Campus & Community

To expand Penn's multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural approach to teaching and learning about the region, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures in the School of Arts and Sciences was renamed the Department of Russian and East European Studies, or REES, before the start of the 2017-18 academic year.

Born in the Dominican Republic, but raised in the Bronx, N.Y., Rhina Duquela recently began her second year as house dean of Du Bois College House. Duquela came to Penn from Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pa., where she was an assistant director for residence life and student conduct. She also worked in student and residential life at her alma mater, SUNY Buffalo State, where she was a resident director in charge of running an entire residence hall.

While an undergraduate student at Duke, MaryFrances McCourt thought she had life all figured out. Studying economics, she expected to enroll in the 3-2 MBA program and pursue international business upon graduating. At around 30, she’d get married, and maybe have her first child at 35. But like most peoples’ 10 year plans, McCourt’s took a turn, and she never looked back.

In 1883, Philadelphia native William Adger became the first African-American graduate of the College at Penn. The son of a former slave from South Carolina, Adger was the second-youngest child—and one of 13 children—in his family.

Across the city and the nation, now is the time of year that many teachers open their wallets to personally pay for classroom supplies that dwindling school budgets may not provide. And many families find themselves confronted with lengthy checklists of supplies that can be costly, sometimes prohibitively so.

It’s not every day that college students are given the opportunity to contribute to their local community simply by playing with LEGOs.

Freedom of speech is a hallmark of American democracy. The authors of the Bill of Rights deemed it so essential to self-rule that it is the second right mentioned, after freedom of religion.

Dear Benny,I wanted to look up some information in newspaper archives, but can’t access everything I need on different publication websites. My colleague told me that the Penn Libraries can help me out with information. Is this true? If so, how do I search the archives of the Inquirer and New York Times?--Looking to the past

When Hurricane Harvey was bearing down on the Texas coast, few people were caught off guard. Weather models predicted when and roughly where the storm would make landfall and officials, including Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, asked people ahead of the storm to “hunker down” and prepare.Experts, too, knew Harvey was coming. And they knew the results would likely be bad.