Penn in the News

David Yaden of the School of Arts & Sciences comments on being the lead author of a study, “The Overview Effect: Awe and Self-transcendent Experience in Space Flight.”

Samuel Freeman of the School of Arts & Sciences reviews Roger Scruton’s book Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left.

Momentum for passing a national free community college program may have slowed, but businesses and private donors are picking up the slack. While state movements to increase access to college in several localities, such as in Tennessee, have generated headlines across the country, many locally based “promise” scholarship programs are funded by private dollars and donations. At the Kalamazoo, Mich.-based W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, Michelle Miller-Adams estimates there are about 80 local, place-based scholarship or promise-type programs across the country.

Penn’s newly completed Stephen A. Levin building which will house the psychology, biology and behavioral sciences departments is profiled.

As the threat of MOOCs and for-profit education fades, so too does the sense of urgency that drives innovation. Yet anyone who thinks that a decade from now higher education will look much as it does today is sadly mistaken. A host of trends are already well underway that spell the end of one era and the beginning of another:

Collaborative research about diversity and bachelor’s degree awardees from the Graduate School of Education’s Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy is cited.

John Wherry of the Perelman School of Medicine comments on research that investigates whether sterile laboratory mice are good models for the human immune system.

Eighty leading colleges announced in September that they were creating a new basic application, which they in turn would customize, moving them away from reliance on the Common Application. At the time, members of the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success said the new application would be released this summer, and coalition leaders acknowledged the possibility that not all members of the coalition would use it the first year out.

Joyce White of the Penn Museum is interviewed about the Ban Chiang Project.

Michel Guillot of the School of Arts & Sciences says that the reports of the life expectancy of white women decreasing in America is more troublesome when put into a global context.