About 40 eighth graders from Penn Alexander Middle School became honorary college students on our campus during “College Day,”an initiative organized by UA Associate Member Faizan Khan and Representatives Cornelius Range and Mark Pan.

Everything went down on Friday, April 3rd. The kids underwent an exciting but packed day, with their itinerary looking something like this:

9:30 AM-10 AM Welcome/Key Note Speech (Huntsman Hall, G65)
10 AM-11 AM Campus Tour (leave from Huntsman)
11 AM-12 PM Lunch (1920 Commons)
12PM-1PM Management Class (Huntsman Hall F85)
1PM-2PM Student Panel on College Life (PAACH)

The primary goal of the event was to excite students about the college experience, in the hopes that they will be motivated to work harder in middle/high school and strive for a college education. The secondary goal was to bring students from a variety of groups together for a University-wide service project. This amazing event couldn’t have happened without dozens of student volunteers who acted as mentors throughout the day, sharing their college experiences with their middle school buddies.

Ever wanted to have every single event at Penn on one calendar, which you can filter to your interests? This Holy Grail of student activity programming has been pursued by the UA for two years, and as we head to Year 3 the Penn Calendar is closer to happening than ever before!

Originally headed up by Jay Patel, UA Triston Francis, Faye Cheng, and Matt Amalfitano worked with representatives from SCUE, the School of Arts and Sciences Student Technology Advisory Board, and staff members from the Provost’s Office to identify four possible platforms for a replacement calendar system. After a long bout of deliberations, the conglomerate committee decided a school-built system would be best for Penn.

The plan recommended by the committee was to overhaul our existing Penn Calendar system to make it more easy to use, both by students and by groups uploading events. Unfortunately, with significant technological improvements happening already (to PennPortal and PennInTouch), a raft of new proposed calendars including a new Simplicity system and an overhauled DP calendaring program (check www.dailypennsylvanian.com later this summer for details), not to mention a few little external problems, the Penn Calendar project fell off the priority list. Nonetheless, in the coming year the UA will continue to push for a universal calendar. Few things would have a bigger impact on student life!

… but only thanks to Ariella Chivil, who developed Penn’s connection to Zimride, a leading social online ride-sharing company

After researching possible platforms, Ariella decided on Zimride, which was subsequently supported by the rest of the UA.

Zimride has an easily customized software format for universities, which has already been purchased by Penn Business Services. Users have the ability to create profiles, which can be altered to display appropriate information and even privacy settings for ride sharing. Examples of such information include: name, class year, past passengers, feedback, and ride preferences. It also uses satellite data via Google Maps so potential passengers can be fully aware of the trip and drivers can retrieve accurate driving directions. To further the ease of its usage, users also have the option of a Zimride application on select social networking sites (i.e. Facebook, MySpace).

However, Zimride is not intended to be used exclusively for carpooling. It has customizable “add-ons” that allow for taxi/limo sharing and mass transit schedule matching!

We’re pretty excited to ride us some Zimride with you!

…that may be so, but it was UA Representative Cornelius Range that worked to secure our “intellectual property rights” as Penn student this year.

First floated during the 2008 Fall Ivy Council Colloquium, the issue caught the attention of Cornelius and UA Associate Members Angela Poe, Wendy Cai, and G.J. Melendez-Torres. With about 30% of Penn’s undergraduate population involved in research, the UA felt it essential to tighten up Penn’s policies on student intellectual property rights. Over the next year the UA and SCUE will work with the University to condense and clarify its policy regarding the intellectual property rights of students, as well as under what conditions student work becomes the property of professors.

In an attempt to boost stairs usage and beautify campus, the UA spearheaded a program to paint the stairwells in Harrison College House.

The project was originally dreamt up by UA representative Yana Sigal, who worked with the School of Nursing to conduct a study on the relationship between walking and overall well-being. After Yana and the School of Nursing painted the main stairway in Claire Fagin Hall, the pedometers affixed to test subjects showed an increase in stair usage.

Yana brought the project to the Associate Member Jon Kayne. Together they conducted an outreach campaign via Facebook and e-mail to get drawing ideas. After much deliberation from the influx of designs, the project was undertaken on April 24th. The picture to the left is a proud product of Yana and Jon’s project.