Author: Alyssa D’Alconzo, GSE ’03, GRD ’11
Office Hours start tomorrow! Are you registered?
Just as they do for current students, Penn Alumni Office Hours provide an opportunity to ask in-depth questions and explore points of interest with professors outside of the classroom. This spring, Penn Alumni Education is hosting 4 of these virtual events, each featuring one of Penn’s dynamic faculty members, who will focus on a topic or issue of his/her choice. These live, interactive webinars offer Penn alumni an exclusive opportunity to engage in dialogue with Penn professors without leaving their homes or offices.
Please join us for one or more of the following events:
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Promoting College Access and Success for all Students featuring Professor Laura Perna
12:00 p.m. ET Register Now!
Although once leading the world, the United States has fallen behind many other nations in terms of the educational attainment of its population. The U.S. cannot achieve the levels of educational attainment required for international competitiveness without raising overall attainment and closing gabs in attainment across groups. Yet, despite substantial investment by the federal and state governments, colleges and universities, and many other organizations, college access and completion rates continue to be lower for students from families with lower-incomes and racial/ethnic minority groups. This talk discusses trends in college enrollment and completion, identifies forces that perpetuate gaps in these outcomes across groups, and discusses strategies for effectively closing the gaps and improving college access and success for all students.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Face Transplant Surgery and Identity Transfer: Decoding the Debates featuring Professor Sharonna Pearl
12:00 p.m. ET Register Now!
Why did the plastic surgery makeover show The Swan have a therapist on staff? Does changing our appearance so drastically change who we are that it challenges our notions of self – and is this a reason not to do it? I take this question one step further by exploring what happens when one person is given not just a new face, but the face of someone else entirely. Drawing on film and literary explorations of the question of identity transfer, as well as the history of face transplant surgery, I ask: what makes us who we really are?
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Contested Boundaries: The Road Toward Compromise in the Battle Over Nurse Practitioner Scope or Practice — Lessons from Pennsylvania featuring Professor Margo Brooks Carthon
12:00p.m. ET Register Now!
The road toward removing scope of practice restrictions for non-physician providers (Nurse Practitioners) is fraught with long held turf battles over who can provide which health care services. Caught in the middle of this war are medically underserved communities sorely in need of health care services. Using narrative interviews from key policy makers, this talk will provide preliminary data from ongoing research, which details the events leading up to and through the passage of health care reform in Pennsylvania in 2007 under the Edward Rendell administration. Attention to key aspects of the negotiations between nursing and physician advocates will be highlighted. Results from this research will provide the foundation for future investigations examining how the removal of restrictive scope of practice laws may impact access to health care in minority communities.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
The Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative featuring Professor Mark Duggan
12:00p.m. ET Register Now!
This talk will provide an overview of the Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative (PPI). Launched in September 2012, PPI operates under the broad mandate of marshaling the University’s resources to foster better-informed policy making on issues that affect business and the economy. To this end, the Initiative aims to get policy-relevant, nonpartisan research by Penn faculty more “in the mix” in DC; to encourage public service among students by creating new opportunities for them to explore public policy through course work, lecture events, and internships; and to engage alumni interested in public policy, especially in the DC area.
In addition to detailing the achievements and aspirations of the Penn Wharton PPI, the talk will delve more deeply into some of Professor Duggan’s current research exploring the effect of Medicare Advantage (MA) program. The federal government contracts with private insurers through the MA program to coordinate and finance health care for approximately 15 million of the nation’s 51 million Medicare recipients (the remaining 36 million are in traditional free-for service Medicare). Reimbursement to and regulation of these private MA plans is changing substantially as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
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