Ethiopian Romance'"

Translated by Moses Hadas $17.95 paper, 288 pages The romance novel didn't begin with Kathleen Woodiwiss or even with the Bronte sisters. By the time Heliodorus wrote his "Aethiopica"-or "Ethiopian Romance"-in the third century, the genre was already impressively developed. Heliodorus launches his tale of love and the quirks of fate with a bizarre scene of blood, bodies, and booty on an Egyptian beach viewed through the eyes of a band of mystified pirates.

Changes in society blur the color line

Will the problem of the 21st century still be the problem of the color line, as W.E.B. DuBois stated it would be for the 20th? Quite possibly not, according to the sociologists who spoke at a panel on the sociological study of African American problems Feb. 23 in College Hall. The panel was part of a two-day conference, "The Study of African American Problems," that marked the centennial of DuBois' landmark 1899 study "The Philadelphia Negro."

Y1K: Apocalypse then?

At the turn of the second millennium, the people of western Europe did not face the technological problems that we do, but they did have another kind of problem that is still unsolved at the end of the 20th Century. They wondered whether or not the Y1K had anything to do with the scenario of the Last Days and the End of Time.

East meets West, father meets son, in philosophy forum

Ira Schwartz

With a scathing attack on U.S. child welfare systems, Ira Schwartz, dean of the School of Social Work, hopes to improve the public policies that are supposed to protect children. Photo by Candace diCarlo

New veep for Business Services

Leroy D. Nunery

Rite of passage

Carrie-Ann Piers (C'00, center) receives a ritual cleansing from (left to right) Trisha Taitt (W'00), Shannon McDougal (C'99) and Jasmine Sykes (C'00) as part of the Nyanka ceremony, a traditional African initiation ritual for young women. The ceremony was part of African Rhythms' spring show, "Afenhyiapa!", performed at the Iron Gate Theatre Feb. 26-28. Photo by Daniel R. Burke

A Philly literary feast

It's Philly phact and Philly phiction, poetry and prose, past and present, literary luminaries and hidden treasures. It's "A Celebration of Philadelphia Writers" - a two-day festival March 26 and 27 celebrating the city's rich literary heritage and its continuing tradition of producing outstanding novelists, poets, playwrights, journalists, essayists and screenwriters.