Aminata Sy, a native of Senegal, is a current international relations major and English minor in the Bachelor of Arts program at the College of Liberal and Professional Studies. She also speaks five languages (Pulaar, Wolof, French, English, and Spanish) works as a freelance journalist, raises three children, and recently got to work on launching an after-school program for young people of African descent called the African Community Learning Program.

“I took Anne Farnsworth-Alvear’s class in oral histories when I was a Bachelor of Arts (BA) student at the College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS), and that’s where the idea for my book started,” remembers Dr. Sharon McConnell-Sidorick (BA ’97 Summa Cum Laude).

A course in the Organizational Dynamics program, Global Collaboration for Sustainability: The Food-Water-Energy Nexus in Italy, recently partnered with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Dynamics students and their instructor Steven Finn joined thought leaders and practitioners from around the world to tackle food waste issues related to environmental sustainability and hunger. Finn’s talk at the conference focused on food waste in the US and the culture of abundance that causes it.

Howard Neukrug was recently appointed as Professor of Practice in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science for his contributions to Philadelphia’s green infrastructure initiatives. During his time as the CEO of the Philadelphia Water Department, Howard established the $2.5 billion Green City, Clean Waters program, which became a blueprint for water resource management and sustainability for cities across the nation.

"I'm excited about being able to spend my time working on the problems I find most interesting and challenging," shares John Sperger, a Post-Baccalaureate Studies student. After spending three years as a consultant at IBM and two years as the Senior Research Coordinator for the Operations, Information and Decisions Department at Wharton, John is starting a PhD in Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina in the fall of 2017.

Marc Hummel (MLA ’17), a content marketing creator, used his Master of Liberal Arts capstone project to explore why framing ideas as viruses doesn’t help influencers understand how ideas spread. Furthermore, he wrote that the “viral” model doesn’t tell individuals and organizations what they can do to make an idea spread.

During a summer internship, Master of Liberal Arts graduate Jonathan Singleton (‘17) helped photograph and research Japanese artifacts given to the Penn Museum by the Tokyo National Museum after the 1893 World’s Fair. A new archaeology class taught by Dr. Yoko Nishimura of the School of Arts & Sciences is built around studying 187 of the ceramic pots, stone tools, and weapons.

Penn’s Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences program—which equips students to understand how individuals and groups make decisions, and how to affect those decisions—welcomed its first class of students to campus this August.

“Birds tell us a lot about the environment of which we are also a part,” shares the Director of the Bird Conservation Program at Willistown Conservation Trust and Master of Environmental Studies (MES) lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Lisa Kiziuk (MES ’04). “Half of all migratory birds have declined in the last 50 years, which is an alarming number.

Dr. Sally Willig, a lecturer and advisor in the Master of Environmental Studies (MES) program, recently brought her students on a kayak tour to explore a freshwater tidal marsh in southern New Jersey as part of her wetlands course. Field trips give MES students the unique opportunity to become fully immersed in the diverse ecosystems studied in the program. The course dives into the geological, biological, ecological, and political perspectives on wetlands.