Cristina Bicchieri, founding director of Penn’s Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences (MBDS) and director of the Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics, wants to better understand how people’s perceptions of their own autonomy impacts their understanding of the inequalities that exist throughout the nation.
Pivoting to online classes to keep students safe during the COVID-19 pandemic introduced challenges—but also opportunities. Our innovative LPS community discovered new ways to put their curriculum to work.
Penn employees are invited to join us for a virtual information session on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 12:30 p.m. ET to learn how to make the most of your employee tuition benefits by taking classes—or earning a degree—with the College of Liberal and Professional Studies. The following programs make undergraduate-level courses available on campus and online, with daytime and evening offerings to fit your schedule.
Meet our program team members and learn how to apply your tuition benefits to one (or more!) of our programs:
In a year where everything seems a little harder, this holiday season will be no different. Luckily, our colleagues from Penn’s Positive Psychology Center (PPC) and the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program are weighing in with expert advice on how to find joy amongst the tangle of emotions.
Karen Reivich, PPC’s director of resilience training and MAPP instructor, acknowledges that “In any given year, the holidays have highs and lows. Those are just the holidays. But this one is going to be different.”
Now in his second term as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, Steve Fluharty embodies the spirit of the school’s past and its future.
Fluharty came to Penn in 1974 as an English major but graduated with a degree in neuroscience instead, something he attributes to the flexibility of the SAS curriculum and its ability to support and extend a student’s curiosity.
“During a time of social unrest, there’s a lot of misinformation, injustice, and frightful things going on,” writes Neelofar Tamboli, a senior at Princeton International School of Mathematics and Science and an alumna of the Penn Summer High School Program’s Social Justice Research Academy (SJRA). “SJRA taught me that in order to make a difference, having the right information and knowledge is key to making informed decisions rather than abrupt, uninformed opinions.”
Dr. Shibin Yan is a Senior Affiliate of Fox Leadership International at the University of Pennsylvania and a social gerontologist whose work focuses on aging policy and community-based care. His research examines how community services, family caregiving arrangements, and policy design shape older adults’ health and well-being, with particular attention to equity and service access among vulnerable populations.
When Linda Robinson of the Department of Biology learned this summer that fall courses would be moving online, she and her teaching colleagues got started on prepping course materials that allowed students to bring the lab experience into their own homes.
After completing the Pre-Health Programs in 2019, Jesse Ebner is currently in her first semester in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University. Although her first semester isn’t exactly as she envisioned due to COVID-19, Jesse is thankful that she gets to be in the lab for her anatomy class for two hours, four days a week—even though the majority of classes are online.
Pivoting to online classes to keep students safe during the COVID-19 pandemic introduced challenges—but also opportunities. Our innovative LPS community discovered new ways to stay connected.
The lifelong learning division of Penn Arts & Sciences
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