4 5 6 8 12 13 14 15 16-19 10 Five fun classes to take in spring 2025
14 Penn Global Seminars for spring 2025 to include new travel sites in Brazil, Bulgaria, Malawi
Penn quietly discontinues Bio-Dental program, sparking confusion over student statuses
Inside Penn’s largely unknown process of assigning sector tags to College courses
James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies celebrates opening with ribbon cutting ceremony
Penn History Department launches political history concentration for undergraduate majors
Penn establishes Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy with $10 million in funding
Penn's Biology Department removes concentrations, prompting mixed reactions from students Opinion Section Top rated courses and professors
Cover design by Devin Khemalaap
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Oct. 28 - Nov. 11 Jan. 28 March 21 March 31 Feb. 24
Advance Registration for Spring 2025 Term Course Selection Period ends
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From Percy Jackson to college presidents, five fun classes to take in spring 2025
With advance course registration around the corner, you might be looking for one last class that won't put you to sleep. The Daily Pennsylvanian spoke with five professors who are teaching new or interesting courses in spring 2025, exploring topics that range from city soundscapes to "Percy Jackson."
1. CIMS 2000: Virtual Reality Lab
This class, taught by Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Professor in the Humanities Peter Decherney, gives students the opportunity to learn about the history of virtual reality and develop their own VR projects. Every year, the class partners with a different organization to create a project that relates to the organization's work.
In previous years, the course has partnered with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the oncology department of a local hospital. This year, students in the course will team up with a local radio station that features artists in Friday afternoon live concerts. Students’ projects will help tell the story of these musicians’ journeys.
“VR is a new way to tell stories,” Decherney said. “What’s really exciting is that as we’re telling the stories, we’re also making up the language of VR. At any point we could discover something new.”
The class meets from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays, and is open to upperclassmen, regardless of their experience level.
2. ANTH 1530: Gifts, Commodities, and the Market: The Anthropology of the Economy
While Penn students have a variety of course offerings related to economics, this course is an option for students looking for a more qualitative approach to the field.
Visiting assistant professor and Penn anthropology
Ph.D. Kevin Burke teaches the class, which looks at the diversity of economic systems across time and space. Students will study markets around the world and discuss different types of currencies, from shells to cryptocurrency.
To help contextualize the course, which is held on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, Burke said that he has included field trips within the scope of the class.
“The field trips are meant to demonstrate the importance of going places as an anthropologist,” Burke said. “I hope the trips will ground these broader, more abstract discussions of the economy.”
3. URBS 4290: Listening to the City: Soundscapes, Music, and Place
This new class, which has space for ten students, is an exploration into what can be learned from a place’s soundscape.
In addition to readings and discussions, the class will include fieldwork in Philadelphia and incorporate students' lived experiences. Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow Stanley Collins, who teaches the class, said that one of the first projects
ISHANI MODI Contributing Reporter
is for students to bring in a sound that they feel represents their origins.
“One student from Ala. brought in the sound of field bumps, while another from N.J. brought in the sound of trains,” Collins said. “My favorite part is learning about and incorporating these lived experiences into the class.”
4. CLST 0021: Percy Jackson and Friends: Ancient Greece and Rome in Children's and Young Adult Culture
Whether you fell in love with "Percy Jackson" through its original books or through last year's show, taking this course might be the perfect way to learn more about mythology.
The classics class, taught by Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek Sheila Murnaghan, looks at how mythological stories have been presented
in children and young adult literature. Other aspects of the class include studying the importance of illustrations in the retelling of myths as well as looking at how darker or historical themes have been reworked in modern renditions.
“My favorite part of the class is the last third, where students present about any piece of literature or work in some medium that explores the classical world,” Murnaghan said.
For those interested in leaving behind textbook readings for legends and myths, the class will run on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.
5. EDUC 5981: The College and University Presidency
This course offers an in-depth focus into the understanding the role and responsibilities of a
university president. The class is taught by Julie Wollman, an associate dean and professor of practice in the Graduate School of Education, who previously served as president of two universities.
“I hope that students take away a better understanding of how higher education institutions work,” Wollman said, “I don’t think people understand the breadth of our institutions and the different expectations and responsibilities presidents have to deliver.”
The class is being taught within GSE, but undergraduate students will be able to enroll with permission.
PHOTO BY CHENYAO LIU
14 Penn Global Seminars for spring 2025 to include new travel sites in Brazil, Bulgaria, Malawi
PHOEBE ANAGNOS Contributing Reporter
Penn Abroad will offer 14 Penn Global Seminar courses for the spring 2025 term, featuring new program sites including Brazil, Bulgaria, and Malawi.
Penn Global Seminars are semester-long courses that combine classroom learning on campus with short-term international travel experiences, typically during spring break or at the end of the semester.
The PGS courses offered for the spring semester will take students across five continents and cover a variety of disciplines, from international relations to sustainability to cultural studies.
One of the new offerings, "Global Aging — Challenges and Opportuni-
ties," taught by sociology professor Iliana Kohler, will travel to Malawi. The course explores the global phenomenon of population aging as a a demographic, social, and economic challenge. Students will explore how aging impacts countries in different ways, with a special focus on the distinct challenges faced by middle- and low-income nations, such as when rapid population growth and aging intersect.
“Students will have the opportunity to really hear and learn how researchers in Malawi and Sub-Saharan Africa think about global aging, what they see as challenges and opportunities from their context,” Kohler said.
For those interested in language and cultural studies, "Perspectives in AfroLuso-Brazilian Culture," taught by lecturers Mercia Flannery and Carlos Pio and offered in both Portuguese and English, will travel to Minas Gerais, Brazil. The course will delve into the history and influence of Portuguese colonization, Afro-Brazilian culture, and the ongoing conversations around race, language, and art in Brazil and other Lusophone countries, including former Portuguese colonies in Africa.
“The course provides the students with a broader understanding of what happened in Brazil and in other countries that received Portuguese influence,”
Flannery said.
Another new course, "European Foreign and Security Policy in Times of Crisis," led by International Relations professor Valeriya Kamenova, will travel to Bulgaria. The course provides a comprehensive examination of Europe's evolving foreign and security policies, particularly in light of current issues such as the RussoUkrainian war, migration, cybersecurity issues, and climate change. Moreover, the course will review the processes behind the European Union’s response to international challenges, including peacekeeping missions, migrant coordination mechanisms, EU-NATO relations, and more.
In addition to the new programs, other Penn Global Seminars for spring 2025 will travel to destinations including Egypt, Japan, the Netherlands, India, Mexico, and more. Returning classes from previous years include "Cairo as Palimpsest," "Mongolian Civilization: Nomadic and Sedentary," and "People of the Land: Indigeneity and Politics in Argentina and Chile."
Financial aid may be applied to the flat $950 program fee, and applications for the spring 2025 PGS will be open during advance registration from Oct. 28 through Nov. 11.
PHOTO BY ZOE MACKEY
Penn quietly discontinues Bio-Dental program, sparking confusion over student statuses
Three students who spoke with the DP described feeling confusion and concern over whether current students in the program were still provided their conditional acceptance into the Dental School.
JESSICA WU Senior Reporter
The University has discontinued its seven-year Bio-Dental submatriculation program and will not be accepting a new class this admission cycle — but the program's director and a School of Dental Medicine administrator disagreed on whether current students are still able to submatriculate into the Dental School.
The accelerated dental program was a joint program in which students in the College of Arts and Sciences received conditional
acceptance to the Dental School upon admission to the University. Students spent their first three years as undergraduate students in the College before applying to the Dental School after their junior year.
The accelerated BioDental program reduced the tuition and time it took for students to receive both a bachelor's degree and a dental medicine degree from eight years to seven years. Students were also able to skip the dental
school interview process, gaining full admission to the Dental School based on their academic performance while in the College — an application process which one student described to the DP as a "formality."
The program's discontinuation means that the University will no longer admit first-year students into it. However, current students who spoke with The Daily Pennsylvanian expressed concern and confusion due to a lack of clear
communication about the status of students already in the program.
The University's BioDental program did not have a group of faculty members or staff leading the program. In contrast, other dual degree programs such as the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management and the Jerome Fisher Program in Management Technology are led by a variety of faculty and staff, with positions including
program coordinators and administrative directors.
The first faculty point of contact for students in the program was their adviser in the College Office, Assistant Dean for Advising of the College Srilata Gangulee. While Gangulee created the program and said that she "directed" it, she told the DP that she did not officially hold the title of program director.
The DP spoke with three students in the Bio-Dental program, all of whom
PHOTO BY ABHIRAM JUVVADI
referred to Gangulee as a pre-major adviser or a general biology adviser and did not know that she directed the program. The three students stated that — while Gangulee helped advise them on their biology courses — she often provided inconsistent information and did not have up-to-date knowledge about the Bio-Dental program's requirements, leading to a heavy reliance on students' peer advisers.
College junior Jaxson Nield, however, said that while most people in the program were assigned to the same Bio-Dental peer adviser, he — along with two other students — was assigned to a different peer adviser who was not a member of the program.
Gangulee, in an interview with the DP, spoke in vague terms about the status of the students currently in the program and slightly contradicted herself on multiple occasions, even when pushed for clarification. She said that the submatriculation option into the Dental School had been completely discontinued, even for students who are already in the program and have received conditional acceptance.
"The Dental School submatriculation program is gone even for the current juniors or seniors," Gangulee said.
However, current students were told by Mark Mitchell, the Dental School's assistant dean of admissions, that they would not be impacted by the discontinuation.
When asked for further elaboration on the status of current students, Gangulee said, “We are in a fuzzy position right now. It’s
neither continued nor discontinued."
College juniors Ved Pimple and Shreya Sharma both said that they, along with their peers, found out the program had been discontinued after seeing a change to the program website reading “The Bio-Dental Program is no longer accepting new applications.” They said that they also noticed that the website began referring to the program in the past tense.
As the three students did not receive any communication about the program's discontinuation, they described feeling confused and concerned over whether current students in the program were still provided their conditional acceptance into the Dental School.
Pimple said this confusion was resolved after a student emailed Mitchell for clarification. In the June 20 email exchange, obtained by the DP, Mitchell wrote that — while the program was no longer accepting applications from individuals in high school — "Those of you currently enrolled in the program are not affected."
In response to a request for comment, John H. and Margaret B. Fassitt Professor and Undergraduate Chair of the Biology Department Scott Poethig said that he did not have any information about the program and directed the DP to Paul Schmidt, the previous undergraduate chair of the department, who is currently on sabbatical. Schmidt directed the DP to the College Office, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Mitchell and Dental School Director of Admissions Brian Hahn also did
not respond to requests for comment.
Gangulee said that, while current Bio-Dental students are still allowed to take eight courses in the Dental School during their senior year at Penn, they will not officially be a student at Penn Dental — contradicting the information that Mitchell told students in the program. She said that if current students have taken all 36 credits required for graduation by the end of their junior year, then they can be admitted into the Dental School for their fourth year — positing that, because of this, the discontinuation of the program for current students doesn’t technically change anything.
Gangulee also said that she first learned of the University's intention to discontinue the program three years ago, and was not provided a reason for the discontinuation — but said that she "imagine[s] it's about money," stating that a portion of the tuition which Bio-Dental students paid for their first year of dental school would go toward the College.
She added that while the Bio-Dental students “were very good academically,” the Dental School wanted to bring in "students from other places" outside of the College.
“It’s probably a good idea for our college students to finish off their college degree here,” Gangulee said. “It was a good program, but I think that they missed out on their senior year in the College. I did not quite care for that, because you are in the College only once in your life. You don’t get to repeat being 19 or 20 years old.”
The three students all shared discontent with the absence of a dedicated faculty adviser for the program, as most students were not aware that Gangulee acted as its director.
“If we could have had a faculty member that knew the Bio-Dental program in and out, that would have been phenomenal — someone who could have been a liaison between the College of Arts and Sciences and the Penn Dental program,” Pimple said.
Sharma added that there is, in his opinion, a “very big disconnect from the dental school to the undergraduate school.”
“I would have expected at least having an adviser emailing us maybe on a monthly or bimonthly basis saying, ‘Hey, these are the requirements. This is what you need to do.’ It felt very much like a solo journey with not a lot of help from the administration,” Sharma said.
Both Pimple and Sharma, who are currently applying to the Dental School, said that they — along with their peers — have experienced confusion about the timeline for applications and deadlines.
“The dental application cycle has been unnecessarily stressful because we don’t really have an adult to go to and ask questions about it, and we’ve just had to fight our way through,” Sharma said.
Pimple and Sharma praised the program, detailing positive experiences in it and suggesting that they were disappointed to hear about its discontinuation.
Pimple said that the BioDental program was the reason he applied to the University and that being
part of the program has taken the pressure off of the tedious and stressful process of applying to dental school.
“Because of that, my college experience shied away from the traditional premed toxicity that I think can exist. There was no sense of competition … I think this guarantee of being in dental school and being like, ‘You know what? We’re not here to fight, but we’re in this together to meet the requirements,’ created a camaraderie that I’m very grateful for,” Pimple said. Sharma said that she was disappointed to hear about this decision, adding that the conditional acceptance into the Dental School gave students the freedom to explore new things during their time as undergraduate students.
“The Bio-Dental program gave a sense of security and camaraderie that I think was needed because you were with the same people for seven years. That could be a group of lifelong friends because you’re living together for seven years and taking the same classes together,” Sharma said.
“At the same time, I’m a little glad because I would hope that other students wouldn’t have to go through the same confusion that we had to go through,” she added.
Although the University's version of the program has been discontinued, the Dental School continues to offer accelerated Bio-Dental programs at four other universities: Hampton University, Lehigh University, Muhlenberg College, and Villanova University.
Inside Penn’s largely unknown process of assigning sector tags to College courses
Multiple faculty members told The Daily Pennsylvanian that they were not aware of how the sector tag assignment process worked or what committees were involved.
GABRIEL HUANG Staff Reporter
Penn community members spoke to The Daily Pennsylvanian about the College of Arts and Sciences’ process for assigning sector tags to courses — a process which several individuals described a lack of familiarity with.
The DP spoke with several members of the Committee on Undergraduate Education and other individuals familiar with the College curriculum to get an inside look at the process behind assigning sector tags. Multiple faculty members told the DP that they were un-
aware of how the sector tag assignment process worked and what committees were involved with such decisions.
As part of Penn's general education requirements, students in the College are required to take courses that fulfill each of the seven College sector requirements, which cover a range of academic disciplines. These requirements aim to ensure the “breadth of education across the sectors or fields of knowledge,” according to the University's undergraduate catalog.
Even if they fall within the content area of a certain sector, the College does not always allow courses to receive such sector tags. According to a spokesperson for the College, this ensures that only courses that “encourage reflection on learning more broadly” fulfill sector requirements.
The process of assigning sector tags begins with a faculty member or department submitting an application on Curriculum Manager, a platform used to "modify, track, and approve new and existing courses
and programs." Any courses submitted have typically been taught before, and any faculty member who submits a course must receive approval from their department. Following submission, the application is then sent to either the Humanities and Social Science Panel — which covers the sector tags for the Society, Arts and Letters, History and Tradition, and Humanities and Social Sciences requirements — or the Natural Science and Mathematics Panel, which covers the
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sector tags for the Living World, the Physical World, and Natural Science Across Disciplines requirements. Both panels are subcommittees of the larger Curriculum on Undergraduate Education.
Faculty members are nominated to the panels and the CUE by the "Committee on Committees in consultation with the Dean of the College," the College spokesperson wrote. The membership of these panels and the CUE is not publicly disclosed.
“Not all departments and
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BAMELAK DUKI
interdisciplinary programs are represented every year (we have over 60 of those), but we aim for the committees to be as broadly inclusive as possible," the College spokesperson wrote. "We cycle through departments and programs to meet that goal."
As part of the review processes, the panels evaluate the syllabus of the course and the faculty member’s responses to application questions to determine if the course counts for the requested sector.
“[The faculty member] has to speak to how the course fits into the overall curriculum, how it relates to the general education requirements, and specifically to the description of the relevant sector,” Florian Schwarz, a professor of Linguistics and Chair of the NSM Panel, told the DP.
The panel then makes a recommendation about
whether the course should receive a sector tag, which is then sent to the College office for final approval, according to Earth and Environmental Sciences professor and former NSM Panel member Alain Plante. Further confusion about the assignment of sector tags developed after the process was paused from fall of 2020 until fall of 2023. The pause led to some departments developing new courses to fill a particular sector requirement, only for their applications to be denied. The DP was unable to confirm if this pause had been communicated to academic departments and their faculty members.
Classical Studies professor and Chair of the College Curriculum Committee
Kimberly Bowes said "they just never ran the process" after her department developed a course to fulfill a
particular sector requirement.
A College spokesperson attributed the pause to an “extensive change” to the College’s back-end systems and “general disruption due to COVID," but added that the College's sector committees continued to communicate with instructors, help develop departments' curricular plans, and "continue our ongoing work to refine our goals for general education."
Bowes speculated that the pause was due to ongoing reconsiderations of the College’s general education requirements and the feeling that the sectors and foundations were getting “a little diluted.”
“[The pandemic] gave them the opportunity to sort of pause the whole thing and be like ‘okay, what in the world is this all about,’” she said.
The pause came also amid
student complaints about a lack of sector-fulfilling course options, specifically in the Living World and Physical World sectors.
“With the hard sciences, it’s really, really hard to find courses that match the right combination of elements,” College senior Michelle Wen, who is also an Undergraduate Representative on CUE and the External Chair of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, said.
"We don't designate courses as challenging, demanding, or relaxed," Schwarz said, "but obviously we're not oblivious to student impressions of these sorts of things."
The College is currently considering changes to sector, foundation, credit requirements for the first time in 18 years.
In a recent interview with the DP, newly-appointed Dean of the College of Arts
and Sciences Peter Struck explained that one of his priorities for his first year in the position is rethinking the College's general education requirement.
He told the DP that the process — which could impact the sector and foundation requirements, the number of credits in each major, and the College’s mission statement — is not a "months-long conversation," but one that could take two years or more.
Dennis DeTurck, who served as the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences when the sector and foundation requirements were first implemented in 2005, agreed that “it was time” for the College core curriculum to change.
“2024 is very different from 2004,” DeTurck said, and he encouraged the College to ask “what a liberal arts education mean[s] in 2024."
Top of the Class
These are (some of) the top rated courses and professors according to Penn Course Review data
Top Courses
All courses listed are offered in the Spring 2025 term with no prerequisites.
RELS 2560: Existential Despair
This is an experimental course that seeks to combine creative pedagogical methods and alternative scheduling to encourage intellectual reflection and emotional vulnerability through an in depth study of the way people cope with existential despair. Through a reading of memoirs, novels, poetry, and essays in an atmosphere conducive to close-reading and full-participation students will explore a wide-range of ways of coping with, describing, and comprehending moments of great despair. Lectures will explain the ritual, liturgical, homiletic, meditative, reflective, self-destructive, psycho-somatic, and ascetic ways despair is both conditioned and mitigated by different thinkers from various traditions over time. Format: This course is different from most others in that there is no homework, no outside reading, and no research papers. There will be no work given to students or expected of them outside of class. All work is done in class and class is very long (8 hours straight, once a week, from four PM to midnight). Students will eat together in class, there will be three bathroom breaks, but there will be no internet, no phones, no computers, and no auditors. Each student must be fully committed to the class and 75% of the grade will be determined by class participation.
FREN 3905: French Caribbean Thought & Literature
This course will examine how the French Antilles, with their discrete set of sociohistorical coordinates came to constitute an ideal laboratory for the elaboration of the concept of "Tout-Monde" — a way of thinking of the world as a productive, though necessarily chaotic, maelstrom of cultural changes and exchanges. How did this cluster of small islands birth a term that offers a radically different understanding of globalization? We will first survey early ethnographies and imagery documenting the multiple immigration waves of Guadeloupe and Martinique to understand how diverse ethnicities coalesced under the banner of the République française universelle. We will then explore how this sociohistorical landscape shaped and was in turn shaped by poetry, fiction, and political and theoretical texts. We will examine images, political speeches, ethnographic texts, essays, poetry, films, and novels to open up discussions on notions of Negritude/Antillanite/Creolite/Litterature Monde, the particular and the universal; on the relationship between politics, identity politics and literary form; and on the role of the engaged author in producing and transmitting a multicultural Antillean ethos.
This course is designed to introduce students interested in art, dance, theater, music, video to the expansive medium of performance. In everyday living we come across performances all the time–in places of art and culture, but also on tiktok and YouTube, on the city street and in the park, on stage, in church and on screens. Performance circulates in various genres and repertoires. In this course, we won’t divide music, theater, visual art, dance, social media and film into separate areas of consideration but will engage ways that performance helps us understand something about fundamentals of all these genres: time, space, presence, context, distribution and the relationship between performer and audience or speaker and listener. The course will look at the foundations of performance and performance studies through reading, viewings of work, classroom workshops and research and practical experimentation. Students will begin to make their own performance work using a variety of techniques and frameworks discovered through classroom activities. The course is well suited to students without any previous experience or training and students who have extensive performance training in one or more disciplines but want to think about performance forms in a new way.
Restorative Justice (RJ) is a new term to describe ancient ways of dealing with harm and being in community which centers our relationships and obligations to one another, as opposed to punishment and retribution. Increasingly popular as a response to a plethora of urban issues, from mass incarceration to gun violence to education inequality, RJ is also sometimes misunderstood or applied without fidelity. This course explores the theory, history, and practice of RJ in the urban environment. The course intersperses practical communication and facilitation skills, visits from local practitioners and advocates, and in-depth discussion of texts and media. Through readings, discussions, activities, and projects we will develop a solid theoretical basis from which to understand RJ and its implementation, including a focus on holistic engagement with self, other, and community.
3517: Plague Lab: Writing through Infection and Affliction
How do we write through a plague? In this creative writing class we will begin with the question of how plagues make and disrupt meaning. In addition to canonical examples, we’ll explore off-center, anti-colonial, and non-Western literary and popular culture works. Students will then produce across a number of genres including poetry, fiction, memoir, zines, double-blind studies, sculpture, installation, performance, or found object scavenging. To learn more about this course, visit the Creative Writing Program at https://creative.writing.upenn.edu.
Top
Professors
All professors listed offer courses in the Spring 2025 term with no prerequisites.
James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies celebrates opening with ribbon cutting ceremony
The Kim Center was the product of a $25 million donation from Penn alum James Joo-Jin Kim and Agnes Kim of the James and Agnes Kim Family Foundation in 2022.
Penn held a ribboncutting ceremony on Sept. 12 to dedicate the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies.
The Kim Center was the product of a $25 million donation from Penn graduate James Joo-Jin Kim and Agnes Kim of the James and Agnes Kim Family Foundation in 2022. Speakers at the event included Interim Penn President Larry Jameson and Associate Dean for Arts and Letters Jeff Kallberg.
The Kim Center's central goal is to promote an interdisciplinary approach to Korean Studies. Since the donation, the Kim Center has been able to set up programs to do just that.
The center established the Moon Family Postdoctoral Fellowship, which is open to scholars who are researching and teaching with a focus on contemporary Korea in the social sciences. The fellowship covers a 12-month period while providing a $57,000 stipend, and fellows may renew their funding for a second year.
The fellowship is one step in the right direction to achieve Department Chair and Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Christopher Atwood’s goals for the Kim Center moving forward. Atwood is one of five members of the Kim Center executive committee.
“We do have one professor in Korean Studies here at the East Asian Languages and Civilizations depart-
VIVIAN YAO Staff Reporter
ment,” Atwood said. “We feel we need another."
Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations So-Rim Lee is the sole professor of Korean Studies in the department and also sits on the executive committee of the Kim Center. Lee emphasized to The Daily Pennsylvanian how the Kim Center has been able to support her classes as well as serving as a bridge with Korean-related studies in other departments.
“As a center, it's something that bridges departments or between various career related researchers who are kind of strewn across different schools and departments at Penn,” Lee said. “So it's research-
focused, but also a community center in many ways.”
The center is focused on academic questions related to Korea and the Korean diaspora on the global scale, but has also taken steps to get involved with the Korean community based in Philadelphia.
For example, under Korea Foundation Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center Hyunjoon Park’s leadership, the center has organized programs with the Philadelphia Museum of Art to focus on Korean contributions to art.
“The Kim Center wants to highlight our engagement with the community in the Philadelphia area,” Park said. “For Korean American communities and Asian
American communities, we think it's important for the Korean Studies Center to bring more cultural knowledge and awareness of Korea to the Philadelphia community.”
The Kim Center also hosts weekly Korean Studies Colloquiums that feature a wide variety of speakers that are open to all members of the Penn community. Speakers are experts in various fields including but not limited to sociology, literature, film, history, and economics.
“It's a blend of the scholarly research side of doing something Korean studies related with the community aspect of eating together and sharing your work,” Lee said. “But I would say
that's like a constant thing that the Kim Center does to create community.”
Up next on the slate of talks is Associate Professor of Korean Studies at The Ohio State University Pil Ho Kim, who will be discussing “Adaptation as Arson: “Barn Burning” from William Faulkner to Murakami Haruki to Lee Chang-dong”.
“I want to really highlight this part: we offer very nice lunches at the Colloquium every Thursday,” Park said. “I wish our undergrad students knew more about this, so they’d come. They’ll learn a lot of interesting things about Korea too.”
PHOTO FROM PENN ARTS & SCIENCES
Penn History Department launches political history concentration for undergraduate majors
Penn’s History Department is adding a new political history concentration, giving students the opportunity to explore the evolution of political institutions and state powers on a national and global scale.
The concentration officially opened to all undergraduate history majors on Aug. 19. According to the department website, the program will push students to “think deeply about how time, place, geography, and context shape differences and similarities in the development and permanence of political regimes and cultures.”
Students who choose the concentration will take six courses — consisting of three core courses with the political history attribute, two “major–related” elective courses, and one seminar. The political history concentration marks the department's ninth concentration, in addition to a general curriculum option. These offerings are divided into regional areas, such as American or European history, and thematic areas, such as diplomatic or economic history.
Associate Director of the History Department Yvonne Fabella said the new concentration's introduction is a response to history majors' heightened interest in courses centered around political history, as well as a "dramatic increase" in the number of students pursuing a minor in legal studies and history over the last five years.
Fabella said that while the history department has offered politics–oriented courses to students in the
past, such courses did not effectively “provide a path through the major that was organized around the topic of politics."
“As an advisor, I would see students who are majoring in other subjects, like political science and PPE in particular, or maybe international relations, taking history courses in order to pursue those topics,” she said. “What we realized after talking with some of those students was that they didn’t understand that you could study politics while majoring in history … so, in a way, the creation of this concentration is just providing a structure for content that’s always been here.”
In addition to dissecting the comparative history of national politics, students will be encouraged to consider political history in a global context. During the fall 2024 semester, the department will offer a range of classes that explicitly examine international political institutions, including HIST 1550 East Asian Diplomacy, HIST 3350 Religion and Colonial Rule in Africa, and HIST 3920 European Diplomatic History 1789–1914.
College senior Alana Yang, who is among the first cohort of students to declare the concentration, said that she was drawn to the program’s emphasis on studying political history’s chronological development beyond national borders.
“Something that has always been important to me as a history major is understanding context,” Yang said. “My political courses have taught me that all of
CHLOE NORMAN Senior Reporter
these global issues happening around the world didn’t happen in a vacuum … so one thing that the history major and political history concentration has taught me in general, is just to look at context more carefully than the actual situation itself.”
The concentration’s conceptualization was spearheaded by assistant History professor Sarah Gronningsater and History professor Brent Cebul. In response to many of their own students’ demonstrated interest in political history, they worked together to develop a concentration that bridged the gap between the two disciplines.
When structuring the concentration’s curriculum, Cebul and Gronningsater said that they hoped to highlight classes that emphasize constitutional and legal changes across history. Both invited their col-
leagues to nominate courses that focus on questions of citizenship, subjectivity, and their interactions with formal political institutions and movements.
Beyond its fusion of politics and history, the concentration will include courses that overlap with other majors in the College. Gronningsater wrote in a statement to the DP that the department welcomes these interdisciplinary connections.
“In fact, one of the reasons we created the concentration is because we had non–History majors — those in Political Science, PPE, the Legal Studies and History minor, and others — who expressed the desire for more political history," she wrote. "While of course political history concentrators will take our classes, we very much welcome students from across the College of Arts and Sciences
and all Penn undergrad schools into the classes that we have designated 'political history.'"
Although the concentration aims to provide a comprehensive examination of past political regimes, Cebul wrote to the DP that he believes the concentration can also offer students insight into the dynamics underlying today’s political landscape.
“Thinking historically also enables us to think with all sorts of cultures and peoples on their own terms,” Cebul wrote. “And that in and of itself alerts us to all sorts of other possibilities, habits of mind, and ways of organizing human societies — which has the power to help us understand our own minds and societies that much better.”
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Penn establishes Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy with $10 million in funding
The Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy, housed in the newly constructed Amy Gutmann Hall, will receive $10 million in funding and operate in tandem with six other schools at Penn.tive students are no longer able to declare a concentration.
Penn has established a new center to propel research on the current media landscape and its interactions with democracy and policymaking, both at Penn and globally.
The Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy, housed in the newly constructed Amy Gutmann Hall, will receive $10 million in funding and operate in tandem with six other schools at Penn. It aims to become a global focal point for researchers, policymakers, and other leaders while bridging the fields of law, political science, media, communications, and data science.
The Center will receive a $5 million grant across five years from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The additional $5 million investment combines support from the School of Engineering and Applied Science, College of Arts and Sciences, the Annenberg School for Communication, The Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, the School of Social Policy & Practice, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
The grant's two principal investigators will be Penn Carey Law professor Christopher Yoo and Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor Duncan Watts.
Watts, who is also the founding director of Penn’s Computational Social Science Lab, said that one of the center's key goals is to
SANYA TINAIKAR Senior Reporter
promote interdisciplinary connections between fields.
“One of the motivations for this center is to try to bring together all these efforts from different schools under a unified umbrella and provide resources to facilitate interactions and unlock synergies between these different groups,” Watts said. “Many of us have been working in different parts of this area for years, but there isn’t a ‘Penn-level’ presence in this space, so we’d like to unify existing efforts and build new programming on top of it.”
The center plans to oper-
ate around four pillars of opportunities and programming: a flagship conference for media leaders, a research grant program for Penn faculty and students, a forum for sharing and collaboration, and a cohort of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers.
“We are looking to establish Penn as a thought leader in this area by bringing together scholars for the annual event that would get attention from policymakers and media as a must attend event,” Yoo said. “I think the center is being established at an opportune time for the University
and it’s nice to be working on a new initiative that is focused on pushing new research forward that is the hallmark of a big university.”
“Championing truth and upholding democracy are important elements of Penn’s strategic framework, in principle and practice,” Interim Penn President Larry Jameson told Penn Today. “We are uniquely positioned to lead on this great challenge through our accomplished faculty in AI and data science who work across disciplines. We are deeply grateful to the Knight Foundation for
partnering with us on this critical endeavor.”
Yoo said that he will serve as the new center's faculty director. Watts will serve as chair of the Executive Committee, which comprises representatives from each of the six Penn schools.
“This center is where scholars can conduct worldclass, cutting edge research in this area and additionally brings them all together in one place,” Yoo said. “It has the potential to create synergies and make Penn the go-to place for academic work in this area.”
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Penn's Biology Department removes concentrations, prompting mixed reactions from students
While the decision to remove the concentrations does not impact already-declared students, prospective students are no longer able to declare a concentration.
Over the summer, Penn’s Biology Department removed all concentrations from the biology major.
While the decision to remove the concentrations did not impact biology majors who had already declared their concentrations, prospective students were unable to declare concentrations after the date of the July announcement. The removal was voted into action by all faculty members within the Biology Department and was communicated to the student body through email, website updates, and major advisors during appointments.
Professor Scott Poethig — a Biology professor and the undergraduate chair of the department — said that this decision was made to create more flexibility within the major and to reduce stress for students.
“We got rid of the concentrations because they didn’t really have an … academic function outside of helping the students decide what classes they might want to take in order to pursue particular interests,” Poethig said. “It was to make life easier from undergraduates — to remove stress so that they would not feel compelled to have to fulfill a series of requirements that were not academically necessary or important.”
Poethig encouraged students to attend office hours and take advantage of the appointments both professors and advisors made available to them in re-
EMIILY PARK Staff Reporter
sponse to student concerns over accessibility. He also stated that, while students' grade point averages are important for admission to graduate or medical school, it lacks significant importance during the hiring process for jobs.
“Sometimes, it’s helpful to appreciate that we try to do things for the best interests of our students,” Poethig said. “We’re not in this business to make life more complicated for [the students] by any means.”
Several students who spoke with The Daily Pennsylvanian voiced varied opinions on the change, including criticism of the decision as well as support for the change and reduced
stress on students. College sophomore Damjan Karanfilovski, who said that he has yet to declare his major, stated that the decision to remove concentrations has not been properly communicated to the student body.
“I think it’s a good thing that now there’s a lot more flexibility,” Karanfilovski said. “You’re able to build your own major, but I do think that it was not properly communicated. I don’t think there was enough forewarning for the Class of ‘27, especially ... major[s].”
Joseph Hochberg, a College senior and biology major concentrating in molecular and cellular biology, expressed that the biology
major might be "pretty overwhelming" for students without the structure of concentrations, particularly citing the varied nature of biology.
“One of the reasons I chose Penn was because they had a specific major in cellular and molecular biology,” Hochberg said.
“Having a biology major that specifically suited my interests was very important to me when I was looking through a school.”
College senior Avi Loren, who is majoring in biology, disagreed and stated that the change was the right decision for the department to make.
“I think it relieves a lot of stress on the students
because I think there were definitely people who felt like they had to take more classes within the bio major more than what was required just so they could get this concentration … just so that they can have this little thing on their transcript to kind of differentiate themselves from other bio majors, when really it has no effect,” Loren said.
“I think just letting yourself not worry too much about what [your degree] really says and just focusing on ‘These are the classes I want to take’ … is the most important thing,” Loren said.
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Opinion | A civic mind involves recognizing what the community can teach you
Columnist Mia Vesely suggests that equitable relationships should be the focus of Netter Center programming.
Recently, a fellow opinion columnist came out with a wonderful piece about the benefits of taking an ABCS course and encouraged everyone to take one. ABCS — Academically Based Community Service — courses are run by the Netter Center for Community Partnerships and directly focus on the community. Civic engagement is important, but the nature of community involvement at Penn is flawed.
The majority of ABCS classes at Penn involve sending students to high schools in the West Philadelphia community. While this is great, the Netter Center should focus more on community engagement rather than community intervention. Traditional ABCS courses foster the narrative that our institution is the instructor while the community is the learner. Even the name of this classification of courses suggests that Penn students are the ones doing the service, but I would argue that the West Philadelphia community has much that it can teach us.
The traditional ABCS framework furthers the notion that the West Philadelphia community is an “other” rather than a colleague.
This semester, I am a teaching assistant for a different kind of ABCS course. “August Wilson and Beyond” switches up the ABCS standard of sending Penn students into schools and instead brings West Philadelphia residents onto campus. These students include many elders from West Philadelphia
— dubbed "community students" — who participate in class, ask questions, and are essentially equal in the classroom. A big part of the class is challenging stereotypes that Penn students have about our neighborhood, while also allowing community students to do the same.
In the classroom, we have discussions about how the West Philadelphia community has changed over the years. Hearing these elders tell stories of how their hometown has changed from one of mom-and-pop stores to university developments and expensive apartment buildings is a moving experience. As a junior who now lives off campus, it is important for me to know the history of the area I live in nine months of the year.
The class partners with local organizations like Paul Robeson House and Theatre in the X to put on events that the students run and organize alongside community members.
Theatre in the X is a West Philadelphia theater company that strives to make theatre accessible for the African American community. This class structure allows those attending Penn — many of whom are new to Philadelphia — to learn about the community through direct participation and quite literally forces them to venture past 40th Street.
Penn students seem to be confronting the ridiculous notion that we shouldn’t travel far off campus, and that initiative is important. But how is Penn programming encouraging collaboration? Our neighbor,
Drexel University, has a program that utilizes an intergenerational homesharing model to bring West Philadelphia residents and students together in affordable housing developments. Initiatives like this build community in a much different way than tutoring programs and after-school projects. According to the initiative Second Story Collective, their vision is that of a “shared living space and shared stories … a foundation for meaningful cohabitation.”
The University must do better in promoting initiatives to fit the desire and need for deeper collaboration. Not only do some Penn students not feel comfortable going off campus, but West Philadelphia residents also feel excluded. Physical markers that draw comfort for students—the Covenant sculpture by the high rises known as the “Tampons,” the Split Button — can serve as markers of unfamiliarity for others. Front-facing restaurants on the sidewalk — like the Sushi Spot advertised for “PennCard holders” on
Spruce Street — also exemplify these divides.
The “Tampons” sit on an area that was once a popular housing block in West Philadelphia. The origin of the sculpture — as told by Penn — deals directly with gentrification and the relocation of previous residents. As our campus expands, these landmarks are a visible reminder of changes to the physical space. Penn students are entitled to spaces just for us, but looking at it from the perspective of a community resident can change the way we view our campus.
If we expect local schools to allow us through their doors, we should at the very least have our doors open too to provide community engagement courses. Courses for high school students are offered by Penn, but with financial barriers like the cost of credits and lack of engaging opportunities beyond high school, their impacts are limited.
I urge the Netter Center to focus more on community partnerships that place people on equal footing. Programs that engage
residents of all ages should be available and would be much more equitable than the current classes offered. I’m not saying we cut out high school programs altogether, but we should expand the programming to include initiatives that allow neighborhood inhabitants on campus.
It may be radical, but creating programs in which West Philadelphia residents get to take the reins would lead to a more formidable and equitable neighborhood. Penn glorifies college kids as educators in an attempt to rectify the fact it doesn’t pay taxes to local schools. As a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, it doesn’t have to and hasn’t since 2000. Instead of banking on tutoring programs in lieu of funding, let's create a culture in which West Philadelphia is welcomed by Penn, both on and off campus.
MIA VESELY is a College junior studying philosophy, politics, and economics from Phoenix. Her email is mvesely@sas. upenn.edu.
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Opinion | Being interdisciplinary: A principle not in practice
Columnist Brian Barth explores a key tenet of Penn’s strategic framework as it continues its rollout process.
Back in December 2023, Penn released a pamphlet titled “In Principle and Practice: Penn’s Focus on the Future.” In a letter to the Penn community, former Penn President Liz Magill described the document as “a strategic framework to guide our path forward.” It is important to note that this initiative, spearheaded by Magill, was released just days prior to her resignation. Nevertheless, when you visit the “About” section on the Penn website, it is one of the first things you find. The plan itself included four principles, one of which was “The Interwoven University.” On the surface, it would be quite hard to know what that exactly means, but it is included with this tenet: “Leadership in interdisciplinary excellence distinguishes Penn.”
Expanding upon that notion, the framework says that the University should “[a]ccelerate interdisciplinary pursuits” by “seek[ing] exponential growth in Penn’s interdisciplinary faculty support; even more inter-School teaching, projects, and programs; and rich opportunities for students and staff to pursue novel collaborations across a wide range of domains.”
Further examination of this statement, however, reveals a rather glaring flaw: The ability to take classes in a school in which you are not enrolled is minuscule at best.
Let me give a simple example: You are a student in the College of Arts and Sciences with your mind set on being an English major. You love analyzing complex literature and working on
creative writing in your free time. You are perusing courses on Path@Penn, as all students do when deciding their classes, and come across a course on global real estate. It catches your eye and seems interesting to you: Why not give it a shot; it fits in your schedule, Penn Course Review gives the instructor an incredible rating, and on the syllabus, you read “there is no prerequisite for the course.”
Perfect! Then you scroll down, only to discover that “Enrollment is limited to students in the Wharton Undergraduate Division.”
For most students, that is where their interest in global real estate — or whatever the specific field may be — comes to a halt because the system told them they had to. That is not, by any means, a liberal education.
Just to clear some things up, as maybe the University registrar is reading, I am not saying that anyone should be able to take any class without their appropriate prerequisites. What I am saying, however, is that taking a lower-level or intro class on a topic that a particular student finds appealing to them should be seen as an open door to an opportunity, instead of a brick wall of audit permissions and out-of-school waitlist forms.
The most notable approach that the University has historically taken to promoting an interdisciplinary education is the development of a variety of coordinated dual-degree programs that allow students to receive more than one degree after four years of an undergraduate-only experience. There are cur-
rently five coordinated dual-degree programs that span beyond one school. These programs are incredibly prestigious and selective — the cohort size ranging from 50 to 55 in the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology to only 24 enrolled in the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management. All in, approximately 156 students matriculate into these interschool programs each year, making up a mere 5.9% of Penn’s undergraduate student body.
As renowned as these initiatives may be, the idea of an interdisciplinary education should not be limited to those specifically selected into five cohorts, but rather all students. In fact, not only should it be permitted — it needs to be highly encouraged. I could give a
whole list of action items for the University on how to best go about this ideological inconsistency, but that is a topic for another day. Ideological execution, however, is essential to the growth of any institution, let alone one of Penn’s stature. Regardless of the University’s success (or failure) in that department, the bottom line is this: When a talented, bright, and unique young person enrolls into Penn, they may be choosing Penn because of a specific world-class undergraduate school, but they also need to be able to take advantage of all the University has to offer.
BRIAN BARTH is a College first year from New York, N.Y. His email is bbarth@sas.upenn. edu.
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Opinion | For everyone’s sake, take handwritten notes
Columnist Eric Najera argues that avoiding the use of laptops benefits all students.
As soon as a lecture begins, instead of hearing what we need to know for the class, the sound of loud typing fills the room. We have all been in that scenario, whether it be in a meeting or in class. In a small class, like a seminar, even the quietest sounds distract the class. In a bigger lecture hall, hearing over 100 keyboards typing at the same time causes an already-full room to be even harder to hear in. But the noise of typing isn’t the only reason why students should avoid laptop usage in class. We now have access to millions of websites and facts in the palm of our hands. Having access to all of this in class allows for distractions. We attend class to learn and consume knowledge that cannot oth-
erwise be attained without paying attention. Students who use electronic devices in class are typically allowed to because their intention is note-taking, but from my experience, note-taking is not the main use of laptops in class. Students seem to find anything to do on their laptops except take notes and pay attention: whether it be gambling, watching sports, shopping, doing crossword puzzles, or playing every single Wall Street Journal game available. This issue is exacerbated in classes that do not have exams. Additionally, when assignments do not stem from lecture material, students don’t find it necessary to take notes, and thus, take advantage of being able to use their laptops. I once noticed that not a single
person in my class was taking notes because students had realized that the notes would not benefit their grade. A main part of a college education is the knowledge we gain in lecture. We have access to world-class professors who are experts in their fields; taking handwritten notes and engaging in class is one of the best ways to maximize learning. In a class where laptop usage is not allowed, the benefits and difference in experience is easily visible.
In his class “Folklore and Sexuality,” professor David Azzolina banned laptops and iPads. I took the class last fall, and the class discussion and involvement was completely enhanced.
On the first day, many students were upset, but since I had already planned to
use my notebook, I was unaffected. The participation and attention were increasingly noticeable compared to my other classes, even though it was a larger lecture. Guest speakers and documentaries had everyone's attention since there was no other screen to pay attention to. We were able to maximize our learning in an interesting subject, but if laptops were allowed, students would not have been nearly as engaged.
In an interview with Azzolina, he shared his theory on the benefits of handwritten notes: “Your body has its own way of making memories by using your own hands.” Studies have shown that handwriting helps with memorization, leading to more success in the classroom! However,
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he acknowledged that “if everyone is using laptops to take notes, it would be fine, but the reality is that it doesn't happen and students use it for other reasons.”
Laptop use has become the norm, and students will continue to use them. That being said, students who do should be courteous of others and attempt to not distract them. Instead of Googling when it comes time to answer a question, use your own knowledge; in class, we are supposed to challenge ourselves, not our internet skills.
ERIC NAJERA is a College junior studying history from Rolling Meadows, Ill. His email is najerae@sas.upenn.edu.
Opinion | Let’s
all be more civic-minded
Columnist Ashti Tiwari calls on students to take part in many civic engagement opportunities so we can give back to the surrounding community.
Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) courses enable students and faculty to engage in West Philadelphia to solve critical problems in the wider community, and one should be in our primary carts at least once out of our eight semesters at Penn.
My current experience with ABCS is a facultystudent collaborative where the academic component entails developing a proposal to improve either Penn undergraduate education or K-12 education in the Philadelphia public school system. The professors emphasize feasible solutions, as some students’ proposals are actually implemented after the seminar.
In what other class are we given the time, resources, and feedback to pick one issue we see at Penn or in the community and get to develop a solution? This unique opportunity to be change-makers is something we should all experience as students and community members.
Aside from the academic component, my ABCS course places us in Paul Robeson High School to provide college access support to high school juniors and seniors. Whether it is essay editing or discussing higher education and other career pathways, ABCS creates a collaborative relationship between the public school district and Penn students while promoting career readiness to high schoolers. As Penn students who successfully went through the college application process, we have valuable expertise, and having the opportunity to share the knowledge we built is very rewarding.
The Netter Center for
Community Partnerships also has different forms of civic engagement outside of ABCS, including Penn programs that help traditional public high schools function as University-Assisted Community Schools (UACS).
The Netter Center focuses on mobilizing Penn's vast resources to build a democratic relationship with UACS, but student engagement is at the core of mutually beneficial civic engagement and crucial to most Center initiatives. We are incredibly privileged with the academic resources of Penn and should take what we learn to do good. ABCS can facilitate this through specialized courses like “Energy Education in Philadelphia Schools” or the “Wharton Field Challenge: Financial Literacy Community Project,” so every student’s academic interests are represented and relevant to civic engagement.
Now that I’ve outlined what is offered on campus, why aren’t we doing more?
To be clear, I am not calling on my fellow classmates
to fix these deep-rooted issues of educational disparity, but there is an obvious disconnect between the wealth and prestige of Penn and the public district we share this city with. While Penn ranks No. 10 in Best National University, Pennsylvania ranks No. 39 in education. Why does this educational gap exist?
The University is considered an exempt 501(c) (3) organization that is required to file Form 990, an informational tax form that most tax-exempt organizations must file annually. With its nonprofit status and the 1997 Pennsylvania Act 55, known as the Institutions of Purely Public Charity Act, Penn has been exempt from paying property taxes after 2000, which make up a large portion of revenue for Philadelphia public schools. According to a 2023 annual financial report of the School District of Philadelphia, 50% of the general fund revenues came from local property taxes and other locally generated taxes.
It’s important to know the significance of this economic power imbalance because the responsibility falls on students to pick up the pieces. With an undergraduate population of 10,610 and one ABCS course each, that is over 10,000 ways we can make a positive difference where the University has fallen short.
In fact, Penn has held firm in not paying Payments in Lieu of Taxes since 2000, which are voluntary to make up for the lost tax revenue. The University’s main reasoning is this: Penn is the largest private employer in Philadelphia with 46,554 local employees. From Penn’s perspective, the sheer economic impact they have on the greater Philadelphia area is significant enough to forgo property taxes if the University is still making major contributions in another way.
But with this reasoning, the public school system suffers due to a lack of programs, funding, and adequate education for the K-12 students. Our re-
sponse to this institutional neglect needs to keep the community at the forefront. If Penn justifies its employment as a large enough contribution to Philadelphia to replace funding for public schools, we can justify using our Penn education to help service those schools.
This longstanding political issue between our institution and West Philadelphia public schools is not something you or I can fix overnight. So, I implore us all to find other solutions to give back. This can start with an ABCS course, but let us go beyond. Get involved with the Netter Center, learn about the neighborhoods that surround us, and make a genuine impact on the community we live in.
ASHTI TIWARI is a College sophomore studying philosophy, politics, and economics from Corning, N.Y. Her email address is ashti@sas.upenn. edu.
