Print Run: The Daily Pennsylvanian Celebrates 125 Years
Was this any time for the Daily Pennsylvanian’s alumni to be celebrating? The University’s daily newspaper turns 125 this year, so eight decades’ worth of former editors, writers, and graphic artists came to campus for a three-day reunion in October. But some of them spent as much time talking about the nebulous future of journalism as they did about their late-night keyboard-pounding and pizza-scarfing of yore. The question asked throughout the weekend was: Does journalism have any future at all? And if not, what happens to the campus’s most widely read student publication? Read more …
Women’s Studies “Fad” Flourishing at 35
When the University created a women’s studies program in the early 1970s, one prominent Penn professor described the field as “a fad that, without question, would disappear soon,” according to Demie Kurz, a sociology professor and the program’s co-director. “Happily, he could not have been more wrong.” Read more …
M&T Marks a Three-Decade Wharton-Engineering “Marriage”
“Thirty years is a long time for a marriage,” said Wharton Dean Thomas Robertson, greeting alumni of the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology who had come back to campus to celebrate their program’s 30th anniversary in November. It seemed an apt metaphor for the University’s oldest joint-degree program, an interdisciplinary effort commonly known as M&T that links Wharton and Penn Engineering. Robertson credits the schools’ close-knit relationship for giving M&T an edge over competing programs at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Read more …
Multiculturalism is a Moving Target: The Greenfield Intercultural Center Turns 25
There was a time, not so long ago, when the very idea of a campus facility dedicated to minority-student interests was a controversial one. Back in 1978, student demands for a “Third World Center” were an issue at a sit-in at the Franklin building. Six years later, after a grant from the Albert M. Greenfield Foundation and the backing of then-president Sheldon Hackney Hon’93, Penn’s Greenfield Intercultural Center was born. In an age when campuses were roiled by identity politics, the facility was dedicated to advising minority students and supporting their various organizations. Read more …
