TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2015
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
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SWAB TEAM A biology lab is hunting campus for microbes SYDNEY SCHAEDEL Staff Reporter
Ever wondered what kinds of microbes grow on the Ben Franklin bench? Introductory Biology students are set to find out. Five different labs in Introductory Biology courses have been replaced with a metagenomics “module,” divided into five parts. After swabbing different locations around campus and taking soil samples, students will identify their samples from the DNA they extracted. “The landscape in higher education is changing quite a bit to be more student inquirydriven, and to bring authentic research into the classroom,” lab
coordinator Karen Hogan said of the new lab program. With students able to take samples from practically anywhere on campus, they are finding out real information about their environment, which has a direct impact on their health. The only places students couldn’t swab were on non-University private property and at dining halls. Lab coordinators were worried about students “finding pathogenic organisms” in the dining halls, lab coordinator Linda Robinson said, so they decided to keep them off-limits. Exposing students to potentially harmful bacteria was a risk in general, and Robinson emphasized that at no point would students be culturing live bacteria. They froze SEE BIOLOGY PAGE 3
MARCUS KATZ | SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
A Mac-loving campus: 70 percent of students use Mac
Students flock to stat majors as demand increases
Some of Penn’s majors rely on operating systems that are Mac or PC specific
Stat majors up 300 percent since the 1990s
HANNAH NOYES Staff Reporter
SYDNEY SCHAEDEL Staff Reporter
Most incoming freshmen are faced with the ever-important question: Mac or PC? In study rooms and classrooms alike, Penn seems to be an Apple-dominated campus. Spotting a single PC in a sea of glowing Apple laptops is a common occurrence. Data confirms that Penn buys into the Apple cult. “Our student population has leaned Mac over the last few years and that continued this fall,” Client Technologies Lead John Mulhern III said. “Though we have no way of knowing if a system that logs onto our networks is student, faculty or staff, we are comfortable with saying that our overall student population is approximately 70 percent Mac.” Mulhern explained that professional schools often have a significantly higher percentage of PCs, especially in master’s and doctorate programs. The divide isn’t quite as clear among Penn’s different undergraduate schools, he added. “Some schools have courses of study that are still at least somewhat operating systemspecific,” he said. Nursing junior Rebekah Lynn Weber uses
Statistically speaking, statistics majors are pretty likely to find a job. According to a study released by the American Statistical Association, numbers of statistics majors have been increasing at colleges and universities across the country over the past decade, but still aren’t meeting industry demand. The number of undergraduates
COURTESY OF CREATIVE COMMONS
As the value of statistics skills increases, more students choose to enroll in stat classes and pursue a stat major.
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… our high expectations for ourselves mean that we have narrow definitions of success.”
majoring in statistics has risen for 15 consecutive years, increasing by more than 300 percent since the 1990s, according to the report. Meanwhile, total employment for statisticians has risen from 28,000 positions in 2010 to 85,000 in 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “There’s a growing appreciation in industry and outside of academia for what value statistics training can bring,” Wharton statistics professor Larry Brown said. Though the statistics department SEE STATISTICS PAGE 10
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