James Corner elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters
Professor Emeritus James Corner, the renowned landscape architect and urban designer who is founder and CEO at James Corner Field Operations, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The honor is widely considered the highest form of recognition of artistic merit in the United States.
“Jim has been a major force in both design theory and landscape architecture practice, and his teaching at Penn was central to that,” says Fritz Steiner, dean and Paley Professor at the Weitzman School of Design.
Corner is one of just 29 newly elected members for 2021—along with Barbara Kingsolver, Wynton Marsalis, and Faith Ringgold—and one of only six architects. Membership in the Academy is limited to 300 architects, visual artists, composers, and writers who are elected for life by vote of the existing membership and pay no dues.
Since earning his Master of Landscape Architecture degree at Penn in 1986, Corner has devoted the past 30-plus years to advancing the field of landscape architecture and urbanism, primarily through his leadership on high-visibility, complex urban projects around the world, as well as through teaching, public speaking, and writing. At Penn, he has served on the faculty in the Department of Landscape Architecture since 1989, and was the chair from 2000 through 2012.
Griffin Pitt, right, works with two other student researchers to test the conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity, and temperature of water below a sand dam in Kenya.
Griffin Pitt’s upbringing made her passionate about water access and pollution, and Penn has given her the opportunity to explore these issues back home in North Carolina and abroad.
Helping robots work together to explore the Moon and Mars
Penn Engineers, NASA, and five other universities tested robotic systems designed to help unmanned explorers cooperate in the dunes of White Sands, New Mexico, paving the way for Moon and Mars exploration.
From framework to actions: Provost John L. Jackson Jr. talks Penn Forward
In a Q&A, Provost John L. Jackson Jr. explains the relationship between the strategic framework In Principle and Practice and Penn Forward—a new University-wide process and action plan that will advance Penn forward for the next decade and beyond.
