2002 - 2003 News Releases
SAS Welcomes 37 New Standing Faculty. August 18, 2003. The School is delighted to welcome 37 outstanding scholars to its standing faculty in the 2003-2004 academic year.
Smaller Portions in Restaurants and Markets May Explain the "French Paradox" of Rich Foods and a Svelte Population. August 21, 2003. The perplexing disconnect between France’s rich cuisine and slender population can be explained in part by portions that are significantly smaller in French restaurants and supermarkets than in their American counterparts, according to Penn researchers Paul Rozin, Kimberly Kabnick, and Erin Pete and colleagues from the CNRS in Paris.
Professor Receives American Institute of Chemists’ Highest Award. July 9, 2003. The American Institute of Chemists and the Chemical Heritage Foundation have presented Professor Ralph Hirschmann with the 2003 AIC Gold Medal.
Tukufu Zuberi: History Detective. July 14, 2003. Sociologist to appear on new PBS television series.
Ivy League First: Criminology Department at Penn. June 20, 2003. The University has become the first Ivy League institution to establish a criminology department.
Seven SAS Graduate Students Receive 2003 Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching. The award recognizes excellence in teaching by graduate students across the university. Ten awards are made in April every year, with nominations solicited directly from undergraduates.
Adjunct Professor to Lead International Body of Clinical and Applied Sociologists. May 21, 2003. Adjunct Professor of Sociology Ross Koppel has been named president of the Sociological Practice Association.
Mathematics Professor Honored for Combinatorial Research. May 21, 2003. The Institute of Combinatorics and Its Applications has awarded its Euler Medal to Professor Herbert Wilf.
Two SAS Professors Named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences. May 7, 2003. Professors David Cass and Michael Klein have been named fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Membership honors intellectual achievement, leadership, and creativity.
Plant Biologist Elected to National Academy of Sciences. May 5, 2003. Robert I. Williams Term Professor of Biology Anthony Cashmore has beenelected to the National Academy of Sciences. Election to membership in the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a U.S. scientist or engineer.
College of General Studies Student Wins "Out of Place" Memoir Contest. May 9, 2003 Joy Bouldin, A Bread Upon the Waters scholar, won the memoir contest for her essay, "The Mississippi Diaries."
Celebration of Ten Years of Jewish Scholarship. May 6, 2003. This spring, the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies celebrated a decade of carrying out its mission of scholarship on all aspects of Jewish learning and culture.
College Announces Graduation Speakers. April 30, 2003. Author Lorene Cary and senior Marian Braccia have been selected to speak at this year's College graduation ceremony.
Midge Rendell Praises Adult-Women Students. April 24, 2003 The Honorable Marjorie “Midge” Rendell spoke at a celebration honoring 21 adult women for distinguished academic achievement and donors of the first ten named scholarships for the Bread Upon the Waters program.
Diebold Named Guggenheim Fellow. April 16, 2003. Francis X. Diebold, the W.P. Carey Term Professor in Economics in the School of Arts and Sciences and a professor of finance and statistics in the Wharton School, has received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for a study of financial asset returns and underlying economic fundamentals.
Matter Named Medieval Academy Fellow. April 16, 2003. E. Ann Matter, professor of religious studies and chair of the department, has been named a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. A Lindback Award-winning teacher, Professor Matter is a scholar of the history of the interpretation of the Bible from the Middle Ages to the present and of women in early modern Italy. Founded in 1925, the group is the world’s largest organization devoted to Medieval studies.
Four New Weiler Fellows in SAS. March, 30 2003. The School has awarded Weiler Faculty Humanities Research Fellowships to Assistant Professor of English Sean Keilin, Assistant Professor of Political Science Andrew Norris, Professor of South Asia Studies Rosane Rocher, and R. Jean Brownlee Endowed Term Professor of Anthropology Peggy Reeves Sanday.
Benjamin Nathans Wins Koret Jewish Book Award. March 11, 2003. M. Mark and Esther K. Watkins Assistant Professor in the Humanities Benjamin Nathans’ book Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia received the top prize in the history category of the fifth annual Koret Jewish Book Awards
Authentic Happiness Named Best Psychology Book of 2002. March 2003. Authentic Happiness, by Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology Martin Seligman, was named “Best Psychology Book” of 2002 by Books for a Better Life
History Professor Discusses WWII Tale on C-SPAN Show. March 7, 2003. History Professor Thomas Childers appeared on C-Span's weekend literature program BookTV to discuss his recently published novel In the Shadows of War: Three Lives United by French Resistance, the second volume in his World War II trilogy.
Scientists Pinpoint Stellar Production of Helium, Yielding New Insights into the Evolution of the Universe. March 6, 2003. Raul Jimenez, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, and his colleagues at Tuorla Observatory, the University of Delaware, and Swinburne University reported in Science that they have calculated the rate of helium production by stars in our universe with greater precision than ever before. This accomplishment paves the way for a better understanding of the composition of the early universe and the exact nature of dark energy.
Church-State Separation Not Breached When Faith-Based Groups Work with Government. March 6, 2003. The Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society has released a new study that finds that faith-based organizations work closely with government agencies without raising First Amendment concerns.
New Penn/Gallup Poll Measures “Spiritual State of the Union.” March 4, 2003. Initial findings from the Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society/Gallup Spiritual State of the Union poll indicate that the spiritual state of the union is strong.
English Professor Probes the Civil Rights Era in Mississippi with New Book. Paul Hendrickson confronts the reality of racism in America 40 years ago and its legacy today in his latest work, Sons of Mississippi.
Alumni Accomplishment Is Recognized. Dr. Stanley Prusiner C’64, M’68, Hon '98, and Melinda Wagner Gr’85, have received the School of Arts and Sciences’ 2003 Distinguished Alumni Award. Dr. Prusiner won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in discovering the prion, a rogue protein that is totally unlike anything else previously known to cause infectious disease. Melinda Wagner received the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion.
Dean's Scholars Announced. Dean Sam Preston and the School of Arts and Sciences congratulate the 2003 Dean’s Scholars for their exceptional academic performance and for their sense of intellectual adventure.
Hundreds of Highly Branched Molecules Unite in a Giant Self-Assembled Liquid Crystal Lattice. February 24, 2003. P. Roy Vagelos Professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Virgil Percec and colleagues at Penn and the University of Sheffield have created a supramolecular structure that unites hundreds of thousands of atoms via self-assembly.
Penn Scientists Hochstrasser, Davis Win Franklin Medal. January 29, 2003. Robin M. Hochstrasser, professor of chemistry, and Raymond Davis Jr., research professor of physics, have been selected as 2003 recipients of the Benjamin Franklin Medal, one of the world’s oldest science and technology awards.
Chinburg Receives Prize from Canadian Mathematical Society. January 27, 2003. Mathematics professor Ted Chinburg has received the 2002 G. de B. Robinson Prize of the Canadian Mathematical Society, recognizing an outstanding publication in the society’s journals.
2003 Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering Fellow: Professor Virgil Percec. January 27, 2003. Virgil Percec, the P. Roy Vagelos Professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is one of six new fellows to be inducted to Polymeric Materials, a division of the American Chemical Society.
Board Member donates $3 million. January 2003. Paul K. Kelly, a member of the Board of Overseers of the School of Arts and Sciences and a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Kelly Family Foundation have made a gift of $3 million to the University.
Randall Collins Wins Ludwik Fleck Prize. January 2003. Sociology Professor Randall Collins has been awarded the Ludwik Fleck Prize for his book The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change.
McNeil Center for Early American Studies to Have Permanent Home. January 9, 2003. The Barra Foundation and Robert L. McNeil Jr. have pledged $6 million to build a permanent home for the McNeil Center for Early American Studies of the School of Arts and Sciences and to provide an endowment for its operational costs. The new building will be located on 34th Street near Walnut Street.
Pilot Curriculum Students Examine Self. January 2003. The complication and artifice that go into representing the self in literature, art, drama, and film were explored in The Self-Portrait, an interdisciplinary team-taught course that is part of the Pilot Curriculum’s general requirement.
Penn Sociologist Receives Fulbright to Uruguay. December 19, 2002. Professor of sociology Frank Furstenberg has received a Fulbright Senior Specialists Grant in Sociology at the Institute de Economia.
Penn English Professor Receives Christian Gauss Award. November 13, 2002. Donald T. Regan Professor of English Susan Stewart won the 2002 Christian Gauss Award, one of the most distinguished awards in humanities scholarship, for her book Poetry and the Fate of the Senses.
Five Penn Researchers Elected Fellows of AAAS. November 1, 2002. Five Penn scientists, including SAS professors Elias Burstein and R. Scott Poethig, were among the 291 fellows named to the American Association for the Advancement of Science this year.
African Studies Association President: Sandra Barnes. Sandra Barnes, professor of anthropology, has been elected president of the African Studies Association (ASA). She begins her three-year term in December 2002.
Raymond Davis Jr. Wins Nobel Prize for Contributions to Neutrino Research and Our Understanding of the Sun. October 8, 2002. Dr. Raymond Davis, Jr. (Hon’90), a research professor at the University of Pennsylvania since 1985, was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize for physics.