Through
11/26
A round-up of Penn mentions in local, national, and international media.
Penn In the News
The H-1B guest worker visa program has been coming under scrutiny lately. The program is important to colleges both in terms of their ability to hire postdocs and other researchers from abroad and, more indirectly, in providing a pathway for the international students they recruit to work in the U.S. after graduation. Many in higher education see the existence of such pathways as important in making the U.S. an attractive destination for international students, especially since some countries that compete with the U.S.
Penn In the News
Four former University at Albany-SUNY students were charged with hazing this week in connection with an alcohol-related death stemming from a fraternity initiation ritual, the Albany Police Department said on Thursday.
Penn In the News
Educators at Pennsylvania State University are getting some help writing textbooks these days. From robots. Don’t laugh. The venture saved students in faculty member Bart Pursel’s Information, People and Technology class $16,000. Pursel used the new technology, BBookX, to build a textbook, and he distributed it to students for free, the university said in a press release. “Penn State develops new technology to create robot-written textbooks,” so touts the news release. “The system is helping to usher in a new genre of media: the bionic book.”
Penn In the News
Federal education officials have launched an investigation into how the University of Mary Washington handled threats made against feminist students on the messaging app Yik Yak. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is probing whether the university administration subjected students to a hostile environment by failing to properly respond to sexual harassment on social media, according to a letter provided Wednesday by an attorney for the students.
Penn In the News
James Alwine and Erle Robertson of the Perelman School of Medicine discuss their research that identified an association between microbial signatures and triple negative breast cancer.
Penn In the News
Williams College students invited Suzanne Venker, a writer and longtime critic of feminism, to speak Tuesday night, but changed their minds and took back the invite for her talk, "One Step Forward, Ten Steps Back: Why Feminism Fails." Venker had been invited to participate in a student-run, alumni-funded speaking series at Williams called "Uncomfortable Learning." The program’s purpose is to expose students to controversial voices and opinions they might not otherwise hear. Many of the speakers tend to be conservative or people whose views don't square with those of most students.
Penn In the News
Michael Perlis of the Perelman School of Medicine is quoted about CBT-I, cognitive behavioral therapy specifically for insomnia.
Penn In the News
Some students at American University got so fed up with the racist comments they were reading on social media that they decided to spread them. They launched an online campaign, #TheRealAU, to blast out the racism they see, in hopes it will make it more difficult to ignore. They have been posting and sharing screenshots of slurs. They plastered them on the school’s front gates. And they are demanding that the administration do something. “It has been getting worse,” said Daniel Marks, a senior from Atlanta.
Penn In the News
Karla Cabrera, a 29-year-old lawyer in Mexico City, was excited when she came across “Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought,” an online course about the Chinese revolutionary leader. She has a passion for Chinese history, and she hoped the class would shed light on the brutal political battles that took place under Mao’s rule. But when Ms. Cabrera began watching the lectures on edX, a popular online education platform owned and administered by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she was disappointed. Each class opened with a patriotic video montage.
Penn In the News
Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School talks about how the cost of college and its sticker price.