Student
Students Honored as 2025 Dean’s Scholars
Penn Arts & Sciences named 20 undergraduate and graduate students as this year’s Dean’s Scholars, a recognition bestowed annually on students who exhibit exceptional academic performance and intellectual promise. They were celebrated at the Stephen A. Levin Family Dean’s Forum on April 8.
2025 College of Arts & Sciences Graduation Speakers
Michael Platt, James S. Riepe University Professor, will speak at this year’s College of Arts & Sciences graduation ceremony, along with student speaker Anthony Wong, C’25, Sunday, May 18, at 6:30 p.m. on Franklin Field.
Letters from a Titanic Survivor
Sophie Michi, a master’s student studying English, transcribed correspondence from the noted maritime disaster while learning to work with archival material.
Penn Arts & Sciences Pathways: Daniel Shevchenko, C’25 (Video)
A study abroad experience in Spain and a course on language policy deepened Shevchenko's interest in linguistics and political science.
Sustainable Packaging Through Chemistry
Through her startup, AekoVera, fourth-year PhD candidate Kritika Jha helps bridge the gap for businesses struggling to adopt more eco-friendly packaging.
A Semester of Mentoring
Alums representing media and technology, film production, investment banking, and more offer advice to undergrads at mentoring meals, roundtables, and coffee breaks.
Among the Elephants
Sixth-year Anthropology PhD student Rebecca Winkler has spent more than a decade documenting the lives of elephants and Indigenous people who co-exist in the forests of Thailand.
Perspectives on Heritage
Chrislyn Laurie Laurore, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology, is studying the public memory and history of slavery, particularly its curation in museums, monuments, memorials, and archaeological sites.
Winners of the Ninth Annual Penn Grad Talks (Video)
TED-style talks on crowdfunding in ancient Greece, gender gaps in political tolerance, shyness, opera singers and language, and how to know what you don’t know, took home the day’s top prizes.
Inspiring Figures in Black History (Video)
Three students from the College highlight individuals including journalist and activist Ida B. Wells, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and John Edmonstone, a taxidermist who trained Charles Darwin.
Modern Medicine and the History of Graverobbing
Using archival documents and primary source material in Philadelphia and Scotland, Catherine Sorrentino, C’25, uncovered what happened to society’s most vulnerable with the rise of “anatomical medicine.”
Unearthing the Secrets of an Ancient Greek City
Classical archaeologist and architectural historian Mantha Zarmakoupi has spent the past four summers excavating the ruins of a city council building at the center of Teos in western Türkiye, in collaboration with the Teos Archaeological Project of Ankara University.
Can Sports Fandom Be a Religious Experience?
With the Philadelphia Eagles set to compete for the ultimate prize at Super Bowl LIX, Megan Robb, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, has noticed a “buzz of collective effervescence” in her Religion and Sports class, a space where students discuss ritual and ceremony, debate where sports and religion intersect—even meet the Eagles chaplain.
The Missing Data Link
Whether decoding medieval manuscripts or analyzing national polling numbers, Penn’s 100-plus data scientists have plenty to talk about, and Penn Arts & Sciences’ Data Driven Discovery Initiative is leading the charge in fostering collaboration.
India, Floods, and Learning Outcomes
Research from PhD student Nazar Khalid, Professors Emily Hannum and Jere Behrman, and Senior Lecturer Amrit Thapa investigates how more intensive and frequent flooding is affecting young students in the country’s rural north.