Category: News

Originally published by the University of Pennsylvania

originally published by Newsy/Washington Post

October 14, 2022

originally published by Penn Today

Hands-on events for Climate Week include a tour of Penn Park Farm, a bioblitz at the Biopond, and planting sessions at Penn Park and the Andrew Hamilton School.

In its third iteration this year, Climate Week at Penn will kick off on Oct. 10, also Indigenous People’s Day. That timing inspired the organizers to collaborate with alumni and students to frame a key event that highlights Indigenous knowledge and its role in addressing the emergency that climate change presents.

Talon Bazille, a Penn alum and a member of the Crow Creek Dakota and Cheyenne River Lakota tribes, is a rap artist and poet. His performance the afternoon of Oct. 10 under a tent on College Green, part of the “Native Lands, Native Knowledge” event, will be “a little different from a traditional hip hop performance,” he says. He hopes to hammer home the ways in which Indigenous people’s voices have been overlooked, dismissed, and devalued while pointing to the sacrifices and shifts in values that must occur to protect future generations from environmental harm.

“Often in my undergraduate days at Penn people were asking me what it’s like growing up on a reservation, what it’s like to be Native, all of these questions,” says Bazille. “This is my opportunity to show them through a performance: This is what it really is, no sugarcoating.”

Bazille’s offering will complement a keynote speech by another Penn alum, Megan Red Shirt-Shaw, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, director of Native student services at the University of South Dakota, and a noted educator, writer, and researcher. A panel discussion will follow, moderated by Toyce Holmes, the staff advisor for campus group Natives at Penn.

Launching the event-filled week by lifting up voices that are frequently not given platforms to be heard is appropriate, says Melissa Brown Goodall, senior director of the Environmental Innovations Initiative, which serves as the administrative lead for Climate Week.

“We want to highlight the opportunity for each discipline, for every member of the community, to connect to the climate challenge,” Brown Goodall says. “Climate Week is an amazing chance for people to explore how they can get involved and find their voice in ways that resonate authentically with who they are.”

While the first two Climate Weeks at Penn, in 2020 and 2021, took place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year, lifted restrictions and falling case counts are allowing most events to convene in person, some with Zoom options.

Groups across campus contributed programming with little prompting, says Simon Richter, the Class of 1942 Endowed Term Professor of German in the School of Arts & Sciences, who has helped organize each Climate Week and will be presenting this year on his work related to “floating cities” in the Netherlands.

“I continue to notice that people just spring into action when they hear about the opportunity to participate,” he says. “There’s a pretty high level of awareness on campus of both the importance of understanding climate change and of the need for climate action.”

A marquee event will be the 1.5 Minute Climate Lectures on College Green, a spin on the School of Arts & Sciences’ 60 Second Lectures that draws attention to the important target of keeping climate warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius on average to avoid the worst harm from heat, storms, fires, droughts, and floods.

In a slightly new format this year, the 1.5 Minute Lectures will include not only intentionally brief remarks from each speaker but also a panel discussion that will allow presenters to dive more fully into the issues they raise on how climate change dovetails with their academic fields. Faculty will offer talks on Wednesday, Oct. 12, with students giving their own talks on Friday, Oct. 14.

The planned events offer immersive activities, including a bioblitz in the BioPond and work days at Penn Park and Andrew Hamilton School in West Philadelphia, providing opportunities for hands-on action. Meanwhile scientific and academic-oriented talks, such as a lecture by climate scientist Michael Mann and a panel on electric vehicles hosted by the Penn Program on Regulation, will dive deep into timely environmental issues.

And as in past years, a number of gatherings will focus on social and environmental justice and equity, in Philadelphia in particular. These include a panel on climate justice in Philadelphia, an overview of a government-funded effort to evaluate heat and air quality across the city, and a workshop on how regulatory systems can perpetuate environmental injustice.

The week offers numerous other ways to get involved, such as:

On Monday, Oct. 10: Pete Psarras of Penn Engineering will discuss responsible deployment of carbon removal strategies, sponsored by the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy;

On Tuesday, Oct. 11: Penn alums whose work intersects with climate change in the corporate world will participate in a panel, organized by the Wharton Undergraduate Energy Group;

On Wednesday, Oct. 12: members of Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy (WRISE) will table on Locust Walk to raise awareness of their mission;

On Thursday, Oct. 13: Philadelphia public school students and teachers will convene and share personal climate stories in an event organized by the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities;

And on Friday, Oct. 14: a tour of Penn Park Farm sponsored by Penn Food and Wellness Collaborative, Natives at Penn, and the Greenfield Intercultural Center will engage participants in a conversation about the future of food and farming in the wake of climate crises.

View the full week’s schedule on the Climate Week website at https://climateweek.provost.upenn.edu/.

The climate emergency is everyone’s business. Join us during Climate Week at Penn to find your place in the climate movement.

From October 10 through October 14, you can find a plethora of climate-related lectures and activities throughout Penn’s campus. PCSSM and the Earth & Environmental Science Dept. will be participating through Dr. Mann’s lectures and Earth & Environmental Science Dept. activities. Please see below for a list of activities and links to more information.

• Wednesday, Oct. 12 at 12pm in Climate Week Tent on College Green: Dr. Mann Giving a 1.5 Minute Lecture  
  • Did you miss the talk? Check out the recorded video here.
• Thursday, Oct. 13 at 2pm in Lynch Lecture Hall (Chemistry 1941): Beyond the Hockey Stick: Climate Lessons from the Common Era
• Friday, Oct. 14 at 3pm in Hayden Hall 358: Impacts on Sea-level Rise from the Flow and Deformation of Glacier Ice with Dr. Brent Minchew (MIT)

For a full list of activities organized by the Provost’s Office click here.

For a full list of activities by the Penn Earth &  Environmental Science Dept. click here.

Some content originally published by the Penn Provost’s Office.

What does the future of globalization look like in a world that is increasingly fractured? Perry World House’s 2022 Global Order Colloquium explored that question in a series of panels featuring experts from government, media, and across the University.Starting the two-day colloquium was a conversation between Penn climate scientist Michael E. Mann and former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull—moderated by Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center—looking at how Australia has become a leader in fighting climate change.

Penn President Liz Magill, in introducing the panel, noted that “the topics they will tackle could not be more urgent or more global in scope.” Recent headlines, from devastating droughts in Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, to record-breaking heat, storms and wildfires in the United States, highlight the increasing threats of climate change.

“These grave challenges are increasingly the norm,” Magill said. “Much like a pandemic, climate change does not respect international borders, does not distinguish among cultures or languages, and is a global fact. If we want to weather what is coming, then we need a global response. We also need the very best and brightest that great universities like Penn can provide.”

Mann, a Presidential Distinguished Professor in the School of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Earth and Environmental Science, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication, is also the director of the new Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media. The talk was the Center’s inaugural event.

Turnbull told the audience that nations around the globe already have the means and tools “to have abundant energy at affordable prices delivered in a reliable manner with zero emissions,” pointing to wind and solar energy and batteries that can store it all. However, he said, climate change denial is standing in the way.

“We have been bedeviled by crazy politics and crazy media,” he said, citing Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News as the main contributor to the problem. “If we can replace ideology and idiocy with engineering and economics, we can get the job done. And that’s what we should be seeking to do.”

Mann recounted his sabbatical in Australia a few years ago, which coincided with one of the most profound climate-driven extreme weather events in Australian history.

“I first came face to face with the impacts of climate change in Sydney during what is now known as the Black Summer, the summer where Australia witnessed unprecedented heat and drought and wildfires that literally blanketed the continent,” he said.

He said he didn’t do as much research as he’d planned during his stay, but rather spent much of his time talking about the context for the extreme weather events, explaining how climate change was behind the real-time disasters that were playing out. That’s also when he first met Turnbull.

“I think what bonded us was our mutual dislike of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. and our willingness to call out bad actors in the media,” he said. “As Malcolm explained, we have the technology to address the climate crisis. We can do it now with the energy technologies we have. The obstacles aren’t technological; they are political.”

Australia offers a lot of lessons that the U.S. could heed, especially just two months out from the midterms, Mann said. Of particular note is Australia’s resistance to Murdoch’s dominant media narrative and the country’s ability to elect a government that defied that narrative of climate denialism and delay.

He said it’s not overstating things to say that the upcoming midterm elections will determine the course of future action on climate in the United States and therefore globally.

“If we don’t lead on this issue, it is unlikely that we can bring other nations, especially developing nations, to the table to join in this effort,” he said. “This is a really critical moment. If we don’t have a functioning democracy, we’re not going to be able to address any of the major challenges we face, including the climate crisis. This is a moment of great opportunity but also of great peril.”

Mann and Turnbull went on to discuss how Australia appeared designed to be maximally impacted by climate change and how the U.S., the largest cumulative carbon emitter, needs to own up to its legacy. They also pointed to how the current gatekeeper of American climate policy is one lone coal-state Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia. They also highlighted voting rules in Australia that helped enable the nation’s climate change agenda: compulsory voting, no gerrymandering, and ranked-choice voting.

Wrapping up the event, Jamieson asked them what they hoped attendees would take away from the discussion.

For Turnbull, it was simple: “Vote.”

“Urgency and agency,” said Mann. “We need dramatic action. It’s not too late.”

Day 2 started off with an ambassadors’ roundtable featuring Ashok Kumar Mirpuri, Singapore’s ambassador to the U.S.; Hilda Suka-Mafudze, permanent representative of the African Union to the U.S.; and Uruguay’s ambassador to the U.S., Andrés Augusto Durán Hareau. The conversation was moderated by Edward Wong, diplomatic correspondent at The New York Times who reports on foreign policy from Washington, D.C.

The group explored how deglobalization is affecting their individual nations and the wider global economy and how the international community can still work together on economic issues.

Lessons from the pandemic, the U.S. and China’s involvement in their nations, and the ongoing war in Ukraine and its effect on the movement of grain around the globe were among the topics discussed.

“The pandemic has taught us in Africa that we have to manufacture our own vaccines,” Suka-Mafudze said, noting Africa-based companies are now making vaccines themselves in various regions across the continent. She also noted that Africa responded well to the pandemic because of its experience battling Ebola.

Wong asked the group if the idea of moving supply chains nearer to home is a good thing for free trade.

“For our country, it is good in the sense that we see more opportunities that we didn’t have before, and we are positioning ourselves as an innovation hub, as a technology hub, and as a health care hub in in South America and working on how can we leverage our partnerships so that the U.S. and U.S. companies can be more engaged,” said Durán Hareau. “In that sense, it’s positive. Obviously, this pandemic has shifted many things, and it’s inevitable. We are making the most of the opportunities that this brings.”

They discussed how, for many countries, the future of globalization may be more globalization, as some nations do not have an alternative.

“Singapore is a country without any resources. We have to import our energy, we import our water, we import our food,” Mirpuri said. “When you tell us that we’re looking at a fractured world, a bifurcated world, that is not a happy outcome for us because every one of us, in all of Asia, want the people to be successful. And that really comes, we think, through economic interdependence, through economic links, through following the rules.”

The final session featured Wharton School Dean Erika James in discussion with Rana Foroohar, global business columnist and an associate editor at the Financial Times.

original source here: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/future-globalization-fracturing-world

originally published by Perry World House

September 13, 2022

Australia has become a leading actor in the global fight against climate change. As increasingly extreme weather events swept the country – such as the devastating wildfires of early 2020 – local advocates and activists contested widespread climate disinformation and mobilized people power to achieve meaningful governmental action. These efforts helped to bring about the groundbreaking Climate Change Bill, which pledges to cut the country’s emissions 43% by 2030.

Climate change remains a highly divisive issue across the globe, but Australia’s gradual move toward this progressive new law is an example of cohesion in a fracturing world. It demonstrates that national governments are acknowledging the extent of this shared global problem and are enacting policies that make a difference.

Join Perry World House, the School of Arts and Sciences, the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC), the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy for a conversation on these developments with former Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull and Penn’s Michael E. Mann, moderated by Annenberg’s Kathleen Hall Jamieson.

This keynote conversation, part of Perry World House’s 2022 Global Order Colloquium, “A Fracturing World: The Future of Globalization,” also serves as the launch event for the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM), which will be led by Professor Mann. This new School of Arts and Sciences-based center is a partner organization of APPC, with its postdoctoral fellows program housed at APPC. University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth Magill provided introductory remarks for the program.

Originally published by The Philadelphia Citizen.

It should be enough to know climatologist Michael E. Mann for his groundbreaking research on global warming. In 1998, he co-authored a study that tracked temperatures in the northern hemisphere from 1400 AD that showed the Earth started to sharply heat up in the early 20th Century. The study, published in Nature, was illustrated by perhaps the most famous graph in science, what became known as the “hockey stick” for how it portrayed the sudden temperature rise of the planet.

That study — and that graph — did not go down easy. Even as the United Nations used the research a few years later in their 2001 report on climate change, Mann and his colleagues were pilloried by global warming deniers. He spent much of the next two decades defending his work in the face of death threats to him and his family; calls for a Congressional investigation; attacks on his character and research known as “Climategate”; and doubts about his motives.

Mann was proven right, over and over. But in the process, he became known for something more than his science. He is now one of the most famous science communicators, explaining to all of us on TV and in popular books what the research says; what it means about how we should live and what we should demand of our leaders; and what the extreme weather we all experience foretells about the future of the earth.

The fight has shifted — it’s no longer possible for any rational person to deny climate change — but it is not over. Today Mann directs his considerable media attention towards convincing climate doomsayers that all is not lost. “Polluters,” he says, “want you to just give up.” Mann will not stand for that.

In September, Mann — for years the director of Penn State’s Earth Systems Science Center — will become director of the University of Pennsylvania’s new Science, Sustainability and the Media program, leading Penn’s push to become a leader in climate change communications.

I spoke with Mann a few days before the Senate passed the country’s first significant climate legislation in decades. The interview has been condensed and edited.

Earlier this year, you co-published an article called the Best Climate Science You’ve Never Heard Of, in which you said “the best climate science you’ve probably never heard of suggests that humanity can still limit the damage to a fraction of the worst projections if — and, we admit, this is a big if — governments, businesses, and all of us take strong action starting now.” Why did you feel that was important to say?

This has been an emerging theme. I’ve been in the climate wars for a couple decades now. When we published the hockey stick curve, I became the target of attacks. That threw me into the center of the ring and ultimately I embraced that as an opportunity to communicate the science. So I’ve watched that playing field move over two decades.

The reason I wrote my most recent book, The New Climate War, was because I saw this shift in the tactics away from outright denialism. At this point, there has to be some pathology behind somebody who still denies it — they are so dug in their heels when it comes to ultra-right political ideology, Trumpism, Maga-tism — and those folks are largely unreachable.

“There are some bad actors who would happily fan the flames of doomism, because it takes those who would be the most engaged, those who would be on the front lines, and it puts them on the sidelines,”  says Mann.

But there’s still a fair number of people in the “confused middle”, I call them. They’re not ideologically opposed to climate action; they’re just not yet convinced that it’s so bad that we need to do something about it, or think it’s too late and that we can’t do anything about it.

And so, what I call the inactivists, the forces of inaction — polluters, and those who promote their agenda— they’ve turned to these other tactics, and one of them, ironically, is doomism. There are some bad actors who would happily fan the flames of doomism, because it takes those who would be the most engaged, those who would be on the front lines, and it puts them on the sidelines. That is something I’ve really been fighting against.

Look, the reality is, if the science told me that we are f’ed, and there’s nothing we can do about it, I would have to be truthful about that. But the fact is, we can very much do something about it. You’ve got on the one hand, all these people saying it’s too late, we can’t stop the meltdown, we have to plan for the end of human civilization.

Yet, on the policy front, we’re on the verge of truly meaningful climate action here.

I was going to ask you about that. You have said that you feel optimistic about the climate bill [just passed] by the Senate, even though it’s not everything you would have wanted. Why is that?

Well, people that I really trust, who are experts at crunching the numbers — including some folks at Penn in the Wharton School who did some of the research that was drawn upon in that bill — they’ve vetted the numbers and said, it’s real. This would lead to a 40 percent reduction [in carbon emissions], roughly.

That’s great; that’s huge progress, if we can do that. A, it’s not enough; we’ve got to do more than that. So that’s an important caveat. And B, words are easy, right? What we have to see is the actual action behind that. But there’s some real reason for optimism. This is, by far, the boldest climate legislation ever proposed in the U.S. Congress.

I’m intrigued by the name of the program that you are going to be heading up at Penn: “Science, Sustainability and the Media.” That last bit is curious to me.

So that’s where my interests lie these days. I mean, I still do fundamental science; I still enjoy doing that. And part of what I will continue to do is basic climate science. But, in part because of my experiences over the decades, I’ve become very engaged on the communication and outreach front. And to me, one of the really exciting things about Penn, what lured me away from the Happy Valley, is the Annenberg School and Annenberg Public Policy Center, all of that infrastructure for science communication. Annenberg in particular has played such an important role in pushing back against disinformation. I love the fact that factcheck.org originated there. I’ve had quite a few experiences with people there on the issue of climate change.

I really think that the critical piece now is our communication of climate risk to the public and the collaboration that involves, between scientists, science communicators, journalists, etc. Our focus really will be on the nexus of those. There won’t be a lot of science seminars in our series.

Do you find that other scientists are open to your efforts to improve science communication?

You know, I grew up watching Cosmos. Carl Sagan was a trailblazer, frankly, and he was sort of pilloried by many of his colleagues for stooping to dumb it down. He was a popularizer, and he was blackballed, actually, by the National Academy of Sciences. There were others along the way, but just like one or two individuals. Now there’s this ecosystem of science communicators — Jane Goodall, Bill Nye, who’s a good friend of mine — and there’s a lot more encouragement of that, a lot more funding for that, and less of a stigma within the scientific community.

I think that’s in part because of the attacks on the science, which have opened the eyes of scientists to be, like, You know what? We can’t just stay in the laboratory; we’ve got to be out there defending the science and promoting it. And that’s not everybody, right? I have colleagues who are best left alone in the laboratory, trust me; not everybody can be the communicator. We need to provide the opportunities for those who have the inclination. That’s one of the things that I’m really excited about with the younger generation of scientists who really grew up in the social media world. Communication is more natural to them.

Why Penn, and why now?

When I was visiting Penn last October for my official interview, it was Climate Week. And there were just, there was so much energy and passion among the students, and all of these events. And I’m checking the news back at Penn State. And, in comparison, there was almost nothing going on. The demand for moving in this direction is really coming from the bottom up at Penn — it’s the students telling the faculty, telling the administration, we want to prioritize climate, justice, climate action.

It just seemed perfect to be part of that environment. Penn is really working to step up their game on climate, like her sister institutions, which have really led on this issue, Harvard and Yale and Columbia.

I also have a lot of native Philadelphia heritage. My grandparents lived in South Philly, on Ritner Street, when I was growing up. We spent a lot of time visiting them. It was like a second home. And my dad actually went to Penn, my grandfather and my uncle went to Penn. And so there’s some real family history there. So in a sense, it’s a logical place for me to end up. My dad was very excited, you know, I took the position there.

You mentioned your basic climate science research. What is that research now?

The research that I’m doing in a lot of ways informs my outreach and communication. You know, one of the areas that I’ve been working in recently is the impact of climate change on extreme weather events. And, in particular, how climate change is altering the behavior of the jet stream in the summer, so that we get these very persistent extreme weather events.

One of the interesting things about that is, it sort of gets to where critics love to talk about the climate models being imperfect, and we can’t trust them, as if that’s a reason for inaction. But it turns out where the models seem to be wrong is often in the direction of underestimating some of the impacts. This is definitely true with ice sheet collapse, for example.

One of the things we’ve shown is that the climate models are not capturing some of the subtle behavior that is behind these weather extremes. And so I’m looking in more detail at that understanding, and finding if the models aren’t quite up to speed, how we can project the impact on these extreme weather events.

This is important because it’s important for us to be able to say, we would not be seeing this event in the absence of climate change. But also, where are we headed? What do we need? How bad will it get? What do we need to adapt to all of these questions?

The better we can convey the risk we’re facing now, the more likely we will make enlightened choices and render invalid our worst predictions. We are among the few fields of science where we would love to be proven wrong.

“Remember that 70 percent of carbon emissions worldwide come from 100 companies worldwide. We can’t forget that,” says Mann.

I have to ask: Are you a climate change hero in your personal life? How do live your values?

Fair enough. It’s always a delicate issue, in part because the fossil fuel industry wants to frame this as one of individual responsibility. I get into this a lot in my latest book. I talk about the “Crying Indian” commercial [whose tagline is “People start pollution; people can stop it.”]. The Coca-Cola company is trying to convince us we don’t need bottle bills, we just need to pick up those cans.

This type of deflection campaign has been done over and over; the NRA has done that really well — “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” And the fossil fuel industry runs with that playbook. BP energy did the very first, widely-publicized, individual carbon footprint calculator. They want us so focused on our individual emissions that we don’t focus on theirs.

Remember that 70 percent of carbon emissions worldwide come from 100 companies worldwide. We can’t forget that.

Wow. Really?

Yeah, that includes some state-owned businesses, like Russia’s Rosneft OAO.

The delicate balance is, we should all be the best stewards we can. There are always things we can do to minimize our environmental impact. Many things save us money, make us feel better, are healthier, set a good example…they are all good things to do.

We should do all those things but we shouldn’t allow polluters to convince us that somehow that’s where responsibility stops. They would love to frame this entirely in terms of individual responsibility and continue to work to prevent any policy interventions.

That’s a nice framing, rather than the scolding I feel like we sometimes get from climate change activists.

Yes. You can continue to operate within the system and be working to change that system for the better. I don’t see any inconsistency there. We’d all love to see the decarbonization of the aviation sector, for example; aviation is responsible for only 3 percent of global carbon emissions — it’s a small amount that gets a lot of attention.

Yes, we can cut back on nonessential travel where we can. But I think it backfires if we start telling people you can’t visit grandma for the holidays. We don’t want it to be about austerity; that’s where you get the backlash. The opponents of action recognize that and they play on that. If you watch Fox News, they say things like, They’re going to take away your hamburgers.

We saw that during Covid.

Absolutely. That’s exactly right.

We also saw during Covid that lifestyle changes brought us a slight reduction for a year in carbon emissions, but it didn’t make the dent we need it to. We need to make systemic changes.

Can you talk to me a little bit about your message to cities? Like, what should Philly be doing in this moment?

It’s going to have to be at least on two fronts: There’s the adaptation. Look at the flooding that Philadelphia is experiencing now. We have to build more resilient infrastructure. Frankly, we have a large, very vulnerable population and these are the most vulnerable people when it comes to climate impacts, because that’s where the floodwaters collect. That’s where it gets hottest in the summer. So that’s a big part of it.

But we’ve got to stop digging the hole. So mitigation is the other part. No amount of adaptation is going to be adequate if we don’t stop digging this hole. I think the most important thing we can do is political, and that’s true at the local level, at the state level, the national level. At every level, we need to prioritize climate-friendly policies, that take us off fossil fuels, and move us towards renewable energy, and lead us in the direction of increased energy efficiency. Some of it can happen from the top down [federally]. But much of the progress we’ve made is from the bottom up.

And that’s where there’s some exciting developments here. I remember when Mayor Nutter was mayor here, there were a relatively small number of cities that had taken a real leadership position on climate in their policies. Pittsburgh is one of them. And Philly was one of them. Mayor Nutter was one of those mayors who was saying we’re going to do everything we can. And so when we say we need action at the municipal level, Philly historically has been there.

Penn is often criticized for — and I think they’ve done a better job lately — not being as engaged with the city that they are in, considering all the expertise, like yours, that’s there. Are you going to engage with the City?

I can’t speak for the administration, although my understanding is, the sustainability institute is trying to prioritize some of those town-gown relationships. Penn’s Water Center, I know, is actually very interested in urban flooding problems. So I think there is an effort to connect up.

Certainly, just by virtue of my mission, I will be looking to do that. You know, I want Penn and Philly, a city that I love as a second home, to have that connection. Obviously, I’m at Penn; but I also feel like I’m at Philly. Like, this is part of my mission.

Welcome. I look forward to all the great things you can do here.

Thanks.

Originally published by France 24.

Paris (AFP) – The Tibetan Plateau will experience significant water loss this century due to global warming, according to research published Monday that warns of severe supply stress in a climate change “hotspot”.

With hundreds of faculty across the University and a number of newly appointed top administrators, it can be hard to keep track of who’s who.

The Daily Pennsylvanian has gathered a list of 10 people to know, ranging from the new president of the University to Wharton’s youngest tenured and highest-rated professors.

Magill was recently appointed as Penn’s ninth president, starting her tenure in July 2022. Magill previously served as provost and executive vice president at the University of Virginia and has also held positions as a professor and dean of Stanford Law School. Magill — an avid fly fisher in her spare time — told the DP in January that philanthropy would be a “top priority” of hers. Magill was nominated on Jan. 13 to succeed former Penn President Amy Gutmann, who is currently serving as the United States ambassador to Germany.

2. Beth Winkelstein

Beth Winkelstein is the current interim provost, who took over from former provost and former interim president Wendell Pritchett in July 2021. She was previously associate dean for undergraduate education in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and vice provost for education. Winkelstein is also a professor in both the bioengineering and neurosurgery fields, and her research focuses on musculoskeletal disorders.

3. Benoit Dubé

Dubé is not only Penn’s first Chief Wellness Officer, but, upon his appointment in 2018, he became the first person to hold the position in the Ivy League. In the position, he oversees Student Wellness Services, including Counseling and Psychological Services, Student Health Service, and the Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Program Initiatives. Dubé, who described himself to the DP as a “student advocate” after being appointed to the role, also holds various other positions such as professor of Clinical Psychiatry and assistant dean for diversity and inclusion at the Perelman School of Medicine.

4. Tamara Greenfield King

Tamara Greenfield King became the interim vice provost of University Life in June 2022, after Mamta Accapadi resigned. King first came to Penn in 2019 after 20 years at Washington University, St. Louis, which culminated in a stint as Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Support and Wellness. King told the DP in June 2022 that University Life wants to partner with other divisions in the future to provide students with a more well-rounded experience.

5. Marc Lo

Lo is the first executive director of the Penn First Plus Office, beginning his role in January 2019. P1P — a hub for first-generation, low-income students — aims to allow these students to form a community and become familiar with the campus resources available. Lo, who was a FGLI student at Northwestern University during his undergraduate years, has told the DP that helping students navigate financial concerns and the impact of Penn’s culture on the FGLI experience would be central objectives for P1P’s office.

6. Whitney Soule

Whitney Soule was appointed the vice provost and dean of admissions in July 2021, and recently welcomed the Class of 2026 — her first admitted class — in March. Soule was previously the senior vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid at Bowdoin College. When she was appointed, Soule told the DP that the office “will look for and create opportunities” for applicants.

7. Michael Mann

Michael Mann will become the first director of Penn’s new Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media and a presidential distinguished professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science on Sept. 1. Mann is currently Pennsylvania State University’s distinguished professor of Atmospheric Science and director of their Earth System Science Center, and is the first appointment made under the new Energy and Sustainability Initiative.

8. Anne Duchene

Anne Duchene is a senior lecturer in Penn’s Economics Department and the director of the Microeconomics Principles Program. She teaches “Introduction to Micro Economics,” a class taken by hundreds of undergraduates across majors. In 2017, economics was determined to be one of the most popular majors at Penn.

9. Nakia Rimmer

Nakia Rimmer is a senior lecturer and the associate director of the undergraduate program in the Department of Mathematics. Rimmer teaches “Introduction to Calculus” and “Calculus, Part 1” — both popular courses that attract students from all majors. He first came to Penn as a graduate student in the 1990s, and has garnered a reputation as a “Quakers superfan.”

10. Adam Grant

Adam Grant is both Wharton’s youngest tenured professor and its top-rated professor — for seven straight years. An organizational psychologist, Grant teaches both undergraduate and MBA courses at Wharton in “leadership and teamwork, negotiation, and organizational behavior.”