August 2005

August 26, 2005
Did You Know…that Penn ranked 4th in the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings of colleges and universities? The complete rankings appear in the newsstand book America's Best Colleges that went on sale this week.

For a complete list of the U.S. News rankings, visit the magazine's website.

August 19, 2005
Did You Know…that Penn’s new wrestling coach Larry “Zeke” Jones is a former Olympian? In addition to being a four-time World Cup gold medalist, Jones won a silver medal at the Barcelona Games in 1992 and served as a 2004 U.S. Olympic Freestyle Coach. Before Penn, Jones was the assistant head coach at West Virginia. According to Penn Athletics Director Steve Bilsky, “Jones brings a great combination of outstanding athletic and academic success as an individual and coach on both national and international levels.”

Learn more about Larry Jones.

For more information on Penn Athletics, visit
http://www.pennathletics.com/

August 15, 2005
Did You Know…that Logan Hall was designed by Penn’s first architecture professor, Thomas Webb Richards? Richards also designed College Hall and the University Hospital. Logan Hall was named for William Logan, a founding trustee of the University and one of William Penn’s colonial officers.

Learn more about Logan Hall here.

August 9, 2005
Did You Know... that Penn will host the 14th World Congress of Criminology Conference? Coordinated by Penn's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, in collaboration with the International Society of Criminology, this year's theme of "Preventing Crime & Promoting Justice: Voices for Change," is expected to draw more than 1,100 people from 65 nations to discuss issues such as gun violence, drug abuse and juvenile delinquency.

For general information on the conference, visit:
www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=824

For more detailed information on the conference, visit:
www.worldcriminology2005.org/index.html

August 26, 2005
Students are now using computer-simulated games to learn. Lee Moss and Dominic Meoli, master's students at Wharton, recently learned the art of negotiation by playing the role of representatives from a Middle Eastern country who had to decide how many barrels of oil their nation should produce. Business schools have long used simulations, and many are now taking advantage of web-based tools to better manage and track data for the games. Deirdre Woods, Wharton's chief information officer, says that "most top business schools" now use computer simulations. [more]

August 23, 2005
The September issue of Golf Digest ranks the Penn golf team fourth nationally among men's teams. [more]

August 18, 2005
Penn grad Elizabeth Banks will co-star in "Invincible," a Disney biopic based on the story of how football fan Vince Papale (played by Mark Wahlberg) became one of the Philadelphia Eagles. Film crews have been filming at Franklin Field, which is doubling as Veterans Stadium in the movie. Producer Mark Ciardi joked that the 5,000 dummies filling the seats at Franklin Field "have a lot of stamina and they don't mind the heat." Ciardi says the entire film will be shot here with the exception of a three-day shoot in Dallas in October. [more]

August 9, 2005
Dr. George H. Heilmeier, EE'58, was named Laureate for Lifetime Achievement in Technology, Science, and the Arts by the Inamori Foundation and will receive its 21st Annual Kyoto Prize. For more information, see the Foundation's press release.

August 2, 2005
How does neighborhood decay and crime affect people's ability to stay active and keep weight off? Do billboards and their messages have an impact on the health of a community? Social scientists and public health researchers have long considered demographic characteristics--age, sex, income and education--to help explain individual behavior or a person's risk for disease. But now sophisticated computer programs--geographic information systems, or GIS--allow researchers at Penn to pull together data on many factors and analyze them spatially, by block, neighborhood or town. "What we're doing is connecting people to the context in which they live," said Amy Hillier, director of Penn's Cartographic Modeling Laboratory. [more]