THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2016
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
EARTH DAY’S A Rhodes Scholar and a rower
HOW PENN HELPED CREATE THE FIRST EARTH DAY
Senior Jenna Hebert embodies what it means to be a student-athlete ANDREW ZHENG Sports Reporter
BY SHOBA BABU
A four-year rower in the Varsity 8, a twotime CRCA National Scholar Athlete, a two-time first-team CRCA All-Region and a 2016 Rhodes Scholar all sit in the same boat. With a lineup stacked with such talent and determination, it’s easy to see why Penn is in the midst of a spell of success. Last week’s win over Cornell to claim the Class of ‘89 Plaque — Penn’s first in over eight years — showed that this is not your typical Red and Blue crew. For the first time in a long time, Penn seems to be in position to challenge its fellow Ivy opponents for an NCAA berth. A large part of this newfound spirit can be attributed to star senior and 2016 Rhodes Scholar Jenna Hebert. Now, you might ask, “what about the other three factors, the other three rowers whose accolades were listed above?”
P e n n’s campus brims with environmentallyfriendly efforts like reusable food containers at 1920 Commons, bike share programs and recycling bins near trash cans. But 46 years ago, this kind of awareness and access to resources was only a dream. This dream began turning into a reality on April 22, 1970, when members of the Penn community banded together to create the first ever Earth Day.
Earth Day was inspired by a 1969 speech by Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson, highlighting the consequences of depleting natural resources. The speech came at a time when environmental issues were on people’s minds — soon after the publication of Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” and the massive 1969 fire on Cuyahoga River. Nelson invited the entire nation to partake in Earth Day celebrations, which led
to a grassroots movement among hundreds of thousands of people who gathered in cities across the country to show support for the environment. In Philadelphia, a group of mostly Penn students and faculty, including late landscape architecture and urban planning professor Ian McHarg and retired earth science professor Robert Geigengack, led efforts for the Philadelphia region’s first Earth Day events.
Teaming up with leaders, activists and planners from the city and local universities, they hosted an entire week of programming, starting on April 16, that culminated in the first ever Earth Day on April 22. According to Ian McHarding’s autobiography at the first Earth Day rally, an estimated crowd of 30,000 people came to Fairmount Park in Philadelphia to hear the city’s keynote speaker Sen. Edmund Muskie SEE EARTH DAY PAGE 3
SEE RHODES PAGE 10
First President’s Innovation Prize winners named Winners get $100,000 for commercial ventures SYDNEY SCHAEDEL Deputy News Editor
DP FILE PHOTO
Engineering seniors Sade Oba , Alfredo Muniz , William Duckworth and Wharton senior Aaron Goldstein are the inaugural President’s Innovation Prize recipients, President A my Gutma nn a nnounced Tuesday. The President’s Innovation Prize is similar to the President’s Engagement Prize in that seniors are eligible to submit projects, but the Innovation Prize accepts submissions that are commercial
ventures, rather than projects based solely based in community engagement. Oba and Muniz received the award for a project called XEED. XEED is a network of wearable devices that tracks the movement of limbs and transmits that information to a smartphone. The project is designed to help patients who suffer from Parkinson’s disease and their families to keep tabs on their well being. Duckworth and Goldstein also won the prize for a healthcare related project, called Fever Smart. Fever Smart is a device that monitors core body temperature over time and sends the information to
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a cloud system, which then allows the patient and doctors to monitor the patient’s body temperature over time. Gutmann said that while she initially planned to only pick one project, she couldn’t decide between the two winners. “I was hoping, planning and expecting to pick one,” she said, but added, “There was no way of choosing between them.” A lt houg h bot h of t he winning projects are healthrelated, Gutmann stressed that it wasn’t a commonality among the 21 projects that were submitted. “They just came to the top out of a very broad group
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which ranged quite widely,” she said. The 21 Innovation Prize projects that were in the running exceeds the number of Engagement Prize applications this year, at 18, even though the Engagement Prize is in its second year and this is only the first for the Innovation Prize. Each of the President’s Innovation Prize teams will receive $100,000 to implement their projects and a $50,000 living stipend per team member, the same dollar amount as the Engagement Prize. The winners will also receive dedicated workspace in the Pennovation Center and mentorship from the Penn Center for Innovation.
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