Hard Questions, Uneasy Answers
Reflecting on his recent experience in Kurdistan, Brendan O'Leary, a leading scholar of ethnopolitical conflict, ponders Iraq’s future.
Growing Movement
At the Charlestown Cooperative Farm, alumna Aimee Kocis is helping preserve valuable farmland from development while keeping 105 area families well supplied with a variety of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables.
Writing For Her Life
Stephanie Williams C’92 was determined to fulfill her ambition to write and publish a novel before cancer killed her. With some help from her friends, she succeeded.
The Global Garden
Penn’s Morris Arboretum owes much of its botanical diversity to the work of plant hunters, whose pursuits (fortunately) are a little less dangerous today than they were a century ago.
A Dark Task
The chaplain asked if I was the lieutenant who had killed a man the day before. I told him I was.
Alumni Weekend 2004
Slideshow
Saving Bentley
Penn’s veterinary hospital not only offers treatments that can prolong quality of life when a pet gets cancer, but also conducts research that sheds light on the disease in humans.
Freak Love
James Mundie has crafted a portrait gallery of “Anomalous Humans” that forces us to confront some uncomfortable truths about the Other and Ourselves.
The Rodin Years
A look back at an extraordinary decade for Penn, and the President who led the way.
Who’s Who on the Savannah
Studying the social knowledge of a troop of baboons in Botswana, Penn researchers Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth gain insights into monkey cognition—and our own.
Creating Space
Architects Peter Shelton and Lee Mindel design interiors that are as striking as they are “eminently livable.”
Dentist of the Purple Sage
Before Zane Grey began creating legends of the American West, he was a hard-throwing Penn dental student named Pearl.
Full Circle
University Museum Director Jeremy Sabloff found his life’s path through an undergraduate anthropology course at Penn. Now, after an extraordinarily productive decade at the museum’s helm, he is ready to head back to the classroom.
Sarah Kagan’s “Genius Idea”
The 2004 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and nursing professor calls on clinicians to listen to patients“talk about what hurts, where the itch is, how tired they are, what they’ve done about it, and how illness has changed the way they live.”
Who’s Minding the Brain?
As our ability to peek inside the brain—and to alter it—expands, the field of neuroethics is beginning to emerge (with the help of a few Penn Scholars) to study the implication for society and the individual.
Homecoming 2003
Homecoming 2003
The University as Discourse Community
In this essay from the book, Public Discourse in America, Penn’s president lays out a vision of universities as “exemplars of a new kind of thoughtful civic engagement and robust public discourse.”
A Passion for Putting Things Together
Design alumni Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, the architects for the new Melvin J. and Claire Levine Hall on Penn's campus, are on a mission to "refabricate" their profession.
The Cult of DMD
The view from inside Penn’s digital-media-design major: “We are an annoying, fidgety, break-things-and-fix-it cult—who make horrible noises.” Others might say that the program attracts some of Penn’s brightest, most dedicated, and most creative students.
Nurturing Enterprise
In its first five years—which, as it happens, is longer than most small-business startups survive—the Wharton Business Plan Competition has given hundreds of would-be entrepreneurs the chance to “test their ideas against the reality of the market.”
The Most Amazing Cell
The greenish glow in the petri dish—a marker for the presence of germ cells—showed that veterinary-school researchers had succeeded in a decade-long quest to get male-mouse stem cells to develop into eggs.
First Fictions
First time novelists Robert Cort, Caren Lissner, and Lisa Tucker talk about themselves and their writing, accompanied by excerpts from their work.
A Matter of Trust
Dr. Ira Harkavy saw long ago that the futures of Penn and West Philadelphia are connected. As director of the Center for Community Partnerships, he's led a persuasive campaign to link teaching and research to service and problem solving.
Art for Art’s Day
“Communication, coordination, and collaboration,” were the watchwords as the volunteer leaders of the University’s artistic and cultural organizations gathered to eat, talk, and, of course, look.