News Archives

They’re off and shopping

Money maven goes to school

A five-member team called the School Reform Commission (SRC) is now in charge of making sure that more than 200,000 Philadelphia public school students get the education they deserve. Not an easy task, considering the angry debates and media hoopla which has dogged the issue of what to do with the city’s poor-performing schools. Sitting on the commission as one of two citizen volunteers appointed by Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street is Michael Masch, vice president for Budget and Management Analysis at Penn.

News briefs

LUCY moves To avoid the construction and congestion at Presbyterian Hospital, LUCY, the University City loop bus, has some route changes. As of Feb. 11, LUCY no longer travels through Myrin Circle at Presbyterian Medical Center. Instead, new stops will be located outside the Medical Office Building at the entrance to the circle. The Green Loop stop will be on the north side of the street. The Gold Loop and Mid-day Express stop will be on the south side of the street.

Campus Buzz

Why did Ira Winston cross the street Feb. 4? First, he wanted to get the lunch he was on his way to order when a car struck him at 34th and Walnut Jan. 22. Second, he wanted to call attention to the issue of pedestrian safety on area streets, and more than 200 people helped him do that by crossing Walnut with him at lunchtime.

Political power, computer power

Computer guru David Farber has some ideas about how advances in computer technology will change the world. Recently returned from Washington, D.C., where he was the Federal Communications Commission’s chief technologist, Farber, the Albert Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunications at the Moore School, spoke on “Predicting the Unpredictable” Feb. 5 as part of the Provost’s Lecture Series. He also spoke about his role at the FCC.

Recipes for life, politics and cooking

It was just an old, battered, handwritten book of recipes, purchased for a dollar from an antiques dealer. But in it, Janet Theophano (Gr’82) found the life of an overlooked woman—a life that set Theophano off in search of the ways cookbooks transmit more than just instructions on preparing food.

Where are the Franklin Field food trucks?

Dear Benny,What happened to all of the food trucks in the food plaza at the corner of 33rd and South by Franklin Field? Is the University going to let new or previously displaced trucks occupy the spaces? —Hungry on the East Side Dear Hungry, I spoke with Bob Kupsch, property manager for UCA Trammell Crow, which manages Penn’s commercial property, and he told me that the trucks all went out of business of their own accord.

How to manage

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Time piece

All this year, the Penn Humanities Forum has been exploring the concept of time—how humans came to understand it, how various cultures kept track of it, what forces shape it—with a series of lectures, discussions and performances.

“You have to come up with a whole whack of cash just to get into the business.”

—Jon F. Merz, assistant professor in the Center for Bioethics, on how high fees charged by gene patent holders are squeezing small labs (The Ottawa [Ontario] Citizen, Feb. 7)