Penn in the News

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.

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.

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

Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve of the School of Arts & Sciences writes about recognizing and honoring screenwriters at the Academy Awards.

As a political-science professor at Central Washington University, Mathew S. Manweller has a personal stake in protecting academic freedom. When the Legislature began this year’s session, Mr. Manweller, who is also a state representative, proposed a bill calling for Washington to strongly defend free speech in two of academe’s most contentious debates, over trigger warnings and microaggressions. Throughout the nation, instructors are under pressure from students to provide them with trigger warnings ­— advance notice of instructional material that might cause them emotional distress.

Adding their voices to the “Black Lives Matter” movement, dozens of La Salle University students demonstrated for more than an hour on campus Monday, also calling on their own university to do more. “It’s hard to find a place called home,” said Ariana Branford, 21, a senior from Reading and president of the African American Student League on campus.

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.