Volume 109, No. 6
Features
Getting Engaged
The Civic Scholars program, which fuses civic engagement with academic courses and projects, is shaping some remarkable, passionate students who are already having an impact on the communities they serve.
By Samuel Hughes
Surprises Are Always the Best
Like her four previous books, Jennifer Egan C’85’s A Visit from the Goon Squad received generally stellar reviews. But it didn’t look like this resistant-to-summary novel-in-stories would catch on with the public—that is, until she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
By Sean Whiteman
The Park of a Thousand Pieces
Penn Praxis has a plan for adding 500 acres of open green space to Philadelphia in the next four years. Their approach, informed by novel research by Penn scholars in areas ranging from real-estate economics to criminology, is a new way of imagining urban parkland.
By Trey Popp
Cup O’Doodles
Artist Gwyneth Leech C’81 started drawing on used paper cups as a distraction when she got “antsy,” but “then it began to really take over.” A few hundred cups later, she spent six weeks doing the same thing while sitting in a window in New York’s Fashion District in an exhibit called Hypergraphia.
Q&A by Molly Petrilla
Alumni Weekend 2011
Our annual photo essay. Plus: Reports from three alumni panels focusing on global health, the economy, and reality TV.
Departments
First Person: Essays
Notes from the Undergrad “Is that a gun?”
Alumni Voices Falling into doctoring
Elsewhere Dividing line
Expert Opinion Passion may not lead to profit
Gazetteer: News & Sports
Denzel to Class of 2011: “Fall forward”
Perelmans give $225 million to the School of Medicine
Collapse author: “Take environmental problems seriously”
$15 million anonymous gift to renovate ARCH
Older scholars, new ideas
Penn Reading Project choice Reality is Broken launches Year of Games
Truman Scholar Corey Metzman
Tracking the rise of the contractor in national security
Wharton Business Plan-winner Stylitics makes dressing digital
All-Americans Maalik Reynolds and Leslie Kovach
Scoreboard
Arts
TELEVISION A high-tech look at the fossil record. Jurassic CSI
INTERVIEW Checking in with John Legend C’99
ART Artist and cosmetic-surgeon Eric Finzi C’77
BOOKS Canon fodder. Grand Strategies
Alumni Profiles
Michael Lovitz C’86 is a copyright-lawyer for superheroes
Kathleen Fields GNu’87 teaches kids farm-work, and more
Curtis Macnguyen W’90’s life “has been beyond my imagination”
Marjorie Margolies CW’63 is at home in the world
Jessica Bohrer C’98 and Becca Richards C’99 make jewelry like Grandma’s
Events
Notes
Obituaries