School of Arts & Sciences

A colorful artist's rendering of a river with people fishing with a barge in the background and a drawing of an old map on the horizon

A sense of place on shifting shores

Roderick Coover, whose work merges cinema, science, and history, is the 2019 Mellon Artist-in-Residence for the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH). His recent film “Toxi-City: A Climate Change Narrative” screened at PPEH’s “Teaching and Learning with Rising Waters” event.

Two people walking on a brick path, talking, in a courtyard surrounding by green bushes and a tree.

Training physician-scholars to see patients as people, not categories

The anthropology M.D.-Ph.D. program, recently graduating its first two students, combines clinical and ethnographic skills aimed at working with and caring for society’s marginalized.

A student crouches in front of several aquariums full of water and collects a sample, surrounded by a park setting.

Putting mussels to the test

With a mussel hatchery in the future for the Schuylkill River, students in Byron Sherwood’s field biology course used scientific rigor to ask how effectively these filter feeders might render the water clean.

Student playing the cello in front of class and professors and another student playing the piano.

Musical merger of academics and performance

Music 236 emerges students in focused study on one classical composer through academics and musical performance with the Daedalus Quartet.

Jennifer Egan stands in front of classroom holding papers in hand.

Studying novels with novelist Jennifer Egan

Pulitzer-Prize winning author Jennifer Egan returns to her alma mater to teach a course on English literature.

a person sitting on a stack of open magazines and newspapers working on a laptop

A course that showcases the prevalence, and power, of math

The Mathematics in the Media course helps students understand how to use fundamental mathematical approaches to solve real-world problems in a data-driven world.

Trading cards with the word Pokemon and the game's red and white ball symbol on a blue background.

Pokémon activates a unique part of the brain, offering insights into its structure

In a study of adults who played the game extensively as children, Penn and Stanford researchers discovered that a particular area of the visual cortex lights up when players view characters from the original version.

The Sachs Program announces 2019 grants, marks one-year anniversary

A year and 23 grant projects later, The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation is phasing into round two of its annual grant awards throughout eight categories that support the teaching, making, and presenting art.

Latin American and Latino Studies celebrates 30 years of growth, plans for the future

What began as a handful of faculty and students has matured into a program offering a major and minor, grants, and a local and international community hub.

Three people sitting at a small, round table outside, with greenery in the background.

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.

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