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Social Sciences

Celebrating Penn GSE’s pilot elementary math tutoring elective
An elementary school student doing math on a white board.

Image: iStock/Ridofranz

Celebrating Penn GSE’s pilot elementary math tutoring elective

The academically based community service elective is supported by Penn’s Netter Center, with the aim to redefine traditional tutoring by designing its curriculum and approach.

From Penn GSE

The Immigration Act of 1924
A group of Chinese and Japanese women and children waiting to be processed, held in a wire mesh enclosure. Benches line either sides of the room, with a stool in the middle.

A group of Chinese and Japanese women and children waiting to be processed, held in a wire mesh enclosure at the Angel Island Internment barracks in San Francisco Bay. The Angel Island Immigration Station processed one million immigrants from 1910 to 1940, mostly from China and Japan.

(Image: AP Photo/File)

The Immigration Act of 1924

A century after a federal law established a national quota system on immigration, legal historian Hardeep Dhillon explains the significance and legacy of the Immigration Act of 1924.

Kristina García

Teaching climate change communication, from the classroom to a conference of journalists
Michael Mann at a podium and Kathleen Hall Jameson beside him teaching a course at Penn.

The class included writing a letter to the editor, op-ed, and fact-check. “We threw a lot at them, we’re asking a lot of them, but I feel like they’re rising to the occasion,” Mann said.

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Teaching climate change communication, from the classroom to a conference of journalists

Michael Mann and Kathleen Hall Jamieson are co-teaching the Climate Change and Communication course this spring, tied to the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference, held this year at Penn.
Teaching doglike robots to walk on the moon’s dusty, icy surface
Close-up of NASA's LASSIE robot, logo in frame.

Penn researchers are part of a collaborative multidisciplinary effort that’s preparing doglike robots to traverse extraterrestrial landscapes, like those that are analogous to the moon’s surface.

(Image: Courtesy of Sean Grasso)

Teaching doglike robots to walk on the moon’s dusty, icy surface

Researchers from Penn are part of a NASA-funded multidisciplinary collaborative effort that’s teaching robots to navigate the extraterrestrial craters, like the moon and Mars.
The stories of a war-scarred Colombian rainforest
The Colombian rainforest.

Aerial view of the torrential rivers of the Andean-Amazonian foothills of Putumayo.

(Image: Daniel Mendieta Giraldo)

The stories of a war-scarred Colombian rainforest

Through her research, Kristina Lyons, associate professor of anthropology, is relaying the tales of the land’s suffering, as well as its enduring practical and spiritual importance to its residents.

Blake Cole

Immigration policy and the 2024 presidential election
A group of migrants along the Mexico-California border show their identification to U.S. Border Patrol agents, with brown mountains in the background and the sun about to rise, giving a spot of light in an overcast sky.

U.S. Border Patrol agents with migrants seeking asylum, mainly from Colombia, China, and Ecuador, in a makeshift, mountainous campsite after crossing the border between Mexico and the United States on Feb. 2, 2024, near Jacumba, California. 

(Image: AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Immigration policy and the 2024 presidential election

An April 2 symposium will bring together policy analysts, immigration scholars, and representatives of nonprofit advocacy organizations to discuss immigration policies and their impact.

Kristen de Groot

The soils beneath the solar fields
Hannah Win takes soil samples at a solar site.

To take soil samples at the solar site, Hannah Winn wields a bulb planter and mixes samples from across locations, looking at variables such that reflect the biological, chemical, and physical properties of the soil.

(Image: Courtesy of AES)

The soils beneath the solar fields

How do solar farms impact soil health? It’s a question that master’s student Hannah Winn is exploring at the central Pennsylvania site where solar energy production is helping Penn progress toward carbon neutrality.

Katherine Unger Baillie

‘Are Civil Rights Enough?’
Dorothy Roberts speaks at a podium. The wooden podium has the words "University of Pennsylvania" and its seal.

PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts addresses the audience at the  23rd annual Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture in Social Justice.

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‘Are Civil Rights Enough?’

During the 23rd annual Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture in Social Justice, PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts addressed the question “Are Civil Rights Enough?”

Kristina García

Thabo Lenneiye on PennPraxis, global outreach, and cross-discipline collaboration
Thabo Lenneiye on Penn’s campus.

Managing director of PennPraxis Thabo Lenneiye.

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Thabo Lenneiye on PennPraxis, global outreach, and cross-discipline collaboration

The new managing director of The Weitzman School’s PennPraxis is a Penn alum who has worked for years on complex mixed-use development and urban planning projects and spearheading DEI initiatives.

From the Weitzman School of Design

Guy Grossman offers a model for refugee hosting
Guy Grossman.

Guy Grossman, political science professor in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences.

(Image: Courtesy of OMNIA)

Guy Grossman offers a model for refugee hosting

The political science professor investigates the effects of Uganda’s refugee-hosting reforms on preventing public backlash.

From Omnia