Penn’s College of Liberal and Professional Studies congratulates Adam K. Thiel, who was recently named Managing Director for the City of Philadelphia by Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker. Thiel previously served as the Fire Commissioner for the Philadelphia Fire Department and Director of the Office of Emergency Management for the City of Philadelphia.
The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and Perry World House led a delegation of more than two dozen Penn people at COP28, the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Dubai. They shared knowledge on the energy transition, climate finance, China, health, food systems, and more. Penn LPS is proud to recognize our colleagues who attended, including Kleinman Center Executive Director Cory Colijn (MSAG ’14), Organizational Dynamics Programs instructor Steve Finn, and Master of Environmental Studies adjunct professor Lolita Jackson.
On January 4, 2024, Penn announced the naming of Ramanan Raghavendran (ENG ’89, W ’89, MLA ’15) as the new Chair of the University’s Board of Trustees. In addition to his thirty-year career in venture capital and growth equity, Ramanan has held a plethora of volunteer leadership positions with his alma mater leading up to this prestigious role.
Not long after he started working at Penn, Dr. Alex Shpenev discovered he still had a lot to learn. “I was asked to teach a graduate statistics class in the new behavioral sciences degree program as part of my postdoc work,” he begins. “And while the expectation is that once you get your job as an academic, you're supposed to teach, very quickly I realized the thing that they don't teach you during your doctoral studies is how to teach.”
“Dentistry was a childhood dream of mine,” says Liz Wimberg (Pre-Health Programs, University of Pennsylvania ’23). “I wanted to either be the president of the United States, or a dentist.” As a college student and graduate, however, Liz was drawn toward creative studies and social justice: she pursued an interdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum, worked in immigration law, and apprenticed in the kitchen of a fine dining restaurant.
The faculty and staff of the College of Liberal and Professional Studies invite you to join us for our upcoming spring information sessions and program events. Join us to learn about our undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, graduate, and certificate programs.
Meet program directors and recruitment staff to get your questions answered about curricula, advising, and how our programs can help you reach your personal and professional goals. We look forward to answering your questions and helping you get started on the application process.
Although he graduated college as a pre-med, Nicholas Parenti (MCS ’23) discovered a passion for virology when he went to work for a pioneering Penn Medicine lab that has been studying coronaviruses for decades. “I just immediately knew working in the lab was for me,” he recalls. “I really enjoyed the lab work and thinking about molecular biology, and I knew that I wanted more education.” As a lab technician, Nick helps the lab run smoothly and supports his colleagues’ research.
A few years before retiring from the role of global sustainability director at FMC, an agricultural sciences company based in Philadelphia, Linda Froelich was invited to co-teach a course on corporate sustainability in Penn’s Master of Environmental Studies (MES) program. “I had been thinking about teaching when I retired,” she says, “so it was a good opportunity to see if it was something that I liked and if I was any good at it.”
“I was a science kid when I was younger,” says Pre-Health Post-Baccalaureate Programs student Anneka Allman. Though she took a different path in college, majoring in visual arts, she decided to return to the sciences after graduation. “I came home to Philadelphia and started volunteering at an immunology lab at Penn,” she says. Not long after, she was hired as a full-time technician.
Penn PhD student Matthew Fagerstrom has aspired to earn his doctorate in economics since his sophomore year at Villanova University studying economics and political science. “My interest,” he says, “is the intersection of comparative political economy and monetary policy.” Penn’s Post-Baccalaureate Studies program not only offered Matthew the math courses he needed to strengthen his doctoral program application but helped him decide that Penn was his top choice for earning his postgraduate degree.
The lifelong learning division of Penn Arts & Sciences
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