Category Archives: The Penn Fund

December 2, 2011 · 9:51 pm

Top 5 Reasons to Love Penn in December

Author: Kelly Graf

There are thousands of reasons to love Penn all year long. But today, with the holiday and winter seasons upon us, I choose to focus on the best aspects of Penn during the festive month of December! Below is a list of five reasons to enjoy Penn this month. Feel free to add more to the comments (or to deride or applaud my choices as well). Happy December!

1. Locust Walk Decorations. Nothing can top the magical feeling of walking down locust walk in the evening and see the lights shine in the trees. It truly feels like you are miles away from a city and in your own Winter Penn Wonderland.

Photo Courtesy of the Wharton School

2. Holiday Garden Railway at Morris Arboretum. The Garden Railway Display is returning again this winter as the Holiday Garden Railway Display at Penn’s Morris Arboretum. Visitors of all ages will be wow-ed by a quarter mile of track featuring seven loops and tunnels with fifteen different rail lines and two cable cars, nine bridges (including a trestle bridge you can walk under), and bustling model trains, all set in the lovely winter garden of the Morris Arboretum. The buildings are all decorated for the holidays with lights that twinkle along the tracks and around the surrounding landscape.

3. Winter Break. Who doesn’t love time off? Students trudge through finals in the first two weeks of December, furiously studying for their end-of-semester exams. Then, they are set free for a full-month to vacation, visit home and take a break from studying. Their excitement can be felt across campus! Most faculty and staff also enjoy a week-long break from the campus to regroup and come back stronger than ever in the New Year.

4. Ivy Stone Society December Drive. The Penn Fund launches its 3rd Annual Ivy Stone Society December Drive this month – an initiative focused on reaching at 4,200 Ivy Stone Society members in the month of December. ISS members are undergraduate alumni who have made a gift to The Penn Fund for three or more consecutive years .These loyal donors are the backbone of Penn’s philanthropic support.

5. Amazing Resources Available at Penn. I am always amazed by the different facets of the University that offer valuable information and resources. This holiday season, for example, the Vet School offers up a four-page PDF educated pet-owners on how to keep their animals safe during the holidays.

But don’t take my word for it…Come back to campus this holiday season and see for yourself the wonders of Penn in December.

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October 20, 2011 · 9:00 am

Beware of Vampires

Author:  Colin Hennessy

October is here, and the season for tricks and treats and ghouls and ghosts is upon us. Halloween is an enjoyable time on any college campus, and while Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries have put the thirsty undead firmly in popular culture, there is another vampire that is perhaps even more dangerous. I am talking about vampire power [flash of lightening, crash of thunder!]

Vampire power is a serious threat for any larger organization including Penn. It may not seem like a big deal to leave your printer on at the end of the day, or even leave your cell phone plugged in for the afternoon, and in truth, the amount of power your equipment is drawing is minimal.

HOWEVER – When you consider the thousands of others on campus doing the same thing, the power draw can be significant. Vampire power or standby power is very common. More and more devices are able to reduce their power consumption when not in use; however, they are still drawing power – leaking power, consuming power.

Consider your office or dorm room. What is plugged in that doesn’t need to be? Each one of those devices is drawing power. Power that contributes to Penn’s overall footprint.

Penn has ambitious sustainability goals, and each of us play a role in helping Penn to achieve those goals. In the coming months join with your colleagues and fellow students in finding ways to reduce Penn’s energy consumption and start with vampire power.

Here are just a few simple things you can do to reduce your energy use:

  1. Unplug  your equipment when possible
  2. Dress for the weather vs. adjusting the thermostat
  3. Use daylight not lamplight
  4. Recycle
  5. Print less
  6. Use public transportation or walk
  7. Report problems
  8. Learn more – visit Penn’s Sustainability Website to get more information
  9. Encourage your friends to join you!

Let us all do our part to make Penn a greener place and keep the vampires out.

Happy Halloween.

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September 15, 2011 · 3:30 pm

I Bike Philly

Author: Colin Hennessy

Philadelphia is a biker’s city. With more and more Center City streets making room for bike lanes, cyclists are able to traverse our city with increased ease and safety. Despite these advancements, what really excites me as a relatively new biker is the Schuylkill River Heritage Area Trail.

Each morning before work, well most mornings, my colleague and I meet and ride to the trail. Our morning routine includes a 10-mile journey to the Falls Bridge and back to the start of the trail near Spruce Street. The whole excursion takes about one hour (door-to-door). This bike friendly journey includes stunning scenery and views of the river. Long straight-aways provide many opportunities for sprinting, while one or two mild hills give that brief burning sensation in quad muscles. In addition, on the weekends we have extended our journey and ventured to Valley Forge.

The best news is the trail is minutes from Penn’s campus. All members of the Penn community are able to take full advantage of this trail. With the opening of Penn Park (today) the combined outdoor space in and around the Penn campus is extraordinary. Few urban schools can boast the amount of green space so easily accessible by their campus.

As late summer transforms to fall, I hope you will take full advantage of the moderate temperatures and lingering daylight that are made for long bike rides, riverside runs, or casual walks and talks. Philadelphia is a wonderfully accessible city and Penn is right at home here.

Make a plan to visit Penn Park and the Schuylkill River trail – before long your visits might become part of your daily routine, like mine.

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August 26, 2011 · 4:14 pm

The Penn Fund Honor Roll Is Live!

Author: Kelly Graf

Today, The Penn Fund is proud to announce the posting of the fiscal year 2011 Class Honor Rolls.

These listings honor those who have made a commitment to the advancement of the University of Pennsylvania with a gift to The Penn Fund as well as gifts to other areas of the University during fiscal year 2011 (July 1, 2010 – June 30, 2011). Following the University’s mission of sustainability, the honor rolls are posted only online in order to save paper and printing resources. We hope you will enjoy finding your name and those of your classmates and friends.

Thank you to all of you who made your annual gift this year in support of Penn and its students! Your generosity at any level is already making a difference on campus and in the lives of Penn students.

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August 16, 2011 · 8:02 am

Penn Saving the Planet, One Bike at a Time

Author: Stephanie Y., C’08

When I was an undergrad, I knew a number of students who rode their bikes regularly whether it was for commuting (biking to classes), for fun (biking to and from downtown), or for exercise (biking along the Schuylkill River and on Kelly Drive). Now I work full-time at Perelman School of Medicine (formerly known as Penn Med), and I am always pleasantly surprised to see how many employees also ride their bikes to and from Penn.

The bike racks by my building are always full by 9am, so people who show up five minutes late to work have to lock their bikes to trees. This does not seem environmentally-friendly to me, but as you can see, people do it!

The bike racks in front of my building are not even the most crowded on campus. You should go see the bike racks outside the Biomedical Library – I don’t even bother looking for a spot there.

So, you can imagine I was thrilled when I heard through the grapevine that some Penn alumni classes are working with The Penn Fund to donate new bike racks to Penn. Let’s hear it for Penn Alumni! Their mission is in line with Penn’s Green Campus Partnership and Reducing Emissions Initiative. Even though there are already many bike racks on campus, we definitely need more!

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August 10, 2011 · 2:05 pm

Remembering Why

Author: Amanda D’Amico

As a staff member at The Penn Fund, I understand the important impact that philanthropy has on Penn’s students.  Penn Fund dollars help to support the 40% of Penn students who receive student aid; they help to support the 574 student organizations at Penn; and they affect each undergraduate at Penn.

But working in an administrative building away from students doesn’t allow me to regularly see what interesting things Penn students are doing because Penn Fund dollars helped to support their lab’s upgrade, or what riveting conversations are taking part in a small lecture hall because Penn Fund dollars helped to pay for more faculty members, or the value added by a student who would be unable to attend Penn without of the support of financial aid.  That’s why I was thrilled to venture with other members of The Penn Fund’s marketing team to Penn’s School of Nursing for a few hours.

A colleague in the School of Nursing set up a wonderful afternoon for us.  Our first stop was five minutes with Dean Afaf I Meleis, PhD, DrPS(hon), FAAN.  The Dean spoke to us about how giving at Penn, through The Penn Fund, the Nursing Annual Fund, and other sources, has impacted the school.  She spoke of her priorities for the school and of her vision for its future.

Next, we sat down with Angela Iorianni-Cimbak, MSN, RN, Director of the Brunner Lab.  Angela gave a wonderful presentation on the upcoming transformation of the simulation labs and the impact it would have on the students.  This was followed by a tour of the existing labs, complete with simulated patients and operating rooms.  We were able to peak at students as they practiced putting IVs in the arms of “patients,” and as they hurried around the simulation rooms which seemed to be almost as busy as a real ER.

At the end of our tour, we were able to meet with two undergraduate students who talked about their experiences at the Nursing School.  Their perspective was particularly interesting, as they were both second-degree students (meaning that they had received a bachelor’s degree from another University in another subject and were now attending Penn Nursing for the bachelor’s in Nursing).  The students talked about their experiences as non-traditional undergraduates and of the opportunities that Penn Nursing afforded them.

Overall, it was a fascinating and fantastic experience, and I can’t thank my colleagues enough in Nursing for taking the time out of their day to speak to us.  This visit really helped to emphasize the impact that philanthropy has on Penn’s students.

To learn more about the Penn’s School of Nursing, visit http://www.nursing.upenn.edu/Pages/default.aspx .

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July 5, 2011 · 2:37 pm

Happy New Year!!

Author: Kelly G.

It may at first seem odd to celebrate what is usually a snowy, cold, and glittery holiday in January, we at The Penn Fund are very excited to celebrate the end of our 2011 fiscal year and the beginning of fiscal year 2012.

Thank you to all of our Penn undergraduates and friends who took the time between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011 to make an annual gift to The Penn Fund in support of Penn students! Our reunion classes had record-breaking years and we are looking forward to announcing our total numbers in the coming weeks, including higher than ever numbers of Benjamin Franklin Society and Ivy Stone Society members.

While we also broke through dollar records this year, it is the participation that the University is most excited about. Knowing that 25,000+ undergraduate alumni come together every year and contribute whatever they can to The Penn Fund – in support of the students who follow in their footsteps – truly demonstrates the amazing commitment of Penn alumni.

Therefore, I wish all of you a very happy new year and I hope you will join The Penn Fund in fiscal year 2012 in support the immediate priorities of undergraduate education at Penn.

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June 6, 2011 · 4:03 pm

Alumni Voices

Author: Kelly Graf

One of the perks of my job at Penn is that I get to meet and learn about some of our very dedicated and generous proud Penn alumni. Every other month, I interview one of our Ivy Stone Society members for the Society’s newsletter, the Ivy Stone Insider. Every interview reveals fascinating details about the individual including why they came to Penn and why they give
back to the University. Today, I am happy to share one of these profiles with you!

Name: Caroline Finger
School/Class Year: C’07

Where Are You Now?
I currently live in New York City and work for an affordable housing redevelopment non-profit. I’m also working towards a Master’s degree in Real Estate at NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate.

What made you choose Penn when you first enrolled?
Choosing Penn was a simple decision. As a legacy, my positive experiences stretch as far back as I can remember, and I had the Penn wardrobe as a child to reflect that. However, my decision to ultimately choose Penn was far more individualized. As a prospective student-athlete, I knew Penn would provide the perfect balance between top-notch academics and competitive athletics, with an administration, faculty and coaching staff that took both pride in and supported their student-athletes. This coupled with the University’s location within one of the nation’s most celebrated cities made my decision to choose Penn extremely easy.

Your history of giving definitely makes you a Proud Penn Donor. When did you first start giving to The Penn Fund and what prompted you to make The Penn Fund a priority?
My first gift to The Penn Fund was made as part of the Class of 2007’s gift drive. The beauty of Penn is that it is an expansive University with a diversity of experiences to be had by all students. Rather than focus all of my giving towards the particular experiences which positively benefited my time as an undergraduate, I find it important to support The Penn Fund, whose mission is aligned with the overall undergraduate student experience.

What has inspired you to continue giving every year?
Although I’ve graduated, the University continues to afford me many services and opportunities, and my connection to Penn continues to grow. I view my giving to The Penn Fund as not only a thank you for the University’s continued support but also as a personal pledge to current and future Penn students and graduates to help provide them with the benefits that have been made available to me.

What is your favorite memory of Penn?
It is impossible to pin-point a singular favorite memory of Penn. Aside from attending my first basketball game at the Palestra at the age of 4, other memorable moments were my first regular season game freshman year at Franklin Field wearing the Penn uniform as a member of the Penn Women’s Lacrosse team, my summer semester abroad in Florence and living in such close proximity to all of my closest friends. However, of all of those memories, it is hard not to include the graduation ceremony for the College of Arts and Sciences where the large screen flashing the name and major of each graduating student froze on mine for approximately 10 minutes.

What advice do you have for current students at Penn?
College has its stressful and challenging moments, but it should not be defined by those moments. If, for whatever reason, you find yourself overwhelmed, pull the lens back and realize that you are at an amazing university, living in a remarkable city and among life-long friends. Your undergraduate years should not be entirely about the books, so try to absorb as much of the full Penn experience as possible to ensure you have the best time. Be mindful that in a few years you will undoubtedly wish you could do it all over again, so make sure to enjoy it while it lasts.

How would you advise Penn students to give back and how would you stress the importance of it?
First and foremost, giving to Penn is not measured by a dollar amount. There are many different ways to give back to the University and each way is just as important as the next. It is evident that Penn’s support systems have been largely provided to its students and graduates through the generosity of its alumni; and as recent graduates it is imperative to continue and build upon that mission.

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