Second year Penn GSE students in the Urban Teaching Residency program can participate in the VAST LIFE program where they are teaching full time in Philadelphia schools through Teach for America while pursuing their graduate degrees. The program gives GSE students the experience they need to meet Pennsylvania requirements for special education certification with a master’s degree in education, while also helping local teens and their families.

The Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions (CMSI) announced that it has been awarded over $745,000 in grants from ECMC Foundation and the Kresge Foundation to host a new program called "MSI Aspiring Leaders." The program will bring together prominent Minority Serving Institutions' (MSI) leaders to engage with mid-career aspiring leaders from the education, non-profit, and business sectors in an effort to prepare the next generation of MSI presidents.

Penn undergraduates have formed a club to empower female physics majors through conferences, weekly presentations, monthly luncheons and annual lectures.

In response to a letter from a group of Penn faculty received Nov. 14, 2016, President Amy Gutmann expressed her continued support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Cathy Bartch, associate director of the Latin American & Latino Studies Program (LALS) and Tulia Falleti, director of LALS, thanked Dr. Gutmann on behalf of the faculty for her advocacy and work for immigration reform and impassioned response on the issue of immigrant students. 

Anita Allen of Law and Arts & Sciences and Martha Curley of Nursing and Med were elected into the National Academy of Medicine, one of the field’s greatest honors.

Diane Spatz, a perinatal nursing and nutrition professor in the School of Nursing and lactation program director at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, conducted a study that shows some women find breastfeeding at work a challenge, even with a supportive system.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Shaun Harper, a Penn Graduate School of Education professor and executive director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education, discusses the controversial video that surfaced of presidential candidate Donald Trump objectifying women.

Lorene Cary of Arts & Sciences shared stories from the National Museum of African American History and Culture dedication in Washington.

Penn President Amy Gutmann, School District of Philadelphia Superintendent William Hite, Penn’s Graduate School of Education Director of School & Community Engagement Caroline Watts and others gathered last Wednesday to celebrate a remarkable accomplishment—the naming of the Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School (Penn Alexander School) as a National Blue Ribbon School. It is one of only a few hundred schools to receive the coveted annual distinction, and the first Philadelphia District school in West Philadelphia to ever receive the honor.

Karen Detlefsen of Arts & Sciences studies the lasting legacy of female philosophers who worked during a time when women were excluded from universities.