Omnia Magazine: Fall/Winter 2024

and Now

during his tenure. PAGE 16

As Steven J. Fluharty steps down as Dean, we look back at how the School has evolved

Omnia is published by the School of Arts & Sciences Office of Advancement

EDITORIAL OFFICES

School of Arts & Sciences

University of Pennsylvania

3600 Market Street, Suite 300 Philadelphia, PA 19104-3284

P: 215-746-1232

F: 215-573-2096

E: omnia-penn@sas.upenn.edu

STEVEN J. FLUHARTY

Dean, School of Arts & Sciences

LORAINE TERRELL

Executive Director of Communications

MICHELE W. BERGER

Editor

SUSAN AHLBORN

Associate Editor

JANE CARROLL

Staff Writer

LUSI KLIMENKO

Art Director

GRACE JUNG

LUSI KLIMENKO

DREW NEALIS

Designers

CHANGE OF ADDRESS

Alumni: Visit MyPenn, the Penn alumni community, at mypenn.upenn.edu. Non-alumni: Email Development and Alumni Records at record@ben.dev. upenn.edu or call 215-898-8136.

The University of Pennsylvania values diversity and seeks talented students, faculty, and staff from diverse backgrounds. The University of Pennsylvania does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, citizenship status, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected class status in the administration of its admissions, financial aid, educational or athletic programs, or other University-administered programs or in its employment practices. Questions or complaints regarding this policy should be directed to the Executive Director of the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Programs, Sansom Place East, 3600 Chestnut Street, Suite 228, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6106; or 215-898-6993 (Voice) or 215-898-7803 (TDD).

SCHOOL NEWS

OMNIA

On the history of the book

Message from the Dean’s Office

By the time this magazine reaches alumni, parents, and friends of the Penn Arts & Sciences community, Steven Fluharty will be serving his last few weeks as Dean. Steve has led the School for nearly 12 years—longer than any dean in its history. You can read more about the School’s many accomplishments under his leadership in this issue (p. 16). In this brief message, we wanted to share a few thoughts on what it has meant to work closely with Steve, and to be a part of this remarkable period in the life of the School.

As the largest academic division at Penn, there are, not surprisingly, a number of associate and vice deans in this office: Ten of us work side by side, consulting daily with each other and the Dean on priorities, problems, and all aspects of the life of the School. Some of us have been a part of this team for just a few months, and some have been here for all of Steve’s tenure. As a group we have shared in and celebrated extraordinary successes and worked as close collaborators with Steve to navigate unanticipated challenges, from a pandemic with a lasting impact on what we do in our classrooms, to calls to reexamine the fundamental values and role of higher education in today’s society.

During this time we’ve seen up-close what Steve brings as a leader: his purposefulness and focus on results; his unwavering belief in the enduring value of a liberal arts education; his passionate dedication to advancing knowledge to make the world better. We

have also had the opportunity to appreciate many aspects of who he is as a person: his loyalty and enthusiasm, his love of holidays and the shore, and the joy he takes in the people around him.

It has been a privilege for all of us to know him and to work alongside him in the Office of the Dean. We are grateful for all that he has done for the School, and we are honored to continue all that he has put in motion over nearly 12 years. Thank you, Steve.

Brighid Dwyer, Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Ellen Furxhi, Vice Dean and Chief of Staff

Emily Hannum, Associate Dean for the Social Sciences and Stanley I. Sheerr Term Professor in the Social Sciences

Corinn Harrell, Vice Dean for Finance and Administration

Jeffrey Kallberg, Deputy Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Music

Nora E. Lewis, Vice Dean for Professional and Liberal Education

Deborah Rhebergen, Vice Dean for Advancement

Peter Struck, Stephen A. Levin Family Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities

Mark Trodden, Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences and Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics

Beth S. Wenger, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor in the Department of History

BEHIND THE COVER

We asked illustrator David Mahoney to create a portrait that celebrated Dean Steven J. Fluharty and the School’s evolution during his tenure. Here’s how Mahoney described his work: “My illustration uses a monochrome palette with accents of red and blue to reflect the institution’s colors. I blended traditional and digital techniques to emphasize the textures of the iconic University buildings in the background, giving the piece a distinct yet recognizable architectural layer.” –Lusi Klimenko, Director, Graphic Design

A Loss for the Omnia Family

This is a hard Editor’s Note to write. It comes just a few short weeks after the Omnia team suffered the shocking loss of our friend and colleague, Susan Ahlborn, who passed away unexpectedly in September. Sue, who was associate editor of this magazine, was a gifted writer who penned countless features and stories during her more than 12 years with Penn Arts & Sciences. We are so grateful that her words still get to appear in this issue, in the tremendous feature she wrote about David Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor of English (“The Wallace Tales,” p. 34), as well as in her coverage of a new book by historian Sarah Gronningsater (“Children of Freedom,” p. 10) and a film by Ejun Hong, C’25, about Russia’s war on Ukraine (“Using Animation to Spread Strength and Hope,” p. 55).

Sue had an unassuming nature and a dry wit that put everyone at ease. She loved her job and loved talking to people—something that came through in the stories they’d share with her, which she retold eloquently in the pages of Omnia. She took great pride in weaving an impactful narrative for our audience. She profiled faculty rockstars like Emily Wilson (“Emily Wilson’s Epic Life,” Spring/Summer 2024) and dove headfirst into challenging topics like physics (“The Physics of Us,” Fall/Winter 2022) or disability research (“Seeing Disability Differently,” Spring/Summer

2023). She was a staunch grammarian and an artiste with an E. Not only did she make Omnia a better magazine, but she also made the team an amazing one to be a part of.

We will miss her story ideas and her unique take on many subjects, but even more than that, we’ll miss hearing about her 1995 Mustang and her gray cat, Winkle, who made frequent—if uninvited—appearances on Zoom. We’ll miss Sue’s attentive smile on those Zoom calls, too. No matter how dull the subject, she always looked interested, a calming presence without saying a word. I will personally miss having a brainstorming partner—someone to bounce ideas off of and ask how some aspect of Omnia was previously done. She always answered happily, regardless of whether it was the first or sixth time I’d asked.

Sue’s time with us was unquestionably far too short. There’s also no question about the vital and invaluable role she played in shaping the identity of Omnia—the magazine as a whole, the issue you hold in your hands, and every one she wrote for in the past.

Michele W. Berger, Editor

Penn Arts & Sciences Launches Plant ARC

Penn Arts & Sciences recently launched the Plant Adaptability and Resilience Center, or Plant ARC. The center, led by Doris Wagner, DiMaura Professor of Biology, aims to enhance plant development and fortitude in the face of climate change, which impacts food security, human health, and ecosystems through more extreme and unpredictable weather events like heatwaves, droughts, and floods. Anchored in the Department of Biology, Plant ARC will collaborate broadly across departments and the University with other Schools and centers, with local stakeholders, and beyond.

“Penn is the ideal place for Plant ARC because of its commitment to climate change solutions across Schools and disciplines,” Wagner says. “Plants sustain all life on Earth and are crucial for ecosystems and climate regulation. By safeguarding essential species interactions, understanding how climate change affects plant physiology and development, and developing climate-resistant crops, Plant ARC will devise scalable, researchdriven solutions that boost food security

and ecosystem resilience, from urban farms in Philadelphia to global agricultural systems.”

To facilitate its research, Plant ARC will build phytotrons, programmable climate chambers that will allow Plant ARC team members to simulate past, current, and future climates from anywhere in the world; reproduce a given climate precisely in replicate experiments; and test plant response to successive, but different, climate exposures. The end goal is precision improvement of plant traits for agriculture and ecosystems generally and specifically in the urban setting.

“Plant ARC is a tremendously exciting idea, allowing Penn researchers to further develop fundamental plant research and to harness the resulting advances in plant adaptability and resilience against the effects of climate change,” says Mark Trodden, Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences and Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics. “This Center represents an important pillar in our broad efforts in sustainability and climate in the School of Arts & Sciences.”

Dorothy Roberts Named MacArthur Fellow

Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology, has been named a 2024 MacArthur Fellow. The honor, commonly known as the “genius grant,” is awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to individuals who show exceptional originality in and dedication to their creative pursuits. Roberts— who has worked for decades as a legal scholar and public policy researcher focused on exposing racial inequities embedded within health and social service systems—was one of 22 fellows named this year.

“The transformative scholarship of Dorothy Roberts focuses on some of the most pressing issues facing our society, addressing inequality, social justice, and race,” says Interim Penn President J. Larry Jameson. “As a scholar, award-winning author, and now MacArthur Fellow, she exemplifies Penn’s commitment to impactful, interdisciplinary, creative pursuits.”

Fox Leadership Program Turns 25

The Robert A. Fox Leadership Program, established thanks to a gift from Robert A. Fox, C’52, and Penny Fox, ED’53, celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. During the past two-anda-half decades, the program’s focus has evolved from public events and curricular initiatives to also include large-scale service-learning initiatives, leadership fellows, and global engagement. What has never changed, however, is its aim to equip and empower Penn students and alums for present and future roles as ethical and effective leaders, today with John Lapinski, Robert A. Fox Leadership Professor of Political Science, at its helm.

Doris Wagner, DiMaura Professor of Biology, founded Plant ARC to enhance plant development and fortitude in the face of climate change.

Ribbon-Cutting Marks Dedication of James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies

On September 12, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held to mark the dedication of the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies and honor its benefactor, James Joo-Jin Kim, W’59, G’61, GR’63, PAR’92, and his wife Agnes Chung-Sook Kim, PAR’92. Their daughter, Susan Y. Kim, president of the James and Agnes Kim Foundation and executive vice chair of the Amkor Corporation, was also in attendance, as was their granddaughter (Susan’s daughter), Alexandra Kim Hay, SPP’16, and Alexandra’s husband, Alexander.

Speakers included J. Larry Jameson, Interim Penn President, and Jeff Kallberg, Deputy Dean and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Music, who both praised Kim’s decades-long support in growing Korean Studies at Penn.

“The Kim Center is an ideal example of Penn’s commitment to working across disciplines—a priority of our strategic framework, In Principle and Practice. By strengthening our ties with Korean Americans both in Philadelphia and beyond, the Center exemplifies our commitment to engaging with our community,” said Jameson. “Penn has benefited greatly from Jim’s leadership and expertise in so many areas, including as a Trustee, and we are forever grateful that his legacy is embodied in the Center bearing his name.”

“Jim has been an advocate and supporter of Korean Studies at Penn for a quarter of a century,” said Kallberg. “Korean Studies simply would not be where it is today without Jim and his family.”

Also, in attendance were Hyunjoon Park, Korea Foundation Professor of Sociology and the Center’s director; Ken Yun, C’77, PAR’08, founder and group chairman of Pavilion Investment Group and long-time supporter of Korean Studies at Penn; and Myoung-Woo Lee, WG’94, PAR’04, president of the Penn Club of Korea and co-vice chairman of Dongwon Industries. Yun and Lee—who traveled from Seoul to attend—presented a check to Kim representing funds raised by the alumni community in Korea in honor of Kim and supporting the Center.

In 2022, the University received a $25 million gift from the Kims and the James and Agnes Kim Foundation, which supported a

Two New Vice Provosts Announced

This fall, the University announced two inaugural vice provost positions, taking steps toward implementing its strategic framework, In Principle and Practice. Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science and Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, was named the inaugural Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action, effective Nov. 1, 2024. Timothy Rommen, Martin Meyerson Endowed

range of initiatives. The largest portion went to the creation of the Center, which promotes interdisciplinary, global approaches to Korean Studies. While traditional Korean Studies programs focus on history and the arts, the Kim Center combines social, scientific, and humanistic approaches and embraces transnational and comparative research and teaching on issues of migration, healthcare, and climate change.

including Interim Penn President J. Larry Jameson

their right and Deputy Dean Jeff Kallberg to their

In the first year following the gift, Korean Studies saw the establishment of a new professorship, the launch of a global conference, the sponsorship of advanced interdisciplinary research, the creation of new student opportunities, and the strengthening of outreach and collaboration with local Philadelphia institutions and the Korean-American community.

Kim is a former member of the Board of Advisors of the School of Arts & Sciences and a former Penn Trustee and currently serves as a Trustee Emeritus, in addition to many other notable roles at the University. Giving to Penn by Kim and his family totals more than $37 million, placing him among the University’s top 25 living donors.

Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies, was named the inaugural Vice Provost for the Arts, effective Jan. 1, 2025.

In making the announcements, Provost John L. Jackson, Jr. called Mann “one of the world’s leading experts in climate change and sustainability” coming into the role “at a pivotal time for global climate action.” Jackson praised Rommen’s breadth of experience, insights, and vision, calling them “invaluable assets in helping us to shape the future of the arts at Penn.”

–BLAKE COLE

Lisa J. Godfrey

James Joo-Jin Kim, W’59, G’61, GR’63, PAR’92, and Agnes Chung-Sook Kim, PAR’92 (center), cut the ribbon at the Center’s dedication. Many came out to mark the occasion,

to

left.

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw Named Inaugural Arthur Ross Gallery Faculty Director

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Class of 1940 Bicentennial Term Professor in the Department of History of Art, was named the inaugural Arthur Ross Gallery faculty director, effective June 1. “Gwendolyn is the ideal leader to bring together the work of the Gallery with our missions of research, teaching, and learning,” says Provost John L. Jackson, Jr.

A renowned scholar and teacher of American art who has been at Penn for almost 20 years, Shaw is also a highly experienced curator. She has served at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution as senior historian; director of research, publications, and scholarly programs; and acting chief curator.

She has curated or been the primary editor of catalogues on dozens of major shows, including “Represent: 200 Years of African American Art,” “Every Eye Is Upon Me: First Ladies of the United States,” and a forthcoming exhibition as part of America’s 250th birthday celebrations in 2026 at the Arthur Ross Gallery. She is also the author of The Art of Remembering: Essays on African American Art and History; Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker; and numerous major essays and reviews.

“As the inaugural faculty director of the Arthur Ross Gallery, I plan to foster creativity and critical thinking, providing a platform for individual expression and a welcoming space for collective learning,” Shaw says. “I see the Ross as a unique space on campus where we can lift up the work of Penn’s world-class faculty, students, and alumni, as well as showcase beautiful objects and present challenging conceptual projects from across time and around the world.” –AMANDA

MOTT

New Penn Arts & Sciences Faculty

In the 2024–2025 academic year, the School is pleased to welcome 27 new faculty across 19 departments.

Squire Booker, Professor of Chemistry

Kate Meng Brassel, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies

Christian Chambers, Assistant Professor of Political Science

Melissa Charenko, Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science

Hannah Feldman, Katherine Stein Sachs, CW’69, and Keith L. Sachs, W’67, Associate Professor of History of Art

Andres Fernandez Herrero, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

Nir Gadish, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

Shresth Garg, Assistant Professor of Economics

Matthew Hewett, Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Rana Hogarth, Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science

Ketaki Jaywant, Assistant Professor of South Asian Studies

Paloma Jeretic, Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Sara Kazmi, Assistant Professor of English

David Kirk, Professor of Criminology

Hayden Lee, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Laurie Lee, Assistant Professor of Music

Joel Mittleman, Assistant Professor of Sociology

Daniel Moriarity, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Lukas Nord, Assistant Professor of Economics

Ana Ozaki, Assistant Professor of History of Art

Juan Ignacio (Nacho) Sanguinetti Scheck, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Andrew SantiagoFrangos, M. Jane Williams and Valerie

Vargo Presidential Assistant Professor of Biology

Mallika Sarma, Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Leigh Stearns, Professor of Earth and Environmental Science

Andrew Thompson, Assistant Professor of Political Science

Soosun You, Assistant Professor of Political Science

Ege Yumusak, Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Class of 1940 Bicentennial Term Professor in the Department of History of Art

Eric Sucar, University Communications

Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department Renamed Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures

The Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC) is the new name for the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC). After a lengthy discussion by faculty, lecturers, and staff, as well as consultation with graduate and undergraduate students, the department voted in December 2022 in favor of changing its name, and the change became official on July 1, 2024.

“Although the change of N to M in the acronym may seem minor,” says Professor Josef Wegner, department chair, “the broader recognition of the ‘Middle East’ over the more restrictive ‘Near East’ was considered a better fit for the numerous cultures and languages encompassed by teaching and research in the department.”

In addition, the word “civilizations” did not adequately reflect the tremendous

historical and social complexity of the Middle East over thousands of years, or how that is represented in research and teaching at Penn, adds Professor Paul Cobb. “The word suggests that only those social groups that can be designated ‘civilized’ are worthy of study and does not signal our interests in, for example, nomadism, animals, rural life, or languages and literatures outside courtly or elite spheres,” he says.

The change to “cultures” recognizes this complex variety of human experience in the broader Middle East, as well as the focus of the department on teaching both ancient and modern languages. Research and courses cover the region from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula through the eastern Mediterranean to Iran and Arabia, as well as social and cultural development from ancient to modern times.

“Our faculty teach and research on diverse disciplines across the ancient, medieval, and modern periods that include language, literature, archaeology, anthropology, philology, historic preservation, religion, philosophy, history of art, history, folklore, legal history, and cinema and media studies, to name the most prominent,” Wegner says. The department offers ancient languages including Sumerian, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, and Egyptian, as well as modern languages including Persian, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Kurdish.

“In its history, our department has had many names,” Cobb says. “One of the lessons we learned through this process is that no name is perfect. But MELC resulted from a slow and consultative process and, better than any other name, communicates to as broad an audience as possible what this fantastic department does.” –SUSAN AHLBORN

Tumor Forcefield

A collaboration between Biology Professor Wei Guo and colleagues in Penn Engineering and Penn Medicine discovered how solid tumors may block therapeutics from getting through.

BY NATHI MAGUBANE

The tumor microenvironment—an amalgamation of signaling molecules, immune cells, fibroblasts, blood vessels, and the extracellular matrix—is seemingly impenetrable. Wei Guo, Hirsch Family President’s Distinguished Professor of Biology, and colleagues from Penn Arts & Sciences, Penn Engineering, and Penn Medicine wanted to understand why.

They found that tumor cells excrete what are known as small extracellular vesicles (sEVs), tiny, fluid-filled sacs that transport materials between cells. These sEVs then act as a “forcefield” of sorts, blocking therapeutics from entering the tumor, results the researchers published in the journal Nature Materials

“This discovery reveals how tumors create a robust defense system, making it challenging for nanoparticle-based therapeutics to reach and effectively target cancer cells,” Guo says. “By understanding the cellular mechanisms driving these responses, we can potentially develop strategies to disable this defense, allowing therapeutics to penetrate and attack the tumors more efficiently.”

The research builds on a series of previous discoveries from the Guo Lab focused on a type of sEV called exosomes. Those

studies had demonstrated that tumor tissues release exosomes carrying inhibitory proteins that block the activity of certain white blood cells that normally kill cancer cells. This laid the groundwork for further investigation, leading the researchers to team up with Michael Mitchell’s laboratory at Penn Engineering and Drew Weissman’s laboratory at the Perelman School of Medicine to figure out how sEVs not only suppress antitumor immune activity but also block nanoparticles.

“Like a bouncer escorting an unruly patron at a bar, the sEVs acted as a decoy, intercepting the nanoparticles and diverting them away from the tumor cells,” says Wenqun Zhong, a research associate in Guo’s lab. “The sEVs come in, pick up the therapeutics, and transport them to the liver, where they are degraded.”

In addition to testing mRNA-loaded lipid nanoparticles, the teams also investigated how other types of nanoparticles and therapeutics interacted with the tumor’s defense mechanism; they found that the sEVs secreted by tumor cells acted as a barrier across many different types of nanoparticles. This was also true for therapeutic antibodies that target proteins highly expressed in tumors. The sEVs

similarly served as a decoy, diverting the therapeutic antibodies away from their intended targets on tumor cells, thus reducing their effectiveness.

Using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, the researchers knocked out Rab27a, a gene known to play a major role in sEV secretion. They wanted to see whether doing so might allow certain nanoparticles to penetrate the tumor tissue more effectively. As Guo and colleagues expected, the mRNA-loaded lipid nanoparticles entered the tumors and carried out their tumor-inhibiting effects.

The findings from the team—which also included Junhyong Kim, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Biology, and Ningqiang Gong, then a Penn postdoc and now an assistant professor at the University of Science and Technology of China—open new possibilities for improving the delivery of these nanoparticle treatments to solid tumors. Moving forward, the researchers say they plan to explore different strategies to disrupt this sEV-based defense system and test the approach in different types of tumors.

Nathi Magubane is a science writer in University Communications at Penn.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

Associate Professor of Criminology Aaron Chalfin reevaluates a 2017 research study on proactive policing and finds it not credible.

BY KATELYN SILVA

oes proactive policing—often referred to as “broken windows” policing— improve or harm public safety? Research published in 2017, based on data from a period when the New York Police Department slowed these practices, showed that reducing proactive policing can benefit public safety. But when Associate Professor of Criminology Aaron Chalfin and colleagues from Barnard College and the University of Connecticut tried to replicate the findings, they determined that conclusion was based on a faulty research design. They outline why and reevaluate the data in an article in the Journal of Comments and Replications in Economics.

“The 2017 article is an example of a bad research design that led to a conclusion that the data does not actually support,” says Chalfin, whose co-authors include Barnard Assistant Professor Morgan C. Williams, Jr., and David Mitre Becerril, a UConn assistant professor who was a Penn doctoral student when the work took place.

The research focused on the aftermath of a December 2014 event. Two New York City police officers were targeted, shot, and killed in their squad car. Shortly after, then-mayor Bill de Blasio commented about concerns for his biracial son when interacting with police. Many officers interpreted this as inflammatory, and an unofficial protest ensued. Officers slowed

all proactive policing like traffic stops but continued to arrest for more serious crimes. This unusual confluence of events was prime for study, says Chalfin.

The researchers who undertook the original research had “good data, but didn’t analyze it properly,” comparing the period in 2014–2015 to the same period a year before, Chalfin says. “The authors used a pre-post comparison, and no one should be drawing causal inferences from a pre-post comparison. You always need a counterfactual, a stand in for what would’ve happened in the absence of this intervention, which these researchers did not have.”

Additionally, Chalfin and his co-authors found considerable variation in the intensity of the policing slowdown across New York City communities, and no evidence that highly exposed communities and less-exposed communities experienced different levels of major crimes.

“Therefore, I would say to those who read the research—or a headline based on it—that the initial results are not credible,” Chalfin says. “When the data was applied properly, we actually found that crime didn’t change one way or another, which is, in and of itself, an interesting result.”

Katelyn Silva is a freelance writer based in Providence.

RESEARCH ROUNDUP

Fluid and Heat in Motion

What can air fryers teach us about fluid dynamics? It turns out they are both based on convection, a process that uses fluids to transfer heat efficiently. Convection is common in oceans and other wideopen settings, but Hugo N. Ulloa, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, wanted to understand how it worked in small spaces. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he and colleagues published results showing that the degree of confinement changed how fluids behaved and how heat transferred, findings Ulloa says not only address longstanding issues in the field but also pave the way for optimizing heat transfer.

Beyond Marriage

Marriage seems like it benefits both parents and children, for a variety of reasons. But in a recent Journal of Policy Analysis and Management paper, Paula Fomby, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Social Sciences, argues that in reality it is a “selectively accessed, variable, unstable, and exclusionary institution.” Fomby suggests that we should instead prioritize families by reducing income penalties to single mothers, fostering economic conditions that “sustain families and relationships,” promoting co-parenting and other such ties, and building on the strength of extended families and communities.

Galactic Collision

The last major collision of the Milky Way galaxy occurred billions of years later than originally thought, according to research published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society from Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Robyn Sanderson and colleagues. By studying “phase-space folds” left behind by past collisions— wrinkles Sanderson calls “cosmic fingerprints”—the researchers could trace the galaxy’s evolutionary history. They determined that stars previously believed to have come from an old merger actually couldn’t: “The pattern that we see them forming,” Sanderson says, “would have changed or faded away by now.”

Children of Freedom

A new book from historian Sarah Gronningsater shows how Black people found ways to advocate for their liberty and rights and helped mold a new nation in the process.

BY SUSAN AHLBORN

In the late 1700s, five northern states passed laws that freed children born to enslaved women. Sarah Gronningsater, an assistant professor in the Department of History, wanted to know more about how this extraordinary situation affected those children.

Concentrating on New York, Gronningsater spent years seeking out published and unpublished sources. That effort resulted in her book The Rising Generation: Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom. It tells the story of how Black people—both enslaved and free—found ways to protect and nurture these children using the laws and politics of their state, and how this “rising generation” of children eventually changed the United States itself.

The American Revolution had energized the abolition movement in the U.S. during and after the war. Particularly in the North, Quakers, anti-slavery patriots, legislative representatives, lawyers, and ministers began to propose ways to eliminate slavery. At the same time, Black people who had escaped enslavement were speaking out or helping others maneuver out of bondage.

All of this was happening as the colonies were becoming states. “It’s a moment of opening when the winning patriots got to decide what laws they would have in

these new states in this new country,” says Gronningsater.

However, the abolitionist sentiment conflicted with another revolutionary ideal: property rights. New York and several other Northern states were unwilling to free enslaved people outright. Instead, they passed gradual abolition laws that declared children born to enslaved mothers after a certain date would be born free. At the same time, these laws also decreed that the children would labor as servants for their mothers’ masters until adulthood.

“It was a pretty weak version of freedom, at first,” Gronningsater says. “But it was also a move away from lifelong slavery.”

Black parents and mentors poured resources into this generation’s education. The most liberal white abolitionists also believed strongly that free children would need schooling. New York even passed a law that required these children be taught to read and write, stating that those who were not would be freed earlier. “The free Black and enslaved population learned this and started going to courts, lawyers, local town officials and saying, ‘I was supposed to be educated. It didn’t happen and so I should be free early,’” Gronningsater says.

This spurred other efforts. Some Black families started businesses. Others earned enough to buy land that they could

use to generate even modest capital. “A lot of the freedom that actually happened was from the work and politics and knowledge” of the Black community itself, Gronningsater says. They were also explicit in stating outright that these children would have advantages their forebears didn’t. “This was a generation born into a new optimism and hope,” she continues. “They were raised surrounded by the belief that they would grow up and help further expand freedom nationwide.”

The result, says Gronningsater, was a remarkable number of Black abolitionists who, by the 1850s, ran the Underground Railroad, led Black churches, edited Black newspapers, petitioned governors and legislatures, and helped fund court cases. Along with their parents, both enslaved and free, these children grew up to become political actors, working with local and state officials for stronger anti-slavery laws.

Despite setbacks from Jim Crow laws, this generation of Black Northerners made real progress, says Gronningsater, a history she believes the world should know. “The story of 19th-century democracy, emancipation, equal rights, and party politics, writ large, to me, has to also be a story of these free Black people in the American North.”

Susan Ahlborn was Omnia’s associate editor until she passed away in September 2024.

A Proud American

In his book, The Ballad of Roy Benavidez , historian William Sturkey explores the life of this Hispanic war hero.

BY KATELYN SILVA

R

oy Benavidez was a celebrated war veteran who earned the Medal of Honor for rescuing eight comrades during the Vietnam War and later became a popular motivational speaker. He was also a Mexican American who grew up in Jim Crow–era Texas, saw the military as a pathway out of poverty, and who, after getting severely injured during his time serving, had to fight to retain disability benefits.

The full and often incongruous life of Benavidez—a self-proclaimed patriot whose very Americanness and right to American freedoms many around him questioned—is the subject of the book The Ballad of Roy Benavidez: The Life and Times of America’s Most Famous Hispanic War Hero by William Sturkey, an associate professor in the Department of History.

Sturkey first learned about Benavidez in 2006, when popular YouTube videos of his speeches began circulating. The talks inspired Sturkey, then a graduate student, to research the veteran’s military heroics, leading him to headlines from 1983 about threats to disability benefits for Benavidez and many other veterans. Though Benavidez successfully lobbied Capitol Hill— helped by a media blitz—the injustice left an indelible mark on Sturkey.

“Roy was shot seven times, had 37 puncture wounds from bayonets and shrapnel, and received the Medal of Honor. He was feted at the Pentagon by President Reagan himself, and only two years later, was told that none of that

was enough to entitle him to disability benefits,” Sturkey says. Another disconnect resonated, too: When Benavidez was young, Jim Crow laws prevented him from enjoying the same freedoms as many around him.

“His life is one of such stark inequality,” Sturkey says. “As a historian who’s always been interested in marginalized individuals, I was grabbed by Roy’s story in a profound way. I wanted to give him the intellectual treatment that rich, powerful white men get, and I wanted to show how his life is a mirror that reflects the underrepresented histories of Hispanic Americans in this country.”

The 464 pages delve into Benavidez’s childhood under Jim Crow, his role as an elite member of a Special Forces recon team, his life as a celebrated speaker who encouraged young people to stay out of trouble and serve their country, and his role as an advocate for veterans who fundamentally changed the disability benefits review process.

Sturkey says he hopes readers come away understanding that “celebrating veterans is not the same as serving them” and that an account of Benavidez’s life can “help tell the story of the marginalized group of people from which he came. Hispanic Americans are such a huge part of the American story, and their experiences need to be centered more.”

Katelyn Silva is freelance writer based in Providence.

FACULTY BOOKSHELF

Recent books from Penn Arts & Sciences faculty

Take Care of Them Like My Own: Faith, Fortitude, and a Surgeon’s Fight for Health Justice

ALA STANFORD

Professor of Practice, Department of Biology

To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement

BENJAMIN NATHANS

Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Associate Professor of History

How to Become a Big Man in Africa: Subalternity, Elites, and Ethnic Politics in Contemporary Nigeria

WALE ADEBANWI

Presidential Penn

Compact Professor of Africana Studies

America’s New Racial Battle Lines: Protect Versus Repair

ROGERS M. SMITH

Christopher H. Browne

Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Political Science, and Desmond King of Oxford University

Fighting the Night: Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer’s Life

PAUL HENDRICKSON

Senior Lecturer, Department of English

HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Whitney Trettien, Associate Professor of English and Faculty

Director of the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, talks about how books came to be and their continuing evolution.

As told to Jane Carroll

Painting:

“The Open Missal,” by Ludger Tom Ring, the Younger.

Photos: Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College; Brooke Sietinsons

Associate Professor of English Whitney Trettien is an expert on the history of the book and its digital future. As the faculty director of the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, she uses and teaches digital tools for exploring this history. Here, she describes the book’s progression from clay tablet to its present-day formats. The history of the book, she says, is a history of innovation.

How do you define a “book,” given its many historical iterations?

That’s a question I explore a lot in my classes. A book, to me, is a physical means of recording, storing, transmitting, and sharing human knowledge, especially text. Clay tablets, papyrus bookrolls, EPUB files, the familiar codex: they’re all books. Thinking very broadly about what a book is helps us put it into conversation with other media and communication technologies, like film or audio or oral storytelling traditions.

How do you approach this history with your students?

We begin with clay tablets, which emerged about 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia as a means of recording some of the earliest forms of human writing. We go to the Penn Museum to look at examples. Then I have students make their own cuneiform tablet with Sculpey. They take a chopstick—which is similar to an ancient stylus—and try to write their names in cuneiform on the clay. Cuneiform script is full of chunky wedges, and when you use a chopstick to write you can see why. You can’t form fluid cursive on clay with a stick because you’re not applying an ink to a flat surface. You’re displacing the clay itself. This exercise shows the interconnectedness of writing tool, medium, and script.

From there, we move roughly historically from papyrus and parchment to the invention of paper in China and its uptake in the Islamic world.

Eventually we make it to the printed book so familiar to us today, which is a relatively recent technology. For it to become possible, the paper industry had to develop, metal movable type had to be invented (several times over), and different forms of binding had to evolve. By the end, we understand the history of the book as a history of technological innovation.

scrolls or bookrolls, cuts it up, and reorganizes those pages onto sheets in a more complicated, nonlinear way. When those sheets are folded and bound, you have a codex, this wonderfully flexible architecture.

What is the future of the book? Is it going away?

There’s a clay tablet at the Penn Museum I always love to share with students. It’s a legal document for an adoption, paired with an infant’s footprint imprinted in clay.

How did the codex evolve?

It has a few origin points. One is the wax tablet of Ancient Rome, a set of wooden boards covered in wax and bound on one edge. You could scratch into the wax then “erase” it. Romans also used little folded pieces of parchment known as pugillares membranei or “skin notebooks.” Both of these seemed to have seeded the idea of the codex in the Western world. It had some advantages over bookrolls, which are rolls of papyrus or parchment that scroll horizontally. For instance, a scroll or bookroll only has text on one side, divided into pagina—that’s where the word “pages” comes from—and it’s more difficult to navigate back and forth through a long text. In a codex, you can insert a bookmark or finger to hold your place and easily flip the pages.

Similar book formats developed differently in other parts of the world. For instance, some Mesoamerican codices unfold like accordions, with content on both sides, a system with some of the advantages of both the codex and the bookroll.

The amazing innovation of the codex is that it takes the page structure of

I don’t think the printed book as we know it is going anywhere. Print sales are rising in many categories. And this makes sense. Even if you don’t read novels, you might have a cookbook in your home. Meanwhile, audiobooks have taken off in fields like self-help, while the sales of ebooks are strong in romance. New formats aren’t replacing more established ones. Instead, it seems like they’re specializing according to genre.

Is there a particular text that stands out to your students?

The mundane evidence of a human life always tends to strike us. For instance, clay tablets used by Sumerian students were shaped like little round disks. When I ask students why, they can’t come up with an answer until they hold a ball of clay and realize it fits perfectly in your hand. A teacher would write an example of a few words in cuneiform on one side and the student could flip over the tablet to practice.

There’s a clay tablet at the Penn Museum I always love to share with students. It’s a legal document for an adoption, paired with an infant’s footprint imprinted in clay. A baby’s footprint from 4,000 years ago! We still do this with babies today, but with ink and paper, right? These little personal touches in everyday documents can be extraordinary ways to tap into history.

Jane Carroll is associate director of donor relations for Penn Arts & Sciences Office of Advancement and writes frequently for Omnia.

(Left) “The Open Missal,” attributed to artist Ludger Tom Ring, the Younger, is meant to “fool the eye,” showcasing a realistic book with pages fluttering.

WHAT HISTORY CAN BE

Assistant Professor Hardeep Dhillon’s first-year seminar explores the history of children in America while equipping students with foundational skills.

By Jane Carroll

Photography by Brooke Sietinsons

What do the Grinch, an academic symposium, and archival documents at Penn’s Kislak Center have in common? They’re all part of the first-year seminar, A History of America’s Children, taught by Hardeep Dhillon, an assistant professor in the Department of History and core faculty in the Asian American Studies Program. The course leans heavily on experiential and analytical learning not only to examine how the roles and perceptions of children and

childhood have changed in American history, but also to explore new ways of studying history altogether.

“This seminar is really about introducing students to what history can be. It’s about history in its multitudes,” says Dhillon, who is offering the seminar for the first time this semester. “History is often misunderstood as a field of facts and dates. As a discipline, however, it offers core analytical skills that allow students to interpret the past.”

Dhillon’s main area of research is the history of immigration, particularly the effects of United States law on immigrant communities and families. Among a larger focus on U.S. citizenship, alienage, and racial violence, Dhillon also studies how American law affects children born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents. This includes access to public schooling and equal rights.

“As I researched immigrant families, I increasingly thought about children,” she says. “Their appearance in historical

During a visit to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Hardeep Dhillon, Assistant Professor of History (opposite page, right), and first-years in the seminar A History of America’s Children examine archived documents, like the photograph (above left) of students at a Native American boarding school. On that same visit, Fia Guyer Galperin, C’28, Olivia LaPlante, C’28, and Victoria Largaespada-Tercero, C’28, (above right) look at other documents pertaining to the subject of the class.

records made me think about their absence in immigration history and the importance of historical methods. I found myself asking how we write histories of people who are marked as passive actors or whose voices are written out altogether.”

By presenting American history from the vantage point of childhood, Dhillon felt she could offer a nuanced understanding of industrialization, education, and social reform. Though perceptions of children and childhood can mirror broader historical shifts, Dhillon argues that children from diverse cultural, racial, and economic backgrounds have vastly different experiences. “So, rather than making broad generalizations about U.S. history, I’m locating children and communities affected in various ways by shared and distinct sets of laws and bureaucratic practices,” she says. “This more granular approach encourages students to slow down and think about the past in a different way.”

One example Dhillon offers is offreservation Native American Boarding Schools established in the late 19th century. Children who attended these schools were separated from their

families and prevented from practicing their Native languages and cultures. “We’re learning about the consequences of those schools through oral histories, the memoirs of people who attended them as children, and Native advocacy in the past and present,” she says. “These histories present a perspective that should prompt us to attend to the historical silences, erasures, and conflicts in the archive and whose authority has shaped Native history and the history of education in the United States.”

This more granular approach encourages students to slow down and think differently about the past.

There are many other examples, and students engage with them through short written responses to readings or discussions, small group activities, and debates. The final project is a presentation exploring a single archival document of each student’s choosing—a “micro-history” tracing where the document came from, how it landed in a particular archive, and the way it has been employed by historians.

Dhillon says she wants students to gain crucial analytical skills applicable beyond the classroom, fostered by understanding how history is produced and influences ideas about the world. “Many arguments that we have as a society are based on historical interpretations of the past—many of them inaccurate—so critical history is a fundamental skill. It helps you better understand arguments about the past and their relationship to the world we live in.”

And how does the Grinch fit in all of this?

“How the Grinch Stole Christmas is fundamentally a story about how childhood innocence transforms even the cruelest character,” Dhillon says. “We need to understand childhood innocence as a historical production through an intersectional lens. For instance, which children were seen as innocent? Which were not? Why? The seminar offers analytical moments like this, introducing students not only to the history of children in America but to the discipline of history as a field with multiple facets and methods.”

Jane Carroll is associate director of donor relations for Penn Arts & Sciences Office of Advancement and writes frequently for Omnia.

David Mahoney

Penn Arts & Sciences Then and Now

As Steven J. Fluharty steps down as Dean, we look back at how the School has evolved during his tenure.

BY LORAINE TERRELL AND MICHELE W. BERGER

Among the many major events at Penn in 2013, the Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology opened; thenVice President Joe Biden spoke at the University Commencement; the total enrollment in Penn’s Coursera programs surpassed 1 million; and Steven J. Fluharty, C’79, GR’81, PAR’07, Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience, became Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences.

In one of his first initiatives as the new Dean, Fluharty kicked off a comprehensive planning process involving students, alums, advisors, University administrators, and one-third of the School’s faculty. In 2015, the results of this process were captured in a document that has been guiding the School ever since: Our Foundations and Frontiers: A Strategic Plan for Penn Arts & Sciences.

Foundations and Frontiers prioritized strengthening faculty and education programs—the foundations for excellence in all of the School’s endeavors. In addition, it targeted a series of eight interdisciplinary themes in critically important areas that presented the School’s most promising opportunities to maximize its impact.

The plan has evolved over time but has remained the roadmap guiding the transformation of the School’s people, programs, departments, centers, and buildings in nearly 12 years under Fluharty’s leadership.

OUR FOUNDATIONS AND FRONTIERS

A Strategic Plan for Penn Arts & Sciences

FOUNDATIONS

Faculty

Education

FRONTIERS

Diversity, Inequality, & Human Well-being

Humanities in the Digital Age

Energy, Sustainability, & the Environment

Mapping the Mind

Arts & Culture

Data Driven Discovery Public Policy & Social Impact Global Inquiries

People

In 2013, the School was home to 486 standing faculty; today, that number is 516. The faculty roster includes 230 members recruited since 2013, representing almost 45 percent of the standing faculty. Beyond the faculty revitalization in terms of sheer numbers, the School’s recruitment and retention efforts have strategically used each hiring opportunity to complement critical priorities and fuel cross-disciplinary pursuits, significantly impacting teaching and research.

Supporting Faculty Success

The School has invested in initiatives to support the success of its faculty once recruited. One such effort, called The First Two Years, launched in 2018 as a resource for junior faculty. This group men toring program provides a cohort experience that helps orient faculty to the School and to Penn and helps them connect to other junior faculty.

Alternate Faculty Tracks

The School’s plan recognized that judicious use of non-standing faculty tracks offers an opportu nity to enhance academic programs by bringing in perspectives from the professional community. Since 2017, the Professors of Practice initiative has brought accomplished leaders from business, government, and the arts into Penn Arts & Sciences classrooms to complement the expertise of the School’s standing faculty. Since 2013, the School has also expanded the integration of artists-inresidence into a range of departments and centers.

Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

In late 2021, the School launched an Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, with Brighid Dwyer, the inaugural Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, at its helm. In the nearly three years since, the office has added a Director of Science Outreach and an Associate Vice Dean, continuing its pursuit of creating inclusive and equitable practices across the School.

Supporting Our Graduate Students

The School of Arts & Sciences has led the way in growing support for our graduate students during their time at Penn, transforming their aid packages through increased stipends and 12-month fellowships that provide enhanced health benefits and cover their cost of attendance.

Enhancing Resources

Under Fluharty’s leadership, the School of Arts & Sciences received record-breaking levels of support from alums and friends, allowing the School to pursue its ambitious agenda and positioning it for continued strength in the years to come.

Between 2013 and 2024, the School’s endowment more than doubled, from $707 million to $1.47 billion, and endowment dedicated to undergraduate financial aid for students in the College more than tripled, from $103 million to $323 million. Fundraising during Fluharty’s tenure exceeded $800 million, including the successful Power of Penn Arts & Sciences campaign, which raised $565.6 million in support of the School’s highest priorities. Just this past January, the School received $83.9 million, the single largest gift in its history, from P. Roy Vagelos, C’50, PAR’90, HON’99, and Diana Vagelos, PAR’90, in support of science initiatives across the School, adding to a record $130 million in gifts last year.

Photos: Lusi Klimenko; Lisa J. Godfrey; Courtesy of Brighid Dwyer; Pieter M. Van Hattem; DeBalko Photography; KPMB Architects; Alan Karchmer; Brooke Sietinsons; Behnisch Architekten

Campus Transformation

In the past 12 years, Penn Arts & Sciences has undertaken an ambitious program of facilities construction and renovation, supporting the ability of faculty and students to teach and learn and better positioning the School to advance key priorities.

Vagelos Laboratory for Energy Science and Technology › VLEST will open in December 2024, providing a state-of-the-art laboratory home for the Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology and the undergraduate Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research.

Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics › A signature project for the social sciences, PCPSE opened in 2018 and is home to the Political Science and Economics departments, as well as many centers. It provides spaces for teaching along with a range of academic programming and public events.

Stephen A. Levin Building ›

Opened in 2016, this building provides state-of-the-art teaching spaces and houses the Department of Psychology, as well as several undergraduate programs.

MindCORE Neuroimaging Facility ›

In April 2024, MindCORE put in place a next-generation fMRI machine at Pennovation Works, giving researchers across campus a novel tool to study the mindbrain connection.

Humanities and Interdisciplinary Centers ›

In 2017, the Wolf Humanities Center relocated to a newly renovated wing in Williams Hall, one that now also houses the Price Lab for Digital Humanities. In 2019, the Marks Family Writing Center moved into the renovated McNeil Building, and in 2022, the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies was moved into a new space at 3600 Market Street.

Left: During Fluharty’s time as Dean, Brighid Dwyer (center) became the inaugural Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; writer Jennifer Egan became an artist-in-residence; and P. Roy Vagelos, C’50, PAR’90, HON’99, and Diana Vagelos, PAR’90, gave the largest gift in the School’s history. Above (from left to right): Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics, Stephen A. Levin Building, MindCORE fMRI machine, Vagelos Laboratory for Energy Science and Technology.

Academic Infrastructure

Academic departments reflect the continuity of the disciplines that make up Penn Arts & Sciences; however, disciplines evolve, and since 2013, several changes were made that reflect this process. In the languages, two new departments—Spanish and Portuguese, and Francophone, Italian, & Germanic Studies (known as FIGS)—were formed from the previously existing Romance Languages and Germanic Studies departments. This reconfiguration supports recent developments in scholarship, with the new departments taking a more global approach.

Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS) became a department after two decades as a program. As a department, CIMS is the official academic home for faculty previously spread across several departments. The department can now recruit faculty, develop new courses and research directions, and support its new PhD program.

• Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media

• The Water Center

• Penn Program on Race, Science, and Society

• Plant ARC (The Plant Adaptability and Resilience Center)

• Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology

• Price Lab for Digital Humanities

• Penn Development Research Initiative-DevLab

• Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, & Immigration

• Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies

• Population Aging Research Center

• Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics

• Crime and Justice Policy Lab

The Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures is the new name for the department known since 2005 as Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. The renaming is intended to better reflect the department’s teaching and research, which encompass the region from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula through the eastern Mediterranean to Iran and Arabia, as well as social and cultural development from ancient to modern times.

(See more on p. 7.)

James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies Center on Digital Culture and Society

MindCORE (The Mind Center for Outreach, Research, and Education) Computational Neuroscience Initiative

Center for Experimental Ethnography

Center for Mathematical Biology

Center for Soft and Living Matter

Since 2013, 20 new centers have been established. As incubators for emerging lines of research and hubs for interdisciplinary and cross-school collaboration, centers play a critical role in positioning the School to respond to new opportunities and challenges. Investing in new centers was also a key strategy to advance the priorities identified in Foundations and Frontiers. Diversity, Inequality, & Human Well-being Humanities

Data Driven Discovery

Data Driven Discovery Initiative

Additional Centers

Melissa Jensen of the Department of English teaches a first-year seminar called Juvenilia, one of many new courses offered during Fluharty’s tenure. Other initiatives to strengthen undergraduate education have included enhancements to advising and an ongoing review of the General Education requirement, among others.

Innovation in Teaching

Across all areas, from undergraduate education to graduate study to programs of lifelong learning, Penn Arts & Sciences’ offerings are constantly progressing as faculty design new programs and approaches rooted in the traditional strengths of the liberal arts and adapted to address today’s challenges.

Expanded Options for Undergraduates

The College has launched 15 new minors, including Digital Humanities and Data Science and Analytics. These programs grew directly out of the priorities defined in Foundations and Frontiers, reflecting the strength and inspiration that came with new faculty and other critical investments.

Other important initiatives to strengthen undergraduate education have included enhancements to advising, expansion of several programs that provide funding for paid internships, and an ongoing review of the General Education requirement.

Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences

In fall 2019, the College of Liberal & Professional Studies began offering a Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences, a fully accredited, online degree program for working adults and other non-traditional students. It was a first for the Ivy League.

Training PhD Students to Teach

The Graduate Division is creating programs for inclusive teaching practices. These new programs provide tools that will enable Penn doctoral students—the next generation of faculty—to become effective educators for students from all backgrounds.

Connecting Research to

Communities

Beginning in 2017, the School introduced new grant programs with the goal of inspiring faculty to apply their expertise in innovative ways. These programs, which include Making a Difference in Global Communities Grants and the Klein Family Social Justice Grants, have involved researchers from fields as wide-ranging as public health and policy, community education, environmental studies, and film and media studies, in projects that span the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences and include collaborators from across Penn.

Loraine Terell is Executive Director of Communications for Penn Arts & Sciences, where Michele W. Berger is Director of News and Publications and Omnia editor.

Your memory holds a vast trove of information. Surprises can come to us unbidden, like the lyrics to a song not heard in decades or the click of a knee that recalls a long-ago accident. Other memories are more frequently called upon— the route home, a coworker’s name—or exist at the periphery, an infrequently acknowledged part of our foundation, like our family history or facts and figures learned in high school.

But what makes a memory real? How can we tell, and does it matter? How are our minds and bodies marked by our experiences, and how do our social, cultural, and political moments shape what we remember?

“Perception and memory are built upon what you already know,” says Mark Liberman, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Linguistics. “When you’re learning something new, you are retrieving information from your past. Every instance of stimulus and response is interdependent.”

With language acquisition, for instance, that can mean mapping the structure of a known language onto the structure of one that’s being learned, or a toddler thinking that all words have two

repeated syllables (like “mama” or “dada”).

Sometimes, people form and recall memories in ways that support what they believe about the world, framing or reframing history. Still other times, this process indicates more, a harbinger of something malfunctioning in the brain.

Then there is collective memory, which is not about cognitive processes or individual experiences, but rather a set of repeated narratives or tropes. “The types of stories people tell about the past get mobilized for different kinds of social and political projects,” says Anna Lehr Mueser, a PhD candidate in history and sociology of science studying collective memory about a New York watershed. “Memory helps us understand how people feel about the past, how they feel about the present, and what they might imagine about the future.”

Scholars across Penn Arts & Sciences are exploring memory through the lens of their own disciplines. They’re using tools from archival records and ethnographic studies to AI-guided brain stimulation. What they are learning has the potential to protect our memories in the face of injury or aging and change how we understand our own minds and bodies in the context of our communities and shared histories.

Finding the Words

Our memory is always at work, storing and retrieving information essential to our everyday functions. Communication falls into this category. “The most extraordinary thing, and the most central thing, about human language is the large number of words that people know,” says Liberman, who runs Penn’s Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC). “Normal speakers of pretty much every language know between 10,000 and 100,000 different words.”

of college undergraduates one of these neurophysiological tests, Liberman says, and you’ll get a range of results. Everyone’s baseline is different, he adds, meaning for one of these tests to give a definitive diagnosis of, say, neurological decline, the person would have to score incredibly low, and that wouldn’t transpire unless the decline had been happening for a long time.

Mark Liberman, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Linguistics

What’s more, “people learn almost 100 percent of their words by hearing them used in context by other people,” he says.

“The rate of learning is surprisingly high and the amount of required exposure is surprisingly low. Do the math: If you’ve learned 40,000 words by the time you’re 17 or 18 years old, then on average, you’ve learned about 10 words a day.”

Watching a child go from a babbling baby to a chatty toddler involves a certain amount of awe. But once conversant, we tend to take our linguistic recall for granted—until, that is, words start to disappear. Forgetting a name or place can cue commonplace worries about aging, sometimes indicating real problems like developmental or degenerative disorders. According to Liberman, the majority of such neuropsychological diagnostic tests are linguistically mediated and involve memory, like asking a participant to listen to a story and then repeat details.

Memory helps us understand how people feel about the past, how they feel about the present, and what they might imagine about the future.

Such testing has its advantages: It doesn’t require more complex measures like an MRI or EEG to observe or measure symptoms. But there are limits, too, including the immense variation in what’s considered “normal” language and recall. Give any group

Liberman, with colleagues at LDC and Penn Medicine, has been working to improve these tests by building a database that tracks neural health across time, enabling doctors to make earlier diagnoses and researchers to evaluate medications and other treatments. This project, called the Speech Biomarkers Study, has already gathered data from a range of participants. Researchers involved have published on testing and diagnostics for disorders including Alzheimer’s disease.

One key finding is that the standard battery of tests is too short to account for individual variation. Higher volumes of data collected over a longer period could yield more accurate, timely results. The researchers are considering ways to motivate people to participate in tests that measure language and memory, like through an app.

“You have to make it fun,” Liberman says. “People don’t do it just because it’s going to tell whether they’re having cognitive problems, because that’s no fun. But they might be willing to do it if it involved playing a game, right? Gamifying these tests is a direction worth pursuing.”

Neural Insight

While Liberman is studying memory formation and loss from the outside, Michael Jacob Kahana is coming at it from the inside—literally. The professor of psychology has a habit of looking into people’s brains and finding surprising things. He studies the neural basis of human memory using behavioral, computational, and neurophysiological methods.

Michael Jacob Kahana, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Psychology

In addition to revealing the neural mechanics of brain activity, he researches and develops therapies to restore memory in patients with brain injury or neurological disease.

“The last decade has seen tremendous advances in the use of brain stimulation as a therapy for several neurological and psychiatric disorders, including epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and depression,” says Kahana, who is director of the Computational Memory Lab. “Memory loss, however, represents a huge burden on society. We lack effective therapies for the 27 million Americans suffering.”

In 2023, Kahana and a team of neuroscientists published a paper in the journal Brain Stimulation showing that targeted electrical stimulation in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) led to an average 19 percent boost in recalling words. They determined

this by studying TBI patients with implanted electrodes, analyzing neural data as patients studied words, and using a machine learning algorithm to predict momentary memory lapses.

Another study Kahana and colleagues published that same year, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that electric signals in the human hippocampus—the brain’s memory and learning center—differed immediately before recollection of true and false memories, the latter being exactly as they sound, where the brain incorrectly fills in the blanks on a situation similar to, but not the same as, one that happened in the past.

In Kahana’s study of true and false memories, epilepsy patients already undergoing invasive monitoring to pinpoint the source of their seizures agreed to have their neural activity recorded.

They then studied a list of unrelated words and were distracted before being asked to recite the words they’d seen.

When you’re learning something new, you are retrieving information from your past. Every instance of stimulus and response is interdependent.

Kahana and colleagues analyzed patterns of electricity generated in the hippocampus, capturing brain activity leading up to the recall. Beyond noting a difference in electrical activity in the hippocampus before correct or false memories, the researchers also predicted that the neural activity would reflect how similar to each other the memories

were—something further work did confirm. Because conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder involve false or incongruous recalls that cause distress, these novel insights about memory retrieval in the brain could lead to new interventions or clinical treatments.

Embodied Histories

The work from Kahana and Liberman involves measuring recall or reactions in the moment. But sometimes, events or experiences leave a mark on our minds and bodies that continue to affect us even if the memory has faded. How do these experiences reverberate across time? Historian Kathleen Brown is trying to answer that question in the context of American slavery and its legacy.

“We all have very personal histories of our bodies,” says Brown, David Boies Professor of History. “We carry scars from surgeries or, in some cases, traumatic memories that make us go sweaty, make our hearts beat faster, make us approach certain life events with great foreboding. Those personal histories, these

memories, are always in a dynamic interplay with the bigger historical context.”

While a faded scar from a skinned knee might not be one for the history books, what about the physical relics of growing up drinking lead-contaminated water, living in a war zone, or surviving a wildfire in an area affected by climate change? Situations like that, inseparable from the big picture of policy and legislation, impact the body long after the immediate experience ends, Brown notes. It’s one of the reasons her recent work centers on the body, casting it as a dynamic and consequential record of what happened in the past.

Kathleen Brown,  David Boies Professor of History

Brown sees connections, for example, between current discussions of trauma and memory and how 19th-century abolitionists focused on slavery’s effect on the human body and psyche. “Today, we think deeply about how experiences of trauma can have a lasting impact,” says Brown, lead faculty historian for the student-run Penn & Slavery Project. People fighting against slavery, she adds, saw the body as formed by its circumstances, so enslavement, then, was an intolerable set of physical constraints, injuries, and harms done to people who might otherwise thrive.

The experience could leave its mark on an individual’s body and mind, from injury, brutal punishment, malnutrition, or the trauma of family separation. Even after a body healed or a person escaped enslavement, the memory of it would remain. And more broadly, Brown says, slavery’s legacy left and continues to influence American history. She explains that racist scientific beliefs propped up legal structures that harmed and limited the movement of Black bodies—from slavery being inheritable to Jim Crow–era laws that enforced segregation—allowing the memory of enslavement and its afterlives to reenact and reinflict on people’s bodies throughout the 20th century.

We are imprinted by our history.

To that end, it is perhaps not surprising, she adds, that if you map out regions of health disadvantage in the United States, places where people are more likely to suffer from diabetes, drug use, and mental health crises, and are more susceptible to lack of dental

care and general healthcare access, this closely follows historical maps of slavery and Native American forced migration to reservations.

“It bears our attention as historians to understand how the world of health outcomes has been made historically,” Brown argues. “They didn’t just happen. They are the product of histories that have created patterns of wealth and poverty and diet and access to healthcare. We are imprinted by our history.”

Memory As Contested Object

Anna Lehr Mueser’s personal backstory includes working at an environmental nonprofit, where she frequently heard arguments against horizontal hydrofracking in New York State. The popular refrain was that New York’s agricultural legacy needed protecting and therefore couldn’t evolve to include fracking.

“But of course, you could also look at New York’s history and say it’s an incredibly industrial state, right?” says Mueser, a doctoral candidate in history and sociology of science. “There are many different things in the state’s history, and I realized that its agricultural past was a really helpful motivator for the activists. It was a memory that had power in that time and place.”

Now, Mueser’s PhD research focuses on collective memory as it relates to people living in the New York City watershed, located about 120 miles away from the city in the Catskills. Villages were destroyed to construct the reservoirs and today, activities including farming are highly regulated to protect the water supply.

Alongside archival work at state and local institutions, Mueser interviews farmers in the region, asking broad questions about their daily practice and how they work within the complex watershed rules.

“Emotions and familial connections— often going back generations— come up frequently in interviews. There is also a sense of ever-present political engagement,” says Mueser. “In the 1990s, farmer protests and citizen activism led to a nonprofit, funded largely by New York City, that helps farms stay financially viable in the face of watershed regulations that limit agricultural activity.”

In her research, Mueser contends that the reservoir’s construction was just one phase in ongoing negotiations between residents of the Catskills and residents of New York City, between their needs, rights, pasts, and presents. Once the reservoirs were in place, the difficult act of living with them began. Knowing how people understand the past can guide decisions in the present, she says.

“Collective memory is important when we look at ongoing politics and policy decisions, say, about where a dam might be sited or a landfill located,” Mueser says.

“The kinds of stories that activists, lawmakers, and different stakeholders tell are shaped by memories about what kind of place that potential site is. They’re activating these stories in moments in which the past becomes a special kind of evidence.”

Lauren Rebecca Thacker is a Providence-based higher ed writer who covers topics from poetry to politics. Additional contributions by Erica Moser.

Emergency Response

Solving the complex challenge that is climate change requires breadth in approach. Penn Arts & Sciences is positioned to lead.

By Loraine Terrell and Michele W. Berger

Illustrations by Kristina Paggioli • Inset illustrations by Grace Jung

hrough the lens of time, humans represent little more than a passing shadow, present for a fraction of a percent of our planet’s 4.5-billion-year history, and even now, with a population of more than 8 billion, encompassing less than 0.01 percent of life on Earth. Despite this, humanity has emerged as a force, rapidly altering ecosystems, reducing biodiversity, warming the atmosphere and oceans, and changing the fundamental equilibrium that has defined and supported life throughout our geologic era.

In this moment, with the hottest summer on record—again—Penn Arts & Sciences faculty are responding to the climate emergency. They’re assessing the challenges and generating solutions, thinking creatively about the policymaking that must follow and considering how best to communicate this complicated and often-controversial issue.

“Problems of this complexity require breadth in approach,” says Mark Trodden, Associate Dean for Natural Sciences and Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics. “Here, Penn Arts & Sciences is positioned to lead, from the basic science through the development of new technologies, formulating and communicating options for the public and policymakers.”

Assessing the Problem

the ocean depend on healthy coral reefs. So do a billion people worldwide. But the coral are suffering as warmer water temperatures lead to mass bleaching events. Katie Barott, Associate Professor of Biology, is studying these ecosystems to understand just how climate change is distressing the coral and reefs, from the cells to the whole organism.

Vector-Borne Disease

Black-legged ticks—the ones that transmit Lyme disease—thrive in warmer, humid climes, so higher temperatures equate to more suitable habitat. To forecast where future disease hotspots might arise, Biology Professor Dustin Brisson, Tammy Tran, GR’21, and William Manley, C’20 (now a Penn graduate student), created a model that successfully predicts prevalence and distribution of Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that cause Lyme disease.

Glaciers

Icy glacial melt provides an important water source for communities and ecosystems worldwide, yet glaciers have been shrinking for decades, by some estimates since the 1950s. Through fieldwork in Greenland and elsewhere, Jon Hawkings, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, is trying to understand the effect rapid environmental changes have on glaciers, meltwater, and ecosystems downstream. Leigh Stearns, Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, also works in this space, studying ice sheet dynamics and sea-level rise, as well as shifts in iceberg and sea-ice distributions.

Local Impact

Arctic Sea Ice

Arctic temperatures are rising quickly, a trend closely linked to a multi-decade Arctic sea ice loss. The decline of the ice serves as both a clear indicator of ongoing climate change and a driver of what might happen in the future. But when might Arctic sea ice disappear altogether? According to statistical forecasting models from economist Francis X. Diebold, Paul F. Miller, Jr. and E. Warren Shafer Miller Professor of Social Sciences, nearly ice-free Arctic Septembers are likely before 2040.

In November, the University released its latest Climate & Sustainability Action Plan, with input from Jared Farmer, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History, Anne Berg, Assistant Professor of History, and Kristina Lyons, Associate Professor of Anthropology, who were all part of the Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee. They worked on transportation, strategic waste, and civic engagement and outreach, respectively.

Climate Change and Children

The Climate, Environment, and Childhood Inequality initiative, co-led by Emily Hannum, Associate Dean for Social Sciences and Stanley I. Sheerr Term Professor, Jere Behrman, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Economics, and Fan Wang, GR’15, of the University of Houston, focuses on how climate change affects the health and well-being of children in China, India, and a number of other low- and middle-income countries.

Thinking Creatively about Policy

Solar Acceptance

New solar projects often face community opposition, and Parrish Bergquist, Assistant Professor of Political Science; the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy’s Sanya Carley; and Alison Knasin, GR’23, have a plan to better understand why. In Department of Energy-funded work, they will follow 24 proposed solar projects, talking with and listening to the people the new infrastructure will most likely affect. They hope to show how better public engagement can improve solar project acceptance at the community level.

Global Reach

Since 2014, Michael Weisberg, Bess W. Heyman President’s Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, has led efforts in the Galápagos to understand human and climate-related impacts on this fragile ecosystem. More recently, Weisberg contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment and serves as a UN Climate Conference senior negotiator, where he helped foster a decision establishing new funding arrangements to address

Climate and the Economy

Global Challenges

The two-year-old Penn Development Research Initiative-DevLab@Penn, co-led by Guy Grossman, David M. Knott Professor of Global Politics and International Relations, Erik Wibbels, Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Political Science, and Heather Huntington, Associate Professor of Practice, is working in 27 countries to help inform policy around forced displacement, land and environmental policies, and bigdata analytics. (See more on p. 40.)

Jesús FernándezVillaverde, Howard Marks Presidential Professor of Economics, wanted to better understand how the climate affects the economy and vice versa. So, he and colleagues figured out how to integrate stateof-the-art climate science into standard economic models. The result—called a structural Integrated Assessment Model—can help design optimal policies such as the best tax approach to decarbonizing the economy.

Water Policy

Faculty in departments from Anthropology to History and Sociology of Science are thinking about water. Nikhil Anand, Daniel Braun Silvers, W’98, WG’99 and Robert Peter Silvers, C’02 Family Presidential Associate Professor, for instance, has published extensively on the relation between water and society in Mumbai. His latest project coalesces around how fishers, scientists, and city planners imagine, design, and dwell in climate-changed cities in close proximity to the sea.

Generating Solutions

Plant Resilience

Through Plant ARC, a new initiative spearheaded by Doris Wagner, DiMaura Professor of Biology, six Department of Biology labs have come together under one umbrella. Their broad goal? To “climate-proof” plants and overcome adverse effects of climate change on food security and biodiversity. (See more on p. 4.)

Bird-Friendly Buildings

Urban Water

Philadelphia, a city of 1.6 million people, faces aging water infrastructure and environmental threats to nearby freshwater sources. A team led by Howard Neukrug, Professor of Practice and director of Penn’s Water Center, is seeking local and global solutions that foster “resilient water management.” Neukrug is also chairing the Delaware River Basin Commission’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change, a group tasked with developing a climate resilience plan for the entire river basin.

Symbiotic Architecture

Thousands of birds migrating along the Atlantic Flyway—the corridor that runs up and down the East Coast of the United States—annually crash into buildings on Penn’s campus, unable to discern the structures that obscure their paths. During his junior year, Zade Dohman, C’25, worked with Penn Sustainability’s Bird-Friendly Penn initiative, recommending that campus buildings add to their windows a special type of film known to deter bird strikes.

Energy Innovations

Meeting the world’s current and future energy needs will require creative thinking and innovative, integrative basic research. That’s the aim of the Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology, a collaboration between Penn Arts & Sciences and Penn Engineering, directed by Karen Goldberg, Vagelos Professor in Energy Research. Affiliated faculty are working on a range of complex issues, from energy storage to optimal use of natural gas and much more.

What if building materials could sequester carbon and remediate contaminated soil? That’s the goal of research led by Penn’s School of Design and involving Corlett Wood, Assistant Professor of Biology, and colleagues. They’re working to understand the ecological components of mycelium, a fungus being used to develop building material. Earth and Environmental Science Professor Reto Gieré is also part of the research.

Solar Farms and Soil

Professor of Earth and Environmental Science Alain Plante and master’s student Hannah Winn sought to determine best management practices for soil health after installation of a solar farm. An extensive literature review revealed the need for monitoring and restoration practices. Next, an expanded team will try to determine the best starting point to compare preand post-installation land conditions.

Communicating Clearly

Climate Risk Assessments

Irina Marinov, Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, and several dozen collaborators across seven Penn schools created the open-source Global Climate Security Atlas. This data-visualization tool offers a straightforward way to assess risk for factors like heat and drought, precipitation, biodiversity, and more.

Community Engagement

This summer, Douglas Jerolmack, Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, and colleagues from the Netter Center for Community Partnerships and Penn Engineering, advised master’s students conducting community-engaged research with students from West Philadelphia’s Robeson High School. One project developed labs and curriculum material for a new Penn class about urban rivers; another generated a low-cost DIY flow meter to measure the speed of river water movement.

Effective Communication

Michael Mann, Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action and Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science, has been at the forefront of climate communication for decades, beginning with his hockey-stick graph, the startling visual of the planet’s dramatic warming. Today, Mann continues his outreach through the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media.

Instructive Art

Professor Poldergeist, aka Simon Richter, Class of 1965 Term Professor of German, is using animation and documentary film to shine a spotlight on what he describes as the cultural aspects of the climate emergency. His aim: to spread the word about climate adaptation and sea-level rise in the U.S., the Netherlands, Jakarta, and elsewhere.

The

David Wallace’s life has been guided by his love of medieval literature and his certainty that it has much to say to today’s world. But he finds time for a day at the races, too.

By Susan Ahlborn

by Alix

Illustrations

Pentecost-Farren

Prologue

went to Worcester Cathedral, and then to the horse races in the afternoon. I placed one bet. It was on a horse called Byzantine Empire, and it won at 8 to 1.”

It seems like a typical summer day for David Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor of English, whose interests range far beyond the medieval literature on which he is a renowned expert. An hour-long conversation with him touches on cathedrals and horses, on Geoffrey Chaucer, the Enigma code breakers, steam trains, free-range parenting, Marxism and Catholicism in East Germany, the climate crisis, the Olympics, Longfellow, the British royal family, and the new British PM.

Suggest that he’s a Renaissance man and Wallace laughs. “No, I’m not a Renaissance man, I’m a medieval man. It’s because I’m well-informed by all my contributors. I look for a hundred smart people to tell me the things I need to know, and then I seem smarter than I really am.”

Chapter One: The Scholar

Though “creaking joints” have caused Wallace to give up soccer for biking, his academic journey has not slowed. He’s organizing his 100 contributors as they explore national epics in countries around the world. It’s an effort to comprehend the cultural mechanics and resurgent appeal of nationalism on a global scale.

For each nation, an author determines its representative epic, then examines when that choice was made and how well it’s holding up. “The myths we live by, the stories we tell, that’s the fascination of the project,” says Wallace. The website, designed by Penn’s Price Lab for Digital Humanities, is already live, and Oxford University Press will eventually publish the book (in three volumes).

This follows 10 previous books, including Europe: A Literary History 1348–1418 and Geoffrey Chaucer: A New

Wallace is being modest, but he really is working with 100 smart people (and counting) on his latest project, a book and website on national epics. It’s the most recent chapter in a tale that spans decades and genres, encompassing 10 books, multiple teaching awards, and a move to the U.S. to be with his future wife. He has traveled to learn more about the medieval literature that is his life’s work, the world in which he lives, and how the two connect. Like Chaucer—Wallace’s first literary love and his scholarly focus for decades—he is authoring a story that interweaves duty and delight.

I’m not a Renaissance man, I’m a medieval man. It’s because I’m wellinformed by all my contributors. I look for a hundred smart people to tell me the things I need to know, and then I seem smarter than I really am.

“It’s been a tremendous privilege, about as good of a life as I could have ever had,” he says. “I’m simply grateful for the teaching and the students and the colleagues and everything else.”

Introduction. Among many accolades, Wallace was named a Guggenheim fellow in 2009, and in 2019 was awarded the Sir Israel Gollancz Prize by the British Academy. Recently, he was honored with a conference known colloquially as “Wallacefest.”

More than 30 of Wallace’s former doctoral students participated in the two-day event (officially called Premodern Literature and Global Histories) organized by Megan Cook, GR’11; Daniel Davies, GR’21; and Emily Steiner, Rose Family Endowed Term Professor of English. Presenter after presenter considered the roles Wallace’s work will play in the future of medieval studies. The event wound up at the house Wallace shares with spouse Rita Copeland, Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg Professor of Classical Studies, with celebrations stretching into the night.

Chapter Two: The Englishman

Wallace grew up in Bletchley, England, a small factory town at the crossroads of the Oxford-to-Cambridge and London-to-Manchester railway lines. His mother was from a rural family; she joined the Women’s Land Army during World War II and enjoyed it so much she stayed in until 1950. A royalist (unlike her son), she twice met Queen Elizabeth II. His engineer father served as a Royal Air Force pilot in the war.

When he was young, Wallace loved steam trains and explored much of the geography of England via train, his

father dropping him off at one station and picking him up at another. He also loved reading and by 16 was downing the complete works of Milton. “For me, it was a form of rock-and-roll rebellion, because nobody else was doing that,” he says.

His first encounter with Chaucer was not auspicious. “The teacher had never taught Chaucer before and was piecing it out bit by bit,” Wallace says. When he got to York University, most of his fellow literature students were focusing on the 20th century, but Wallace heard a medieval studies professor there read Chaucer aloud

Chapter Three: The Traveler

Like Chaucer, Wallace’s life and work have been shaped by travel. At college, he learned Italian, now the language he loves best and feels most comfortable with. Time in Italy opened his world as it had for Chaucer. “His trips to continental Europe led to his discovery of great contemporary writing in France and especially Italy—authors like Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch,” explains Wallace. “He was inspired to think that the humble English language, too, might achieve great things.”

After graduating, Wallace spent a year at Leipzig University, and toured Eastern Europe, publishing his first article

and fell under the poet’s influence. “It was so expressive and powerful,” Wallace remembers.

He still cares deeply about “the voicing” of Chaucer’s work, partnering with the audio poetry site PennSound and collaborating on performance pieces. He even has his students learn to read the text aloud.

“Fourteenth-century English hadn’t yet stabilized,” says Wallace. “Chaucer had the opportunity to write from the beginning.”

about his experience in communist East Germany. After another year in Italy and a summer working with intellectually disabled adults in England, he began his doctoral studies at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge. There he met an American graduate student named Rita Copeland. “It was like animal magnetism in a medieval classroom,” he says. “I always tell my graduate students never to get involved with a fellow student, but I didn’t take my own advice.” The day after he turned in his thesis, he headed to the United States (where Copeland was finishing hers). More moves followed for the pair,

to Stanford, the University of Texas, the University of Minnesota, and finally to Penn.

Wallace is grateful to be working in both the U.S. and U.K. “The United States is really good at developing your ability to think abstractly, philosophically, paradigmatically,” he says. “The English side is much more pragmatic: content, history, manuscripts, archives.” His new nation has failed him in at least one way, however: The former sweeper never found a place to play soccer in Philadelphia, though he remains a lifelong Manchester United fan.

Courtesy of David Wallace

From left to right: Wallace in first grade and at Bletchley Grammar in Bletchley, England, where he grew up; trying on hats with his dad at The University of Texas at Austin, where Wallace taught from 1991 to 1996; and befriending a Shetland pony during a Penn Alumni Travel trip.

Chaucer for Children

Chaucer’s characters as foxes, horses, and ravens? When Emily Steiner, Rose Family Endowed Term Professor of English, challenged her students to adapt Chaucer for young readers, Zuza Jevremovic, C’26, went twice as far. Believing that no children’s book is complete without pictures, Jevremovic rewrote and illustrated “The Franklin’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales, a story about the plight of a triangle of lovers and the rash promises they make.

She used animals to add interest and differentiate the characters, selecting them based on the qualities they reflect in medieval bestiaries. Jevremovic also refocused the ending to add the moral traditional in children’s adaptations. In her version, she attributes the lack of punishment for mistakes to the character’s “willingness to come clean. Naturally, children (and all people) will make mistakes; at least there is hope that honesty may alleviate the consequences.”

–SUSAN AHLBORN, ILLUSTRATIONS BY ZUZA JEVREMOVIC

Chapter Four: The Teacher

In 2024, Wallace won the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, the University’s highest teaching honor. “When I announced that he won, a colleague said to me, ‘Everything about David is distinguished,’” says Department of English Chair Margo Natalie Crawford, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor for Faculty Excellence. Wallace had previously received the Ira Abrams Award for Distinguished Teaching, the top School of Arts & Sciences award, and been honored twice by the English Undergraduate Advisory Board.

One secret to being a good teacher, he says, is to really like the kids: “If they know, or suspect, you’d rather be somewhere else, you won’t succeed.”

Wallace believes it is crucial for English faculty to teach writing. He edits all of his students’ papers and calls the seminar model “an alternative to AI in collective learning. That’s a key task, to help each student develop a style that is like their fingerprint as a writer.”

Given his specialty, Wallace has another challenge: teaching students accustomed to the quick-digest nature of social media about an alien medieval world in what is almost another language. Reading 300 pages

of anything, he adds, has fallen out of fashion. “We’re trying to create an environment where you can think a little longer,” he says.

To that end, Wallace has taught multiple classes on medieval women writers, and on Dante, whom he says “just blows everyone away. The Divine Comedy is a deeply beautiful poem. A complete poem.” His class this fall, After Dante, looks at the way the poet inspired writers from T.S. Eliot to Bob Dylan to Lil Nas X.

He keeps the atmosphere relaxed but rigorous, and he’s supportive even as he’s pushing you in the right direction. Alongside this great scholarly and teaching perspective, he’s funny and down to Earth.

“These classes are a breath of fresh air,” says Daphne Glatter, C’25, who has taken two with Wallace. “He keeps the atmosphere relaxed but rigorous, and he’s supportive even as he’s pushing you in the right direction. Alongside this great scholarly and teaching perspective, he’s funny and down to Earth.”

Wallace teaching the class Travel Writing: Preparing for Your Journey, one of more than four dozen courses he has taught since arriving at Penn in 1996.

Eric Sucar, University Communications

Chapter Five: The Globalist

It may be surprising given his scholarship, but Wallace is motivated by current events. “Just like everyone, I’m thinking, ‘Why are things happening the way they are?’” In 2022, as his national epics course was discussing Russia, Russia invaded Ukraine. “The present is breaking into the classroom all the time,” he says.

It did so dramatically just after Wallace published Europe: A Literary History 1348–1418, “two big, fat volumes” that traced linguistic paths through Europe and beyond after the bubonic plague. He and 85 contributors spent seven years studying how literature followed routes taken by merchants, pilgrims,

armies, and disease, looking beyond categories like “English literature” or “Italian literature.” It published in 2016—two weeks before Brexit, in which the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.

“I thought I’d given birth to the biggest white elephant because I was very much hoping this would help integrate Britain into Europe, to show how we’re part of a connected culture,” he says. “But politically, what’s happening is a hardening of nationalism.” The national epics project, which will eventually run “from Albania and Algeria to Vietnam and Wales,” is his response.

Wallace is also informed by his National Epics class, which he is teaching this spring for the sixth time. He looks to students with knowledge of a particular locale or its diaspora as his “expert informants.” “The students realize that their own family histories are wrapped around these sagas of nations,” he says. “Your family has lived out its own rich and complex history, but then the state adopts certain limited views of nationhood and institutionalizes them. Inevitably some people get left out or misrepresented.”

It’s never simple, he concludes, “but the class is a trusting, supportive place to think these things through together.”

Epilogue: The Continuing Tales

Wallace’s journey continues. His greatest concern now, he says, is “that we do not fry our planet to death.” He collaborates with the Faculty Environmental Humanities Working Group, as well as the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program, Italian Studies, the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, and Kelly Writers House. He’ll shortly publish a chapter on Dantes in America, with special

emphasis on African American Dantes, and another on Walt Whitman’s personal copy of Dante’s Inferno. (He’s also the campus go-to on the British royal family—despite never having met Queen Elizabeth himself.)

“He cares deeply about the past, present, and future of Penn English,” Crawford says. “David is an award-winning teacher and a dedicated mentor to

undergraduate and graduate students, and he’s an incredibly prolific scholar.”

Decades in, Wallace himself is still learning, about national epics, about Chaucer and other writers, about the world, and teaching others to dive in with him. “It’s tremendous fun,” he says.

Susan Ahlborn was Omnia’s associate editor until she passed away in September 2024.

Beyond the Policy Paper

PDRI-DevLab, only two years old, is on the ground in developing nations working to find actionable data for policymakers.

By Matt Gelb

Two years ago, during one of Guy Grossman’s frequent trips to Uganda, he had some downtime between his lectures for the Penn Global class he was there teaching. So, he arranged a meeting with the top official in the Ugandan office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). During that meeting, Grossman posed a question: What keeps you up at night?

At the time, budget tightening in Uganda, which hosts more refugees than any other country in Africa, had cut support for 85 percent of those refugees, though the 15 percent of neediest refugee households would still receive the same level of provisions. UNHCR was worried about the implications of the aid cuts for this marginalized population but wasn’t sure how to assess the impact of this dramatic policy shift. Grossman had an idea: The Penn Development

Research Initiative (PDRI), which he’d created in 2020 to address the challenges facing developing nations, could survey households just above and just below the 15 percent need threshold. His team would collect data for a year to show the effect of the aid cuts on refugee well-being.

The project had potential because Grossman, David M. Knott Professor of Global Politics and International Relations, had relationships in Uganda and the backing of Penn’s resources. The proposed study had a robust design, and because it would happen in partnership with UNHCR and the Ugandan prime minister’s office, it would have funding and access to the refugee population. Grossman could recruit Penn undergrads to help undertake the in-country research.

Most importantly, Grossman says, “it was going to generate hard evidence.”

Courtesy of Heather Huntington

The study would also potentially provide UNHCR a useful tool, says Erik Wibbels, Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Political Science and founder of DevLab@Penn, which assists social scientists at the University with research designs. “They could take it to international audiences and say, ‘Listen, you don’t give us the money that you say you will every year, and the result is that there are refugee kids in Uganda who are starving.’”

We’re in the room with the policy people and they will change their programming based on what’s being studied. That’s pretty powerful.

It was just the kind of project Grossman and Wibbels envisioned for PDRIDevLab. The initiative, which brings together dozens of Penn faculty and students from across seven schools, focuses on three flagship themes— migration and forced displacement,

environmental and land policies, and big-data analytics—and has projects in 27 countries so far.

It’s more than publishing ideas in policy papers. It is a quest to investigate social, political, and economic issues seen in developing countries and to find actionable data for policymakers.

Ashared goal across different disciplines has taken the group on unexpected paths. Wibbels created Machine Learning for Peace, a bigdata initiative to improve the timeliness of actionable data on developing countries’ day-to-day politics and to forecast democratic backsliding, conflict, or other potential crises. Then, through PDRI-DevLab, he met Irina Marinov, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science who studies oceans.

“I don’t know the world where Irina and I would have come up with something” to collaborate on,

Wibbels says. “But because of this attempt to build bridges across disciplines, we started thinking.”

It is not difficult to find rainfall levels for the past week from anywhere across the world, but Wibbels knows policymakers don’t care about the measured rainfall; they want evidence to understand the human implications. “We know when catastrophes happen,” Wibbels says, “but we have very little data at the level of villages in northern Nigeria that are facing climate change, which is bringing herder communities into their villages and causing all sorts of conflict. That’s the beginning of something really big.”

Wibbels wrote a proposal with Marinov to create something that would generate better data. They won a $1.6 million grant in August 2024 from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative. “I don’t know anything about climate science,” Wibbels says. But Marinov does—and that’s the beauty and promise of PDRI-DevLab.

PDRI-DevLab Research Fellows are working in Zambia as part of the UNAID-funded Eastern Kafue Nature Alliance there. The project aims to protect the animals and nature while providing resources to people, many of whom experience high rates of poverty.

Courtesy of Heather Huntington

At its core, it is trying to institutionalize the quest for better data that can then inform policymakers. It is why Grossman could ask a Ugandan official a straightforward question two years ago. He knew he could propose a solution to whatever complicated answer followed.

“OK,” Grossman said that day, “let’s find the evidence.”

Grossman took a shorter trip to North Carolina four years ago. He wanted to meet Wibbels, who, along with Heather Huntington, an associate professor of practice in political science, had started DevLab at Duke. There was no hub for this type of research at Penn. Other universities are better known for their work in developing countries, but Grossman wanted something more than a lab and something smaller than a largescale center. Something that would not grow stale over time, a way for Penn to leverage its strengths.

By 2022, Grossman had helped recruit Wibbels and Huntington to Penn. They created PDRI-DevLab.

“To be able to push for high-quality, impactful work within your institution, you need to bring people together, right?” Grossman says. “You need to create an intellectual community, and that intellectual community should span more than one discipline. If you think about some of the big challenges of our time—cross-border migration, climate change, and democratic erosion—it’s rare that one perspective can capture them in totality. You might need someone who knows more about society and more about economics and more about how political systems work.”

All of them are working on a multifaceted problem. There’s a

migration

part, an agriculture part, a climate part, a human trafficking part. All of this comes together in a way that exemplifies what we’re trying to do.

Until recently, PDRI-DevLab had just one full-time employee. It has grown enough to hire two research managers,

an administrative assistant, three data scientists, several PhD-level researchers, and a small army of undergraduate fellows. Huntington, PDRIDevLab’s executive director, has a background in policy. Those connections have helped the initiative secure a strong donor base and are part of her pitch to faculty and students thinking about collaboration.

“We’re in the room with the policy people,” Huntington says, “and they will change their programming based on what’s being studied. That’s pretty powerful.”

Huntington had a project in Zambia to promote organic quinoa growing among subsistence farmers. But when she and fellow researchers went into the field, they realized farmers would be required to cut down trees to qualify for an organic farming program. They flagged it with the policymakers and implementation partners, and the project shifted to agricultural interventions that would not motivate extensive land clearing.

For his part, in addition to work in Uganda, Grossman is heading a $7.9 million project with the nonprofit Winrock International to study the

In Ghana, a team led by Associate Professor of Practice Heather Huntington is working with many partners to support “deforestation-free cocoa,” which could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase carbon sequestration, and help cocoa farmers up their productivity and resilience.

Christina Seybolt, courtesy of Heather Huntington

relationship between climate change and human trafficking vulnerabilities. The research team, whose main objective is to analyze the effects of better agricultural practices for Bangladeshi farmers, includes an international relations PhD student who specializes in gender issues, a postdoc with expertise in public policy, and a behavioral economist from Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.

The point is to build a bigger engine to change the way the policy world works so that lives on the ground can improve and policy dollars are spent more intelligently. And to really do that at scale, we need a lot of people.

“All of them are working on a multifaceted problem,” Grossman says. “There’s a migration part, an agriculture part, a climate part, a human trafficking part. All of this comes together in a way that exemplifies what we’re trying to do.” The project is supported by the U.S. State Department, the field’s biggest funder. Grossman and his team have periodic calls with those officials to explain their methodology and provide updates on the project’s progress.

It’s a fundamental shift in the way research gets conducted to help millions across the world in need, Wibbels says. “Those efforts have historically been very poorly informed by evidence. We need better evidence to improve policy. To improve real human outcomes. And there’s been a growing taste in the policy world for improving the quality of evidence.”

The point, he adds, is to “build a bigger engine to change the way the policy world works so that lives on the ground can improve and policy dollars are spent more intelligently. And to really do that at scale, we need a lot of people. Guy and I and 10 others like us can’t do it alone, so that’s where education comes in.”

PDRI-DevLab has postdoctoral fellows and an expanding internship program that included 22 full-time undergraduate fellows this past summer. The team reimagined an undergraduate minor in international development to make it much more data-centric. In fall 2023, PDRI-DevLab launched a fellowship program that offered a semester-in-residence for social scientists from sub-Saharan Africa.

There’s also a pre-doctoral fellow program that brings students from low- and middle-income countries to Penn, the aim of which is to make participants more competitive in gaining admission to PhD programs. One student who came from the West African country of Benin was recently offered a spot at a social science PhD program at Princeton, the first

Huntington (top left) and PDRI-DevLab Research Fellows collaborate with cocoa farmers like the one seen here (bottom left) on this work, which is happening at both farm and landscape scales, and aims to expand opportunities for women and youth.

Beninese person to accomplish such a feat there. PDRIDevLab has also recruited students from Turkey, Malawi, Morocco, and elsewhere.

“With the help of the School of Arts & Sciences,” Grossman says, “we created something that didn’t exist.”

Two years in, PDRI-DevLab is making real headway. And it will continue to work toward gaining an audience with foreign policymakers, wielding data-driven ideas that meet them where they are, responding to real-world questions and creating new partnerships along the way. “It makes you feel good,” Huntington says, “that the work you’re doing is informing these sorts of activities.”

Matt Gelb is a Philadelphia-based writer. His last Omnia piece was about Olympian Regina Salmon, C’18.

Christina Seybolt, courtesy of Heather Huntington

Peter Struck shares his journey as an academic, an educator, and now, Stephen A. Levin Family Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.

By Blake Cole

Peter Struck has pursued a long and winding path through the liberal arts. A self-declared “classicist without a degree in classics,” Struck has never limited himself to one sector of the arts and sciences and firmly believes in the experience of learning—what he calls “habits of mind”—instead of skill training alone. This road has led Struck, Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities, to a new role as Stephen A. Levin Family Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.

Struck’s academic and educational accolades are numerous. Two of his books won the Goodwin Award, the top prize in classical studies. He has received prestigious teaching honors from the University and held leadership roles that further teaching and the liberal arts within and outside of Penn. He also founded the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education, a threeyear program designed to identify and prepare emerging liberal arts leaders.

As Struck embarked on his new role as dean, a tenure that began August 1, he shared with Omnia how he came to love the liberal arts, how he thinks they can meet the challenges of technologies like AI, and what he wants students in the College to know.

What were your early liberal arts experiences? What led you to classics?

I had always loved math and science. Then, during my freshman year at the University of Michigan, I took a class called Great Books and read Homer’s The Iliad. I was just blown away by how much I could relate to it and also by how strange it was. I later wrote my thesis on James Joyce’s Ulysses and Homer’s The Odyssey, and then completed a PhD in comparative literature.

None of the degrees attached to my name are in classics, which is non-standard for my field. Luckily, my colleagues at Penn were open-minded enough to think I made sense in the department, and it has been a wonderful home for me.

You directed and enhanced the Benjamin Franklin Scholars (BFS) program, which encourages intensive learning beyond students’ academic major and interests. Can you talk about your tenure in this role?

The College is now several years into rethinking the General Education requirement of the curriculum that had been in place for two decades. What has that been like?

We want to simplify general education and make it legible to first-year students and their parents. I want it to make a clear statement about what liberal arts is. People learn skills their whole lives, and if you think of yourself as a kind of skills-acquisition machine— well, OK, it’s good to have skills—but in college, you can do much more than that. You can learn the fundamentals of how it is you think in the first place.

How do the liberal arts fit with advancements in AI, like ChatGPT?

You are a lifelong advocate for the liberal arts. Why are they foundational to education?

Liberal arts are liberal because they’re liberating. They help you think in a broad way, and they free you from mistakes and misimpressions and fearfulness about the world, as well as doubts about your own agency.

Different disciplines organize their picture of the world differently, and finding the discipline that organizes the world the way you see it will set you up to thrive.

The liberal arts changed my life, and I wanted to help other people find the amazing power in these ideas. I wanted to attract the kind of students who want to do liberal arts because it’s hard. I wanted folks who were thinking about every side of the problem, who weren’t satisfied with simple answers.

We built the first-year aspect of BFS— what’s called the Integrated Studies Program—around core themes, one in the fall, one in the spring, that vary year to year. We organized parallel introductory courses taught by faculty from disciplines far apart from one another. This has led to all kinds of interesting insights and back-andforth around the similarities and differences in how fields organize their understandings of the world.

The kind of knowledge that we’re pursuing in the arts and sciences is more important than ever. ChatGPT is showing us what happens when machines can mimic thinking. It is absolutely critical to have the habits of mind to understand when data are being cherry-picked and when arguments are forced. Our world is changing, so the ability to know the difference between what really counts as knowledge and what doesn’t is crucial.

What do you want students in the College today to know?

When our students go out into the wider world, in the first year, 93 percent of them are settled into their careers or are in graduate school. They’re prepared for anything. Sometimes our students think that if they major in a liberal arts discipline, it may limit their career choices, but that’s just not true. We need to get them on the other side of that.

Blake Cole is Director of Advancement Communications for Penn Arts & Sciences and previous editor of Omnia

HUNGRY IN AMERICA

Penn Arts & Sciences alums are taking on the challenge of food insecurity, both locally and on a national scale.

By Judy Hill

Illustrations by Melissa McFeeters

America is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, and yet roughly one in seven adults— more than 47 million people—lives with hunger, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Unraveling and ameliorating the problem of insufficient access to food in the United States is complex, frustrating, life-changing work, and it’s an area where Penn Arts & Sciences alums are actively contributing, through their own initiatives or by joining those already tackling the issue.

Lack of available food is not the problem, says Julia Luscombe, C’10, W’10, who heads strategic planning at Feeding America, the largest charity working to end hunger in the U.S., in partnership with a nationwide network. “We have the resources, technology, and knowledge in this country to make hunger a non-issue,” she says, but systemic inequities and inefficiencies have erected obstacles to getting food into the hands of those who most need it.

More than a third of the food produced annually in the U.S. goes unsold or uneaten, so a big part of Feeding America’s work revolves around food “rescue”—collecting and redistributing the surplus. Feeding America expects to collect 7 billion pounds in 2024.

At the local level, too, Penn alums are involved in a range of efforts to combat food insecurity. In San Francisco, Jason Nunan, C’80, pivoted during the pandemic from fine dining to working with a food bank, which he continues today. In Philadelphia, Alex Imbot, C’20, and Eli Moraru, C’21, have partnered with neighbors to reinvent the corner store, to get residents access to fresh, healthy meals using their public benefits.

“It takes a collective effort to reimagine our food system, to work together, to collaborate, to harness the power of our communities,” says Moraru. “By addressing food injustice together, we have the ability to lift up our communities and solve nutrition insecurity.”

The Ideal Corner Store

Distributing USDA food boxes on the corner of 30th and Moore Streets in South Philadelphia during the pandemic, Imbot and Moraru had plenty of time to chat with neighbors about the failures of our current food system and to envision the perfect corner store. This winter, those dreams will turn brick-and-mortar with the opening of The Community Grocer a few miles away in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia.

Eli Moraru (left) and Alex Imbot of The Community Grocer, with neighborhood activist Charles Reeves (bottom center).

Before volunteering together, Imbot and Moraru seemed on different trajectories. Imbot was focused on environmental justice and had spent years working with residents of the city’s Grays Ferry neighborhood, the site of a 2019 oil refinery explosion. Moraru was interested in politics and had been active in voter registration. As they handed out food, both were struck by how this top-down government solution to address hunger failed to understand the nuances of daily life.

Many neighbors, they discovered, were uninterested in free boxes of onions, apples, chicken, cheese, and yogurt. “The raw bulk ingredients didn’t add up to a recipe,” says Imbot. Instead, people would go to the corner store and spend their Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) dollars on what was readily available: ultra-processed foods like chips and soda.

Eric Sucar, University Communications

Eric Sucar, University Communications

Imbot and Moraru learned that food stamps—or SNAP, as the program is now called—cannot be used to purchase hot prepared food. “You can buy Skittles for breakfast with your food stamps,” says Imbot, “but not scrambled eggs.” The neighbors, Moraru recalls, “kept saying to us, ‘I wish I could use my EBT for a hot, healthy, delicious meal, but I can’t.’ Alex and I just thought that was ridiculous.”

Rules of SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, specifically prohibit “you buy, we fry,” says Imbot, meaning that someone cannot go into a store and purchase raw chicken and then have the people in the back cook it, a popular model in many under-resourced neighborhoods. Yet Moraru and Imbot wondered whether “you buy, they fry” might be an option. In other words, Moraru says, “you buy an EBT-eligible meal kit at our store and somewhere else, off-premises, it gets cooked.”

It takes a collective effort to reimagine our food system, to work together, to collaborate, to harness the power of our communities. By addressing food injustice together, we have the ability to lift up our communities and solve nutrition insecurity.

That became the model for The Community Grocer, an idea that in 2022 earned the President’s Sustainability Prize, a transformational $100,000 contribution from Penn. Others jumped on board, including Chef Z (Aziza Young) as culinary director and architect Richard Stokes, who is designing the space. Priced out of South Philadelphia, Imbot and Moraru purchased the Cobbs Creek property and spent four months talking with neighbors, meeting block captains and community organizers, and sharing their vision.

When The Community Grocer opens in early 2025, it will receive, store, sort, chop, and marinate to create raw meal kits. Customers will select a kit from the fridge and pay for it with SNAP or any other kind of payment. They’ll then have the option to walk out the side door and back into a separate part of the building, operated by a separate nonprofit, where they can present the kit and swap it for one that is hot and ready to eat. “Their ingredients go toward the next batch, so effectively the transfer can be done faster than microwaving an entree,” says Imbot. As long as the preparation and cooking entities are separately owned and operated, the model is legal and compliant.

Menu tasting is underway and a team of 45 neighborhood residents will be hired over the next few months. Most importantly, Moraru says, they will be “providing the neighbors with the toolkits, funding, and everything necessary for them to operationalize” a new kind of corner store, one focused on what the community has said it needs.

Community-Led Change at Scale

Julia Luscombe, VP for strategic planning and portfolio management at Feeding America, always envisioned working in an area of social impact. “What is surprising to me, though, is to be working on hunger relief in the U.S.,” says Luscombe, a graduate of the dual-degree Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business administered by Penn Arts & Sciences and Wharton. “If you had told me in college that hunger would be an issue of this magnitude here, I would not have believed you. I would have seen myself doing that work in other countries.”

One factor contributing to this reality, she says, is globalization. “It has impacted what is required to build a more equitable and sustainable food system: thriving, resilient local economies. And so, all these challenges of food security that you hear about globally we face in the U.S. as well, where, ironically, some of the highest rates of food insecurity are in rural areas where food is produced.”

Julia Luscombe, C’10, W’10, heads strategic planning at Feeding America, the largest charity working to end hunger in the United States.

Courtesy of

Julia Luscombe

To solve the “huge gaps in food access,” she says, will take deep engagement and support for community partners to build flourishing local food systems. “Without targeted investments that meet the unique needs of communities, we risk letting some people fall more behind,” she says.

A national organization, Feeding America works as a catalyst for local, community-driven solutions, partnering with a network of food banks that distribute regionally to food pantries and community organizations across the U.S. In her role, Luscombe is supporting network members in developing a shared five-year strategy informed by local and regional listening sessions— centering the voices of the people they serve.

The goal, Luscombe says, is “to have everyone in this collective network, with its incredible reach

It was like the circus coming to town. We literally would pop up tents, block off two ends of the street, and an 18-wheeler truck with 27,000 pounds of food would roll in. There were cases upon cases of fresh fruit and vegetables, and we would make a production line, assemble 15- to 30-pound bags of food, and hand them out.

and potential for impact, all rowing in the same direction, with the needs of people facing hunger setting that direction.”

For food sourcing, Feeding America partners with national producers and then works to coordinate food rescue locally. “We and the network are being increasingly intentional in how we are sourcing food, for example working with growers led by people of color,” says Luscombe. “When donations aren’t sufficient and food has to be purchased, we’re thinking about how we can support local growers, local companies, to keep the dollars within the community whenever possible.”

Luscombe says she jokes with her friends that she studied international business and is now working in “domestic non-business.” Having spent time abroad, though, working on economic development strategies in Ecuador, she says, “I realized how many challenges there were back home and how I could contribute to helping the U.S. better model the solutions we often try to promote internationally. Now, to be working at a national organization that’s coming up with strategies together with our network, with people facing hunger, and thinking about how we can catalyze community-led change at scale is really exciting.”

A Pandemic Pivot

Jason Nunan, C’80, has spent most of his career working with food. Until four years ago, his focus was squarely on fine dining. As executive director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s restaurants and later, general manager at Michelin-starred restaurants in the Bay Area, Nunan took care of a clientele who willingly paid a premium for white truffles and wagyu rib-eye.

The goal is to have everyone in this collective network, with its incredible reach and potential for impact, all rowing in the same direction, with the needs of people facing hunger setting that direction.

That all changed when, at the beginning of the pandemic, Nunan’s restaurant went into lockdown and the entire staff was furloughed indefinitely. Sitting at home and, as he readily admits, “spending more time on social media than I should,” he noticed that a chef friend was posting pictures of himself distributing food with the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank.

“I thought, ‘Well, I’ve been around food all my life—this is my connection,’” says Nunan. “I’m tired of sitting here watching Tiger King and scrolling through Instagram.” Nunan began volunteering four days a week and “fell in love with it.” The food bank’s 240 pantries in San Francisco and Marin County (which feed 50,000 people a week) had closed due to the pandemic, so pop-up pantries were being organized. Nunan happily jumped into the fray.

“It was like the circus coming to town,” he says. “We literally would pop up tents, block off two ends of the street, and an 18-wheeler truck with 27,000 pounds of food would roll in. There were cases upon cases of fresh fruit and vegetables, and we would make a production line, assemble 15- to 30-pound bags of food, and hand them out. The criteria for eligibility was, ‘Do you live in San Francisco?’ If the answer was yes, then the next question was, ‘Do you need food?’ And if you said yes, we gave you food.”

Jason Nunan, C’80, at a pop-up food pantry, one of many that opened during the pandemic when traditional food banks had to close.

Courtesy of Jason Nunan

When a fulltime community coordinator position came up, Nunan raised his hand. The first year, he remembers, was unusually rainy and he would return home soaked to the bone. “I honestly didn’t care,” he says, “because I felt like I was moving the needle just a little.” Four years on, he still feels that way. “I’m making a fraction of what I used to make, but I truly feel like I’m helping people,” he says. “Rather than selling $300 caviar, I am giving someone who might be living on nothing more than Social Security payments 23 pounds of fresh food. I can’t go back.”

The pop-up pantries, paid for by a pandemic funding spike that has since subsided, will wind down in 2025, and patrons will be encouraged to visit existing local pantries. Nunan’s job will shift to the permanent pantries, too. The need is very much still there. Before the pandemic, according to the food bank’s statistics, one in five people in the area was food insecure. The figure is now closer to one in four.

More than half of the distributed food comes from Farm to Family, a program set up by the food bank through which farmers can donate produce that would not sell in a grocery store—tiny apples, massive cabbages, ugly tomatoes. The USDA also contributes items such as frozen chicken and eggs, and private donors like Trader Joe’s and Safeway regularly give baked goods.

Nunan knows that, with its famously high cost of living, the Bay Area can be a tough place to make ends meet. Still, he has been surprised and moved by his encounters with those experiencing food insecurity. He feels compassion toward anyone who comes for a bag of groceries, “but what touches my heart even more is when someone like a working-age woman in her uniform comes up to get a bag. And you can tell she has run out from work on a break, and her job is not providing her enough money for groceries.”

Judy Hill is a writer and editor who covers a wide range of topics. Her last Omnia feature was about climate change.

Welcoming the Class of 2028

First-year College students received a festive welcome during New Student Orientation. Peter Struck, Stephen A. Levin Family Dean of the College and Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities, moderated a discussion about the value of a liberal arts education (above). The day also included an Academic Fair and Picnic, 60-Second Lectures, and afternoon sessions on STEM, work study, and research.

Just the (Arti)facts

Ethan Nemeth, C’26, spent nine weeks on the Penn Museum’s public engagement team as part of the Summer Humanities Internship Program.

Ethan Nemeth, C’26, wasn’t sure which academic path he wanted to pursue when he came to Penn, but he soon discovered that he loved classical studies, which led him to an ancient history major. This summer he had the chance to see what a career in this field might look like as an intern with the Penn Museum’s public engagement team. One of 17 paid interns from colleges across the country, Nemeth was brought on through the Summer Humanities Internship Program, which is supported by the College of Arts & Sciences and administered through Penn’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.

“The students get a very rigorous experience of working in a museum, like an Introduction to Museum Studies program. And they get hands-on experience working in a museum, not

Brooke Sietinsons

Ethan Nemeth, C’26

Emmanuel Beatty for the Penn Museum

easy grunt work, but work that people in departments would be doing,” says Jessica Lubniewski, who manages the program.

“They get this discrete experience that is transferable to any museum they may want to work at in the future.”

That played out during Nemeth’s time there. For the inaugural Juneteenth Festival and the Wawa Welcome America Day, for instance, he managed presenters’ technology needs and spearheaded some children’s activities. He also helped set up and worked at Garden Jams, the Museum’s free summer concert series, coordinating reserved tables, ushering bands through, and checking in people at the door.

As part of marketing a series called “Archaeology in Action,” which features virtual lectures by experts in the field, he compiled lists of potential interest groups and emailed them with information. And he did a “Daily Dig” pop-up talk—15 minutes on one object. But Nemeth says he most enjoyed working on projects involving the education team, especially a trivia night for middle schoolers. “They were very excited to be there and engaged in the lesson,” he says. “That made me feel really good about the work I was doing.” Overall, Nemeth says, the experience offered him more direction in a career path. “Going into the summer, I liked what I studied, but I didn’t know what it could lead to down the road. At the Museum I’ve learned all these different jobs that I can do,” he says. “I’ve also learned what academic degrees are required for the different roles in a museum, and so it’s definitely given me a better understanding of the career landscape.”

— LOUISA SHEPARD

Pain Management

Jessica Wojick, PhD candidate in the Department of Biology, examines the inner workings of chronic pain and how to mitigate the suffering of those who are afflicted.

Have you ever stepped on a Lego then recoiled, re-living the “ouch” moment in your head? “That’s because pain is complicated,” says Jessica Wojick, a PhD candidate in the Department of Biology, who uses this exact scenario to connect with audiences at speaking events. It can feel like a mortal enemy and can also serve as protector. But what governs pain? What processes do the body and mind undergo when they experience and cope with it?

“If you touch a hot stove, it will activate specialized neurons in the peripheral nervous system called nociceptors, and those nociceptors will send a signal to your spinal cord, which will eventually send a signal to the brain,” says Wojick. “This is how we learn about our environment, and it also allows us to learn to rest and recover when injured.”

Wojick breaks down the pain experience into three component stages: sensory, cognitive, and emotional. The sensory component derives from the physiological response— the pinching sting of a bee, for instance— while the cognitive aspect is how the brain reasons through the trauma and how to potentially avoid it in the future. Finally, there is the emotional component: This hurts. How do I deal with it moving forward?

That third stage is where Wojick’s research enters the picture, as she tries to understand how to allay the suffering of people experiencing chronic pain. The majority of her work is done using mouse models and centers on the amygdala, the brain region closely linked with the emotional stage of pain.

This association was famously highlighted in a procedure performed in the mid-20th century. The patient, named Henry Molaison, underwent a temporal lobectomy to combat severe seizures. Afterwards, he felt no pain when heated probes were tested on his skin, no matter how hot they were.

Wojick is trying to parse what happens in such situations like with Molaison, as well as what occurs in the brain in positive or rewarding

situations, such as imbibing a sweet drink. She’s also trying to figure out how to conquer pain in a controlled manner that doesn’t interfere with the body’s protective instincts.

such imbibing sweet figure a controlled manner that doesn’t interfere with the body’s protective instincts.

One of the most promising solutions turns out to be light, specifically a technique called optogenetics that acts as a “protein light switch,” says Wojick. In this process, these genetic proteins—which are derived from algae—turn off the active “pain” cells when light is shone on them, but the sensory component remains—important in teaching our bodies what is and isn’t safe, she explains. As these techniques continue to advance, she adds, they have the potential to provide customized pain treatment for those with chronic symptoms and complex conditions like Parkinson’s. — BLAKE COLE

One of the most promising solutions turns out to be light, specifically a technique called optogenetics that acts as a “protein light switch,” says Wojick. In this process, these genetic proteins—which are derived from algae—turn off the active “pain” cells when light is shone on them, but the sensory component remains—important in teaching our bodies what is and isn’t safe, she explains. As these techniques continue to advance, she adds, they have the potential to provide customized pain treatment for those with chronic symptoms and complex conditions like Parkinson’s. — BLAKE COLE

PhD Candidate Jessica Wojick

Courtesy of Jessica Wojick

A Pandemic Puzzle

This summer, Matthew Breier, C’26, worked with Associate Professor David Barnes to research how the 1918 flu pandemic affected Philadelphia’s Black and immigrant neighborhoods.

Matthew Breier, C’26, flipping through Philadelphia’s 1918 city directory.

department he cares about deeply and an introduction to how research in the humanities works. “To understand the full picture of the period and event we are examining,” Breier says, “we must interact with and examine both quantitative and qualitative data and documents.”

— ERICA MOSER

Career Considerations

Joyce Kim, a PhD candidate in sociology and education, wants to know what motivates undergraduates to choose the job trajectories they do.

When PhD Candidate Joyce Kim, C’15, arrived at Penn as a first-year undergraduate, she found the campus environment liberating. “Having primarily grown up in a homogeneous suburb of Dallas, it was a breath of fresh air to be in a racially diverse, not only campus, but also city,” she says.

Matthew Breier, C’26, spent his summer immersed in primary sources like death certificates and Philadelphia’s 1918 city directory to learn about the effect of the 1918 influenza pandemic on Black and immigrant neighborhoods, part of a project led by public health historian David Barnes, an associate professor in the Department of History and Sociology of Science.

Matthew Breier, C’26, spent his summer immersed in primary sources like death certificates and Philadelphia’s 1918 city directory to learn about the effect of the 1918 influenza pandemic on Black and immigrant neighborhoods, part of a project led by public health historian David Barnes, an associate professor in the Department of History and Sociology of Science.

“It’s mind-boggling how little we know about this thing that happened during the age of scientific medicine, during the age of mass media,” Barnes says.

“It’s mind-boggling how little we know about this thing that happened during the age of scientific medicine, during the age of mass media,” Barnes says.

Specifically, Barnes wanted to understand whether certain populations were more vulnerable to dying from the flu in 1918, part of a broader question he had about whether people in the past experienced chronic stress. When Breier came on through the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program, he was tasked with mapping where people who died from influenza lived, as well as

Specifically, Barnes wanted to understand whether certain populations were more vulnerable to dying from the flu in 1918, part of a broader question he had about whether people in the past experienced chronic stress. When Breier came on through the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program, he was tasked with mapping where people who died from influenza lived, as well as

learning more about the characteristics of neighborhoods with high and low mortality rates.

To do this, he scoured death certificates. He took trips to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center. He made observations— deaths in African-American communities seemed to be less commonly reported than deaths of European immigrants, for instance—and learned how to interpret what he read.

“If you see two people with the same last name listed right next to each other and they died a day or two apart, or even on the same day, you can imagine that they were a mother and her child or a husband and wife,” says Breier, who is double majoring in anthropology and health and societies with minors in classical studies and history. “It brings this research to life.”

The experience, he adds, was “incredibly valuable,” an opportunity to receive one-on-one mentorship for work in a

Kim also noticed that many graduating seniors were choosing careers in finance, tech, or consulting. The question of how students get funneled into those specific trajectories informs her current research, which examines the college-to-career transition, with a focus on how race and class affect students’ decision-making and how inequality can factor in.

seniors were choosing careers in finance, tech, or consulting. The question of how students get funneled into those specific trajectories informs her current research, which examines the college-to-career transition, with a focus on how race and class affect students’ decision-making and how inequality can factor in.

Eric Sucar, University Communications

PhD Candidate Joyce Kim, C'15

Courtesy of Joyce Kim

As a first step, Kim interviewed 62 students at a highly selective college she calls “Eastwood” (a fictitious name) about their career plans. About half identified as first generation and low income (FGLI) and half as middle class. While not all institutions define FGLI in the same way, Kim laid out specific criteria for identifying such students, those who were first in their immediate family to attend a four-year university and whose families met the threshold for full financial aid.

The idea of “selling out” quickly emerged as the study’s main theme. “The flavor and texture this idea took on varied by students’ racial and class backgrounds,” she says. “Much existing literature focuses on individualistic job values such as pursuing a passion or worklife balance. But I also found a moral component that was colored by students’ class and racial backgrounds in ways that previous research hadn’t explored.”

Kim identified, for instance, what she calls “objections based on a value of social good,” such as the desire to avoid working for companies perceived as responsible for some kind of social harm. For some FGLI students, however, financial considerations pitted their social objections against a sense of obligation to family or ethnic or racial community. “The tension that comes with students grappling with the moral aspects of what they want to do and who they want to be is really important,” she says.

The research, which has been recognized with awards from the American Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems, was recently published in the journal Social Problems — JANE CARROLL

Using Animation to Spread Strength and Hope

Ejun Hong, C’25, created a prizewinning animated film inspired by Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Ejun Hong, C’25, has been making animated films since high school. Echoing, It Doesn’t Stop is her fourth, inspired by Russia’s war on Ukraine. In the film, Yaryna Uhera, C’26, reads a Ukrainian poem on the soundtrack while a mix of media reflects the words—sometimes literally, with a demon’s eye blinking above a sleeping figure, sometimes more abstractly, with rippling mounds that could be earth or struggling humans.

“It was hard to attempt to portray the reality, but at the same time, deliver hope,” Hong says. She started by selecting a Ukrainian poem, “So I’ll Talk About It,” as the focus. Its abstract nature meant Hong had to visualize how to effectively tell the story she wanted to tell. “That is the first time I learned that the medium and material itself could also convey their own unique message,” she says. The experience had an unexpected consequence for Hong. “It made me realize how passionate I am in terms of using tangible material,” she says.

At Penn this fall, Hong, who is double majoring in fine arts and cinema and media studies and minoring in design, continues to lead an after-school program she started at William L. Sayre High School in West Philadelphia to assist high schoolers in expressing their voices through media. She’s also planning two animated films for her senior thesis and taking every animation class she can.

Her films have received 10 awards and 37 official selections to film festivals, including three that qualify films for the Academy Awards or BAFTA Awards. Her dream is to inspire others with her animation as she herself was inspired as a child with a serious eye disorder: “I would like to keep exploring media and materials and creating films that help people in need tackle societal issues.”

— SUSAN AHLBORN

Ejun Hong, C’25

Joe Hall

A sand animation still from Hong’s film Echoing, It Doesn’t Stop.

Ejun Hong

Penn Arts & Sciences at Work

Penn Arts & Sciences at Work is a photoblog series that highlights College alums in their workplaces as they reflect on how and why their careers took shape. To see more, visit www.sas.upenn.edu/at-work

SIMONE ECCLESTON, C’02

Director of Hip Hop Culture and Contemporary Music, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts WASHINGTON, DC

AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES MAJOR

Iam the Director of Hip Hop Culture and Contemporary Music at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. In my position, I curate and produce our annual season of programming and build the strategy for how Hip Hop and Contemporary music live inside the Kennedy Center.

When you think about the Kennedy Center’s role as the national cultural center, we’re responsible for making sure that we reflect the nation. There’s no way we can achieve this aspiration without Hip Hop Culture as a core part of our work. It’s one of the most transformative forces within contemporary culture. It has shaped and shifted society and transfigured global culture. In addition, it has served as a powerful conduit for community and social change. Therefore, it was only fitting for us to include it as an institutional pillar. Being able to create this program— which offers a space where people can see themselves powerfully reflected and see

Hip Hop Culture celebrated—has been game changing.

In my junior year of high school, I read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and it was transformative for me because it was the first time that I felt seen in literature. The novel was thought provoking and breathtaking. Although Morrison was offering up a societal critique on how a community failed a child, and the impact of internalized racism, there was something that felt personal, sacred, like a call to action. The Bluest Eye would find its way back to me through Hip Hop, when I heard Black Star’s “Thieves in the Night”—Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) and Talib Kweli used Morrison’s epilogue as the foundation for the song’s chorus. This connection between the music that I loved and the literature that moved me was powerful. Each artist was offering up societal commentary, just using a different lens.

Fast forward to the summer before my first year at Penn. With the support of my

parents, I participated in the Africana Studies Summer Institute. It was such an important foundation for me, and it set a standard for my undergraduate experience. It was intellectually rigorous, deeply inspiring, and one of the most important times I had at Penn. Understanding that we had professors like Herman Beavers and Farah Jasmine Griffin as well as a community of peers who were deeply committed to our success was extraordinary. That experience really cemented my desire to major in African American Studies [what is today Africana Studies], which prepared me for my career trajectory before I even knew what it would be. So, the advice I want to give to undergraduates today is, don’t be afraid to follow your passion. You can create a career based off of what you love and what inspires you. You never know where your passion will lead you and the kind of impact it will have on others.

–AS TOLD TO MICHELE W. BERGER

Inspiring Community

This fall, Penn Arts & Sciences alums gathered on campus, in New York City, and abroad to mentor, mingle, and learn.

College Alumni Mentoring Series Roundtable: Careers in the Biological Sciences

Brooke Sietinsons

Bing Chen, C’09, CEO and Cofounder of Gold House, in conversation with Angela Duckworth, Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor Callum Bhatti

Pub Night with Peter Struck, Stephen A. Levin Family Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities

Rolf Marriott

Elevate: Women in Leadership Panel and Networking Event, put on by the Penn Arts & Sciences Professional Women’s Alliance, hosted by Elena Ayot, C’02 Anthony Artis

The tables outside of the Arch building, where I’d share a Magic Carpet order with a friend or absentmindedly do my readings while watching Locust Walk—which then felt like my entire world—go by.

–ALICE GOULDING, C’21

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE SPOT ON CAMPUS?

We asked, you answered. Alums share their memories, thoughts, and ideas with Omnia.

Photography by Callum Bhatti

I’m a huge basketball fan and entered Penn in the early ’70s when the team dominated. So, it’s no surprise that my favorite place on campus remains The Palestra, the Cathedral of College Basketball. The demise of the original Big 5 format has lessened the excitement, but I still go to several games a year.

–WILLIAM BABCOCK, C’73

The Ben Franklin statue. It gave me goosebumps when I stared at him.

I don’t know why.

–PRICHA PETER SAENGSWANG, G’65

Fisher Fine Arts Library. I have 50-year-old fond memories of the Design of the Environment drawing class on the top floor and the great beauty of what was then called Furness Building. It has charms like no other place on campus; even the acoustics of the entry are lovely.

–MARGARET DEVANEY, C’77, MT’77

As an English major, Fisher-Bennett Hall was always my favorite spot. It was my academic home on campus. I had at least two classes there every semester and would often spend time studying in the second-floor lounge. I visited campus a few summers ago and was able to sneak in behind an entering student; walking in and immediately seeing the Shakespeare mural and the soaring staircase was like coming home.

–TAYLOR COOK, C’13

The Penn Museum. During my first year at Penn, my anthropology class was there. This was the first time that I visited a museum and was amazed by the many galleries and artifacts. Before class, I would arrive early just to sit in the entrance and enjoy the garden views. My first viewing of the Sphinx was mind-blowing.

–JOHN SIMS, C’76

My favorite spot on Penn’s campus was the Makuu office. It always felt like a safe place to land.

–DOMINIQUÉ BYNOE-SULLIVAN, C’16, GED’17

The reading terrace area on the 6th floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library What an awesome view of the green. Check it out!

–STUART SHAPIRO, C’74

It’s a tie. First, the chairs and tables between the Castle and the Arch, where Locust Walk meets College Green—a pretty, shady spot to read, peoplewatch, and squirrel-watch. Also, the narrow courtyards in Hill, overlooking the atrium—another great reading place, tucked away but filled with light.

–DANIEL HARTSOE, C’13

My favorite spot on the Penn campus was the Bio Pond [James G. Kaskey Memorial Park]. Such a beautiful and secluded spot to study, read, or just relax. It brought much peace and calm to the hectic campus life of this undergrad. Rarely was there another soul in the vicinity, and the only disturbance was the sound of the wind and wildlife. It all washes over me as I recall these memories.

–STEVEN MOGUL, C’80

FROM THE MICROSCOPE TO THE BIG PICTURE

Steven J. Fluharty reminisces about his time on campus as an undergraduate and the path that got him where he is today.

By Loraine Terrell

During Steven J. Fluharty’s time as Dean of Penn Arts & Sciences, the School expanded and evolved, thrived during a pandemic, and received the largest gift in its history. Yet Fluharty’s connection to Penn started much farther back than his nearly 12 years as dean. When he steps down in December, it will mark nearly five decades since he first stepped foot on Penn’s campus as an undergraduate.

Let’s go back to 2013. Having started out as an Arts & Sciences undergraduate, what did it feel like to become the person leading the School?

It was just a thrill. And for the past 11 plus years, despite tumultuous times, it’s been a great position to be in at Penn. The School of Arts & Sciences is the heart and soul of the University. And to get to lead it and build leadership teams was fantastic.

You went from your freshman year to completing your PhD in record time. How did that come about?

I was very fortunate to make a connection with then-Provost Eliot Stellar in my first year at Penn. He was a world-famous neuroscientist, and he helped me find my way into the University Scholars Program, which made it possible to begin post-baccalaureate studies as an undergrad. I was doing lab research by my sophomore year and even got a National Institutes of Health grant as an undergrad.

What was one of your proudest Penn moments as a scientist?

My own work was in neuroendocrinology—the action of hormones in the nervous system. I’m probably most proud of my lab’s role in discovering how a hormone, aldosterone, and a peptide called angiotensin, acted in the brain to produce thirst and salt appetite, which are critical

to blood pressure regulation. Years later it became a citation classic in the study of ingestive behavior, but more importantly it was a conceptual discovery, the notion that hormones don’t just act additively, they act synergistically.

I didn’t plan any of this. When I look back, I don’t think that was necessarily a bad thing. If you don’t have a path, you can never go the wrong way, and I was very open to the opportunities that presented themselves.

How did your liberal arts background affect you over the course of a career that took you from scientific research and teaching to Senior Vice Provost for Research and Dean of the School?

I actually came to Penn wanting to be an English major. And even though Eliot steered me from English to neuroscience, I never lost my passion for the humanities—I was a would-be poet looking at life through a microscope. I retained a broad view that I think came from my appreciation of everything a liberal arts education provides: the ability to think creatively, to have an insatiable curiosity, to communicate effectively, and to form world views and conceptualize things. These are essential skills for scientists, and this broad view was absolutely essential for me as dean.

When you think about what’s next for the School, what are you excited about for your successor?

I think the School’s single greatest achievement during my time as dean was our strategic plan, Our Foundations and Frontiers, which clearly laid out important problems, as well as opportunities, for the School to make a big difference. But equally important was the process by which we got there. We took about 18 months and had nearly a third of the faculty involved in our working groups. We had staff, we had students—both graduate students and undergraduates. The buy-in from the process was almost as important as the priorities we identified. It’s a living document and has undergone some evolution, but it’s still the driving force for the School. I think what I see for my successor is a wonderful opportunity to do even more as the University identifies its priorities and puts necessary resources into those. If you look at In Principle and Practice [the University’s strategic initiatives] and Foundations and Frontiers side by side, you’ll see that the overlap is enormous.

What would your undergraduate self think of your Penn trajectory?

I joke with people, but it’s really not a joke—I didn’t plan any of this. When I look back, I don’t think that was necessarily a bad thing. If you don’t have a path, you can never go the wrong way, and I was very open to the opportunities that presented themselves.

What’s your favorite spot on campus?

To me it will always be the Bio Pond [James G. Kaskey Memorial Park]. When I was an undergraduate working in Leidy Lab, I started to eat lunch there. It was just peaceful. And it still is. Great place to hang out.

Office Artifacts: Jean-Christophe Cloutier

The stories behind six prized items in the office of this Associate Professor of English, in his own words.

Autographed Adam West Batman Photo

One of my prized possessions, this photograph of Adam West as Batman from the 1960s TV show, was signed to me by West at the 2012 New York Comic Con, five years before his passing. I waited in line over an hour for the autograph and when I finally arrived, West seemed to be bickering about something with Burt Ward, the actor who played Robin, and who was seated to his left. West looked magnificent, in sunglasses and with a resplendent smile. The frame never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Charlie Chaplin Figure

As an undergraduate, my first major was film studies, and I had arrived with a degree in cinema from Montreal. I loved silent film, especially Chaplin. I’ve always gravitated toward comedies and became fascinated with how Chaplin used to not only act, direct, and write his films but also compose the musical scores. I read his memoir, My Life, as an undergrad and his definition of humor left an indelible impact on my own life.

Québec License Plate

This motorcycle license plate is from my home province of Québec and bears our nation’s motto, Je me souviens, which means “I remember.” It is a reminder of my roots as a Québecois and native French speaker who is now, somehow, in an English department. It acts as a talisman to ward off total assimilation and keeps the dream of my next road trip alive.

Wolverine #1 (September 1982)

Most of my comics collection lives in my office, hidden within my specially modified filing cabinets. I love teaching comics at Penn and having my collection close at hand is a pleasure. This particular issue is near and dear to my heart as it features my long-time favorite, Wolverine, a.k.a. Logan, the laconic super-healing mutant Canuck, and was created by an all-star duo of comics legends, Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, two humans who have forever widened my sense of wonder. Like Wolverine, they are the best at what they do.

Overlook Hotel Mug

Stephen King’s The Shining is one of my favorite novels. The protagonist, Jack Torrance, is an English teacher-writer who finds the inspiration he’s been hoping for when he encounters the basement archive of the Overlook Hotel, where he has been hired as winter caretaker. Alas, Torrance fails to write the book and ends up consumed by work. The mug is a reminder to enjoy my work but to not let it control me at the expense of family and those I love.

Star Trek Enterprise Paper Weight/Bottle Opener

This isn’t any old Enterprise—this is the Galaxy-class starship USS Enterprise “D” (NCC-1701D), Starfleet’s finest. Under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, it served as the Federation’s flagship for many glorious years, notably the seven wonderful seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, one of my all-time favorites and most formative TV shows. It’s both a paper weight and a bottle opener. “Make it so!”

Brooke Sietinsons

OMNIA PODCAST Democracy and Decision 2024

In our latest season of Omnia, the podcast on all things Penn Arts & Sciences, we examine the state of U.S. democracy in the context of the presidential election, focusing on topics like truth, the role of the press, political polarization, and what happened on November 5.

Listen to Democracy and Decision 2024 at OMNIA.SAS.UPENN.EDU or search “Omnia podcast” wherever you listen.

The podcast was done in collaboration with the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies (PORES) and hosted by Stephanie Perry, PORES Executive Director and a member of the NBC News Decision Desk Team.

Three Questions: On Enlightenment

In a new

exhibit, Liliane

Weissberg, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Arts and Sciences, reflects on the contradictions inherent in the Enlightenment— and that are still our legacy today.

BY JUDY HILL

When Liliane Weissberg was asked by Berlin’s German Historical Museum to curate a major exhibition about the Enlightenment—the 18th-century intellectual movement that emphasized reason but also a new approach toward emotions—to coincide with the 300th anniversary of Immanuel Kant’s birth, she knew the story she wanted to tell.

“A lot of what is happening in Germany around this anniversary is what I would call celebratory,” says Weissberg, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Arts and Sciences. “And I’m not diminishing by any means the importance of Kant, but I wanted to look critically at the Enlightenment and show that a lot of the problems and issues we have today are actually rooted in discussions that happened back then.”

“What is Enlightenment? Questions for the 18th Century,” which runs through April 6, 2025, is not a pessimistic exhibit, though, says Weissberg. “Wanting to understand why some things didn’t work is different from saying one shouldn’t have tried. That human equality was not realized, for example, doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t continue to demand it.”

WHY USE OBJECTS TO TELL THIS STORY?

You can experience an object with the senses in a different way than you do by reading a book. With this exhibit I want to complicate history, but also tell stories, and one can do it so splendidly with objects. When you want to show how eager people were to adopt science, you can offer a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby that has a family at a table, engaged in experiments, and show the actual scientific instruments, too.

HOW DO YOU HOPE THIS EXHIBIT ADDS TO THE CONVERSATION ABOUT THE ENLIGHTENMENT?

We are documenting discussions that offer ambivalent or even contradictory conclusions. But even values and demands that were clearly stated— human rights, tolerance, democracy— were not translated into practice.

are equal, and then he owned somewhere between 600 and 700 slaves during his lifetime. There is the Declaration and then there is the reality, which we showcase through a list of enslaved people at Monticello owned by Jefferson.

The Enlightenment was an international movement. The philosophers developed their understanding of philosophy and science by corresponding with travelers who discovered the New World and brought back examples of plants and animals and offered descriptions of people they encountered. There again things get problematic and paradoxical: scholars were appreciating other cultures but also often putting in place a hierarchical order. We laud cosmopolitanism, but at the same time worry about a concept that led to racism.

ANY FAVORITE OBJECTS?

It’s hard to pick. We have more than 400, and where else can you see all at once original manuscripts by Isaac Newton, an engraved ostrich egg, and King George III’s silver microscope? A French ball gown embroidered with hot air balloons is one of my favorites because of the surprise I had when we found it. It had been owned by the German Historical Museum for many years but never shown—there was never an exhibit in need of such an extraordinary dress—but it helps tell the story of how eager people were to embrace science.

Judy Hill is a writer and editor who covers a wide range of topics.

We focus, for instance, on Thomas Jefferson. He wrote the Declaration of Independence, insisting that all people

Annette Hornischer

During the summer of 2023, Peter Decherney, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Professor in the Humanities, was in eastern Uganda with Sara Byala, a senior lecturer in critical writing, and a few undergraduates. They were there to photograph members of a group called the Abayudaya. “It is part of an ongoing project partnering with Jewish

communities across Africa to share their stories,” Decherney explains. “We were taking a day to decompress on our way home, so we hiked to Sipi Falls. It was a very foggy morning. It made the hike up to the waterfall extra dramatic because while we could hear it, we couldn’t see it until we were a few yards away.” On the way, the group encountered the cabbage farmers seen

here. It ended up being a moment—and a photo—that stands out to Decherney: “The running joke is that my best film footage and photographs are taken on our days off.” He returned to Uganda this past summer to continue working on the project, creating two films, The Cave Synagogue and Days Between Rest, which both premiered in New York in September. –MICHELE W. BERGER

Peter Decherney

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