For the first time, students at Penn had the chance to learn Kurdish, through a class offered by the Annenberg School for Communication and taught by doctoral student Mohammed Salih (center), a native speaker.
Kurdish is the newest class on the global language roster
A course taught by Annenberg doctoral student Mohammed Salih offered, for the first time at Penn, entrée into the basics of a language spoken by 30 million people worldwide.
A new course taught by PIK Professor Jay Gottfried (standing) has students leading discussions on cognitive neuroscience topics during one session, like the class shown here, then at the next, brings them face to face with people who have those or similar conditions.
Looking beyond the disease to the person living with it
In a new course taught by PIK Professor Jay Gottfried, students lead discussions on cognitive neuroscience topics and then meet patients who have relevant neurologic conditions.
Penn Nursing seniors José Maciel (left) and Antonio Renteria were awarded a 2019 President’s Engagement Prize for their project Cultivando Juntos, a 10-week community-based curriculum aimed at alleviating the social determinants of health for the mushroom farmworkers of Kennett Square.
For Kennett Square’s mushroom farmworkers, healthy interventions come directly to the workplace
With the President’s Engagement Prize, seniors José Maciel and Antonio Renteria plan to bring subjects like nutrition and sleep to the workers, reinforcing preventive screenings already provided by a local, federally qualified health center.
Jay Gottfried is a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and the Arthur H. Rubenstein University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Brain regions linked to memory and emotion help humans navigate smell
The work points to the existence of a grid-like hexagonal structure in olfactory-related brain areas, similar to mapping configurations previously found to support spatial navigation in animals.
A new course taught by James Pawelski of the Positive Psychology Center (standing) not only gives students an intellectual understanding of what it means to be happy and how to pursue it, but also aims to foster long-term change.
In the pursuit of happiness, a new class leads the charge
The course, taught by Positive Psychology’s James Pawelski, not only gives students an intellectual understanding of the subject but asks them to practice what they’re learning.
In this church in Nyamata, in Rwanda, bullet holes cover the ceiling and soiled clothing cover the pews and the floor, all reminders of the genocide that took place in the country 25 years ago. Randall Mason of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design has been working in that country for the past three years to conserve memorials dedicated to remembering the 800,000 people who died and to support Rwandans in their quest to do the same. (Photo: Randall Mason)
Twenty-five years after the Rwandan genocide, memorials remember the 800,000 who died
Penn historic preservation professor Randall Mason has been working with the country’s government since 2016 to protect and conserve such monuments.
Astronaut Scott Kelly on his nearly year-long mission on the International Space Station. (Photo: NASA)
How a year in space affects the brain
Penn Medicine’s Mathias Basner discusses the NASA Twins Study, which analyzed astronaut Scott Kelly’s physical and mental health after he spent 340 days in space, and found that Kelly’s performance on a cognitive test battery dropped when he returned to Earth for six months.
In February, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a non-binding resolution to Congress known as the Green New Deal. It’s unclear how far it will progress, but it is fueling a long-needed conversation about climate change, according to Mark Alan Hughes of Penn’s Kleinman Center.
The Green New Deal: What it says, what it doesn’t say, and how close we are to adopting it
Mark Alan Hughes, director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, discusses the basics of this energy-mobilization proposal.
A handful of people like guide Amittai Weinberger (front, walking backwards) led 18 Penn students, including junior Athena Panton, junior Emma Moore, and sophomore Justin Greenman around Haifa, showing them sights they’d read about or seen film of leading up to the trip. (Photo: Jessica Davis)
Experiencing the literature, architecture, and film of Haifa, up close
During a Penn Global Seminar in March, professor Nili Gold led 18 undergraduates around the coastal Israeli city, exposing them to its people and places and to her childhood home.
