Penn in the News

Marybeth Gasman of the Graduate School of Education shares her thoughts on TM² Executive Search, a new firm that focuses on identifying and placing candidate for top administrative positions at historically black colleges and universities.

Mathias Basner of the Perelman School of Medicine is featured for monitoring astronaut Scott Kelly during his year in space and his twin brother Mark, back on earth, to compare cognitive differences.

Michael Perlis of the Perelman School of Medicine is quoted about new insomnia drugs.

The president of Mount St. Mary’s University wanted to improve the school’s vital national rankings by pushing out struggling freshmen before they flunked out and hurt its federal retention rate. “Put a Glock to their heads,” the president, a former private equity manager, said according to the campus newspaper. On Monday he resigned after outrage by academics who felt his cold, business-like approach was at odds with the school’s academic mission. Some say that as costs and student debt soar, the trend of hiring business people for academic leadership is beneficial for schools.

Police officers at all 14 University of Texas campuses will soon be trained to follow new investigative protocols aimed at changing how campus law enforcement officers interview and support victims of sexual assault, the system announced today. A new 170-page manual, called "The Blueprint for Campus Police: Responding to Sexual Assault," instructs the system's 600 sworn police officers to replace "tradition with science" when investigating sexual violence.

Those Temple Owls caught a lot of passes this season, but they also apparently caught something else: the attention of prospective applicants to the university. With the deadline to apply this week, Temple has seen an increase of more than 15 percent in applications for the fall 2016 class compared with this time last year. University officials are attributing at least some of that increase to the success of the football team, which went 10-4 and beat Penn State for the first time in 74 years. "College football is the 'front porch' of university life," Temple President Neil D.

Angela Duckworth of the School of Arts & Sciences critiques testing students on “social-emotional skills” to evaluate school performance.

The first conclusion to a four-year federal probe of sexual violence at the University of Virginia was issued in secret, and it stood for just four days. Among its findings was that U-Va. “abdicated” its legal responsibility to act on reports of sexual violence within the school’s powerful Greek system and took a “hands off” approach, relying instead on fraternities to police their own membership in cases of alleged rape and other sexual assaults.

The University of Central Missouri has started a program to keep students who have been sexually assaulted from dropping out. Corey Bowman, associate vice provost for student services, last spring started tracking about 50 students who had experienced gender-based violence, either before enrolling or while they were at Central Missouri. The prevention program is on alert for students who may be struggling as a result of gender-based violence, whether in the classroom or in their efforts to get along with roommates, arrange child care, afford tuition, or handle other personal matters.

Daniel Hopkins of the School of Arts & Sciences is quoted about the impact of the Obama presidency on the African-American community.