Author: Dan Bernick, 2014
Not many know it, but there is a statue of Ben Franklin as a young boy on campus.
Of all the Ben statues, this is my favorite because it shows him when he was ready to conquer the world – exactly where so many Penn students are in their journeys.
To all my friends who are graduating, go off and do great things!
Filed under Student Perspective
Author: Gabriela Coya, C’14
For over 125 years, the Penn Museum has been transporting people back in time through artifacts from all around the globe. From 5,000-year-old mummies from Egypt, to Mayan hieroglyphics tracing back to 600 BCE, these diverse and often-fragile artifacts need proper care if they are to be around for future visitors.
This couldn’t be done without the help of researchers and conservators, who often stay behind the scenes but will reveal their secrets at Long Live Our Treasures: The Science of Conservation and Preservation, a Philadelphia Science Festival Signature Event taking place next Wednesday, April 26.
Conservators and researchers from the Barnes Foundation, the Mütter Museum, and even our own Penn Museum will tell all about the science and art involved in preserving our most precious artifacts, such as those from In the Artifact Lab. This new exhibit, which opened last fall, allows you to speak directly to conservators about the artifacts they are working on, including a fragile coffin from 600 CE in need of repair, a complete adult mummy called PUM I, and this little (and even kind of cute) falcon mummy, which you can learn even more about from the conservators themselves on their blog.
Photo credit: Penn Museum
Among other treasures currently Penn’s campus is the Lod Mosaic, which has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and is in its final American pit stop before heading to the Louvre in Paris. The mosaic found near Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1996 was impressive upon first glance — despite being nearly 2,000 years old, I didn’t think it looked a day over 100. The colors are vibrant and nearly each tiny cube on this huge 300-square-foot mosaic is still intact. Learn more about its discovery and conservation story in the video below:
If you’re interested in learning more about how the Penn Museum and other Philadelphia museums use science and art to keep the past alive, register for “Long Live Our Treasures” here. Go give artifacts like mummies a little love and attention; because it turns out they need it too.
Filed under Campus Life, Gabriela C., Penn Museum, Student Perspective, Video
Author: Rebecca Eckart, GEd’13
As the school year nears its completion, many of my classmates and I find that we have a lot to celebrate. Prime example: in one of my classes, the due date for our final paper was pushed back a whole week! I’m sure I can speak for my classmates in sharing my excitement.
Outside of class, we have a lot to celebrate, as well. The Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the Wharton Doctoral Council hosted a Masquerade Ball for GSE and Wharton students last Saturday. It was a fun evening to dress up, see friends that I haven’t been able to catch up with recently, and indulge my creative side by decorating a mask. My full time cohort members and I will graduate in May, so while we enjoyed the evening, we also took a lot of photos with each other, trying not to think too much about the good-byes we’re all going to have to say in a month or two. \
GSE formal: Posing high-school-dance-style with some of my cohort members.
Tomorrow Time to Shine will be held in Penn Park to celebrate the success of the Making History campaign. The whole campus is full of bright signs and floating stars, and Locust Walk has a festive air to it. I hope to see many of you there on Friday!
The view on Locust Walk today.
Filed under Campaign, Penn Park, Rebecca E., Student Perspective
Author: Dan Bernick, C’14
In middle school, I played Tevye the Dairyman in Fiddler on the Roof. (Suffice it to say my acting career began and ended that year).
Tevy’s whole life was tradition, from the work he did to the ways his daughters were married. The play is about adapting these traditions in light of changing circumstances.
Penn is full of tradition and traditions. Fling has been around for 40 years, as has the Undergraduate Assembly (our 41st term started last night!).
There are some traditions at Penn that have disappeared. The tradition of the Rowbottom has not been seen (or heard) for years, and the Bowl Fight is long gone.
Some have been transformed. SkimmerFest is a result of Callow Day becoming Skimmer becoming Fling and then being brought back as Skimmer and then joining with SPEC’s Fall Fest to become Skimmerfest. The toast toss at Franklin Field has also evolved over the years.
This past weekend, Penn began a new tradition: Penn Holi, a celebration of spring. For some, the idea of a new tradition is oxymoronic. But Penn students understand new traditions are born all the time out of enthusiasm for the school, and that we should welcome novel ideas even as we carry forward the events of yesteryear.
Photo credit: Penn Class Boards
Photo Credit: Penn Class Boards
Traditions are part and parcel of a Penn education. And whether they are generations old or brand new, they bring our community closer together.
As I reflect on my last three years and prepare for Hey Day (another great Penn traditions), I am humbled to be part of something much bigger than myself…to be part of Penn Traditions.
Filed under Campus Life, Daniel B., Student Perspective, Traditions, Uncategorized
Author: Rebecca Eckart, GEd’13
My name may not sound like it, but my family actually has quite a bit of Irish ancestry on both sides. And this year, for some reason, I celebrated that more than ever.
I checked out the St. Patrick’s Day parade here in Philadelphia (held the week before, on the 10th) and really enjoyed the bagpipes. Thankfully, the day was warm and sunny—a rarity in Philadelphia so far this year—and a great day to be outside.
St. Patrick’s Day Parade
On the 15th, the Annenberg Center hosted Natalie MacMaster, a Canadian fiddler who, despite having a cough, played beautifully and simultaneously step danced throughout much of the performance. She also shared touching stories of her family and musical inspirations with the audience. Before the show, a friend and I went out for fish and chips—a perfect way to start off our evening of Irish music.
Poster for the concert at the Annenberg Center.
Filed under GSE, Rebecca E., Student Perspective
Author: Dan Bernick, C’14
Penn made history. Five years and $4,302,890,707 later, Penn has accomplished and surpassed the Making History Campaign goals. Faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, and Penn family and friends are rightly overjoyed by our collective accomplishment.
But what does the Campaign mean for students?
In a word, everything.
$366.3 million was raised for undergraduate financial aid. That means more of my friends can take advantage of a Penn education for years to come. It means Penn will continue attracting the best and brightest students in the world, no matter their background.
$752.7 million was raised for buildings and facilities. This money goes to create new collaborative spaces for students, like the Education Commons; it goes towards improving dining and living facilities, so students can make Penn their home; and it goes towards building the world class facilities where students are learning and building and curing and discovering the future.
In total 326, 952 donors gave to Penn. That means my friends and I are graduating into a great big Penn family – thousands of individuals we can turn to for advice, support, friendship, (and a job!).
Ben Franklin would be proud.
Penn President Amy Gutmann wrote, “At Penn, we know that history does not just happen; it is made.” Well, we made it. Now, It’s Time to Shine.
Filed under Campaign, Daniel B., Student Perspective, The Penn Fund
Author: Jonathan Cousins, SEAS’14
As I left the Palestra on Friday night, I was upset. Penn had played a terrible game and lost to Dartmouth. I had seen games like this before: a rough road loss to Columbia, a road game against Harvard, and home losses against Cornell and Yale. But it has been a season of Ivy splits for Penn, as paired with each bad Ivy loss this season there has been a win. If there was going to be a split this weekend, the money would have been on a victory over Dartmouth and a loss to Harvard. So, as I left the Cathedral of College Basketball Friday night, I was dejected.
I had put off going home for spring break in order to see two more basketball games, but of course, when I bought the plane tickets, I hoped we might be in Ivy contention. As of Friday night, we were mathematically eliminated from the Ivy race. Friday’s crowd had been lackluster at best, and I knew that fewer students would show for Saturday than for Frid
ay, due to travel during the break.
As Chair of the Red and Blue Crew, I had met with Penn Traditions to discuss possible collaborations a few days before any of this happened, At that meeting, I learned about the Volunteer Thank You event happening right before the Saturday game. I volunteered to help, and had a great time hanging out with alumni and their families. With that event, each person received two tickets to the basketball game, and because of this, the Palestra was packed; as full of Penn fans as I have ever seen it. And, as Penn opened the game against Harvard with tough defense and effective offense, the crowd got into it!
Penn led by 12 entering the half, and held on down the stretch to win by 3, 75-72. It was exciting, as always, to throw streamers, but especially in a game nobody expected us to win. And just like that, it was another Ivy split.
On Tuesday, Penn plays Princeton in the final Ivy game of the season. We lost badly at Princeton in January, but we have a large group of students that we hope will turn out in force at the Palestra tomorrow. And, if these past few months have given us any indication of patterns, we will probably beat them and continue the season of splits
Junior guard Miles Cartwright (left) and freshman guard Tony Hicks walk off victorious after combining for 36 points in a 75-72 upset over Harvard Saturday. From the DP. Photo credit: Andrew Dierkes
It has been an up and down ride, and one that will hopefully give the team the necessary experience and confidence to compete for the Ivy title next season.
Filed under Athletics, Jonathan C., Penn Basketball, Student Perspective
Author/Photographer: Sabrina Shyn, C’13
I spent some time today, on this blustery Monday, to walk around campus and capture a few photos of the winter branches. Enjoy!
Filed under Campus Life, Photos, Sabrina Shyn, Student Perspective
Author: Jonathan Cousins, SEAS’14
As I looked down three stories to a staircase in the Skirkanich building, I was worried.We were about to drop a GI Joe down attached to nothing except a bungee cord made of rubber bands, and only the prediction of our computer program telling us that he would not hit the ground.Our professor turned on the accelerometer, counted down – 3, 2, 1, go! I let go of the GI Joe, and…
Let me back up for a minute. This is a class project for MEAM 348, the second semester junior year lab for Mechanical Engineers.The goal was, given a height and mass of a GI Joe, design a bungee cord that would give him the most free fall time while not hitting the ground and not exceeding 5 Gs in acceleration.My team started out testing individual rubber bands with different masses to see how they stretched.The difficulty with using rubber is that it does not stretch linearly.A spring will deform an amount that is proportional to the force put on it, but rubber bands do not do this.We created a graph of how they changed from our experiments, and used this to try to predict how the rubber bands would behave when grouped together.
After many hours of testing, thinking, and coming up with a model, we finally had something that could predict how far our GI Joe would fall, and how many G forces he would endure.We then started doing drops where we made bungee cords and checked to see that they performed as our model said that they would.There were a few mishaps – strings coming untied, masses flying – but the tests we ran suggested that our model was pretty good.
Then came the demo day.We were given a height much larger than anything we had tested, and we did not know how well our model would do.We had an hour or so to figure out a good configuration and put the rubber bands together – we ended up using 7 strands of 46 rubber bands each. During this process other teams that tested before us kept coming back into the lab, and many of them had stories of their GI Joes hitting the ground, sometimes with a lot of force. We watched a drop right before ours where the GI Joe hit the ground so hard, the accelerometer came off!
Finally, it was our turn.We set up our cord, and attached the GI Joe.The count went, we dropped the doll, and it didn’t hit the ground!We were excited, but we would not know how well it had gone until we looked at the accelerometer data.We checked it, and the G forces were close, but just under 5 Gs.We had done it! But almost immediately our attention turned to the next lab: trying to build and model a cooler that could cool drinks to a specified temperature after a specified amount of time – another daunting task. But for that short time, we knew we had truly accomplished what we set out to do.
Filed under Academics, Jonathan C., Student Perspective
Author: Sabrina Shyn, C’13
A shoe print remnant of the weekend snow on Locust Walk…
Filed under Sabrina Shyn, Student Perspective
Frankly Penn 