Penn in the News

Vukan Vuchic of the School of Engineering and Applied Science comments on SEPTA’s regional rail system.

Michael Povelones of the School of Veterinary Medicine is quoted about studying the mosquito and the Zika virus.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center talks about why viewers are attracted to media outlets that align with their own beliefs.

Kenneth Goldsmith of the School of Arts & Sciences pens an op-ed about spending time browsing the Internet.

The recent police shootings of unarmed black men in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis, among others, are likely to spur student protests against racism when the fall semester begins. And with those protests will come more demands for racial diversity and inclusion on campuses, including calls for recruiting more students and faculty members from minority groups, and for incorporating those issues broadly in the curriculum.

Eugene Kiely of the Annenberg Public Policy Center presents the findings of FactCheck.org on recent claims and issues related to the republican and democratic presidential candidates.

Over the past two decades, and across the nation, the university has been undergoing profound changes. These structural changes underpin an emergent philosophy of the new university today -- one that should give pause to anyone concerned about the direction of higher education. For much of the 20th century, and especially after World War II, the university served as the vehicle of upward mobility, the principal pathway to securing a middle-class and eventually upper-middle-class life.

Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School says, “It’s actually easier for blue-collar people to get help thinking about alternative careers because most of the government help is aimed at them.”

Jonathan Moreno of the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Arts & Sciences shares his thoughts on a new book criticizing the work of a late, well-known neuroscience professor.

A group of recent studies on technology in education, across a wide range of real-world settings, have come up far short of a ringing endorsement. The studies include research on K-12 schools and higher ed, both blended learning and online, and show results ranging from mixed to negative. A deeper look into these reports gives a sense that, even as computers become ubiquitous in classrooms, there's a lot we still don't know — or at least that we're not doing to make them effective tools for learning.