5/18
Penn in the News
A round-up of Penn mentions in local, national, and international media.
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Penn In the News
Trump’s Surprise Victory Sends Shock Through Higher Ed
Donald J. Trump’s upset victory in the presidential race early Wednesday morning, after an acrimonious campaign that cast a harsh light on deep racial divisions across the United States, stunned higher-education leaders and left many questioning what his administration would mean for colleges. Mr. Trump’s win represented one of the most surprising results in a presidential election in decades.
Penn In the News
Little-Loved by Scholars, Trump Also Gets Little of Their Cash
It’s no secret that campaign contributions from higher education have favored Democratic candidates for years. When it comes to the current presidential race, however, data show that the gap between left and right has grown from a rift into a chasm.
Penn In the News
Here Are a Few of the Academics Who Will Vote for Donald Trump
In some ways, Amin U. Sarkar’s conservatism makes sense. He’s a professor of economics at Alabama A&M University, where he tries to impress upon his students the importance of free-market trade to a thriving economy. He is against abortion and is the proud father of a United States Air Force veteran.
Penn In the News
Older Scientists Are Touted as Offering Untapped Value
Federal funding agencies have been eager to support younger researchers, reflecting a widespread belief that nurturing the next generation is critical to ensuring the long-term success of the nation’s scientific enterprise. A new analysis out of Northeastern University, however, is challenging the orthodoxy. Looking across a variety of fields, the study found that while a researcher’s productivity generally declines with age, creativity and impact do not.
Penn In the News
Setting the Tone for Inclusion on Campus
Joanne Berger-Sweeney, a neuroscientist, became president of Trinity College in 2014, after serving as dean of Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences. She describes her experience as the first female and first African-American chief executive of the primarily white institution in Hartford, Conn., and explains what the college is doing to make it easier for students of all socioeconomic backgrounds to attend.
Penn In the News
To Prevent Sexual Assault, Do Colleges Target Serial Offenders?
When a University of Wisconsin student was accused last month of assaulting at least a half-dozen women, an idea resurfaced that’s embedded in the popular conception of campus sexual assault — that of the serial predator stalking unsuspecting students. In fact, the literature on repeat sexual offenders at universities is mixed. An oft-cited study from 2002 found that the majority of campus sexual assaults were perpetrated by a small cohort of repeat offenders. But two papers published in 2015 found the situation to be more complicated.
Penn In the News
Feuding Over Sex-assault Scandal Intensifies Spotlight on Baylor
Baylor University has been criticized for months for being slow to divulge details about a spate of sexual assaults that rocked the campus and toppled its leadership. Now, the university is seeking to regain control of its message with a series of moves that are raising eyebrows among alumni and activists. This week, it set up a website, The Truth, in which it has been taking on its critics as part of an effort to increase transparency. The aggressive tone of some of its posts contrasts sharply with what many have described as the university’s previous silence on the scandal.
Penn In the News
Her Students Asked About Police Shootings. So She Created a Guide for Them.
In the fall of 2014, Patricia A. Matthew’s students started asking her why Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, had been shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. Ms. Matthew, an associate professor of English at Montclair State University, in New Jersey, didn’t have the answers. So she did some research: How had racial tensions reached a boiling point in Ferguson?
Penn In the News
Ride-sharing Services and Boundary-blurring Buildings: A Vision of the Future Campus
Once upon a time, campus buildings had clearly delineated missions that rarely overlapped. As Lauren Scranton, a campus-planning expert, puts it: "This is where you sleep. This is where you go to class." That appears to be changing, and technology is often the catalyst. Look no further than what’s happening to college libraries: These days they’re designed to be social hubs as much as book repositories.
Penn In the News
Micro-Barriers Loom Larger for First-Generation Students
By the time J.D. Vance got ready to apply for law school, he’d already survived an abusive and chaotic childhood, made it through Marine Corps boot camp and a deployment to Iraq, and galloped through a bachelor’s degree at Ohio State in less than two years. But as he looked over the application for Stanford law, he found himself stymied by a simple requirement — a signature from his dean. "I didn’t know the dean of my college at Ohio State," Vance writes in his best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. "I’m sure she is a lovely person, and the form was clearly little more than a formality.