In celebration of Valentine’s Day, two graduate student organizations partnered up to host a Valentine’s Day Safer Sex Event table in Nesbitt Hall Feb. 11 and 13.

The Maternal and Child Health Student Organization and the Drexel Preconception Peer Educators handed out candy and goodie bags in exchange for answering a sexual health trivia question. The table offered educational materials on safe sex, and goodie bags filled with free condoms and lubricant, each containing a fun fact about sexual health.

The students representing the organizations emphasized their desire to work together to bring sexual health education to conversation this Valentine’s Day.

“We have a vested interest in protecting people’s sexual health,” Sarah Ehsan, a table representative, said.

Revathi Varanasi, another student volunteering at the table, commented on their desire to focus on education.

“This is about destigmatizing the conversation about sex,” Varanasi added.

Drexel PPE states in their mission on their DragonLink page that the goal of the organization is to “disseminate essential preconception health messages with a commitment to lowering the high infant mortality rates among racial and ethnic minorities.”

The student volunteers all mentioned that the table had seen many happy visitors and that many had learned a new fact or two while visiting.

Free STI screenings for all are available with no appointment needed at the Drexel Women’s Care Center, located just a block away from the center city Dragon shuttle stop from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays. The WCC also provides a full range of gynecological and obstetric care, including annual exams, pap smears, and birth control consultations.

Free external and internal condoms, as well as condom-compatible lubricants, are available at the Drexel Student Health Center, where walk-in STI screenings are also available 5 to 6 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Additional resources for sexual health education, STI screenings and free contraceptives are available throughout Philadelphia. For members of the LGBTQ community, the Mazzoni Center offers STI screening from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday at their Washington West Project Location at 12th and Locust. Planned Parenthood also offers confidential STI testing and accepts several major health insurances, though an appointment is recommended.

Erin Katz, a fifth-year Drexel University Chemistry program senior, found herself cooking two Thanksgiving dinners in a manufactured home in Texas in June; all for science. Katz was participating in a large and unique field experiment as part of the project HOMEChem, which stands for House Observations of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry. The study marks a landmark undertaking in the relatively new field of indoor air chemistry and related studies.

HOMEChem is a field-study research program which ran over this summer from late May to early July of 2018. The project is the first of its kind in the field of indoor air studies at such a large scale. Over 20 research groups from 13 different universities were recruited by principal investigators Delphine Farmer and Marina Vance, and were awarded funding by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2017.

Peter DeCarlo, Drexel associate professor and head of the Drexel Air Resources Research Laboratory, brought five analytical chemistry instruments and four researchers with him to the field study — including Katz, the only full-time undergraduate student researcher of roughly 35 researchers on-site for the extended study. Other groups were invited to participate by Farmer and Vance based on areas of expertise, instrumentation available  and related fields of study.

Although Americans spend an estimated 90 percent of their lifetimes indoors, most air quality research done until recent years has only focused on outdoor air quality, to provide data which informs the regulations of outdoor air quality by the EPA. However, indoor air quality has never been regulated in the ways that outdoor air has been, and until recently funding for scientific inquiries of indoor air has been scarce.

The funding for HOMEChem and other projects related to indoor air quality studies has been provided most recently by the Chemistry of Indoor Environment science network under the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which comprises a multi-million dollar research funding program. Of these projects, HOMEChem is the first field-study to take place under the CIE program.

The quality of our indoor environments is an incredibly important field of study, according to Katz.

“Most of our exposure to outdoor pollutants happens indoors. Everything that’s outside is coming inside, that’s where you’re breathing it. Your house is not a perfect seal,” Katz explained.

She explained how we pay attention to the health effects of outdoor air, but our exposure is magnified indoors, where closed doors and low ventilation contribute to increased concentrations of harmful particulate matter and emissions from cooking and personal care products.

Targeted chemical species measured in the project included three groups of highly reactive or unhealthy species: oxidants, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter in the size range of 10-1,000 nanometers. The compounds in the study are related to human health and air quality, but the focus is not yet on the health sciences.

“The focus of this project is actually just the chemistry. We’re not here to say ‘this is bad, this is good.’ This study is meant to open up the can of worms and say: what are we measuring in this house, and then what should we do from here? Because if you don’t know what’s there, then you can’t take action,” Katz said.

The field study took place in the UTest House in Austin, Texas, built specifically for the purpose of studying the dynamics of energy, air flow and chemistry inside a 1,200-square-foot manufactured home. This house is one of only a few in the world dedicated to studies on indoor environments. The researchers in HOMEChem began the field study by outfitting the test house with tubing, valves, sensors and inlets that carried air samples to several sophisticated analytical instruments, housed in four different trailers built around the home. The several vacuum pumps for the instruments were housed in the affectionately named “Hot Pump Alley,” a shelter constructed by the HOMEChem scientists prior to data collection for pumps which produce too much heat to be stored in the instrumentation trailers.

Measuring the chemical composition of the gases, droplets and particulate matter in the air inside the home is not an easy task, and the researchers were responsible for daily instrument calibrations, maintenance of the home to ensure consistency across variables, instrumentation repair and troubleshooting, tubing leak identification and repairs and more. Setting up the field-study environment — placing sensors and tubing in the test house, connecting all inlets to the instrumentation in the four trailers, supplying power, and getting the pumps in a shelter to keep them dry and cool — took a week.

Focuses were cooking, cleaning and occupancy, and researchers were charged with completing several indoor tasks to mimic activities in a real home. Researchers were expected to wear a “normal” daily amount of personal hygiene products, cook stir fries and other meals in exact replications, clean the house with different types of chemical cleaners, and sometimes just hang out inside the house, sitting down and chatting.

Researchers might even volunteer for a “sniff test,” explained by Katz as standing directly in front of some of the instrumentation inlets to allow body odors, perfumes, deodorant scents and other chemical emissions from their bodies to be directly analyzed by the instrumentation. The hope is to study the types of compounds present in an indoor air environment which closely mimics the average American household, in order to begin understanding the effects of indoor air pollution on our quality of life.

“A lot of research efforts have been focused on studying outdoor air. The main reasons why people write these papers and do this research is for human health effects but at the end of the day we are living indoors. So, if we’re going to be talking about the health effects of air quality we cannot ignore the indoor environment, because that’s where we spend all of our time,” Katz explained. “So little is known about [indoor air quality] it’s hard to say what the health effects are because there hasn’t been much research done yet.”

However, in order to start accumulating research and data about indoor air quality, funding is needed. HOMEChem is the first largely funded undertaking of indoor air studies, though it’s hard to say if more funding for indoor air environments will be provided by the government in light of the HOMEChem project findings.

“The indoor air community is lacking a lot of crucial information to get more funding. It’s a tough situation — what is the government going to do, regulate your house? People don’t want that,” Katz stated.

All activities were logged precisely by researchers including an exact start and stop time for all measured events to be compared with the 24-hour data logs later on. Outdoor air data was also collected at frequent time intervals along with indoor air data to compare the trends across the environments. Now, the field data is to be processed by the several groups and universities who took place in the study to begin compiling sets of data, searching for trends and publishing highly-anticipated results.

The team preliminarily found that concentrations of particulate matter, which is known to be extremely detrimental to human health at high concentrations, can be up to 10 times or more concentrated during cooking events indoors as compared to outdoor levels. Katz also explained that when carbon dioxide levels rise, humans become lethargic, which is why it’s so important to keep ventilation in office buildings and classrooms high. Outside, carbon dioxide levels are normally around 400-410 parts per million, but inside you can see much higher concentrations. The researchers found concentrations up to 4,000 parts per million of carbon dioxide inside during their Thanksgiving Dinner cooking events.

When asked what she thought the most interesting finding she encountered during the field study was, Katz responded: “Toasters emit so many particles! The particle mass concentrations during toasting events would spike up. You can’t see them, you don’t see a smoke cloud — they’re these invisible things that you don’t think of.”

As HOMEChem scientists continue to extract conclusions and new understandings about the indoor environment over the next few months, many hope to publish new and important findings that have never been explored in the field of atmospheric and air chemistry. To follow the progress of the study, you can track the group’s Twitter account @IndoorChem or by following #IndoorChem.

Ann Haftl The Triangle

The 2017 Philly Chef Conference brought chefs, hospitality experts and restaurant professionals from all over the country to the Drexel University campus March 5 and 6.

Events began Sunday with guest lecturers speaking at Gerri C. LeBow hall to an audience of about 100 conference attendees. Provost M. Brian Blake opened the event with some remarks about the continual yearly success of the conference.

“The conference over the years has picked up a great deal of speed. I want to thank all of the attendants from the hospitality community. We’ve had the opportunity on campus to really take advantage of the type of things that come out of this community,” Blake said.

Kerry Brodie was the first speaker for the evening. Brodie is the founder and CEO of Emma’s Torch, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing culinary education and training for refugees and asylees. The program provides its students with 100 hours of training composed of 70 hours of culinary training and 30 hours of career preparation, including English language classes and resume building.

“We give them the opportunity to showcase their culinary heritage, and join the tapestry of bakers, prep cooks, line chefs and small food producers that make up this country,” Brodie explained. “James Beard famously said, ‘Food is our common ground, a universal experience.’ That’s the backbone of our work. … We believe that the experience of cooking and sharing meals can build bridges between cultures,” she continued.

The next set of talks shifted the focus towards ingredient genetics, innovation and restaurant analytics.

Stephen Jones, a professor of genetics, came from Washington State University to talk about his experience as a wheat breeder and baker.

“We develop new wheats. We make [genetic] crosses and we develop wheats that work for the farmer first. We are outside the commodity system completely,” Jones explained, talking about the work he does with The Bread Lab.

Some form of an urban bread lab at Drexel is in the works for the future, according to Jones.

In the talks following Jones, M. Pilar Opazo, a restaurateur with a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University, spoke about innovation in the kitchen and her analysis of the successful restaurant elBulli, and Damian Mogavero gave a talk connecting restaurant analytics and the food industry.

“I went about solving [the disconnect between restaurant analytics and the food industry] by recruiting a chef, a sommelier, a restaurant manager and three techies. And the techies said to me, ‘Why would you ever hire these restaurant people? They don’t know anything about building code!’ And you can only imagine what the restaurateurs said,” Mogavero explained.

Mogavero went on to discuss how restaurant analytics can help restaurateurs plan better business plans based on “foodie” trends and keeping up with the demands of the “foodie generation.” Citing new trends in social media, he explained how analytics might help.

This year, like previous years, the conference was organized and staffed in large part by student volunteers who are a part of the culinary arts or hospitality program. Four seniors were organizational leaders, and all other students worked in teams under those seniors. One senior, Alex De Los Reyes, has been a volunteer for the past three years and has now seen what it’s like to be a leader as well.

“We’re in charge of all the student volunteers and operations at the event. We’ve been doing a lot of the planning for the past month, and it’s been really great,” she explained.

The conference is especially important to seniors, De Los Reyes explained, because planning the conference gives them experience using organizational skills they will be expected to use when entering the workforce. The networking opportunities are also important for student volunteers at the event, who get to interact with many chefs and professionals each year.

“They’ve given me more responsibility each year because they see the potential of what students can do. Since we’re learning this in classes it’s awesome that we get the opportunity to actually do it,” she explained.

The second day included a plethora of demonstrations in the kitchen and more traditional presentations.

The demo kitchen was especially full when Cure restaurant co-owner and chef Justin Severino prepared to demonstrate his butchery techniques on half of a pig.

Severino, who owns two restaurants in Pittsburgh, is a four-time James Beard Foundation Award nominee and Food & Wine’s two time “best new chef Mid-Atlantic” winner. During his demonstration, he explained his respect for humanely raised livestock.

“As a professional, I started to really challenge myself with what cooking was all about. The first thing I agreed with was that it wasn’t just about ordering any ingredient from anywhere on the planet with no regard for season. It was about really embracing local food. When I learned that I started to dive deeper into that and I started to learn about what food was as a commodity,” Severino recounted.

In the other demonstration room was coffee tastings provided by Rival Bros., La Colombe, Elxir, and ReAnimator. Guests were walked through tastings of coffees by representatives from each company.

In the final set of presentations, a menu development lecture was given along with a health and wellness talk for hospitality industry professionals. Troy Jackson spoke about how to bring wellness into the back-of-house practices and why it is so important. Jackson has 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry.

“If you’re a painter, you clean your brushes. You start with a fresh canvas. If I’m coming in [to work] feeling like crap from the night before, I can’t cook, I can’t perform, and I can’t be a good host to anybody. … If I’m going to be a great artist in anything I do, I need to take care of this instrument right here,” Jackson said, gesturing to his body.

Michael Traud, the program director for hospitality management, said all went smoothly.

“I think this year the most exciting aspect was that every single participant is from outside Philadelphia. There’s people from New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, Copenhagen, all coming to Philadelphia to connect with our students. These ideas and these amazing individuals that you don’t normally get to see or talk to are all here,” Traud commented.

“Everybody comes together. Everyone volunteers. It’s food, beverage, students, faculty, staff, and it’s just an amazing day and event that elevates the program and gives our students some time to shine,” Traud added.

Also giving presentations over the two days were Sydney Finkelstein, Claire Kopp McWilliams, Bill Telepan, Alon Shaya, Maria Campbell, Chris Curtin, Scott Haas and Daniel Gusti. More information about the Drexel’s Center for Hospitality & Sport Management can be found on its website.

Pool: Abaca Press

The afternoon of Jan 23, I was sitting in class.

I was in class because I am a very blessed woman who can attend university and prepare for a career in a scientific field in America, thanks to my parents who pay for my tuition and medical insurance.

While I was waiting for class to start, I received a news notification that Donald Trump had just signed an executive order to bring the “Global Gag Rule,” otherwise known as the “Mexico City Policy” originally introduced during the Reagan administration, back from the dead.

Pro-life advocates may support this recent move, thinking it is helping to prevent abortions and is a generally safe global move to make. However, if you sincerely educate yourself on the extent of this policy, you will quickly find that it is is, at its roots, harmful.

This rule impacts far more people than what idealistic pro-life conservatives believe. According to headlines you may have read, the policy is “anti-abortion.” These headlines mask what this policy truly does. The gag rule blocks all USAID monies from going to health, health-education, family planning and women’s clinics overseas when clinics have anything at all to do with abortion. This includes providing information about abortions, performing abortions, or counseling women on their decision whether or not to have an abortion.

I suppose you might say it’s a good thing that U.S. monies, that is, U.S. taxpayers’ monies, shouldn’t be funding abortions overseas, but here’s the thing – they never were.

Since 1973 and the implementation of the Helms Amendment, it has been illegal for any foreign aid monies to be used in funding abortion costs and state-funded clinics cannot persuade patients to undergo abortions, no matter the instances through which the patient became pregnant.

That means that even women who may have been raped by family members were not to be counseled that abortions were the best thing for them, and could not have abortions if funding came from the U.S.

So what is the point of the gag rule?

Many conservatives in the Reagan administration thought the Helms Amendment wasn’t enough. Not only could our money not be used to fund abortions, it couldn’t be used for the same non-governmental organizations that had any ties at all to abortion education, counseling or procedures.

So, the Mexico City Policy was put in place as an executive order-controlled rule that has been turned on and off by each successive administration since. Today, Trump brought it back after the longest period of suspension under the Obama administration, from 2009 to 2017.

What does this mean for global public health?

This means that the two organizations which benefit the most from USAID money, Marie Stopes International and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, will not agree to the rule, and will cut themselves off from the USAID program like they have opted to do in the past. This means that money that was previously available to fund clinics in developing countries, along with the medical staffs which served them, will likely experience huge cuts in operating hours, while many are at risk for closing altogether.

The last time the rule was enacted and shut down in a vicious cycle, it took clinics years to re-organize, re-build, re-staff and get up and running again. Judy Kahrl, a board member of reproductive health organization Pathfinder International, said that “it doesn’t take time to shut it down, but it takes time to set it up.”

But in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, where the pains of this policy will be felt the most, the issues go way beyond providing reproductive health counseling. These health clinics are currently able to provide basic contraception like condoms, which are the first barrier to protect against HIV infection. In countries and villages where incidence rates account for nearly half of global infections, we can expect a potential increase in new HIV infections and an increase in HIV-related mortality due to a lack of treatment centers, which may be at risk for closure.

By the time I graduate college, I will have personally spent over a year of my life in my early career as a chemical researcher supporting the academic pursuit of a cure to HIV. I have learned that HIV/AIDS is not something we can afford to ignore, and we are not close to eradicating either.

Policies like the one re-implemented Jan. 23 are only going to make curing and reducing the incidence of HIV more difficult, costly, lengthy and tragic. Tragic, because every day we waste on petty beliefs in our privileged American brains thinking we should hold the power over another person’s body in a developing country, 5,753 women die from unsafe abortions and 3,014 people die from HIV/AIDS.

Every day.

This is truly, and totally, tragic.

But wait — there’s more. The real kicker of the Mexico City Policy is found in data collected and analyzed by the World Health Organization and published in a paper by Eran Bendavid, Patrick Avila and Grant Miller in 2011.

WHO’s chilling research shows that re-implementation of the policy is statistically linked to an increase in the probability that women in areas receiving U.S. aid money will choose to have an induced abortion by 200-400 percent (95 percent confidence interval). So, a policy backed by loud-mouthed conservatives to stop abortions all over the world has actually been found to increase abortion rates, steadily, yet unpredictably. Yet, with all of this empirical data in place, our new President still brought it back — and is the only president to have done so in the light of the new data and reports published by scientists from our country.

These abortions also reflect an increased rate of pregnancies, which have been shown to pull young women out of school earlier than expected in countries where education is hard enough to come by already.

Now, young African women who already struggle to be able to go to school will see an increase in unwanted and unexpected pregnancy rates, and will face roughly equal rates of dropping out of schools.

So why did Trump re-sign the rule into action?

Many pro-life conservatives (most in the Republican Party) urged Trump along the campaign trail to take concrete actions to assure the American people that he was really pro-life. This was his action — hand me that paper, I’ll sign it, hey look, I support pro-life. But if you ask me, somebody who has bragged about sexual assault, doesn’t have the ability to carry a baby in his womb, and who has never been overtly or publicly religious, doesn’t really care about this rule or the millions of people who will be hurt by it.

He cares about looking good for the people donating money to his campaign and causes his constituency supports. There have been several qualitative, and a handful of quantitative studies since the policy was first implemented that showed exactly how harmful the policy was to developing countries, how harmful it was to the HIV epidemic, to maternal death rates, and to other factors too long to list. No person with a conscience could have re-enacted this law, truly understanding what it is, without regretting immediately what he had done. And yet, look where we are.

So to any of you who think that just because you’ve never had to have an abortion, never needed family planning assistance you couldn’t afford without governmental funding, or have ever had to live in a country where clean water and electricity are daily graces, you get to decide what’s right or wrong for those people who do: re-evaluate your thinking and your voting practices.

This rule is outright disgusting, harmful, ignorant and ridiculous, especially in light of quantitative data published during the Obama administration.

Foreign policy is not a game, and it is not something to use to your advantage while you run a powerful country. It is not acceptable to push meaningless, shallow political agendas on people who have no choice but to comply with them, or die.

Or worse: both.

Student and professional entrepreneurs from across the U.S. gathered Nov. 11 in Behrakis Grand Hall for competition and networking at Drexel University’s Startup Day.

Featured activities included the Baiada Institute Incubator Competition, the Fast Pitch Competition and a panel discussion with field experts.

The day started off with a networking expo, where attendees could visit various tables hosted by startups and Drexel representatives. Then came the panel discussion, titled “Starter’s Review: Women in Entrepreneurship.”

The discussion was moderated by Donna De Carolis, founding dean of Drexel’s Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship.

The panelists were Dawn Quaker, co-founder of Profillic; Lindsay Tabas, a designer and developer for digital products and a startup consultant; Melissa Schipke, a local Philadelphia entrepreneur and founder of Tassl; and finally Archna Sahay, the director of entrepreneurial investment for the City of Philadelphia.

After the panel discussion came the Fast Pitch Competition final round. In the preliminary round, a group of random judges made up of community members and faculty had picked six students representing five different pitch concepts to go on to the second round. In the final round, those pitching spoke for two minutes each in front of a panel of judges for the opportunity to win $1,000 towards their pitched concepts.

The first pitch came from two students interested in starting a small company that would offer language-learning services in a novel and immersive fashion, which they called Renaissance Language Learners.

“Imagine if we could bring to you this immersive, novel, awe-inspiring experience, that takes cultural immersion and brings it right to your computer,” representatives from Renaissance Language Learners explained in the pitch. The concept they presented offered games, videos, and simulations that would help the user learn the language naturally.

Next up was Buck DIY, presented by entrepreneurship and innovation student Moe Salama. “Home improvement can be easy, and that’s where Buck steps in. What Buck is, is a home improvement DIY delivery box,” explained Salama in his fast pitch. “Do it yourself with a little bit of help from Buck,” he concluded.

Chemical engineering major Tapiwanashe Ndlovu began his pitch with the question “What is Africa to you?”

The startup concept pitched a platform that would help bring together information about Africa to give interested users a better search engine and unified site to find out more information on the country.

“There’s a big disconnect between what the world thinks of Africa and what Africa is really about,” he explained. The company would bring information about study opportunities, business opportunities, investment possibilities and more together on the same web-based platform.

Next up was a pitch for a new product that could detect cancer developing in users early on with a non-invasive process: brushing teeth.

The pitch offered the concept of the Smart Brush. It would be a toothbrush you could use twice a day that could analyze users’ saliva to search for markers that signal the rise of diseases including hepatitis and several types of cancer. The brush would send information to users’ phones, where they could view results with an app.

Lastly, business major Matt Esposito presented a concept for his startup Silk. “At Silk we are developing a platform that will easily connect local, individual and independent tour guides with travelers that travel to their destination,” Esposito explained.

The concept behind the startup is that travelers can get the best experience from a tour when they are being shown around by natives of the towns and countries they are visiting, who are really interested in showing them around. The startup would connect users with a supposedly widely unused base of independent tour guides in several locations around the world.

After the fast pitch competition, the judges left the room to deliberate while Philadelphia native and Temple graduate Nicole Marquis, the founder of HipCityVeg, gave a 20-minute talk on her experience opening a fully plant-based restaurant in the middle of the Great Recession, in the heart of Philadelphia.

HipCityVeg has two locations now, one in Rittenhouse Square which opened in April 2012, and another in Washington. Marquis is also the creator of plant-based restaurants Charlie Was A Sinner and Bar Bombon. Though she never had any business schooling and instead focused her learning in theater and the arts, she felt prepared to tackle a restaurant concept.

“I never had any formal business education, and even though I loved theater, I never tried to make any money out of it. In retrospect, however, it became clear to me that there is a lot of theatrics in creating a restaurant concept. Running a restaurant is not all that different from directing a play,” the keynote speaker said.

Marquis went on to describe her model for forming a successful business. “Articulate your plan, know your passion, a build your mindset with determination,” she advised the audience.

She spoke in detail about the passion she had to effect a positive social change through a restaurant serving only plant-based foods. Without that passion, she noted, it would have been nearly impossible to follow through with her business plans.

“I want you to appreciate the importance of finding your own passion, something beyond the desire of profit, a mission that helps you get through the rough times,” she explained.

Following Marquis’ speech, six different startup businesses presented 10-minute plans and presentations to the judges.

The companies included Oratio, led by Danish Dhamani; Circalux, led by David Hanrahan; Know Your Rights, led by Maggie Treutig; Boost Linguistics led by Ethan Breshanan; AneeLondon, presented by Rachel Benyola; and SLEEP: Sleep Level Eye Epsy Product, presented by Josue Manjarrez.

Oratio is a platform that uses artificial intelligence and video software to evaluate the user’s speaking and provide insight and feedback for improvement.

Circalux offered a new type of lighting that would be beneficial for night-time use in hospitals, nurseries, and other applications. The light would be adjusted so as not to disturb someone sleeping when it was turned on. Know

Your Rights is a company dedicated to providing counseling and legal advice to those in need of it but not sure where to look.

Boost Linguistics offers a software that filters through samples of writing for words that trigger certain emotions. This could be helpful to companies looking to elicit trust, excitement, or more with their product descriptions and ads.

AneeLondon is a company producing a cheaper, more stylish, protective and collapsible bike helmet.

SLEEP aims to provide users with statistics on their sleeping habits with better accuracy than other devices currently on the market.

When the judges made the final call, Boost Linguistics won third place, securing $5,000; Aneelondon won second place, winning $7,500; and Oratio.ai won first place, with $12,500 towards its business.

Additionally, the students who pitched the Renaissance Language Learners concept won $1,000 towards their startup concept.

Co-founder of Oratio, Paritosh Gupta was excited about the win, and about the company. “What we’re building is a technology to help people communicate better. Speech is one of the most personal things that you give to another person. A lot of people are in a shell and they’re afraid of public speaking, they have great ideas but cannot communicate about them enough. We hope that in the coming future our technology will help people get out of their shell,” Gupta explained.

Following the announcements of winners, the day ended with a happy hour networking opportunity.

University Crossings

Benjamin Ahrens The Triangle

University Crossings, an American Campus Communities property, is located at 3175 John F. Kennedy Blvd. Most Drexel students could pick out the building from halfway across the city; at 17 stories high, the building’s giant “Drexel” logo at the top is an iconic member of our campus skyline.

Offering 19 different floor plans which include two and three-bedroom options, the rooms in University Crossings are admittedly gorgeous. Throughout the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years, University Crossings underwent several renovations, and the rooms really show off a new polished feel.

Private and shared rooms are both available, and every unit comes with a full kitchen fitted with a fridge/freezer, oven, electric range, microwave, sink and garbage disposal. The countertops are topped with granite and there is an island in every kitchen as well. For students who can’t live without being able to cook for themselves, this is one of the best amenities University Crossings offers.

Other amenities include fully furnished rooms, package service, a full gym, a game and entertainment center, laundry rooms on every floor, study lounges and media lounges on alternating floors, and building-wide wi-fi. The water, heat, cable and internet access, are all included in the monthly rent, along with a capped electricity installment of $25 per resident. This cap may seem small, but students rarely go over the monthly limit. The laundry rooms on each floor offer three washers and three dryers, and the cost per load for the washing machines ranges between $1.75 and $2.00 for light, medium or heavy loads. The dryers cost $1.75 per load.

The range of monthly rent for the property is from $799 to $1,179 per resident per month. The most expensive unit offers private bedrooms for students who want extra privacy. There is a $250 application fee, and a $350 security deposit students must pay when applying to live at University Crossings.

The property also offers 6-month co-op leases in select floorplans. Co-op leases allow students to break their leases after only six months if they take a co-op that is a certain distance away from the building.

One of the obvious bonuses of living in University Crossings is how close the building is to class buildings. Sophomore nursing major Sophia Legaspi, a University Crossings resident, loves the convenience of being near classes. “I’m close to the [Dragon] shuttle stop so that makes getting to my center-city classes quicker. The majority of my on-campus classes are right there, so it’s literally just a straight walk from here,” she said.  

Chestnut Square

Millo Ling The Triangle

Chestnut Square, owned by American Campus Communities, is a housing option for Drexel students, particularly, sophomores who must fulfill the requirement of living in campus-affiliated housing for their second year.

Sophomore design and merchandising major Kate Broskie prefers her Chestnut Square apartment over her freshman living arrangements in North Hall.

“I like having my own kitchen — I finally have my own stove with my own food and no need for a dining plan. It’s also nice no longer having an RA — it makes me feel more independent,” Broskie said.

Located at 3200 Chestnut St., residents are close to many popular dining options like Wahoo’s Tacos & More, Zavino, Shake Shack, Joe and the Handschumacher Dining Center. Though it is further from other campus dining options such as Urban Eatery and the Northside Dining Terrace, it is closer to Center City where more dining options are available.

There are several different floor plans to choose from ranging from $799 per month to $1,249 per month, depending on privacy needs. Chestnut Square claims they offer “the perfect space to entertain and socialize when you want — and plenty of privacy when you don’t.”

The cheapest option includes two shared bedrooms and two shared bathrooms for $799 per installment per person.

The priciest option is $1,249 per installment per person and consists of two private bedrooms and a single bathroom.

There is also a floor plan with two private bedrooms and one shared room, with two shared bathrooms. The residents with the private bedrooms pay $1,129 per installment and the two people in the shared room each pay $919 per installment per person.

A plan with four private bedrooms and two bathrooms costs $1,079 per installment. To add another half bathroom totaling four private bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms total, starts at $1,129 per installment per person.

“I love how many floor plan options are available. They appeal to a wide variety of students and that’s why my roommates and I chose Chestnut. It had exactly what we wanted: a shared bedroom and two individual rooms,” Amanda Christian, a current resident of Chestnut Square, said.

All apartments are fully furnished with leather couches, a kitchen table and contain fully equipped kitchens including a dishwasher, a microwave, an oven and range, a refrigerator/freezer and granite countertops.

There are also many amenities available including a 24-hour fitness center with strength equipment, cardio machines and weights.

In addition, there is a media room, a 24-hour recreation center complete with a poker table as well as a multimedia area with gaming systems

Ink for printing is free, but residents must provide their own paper. Laundry is not free and costs $1.25 per washer load and $1.25 per dryer load and you must use a credit card or debit card to pay.

Despite the benefits, some students still don’t think Chestnut Square is entirely worth it.

Carly Kandler, another current resident said, “Chestnut Square has a lot to offer, but I still think it’s overpriced. I don’t like that you have to live on campus for your second year and that you’re locked in a twelve-month lease since a lot of students go on co-op and want to study abroad.”

Apartments are filled on a first-come, first-serve basis. You can apply online or directly at the Chestnut Square leasing office on the ground floor.

Summit

Caleb Gerald The Triangle

The Summit at University City, located at 3400 Lancaster Ave, is one option for sophomores to fulfill their housing requirements next year.

The Summit is located across the street from the Daskalakis Athletic Center and has a dining hall, the Urban Eatery, on the ground floor. There is also a Starbucks, Chipotle, Insomnia Cookies, Blaze Pizza, Ramen Bar, Old Nelson and other restaurants and businesses on the street level of the Summit.

There are a variety of floorplans to choose from, ranging from one to four bedrooms and $769 to $1,779 per month. All apartments are fully furnished and include a washer and a dryer. Each resident must sign an individual lease; therefore, each person is responsible for making their own payments each month independent of their roommates.

The one-bedroom, one-bathroom option is the most expensive at $1,779 per month. This option has a full kitchen with a dishwasher, refrigerator and an electric oven and stovetop.

There are multiple two-bedroom, two-bathroom options to choose from. Floor plans with shared bedrooms cost $769 to $969 and those with private bedrooms cost $1,349 to $1,399 per month. The shared bedroom options do not have a full kitchen, but they do come with an induction cooktop and a convection microwave oven.

There are a few three-bedroom, three-bathroom options ranging in price from $1,229 to $1,269 and have deluxe and standard bedroom options. All three-bedroom floor plans have a full kitchen.

A four-bedroom, two-bathroom option is available for $1,129 per person a month. In this apartment, there is no full kitchen.

There are multiple four-bedroom, four-bathroom floor plans, all with full kitchens. The prices range from $1,219 to $1,279 per month.

There are a limited number of private two-bedroom, three-bedroom and four-bedroom apartments with a balcony option.

Paul Nigro, a pre-junior business major at Drexel University, lived at the Summit from September 2015 to September 2016 in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom shared bedroom Suite C floor plan.

“The one big thing about living in Philadelphia is safety and the Summit did just that; I always felt safe living there and the security staff was definitely very helpful and friendly,” Paul said.

The Summit does put an emphasis on resident safety. There are sprinklers in every room, and each bedroom has an individual lock. Each apartment’s front door has an electronic deadbolt lock. There is a security guard on duty at the front desk 24 hours a day. Residents must scan their key fobs at the front desk and to use the elevator.

“Although the Summit is a safe place to live, it is expensive to live there, and the walls are really thin,” Paul said.

While each resident may sign in three guests at a time, the Summit allows up to 10 guests in an apartment at one time unless otherwise approved by the staff.

The Summit offers roommate matching and permits roommate requests.

Virginia Tanner The Triangle

EAT Cafe opened its doors as a full-service, pay-what-you-wish restaurant Oct. 26, at an 11 a.m. ribbon cutting ceremony.

EAT Cafe is the first of its kind in the area. Situated in the middle of seven West Philadelphia neighborhoods, including Powelton Village, Mantua and University City, it is surrounded by food deserts — areas where nutritious, healthy food is hard to find and even harder to afford for the low-income families that make up much of the population.

The idea for EAT Cafe started about five years ago, when Mariana Chilton, professor at the Dornsife School of Public Health and director of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities, learned about Brazil’s zero hunger campaign.

She discovered that restaurants and cafes were opening in Brazil where diners could come and enjoy a healthy meal, and pay only what they were able. She wanted to see this idea in the United States. When she began doing research, she found that some of these establishments already existed within the country, but none were in Philadelphia.

This was the birth of EAT Cafe.

Now, five years later, and four years after receiving seed money to begin the real work on the project, the restaurant is open.

Diners can order from a three-course menu, be served and treated with respect and courtesy and pay a suggested bill however they see fit. Diners have no obligation to pay any amount of the bill. Those who are able are encouraged to pay at or more than the suggested price to help cover the cost of a meal provided for someone who could not afford it otherwise — the concept relies on diners paying it forward.

“It’s not going to end hunger. But, it creates community and it’s a place if you want to come, you can eat with a sense of joy and no chains,” Chilton explained.

“They don’t have to prove anything, they don’t have to say anything, they don’t have to demonstrate need, just come and eat. Pay what they can. If they can’t pay anything, that’s wonderful and fine, and I hope other people come and pay a hundred dollars,” she continued, laughing.

Virginia Tanner The Triangle

Across the country, other restaurants like EAT Cafe do not offer as much of an open environment.

Chilton explained: “This is a unique one. Sometimes they’re in a church basement, you have to prove need, it’s a cafeteria style — we wanted a full service restaurant. We wanted people to really feel like they could come out and really enjoy themselves when they’re coming here. They could come and just sit and have a cup of coffee and no extra discussion about having to volunteer, none of that, so ours is pretty unique.”

The restaurant did have some setbacks while opening, and the projected opening date was pushed back a little over a month. EAT Cafe manager and CFHFC member Donnell Jones-Craven, however, didn’t seem worried about this at all.

“Opening a restaurant is always full of challenges, all the way up to the ninth hour, but the main thing is to maintain your focus, communicate as much as you can and work through the process. It kind of came together for us,” he explained.

Everybody at the open house had great things to say of the cafe. Community members were seated indoors and outdoors, enjoying small plates of food around huge, family-style tables, chatting, laughing and enjoying the weather and the community atmosphere.

Next to the kitchen, staff members and volunteers were serving up crudites, fruit salad, fresh bread with 3 dips, pasta salad and fried chicken both with and without sauce. Outside were cakes, cookies and fresh fruit. Chef Derek Wilks stood behind the barrier between kitchen and restaurant, chatting with diners while sending a booming laugh down the hall.

“[The kitchen] brings a smile to my face. It’s like a home,” Wilks explained.

He expressed how excited he was to be working at the cafe, and how much he loved the open kitchen and the connection it made between the diners and the chefs. Wilks explained that the process to be hired was just like that for any job.

“You had to get hired, just like a Drexel employee, go through a background check, fill out an application, go through the whole process,” he said.

Food is obviously the central theme to EAT Cafe. In a region devoid of nutritious and affordable food options, providing wholesome, healthy food in an affordable and respectable manner is incredibly important.

“One of the things that we’ve learned from our research and our programming is that food is just essential and a part of everyone, every community, every family. Food is a central thing. One of the things we’ve been doing for a long time is trying to bring community back and trying to unite everyone around food, and a place to eat, no matter what walk of life they’re from, and EAT cafe does that,” CFHFC member Falguni Patel explained, while helping out during the open house by serving cake and chatting with community members.

EAT Cafe community engagement and communications fellow Callie Perrone was also at the open house.

Her job focuses less on food, and more on the community. Perrone helped organize and coordinate the cafe’s advisory committee. The advisory committee is made up of eight community members, each a representative of one of the neighborhoods serviced by the cafe.

The committee regularly attended meetings with EAT Cafe representatives to help decide on many factors which influenced the Cafe, all the way down to the name, color scheme and vibe of the restaurant. Perrone will also help coordinate community outreach events that can be hosted in the Cafe with the use of a small stage at the front of the restaurant.

“The space is intentionally able to transition into a performance space so we could have spoken word nights, a jazz artist… We want to be able to, being a community cafe, be able to highlight the community’s talents,” Perrone explained.

The performance space aspect of EAT Cafe brought up the question of coordinating events with Drexel students.

“One of the many points of the cafe is to bridge that gap between University City and West Philadelphia and give a space where people can really connect,” she explained.

“This is not a for-profit type of restaurant. It’s really for the community and by the community,” Patel added in agreement.

Another one of the ways Drexel students will probably be able to connect to the cafe in the future is via the co-op system. While the cafe is non-profit and would likely not offer “traditional” restaurant-based co-ops, there are several avenues for business or public health positions students could likely be a part of.

Chef Richard Pepino, the executive chef of Drexel’s Center for Hospitality and Sports Management, made an appearance at the open house to see the finished restaurant space. Though not directly involved, Pepino has worked a few times with  Jones-Craven at Dornsife community dinners and in general to help get the word out about EAT Cafe.  

“I think this is amazing, I really do. Seeing everything that I’ve been a part of in the last two years since I went to the Center for Hospitality and Sports Management and what I’ve done with Dornsife Center, with the side-by side classes, the community meals, looking at this, this is wonderful,” Pepino stated.

He went on to say that while nothing is official yet, he imagines co-ops at EAT Cafe will definitely be on the table for discussion, and opportunities for student involvement will likely be explored in the future.

The entire place was packed for the open house.

One family was eating outside and enjoying the fall weather. Ben Rhoades and his family have lived in Powelton Village but currently live in University City.

“This has been ongoing for months and months and seems to be taking a little longer than expected, but we saw a line with this opening today and we decided to come down,” he stated.

Rhoades, like many of the patrons attending, said he was totally blown away by the unexpectedly beautiful aesthetic of the interior and exterior of the cafe.

“I don’t know how well or not well it will address the needs [of the community] because I don’t know if the people who need it will come. I don’t think it’s going to hurt the community, I think if anything it’s going to be a good business and a good neighbor and good for the area as a whole,” Rhoades commented.

The cafe will be open for service Wednesday through Saturday from 4:30 to 8 p.m. Jones-Craven is excited to get started.

“I’m excited to see how it’s going to start working. We’ve got a pretty good staff, and the staff has been together for a little less than a month and so we’re learning each other which takes time, but we’re looking forward to really doing a good opening, and just keeping everything simple in nature the best that we can,” he stated.

All patrons are welcome at EAT Cafe, and students are encouraged to check it out. For more information on how to support the cafe, visit www.eatcafe.org.

Benjamin Ahrens The Triangle

Following the Supreme Court’s decision that established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage June 26, 2016, the country has moved towards policies that esteem equality for the LGBT community  — and Drexel University isn’t far behind.

Drexel made its Gender Neutral Housing policy into an official housing program in June 2016. A limited number of rooms are available where roommates share bathrooms and other interior spaces regardless of gender, biological sex, sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity.

For the 2016-2017 academic year, Drexel has offered GNH for incoming freshmen in Millennium Hall, North Hall, Race Street Residences and Van Rensselaer Hall. Caneris Hall, North Hall and Stiles Hall all offer gender-neutral rooms for sophomore, pre-junior, junior, senior, graduate and transfer students.

Many universities across the U.S. now offer desegregated housing, though this can look very different at different institutes. Some universities and colleges offer single-occupancy rooms with private bathrooms; some offer apartment-style housing on campus; others offer entire floors or dorm buildings dedicated to “Rainbow Communities” or similarly named groups.

In the past, mixed rooms were available to all Drexel students living in dorms on a case-by-case basis. As of fall 2016, there is a process for declaring a desire to be assigned to such rooms in the online housing application, and a priority period set up for students who would prefer to live in GNH.

This year’s priority period ended June 30. However, students remain able to request placement after the priority period is over, and their requests will be considered on a space-available basis.

“GNH enhances the residential experience by allowing students to live with other students with whom they feel comfortable and is an option for any student,” Campus Services told The Triangle in an email.

Drexel’s GNH options are not randomized, and only those students who request it will be considered. For more information, students can email or call Sasha Gamburg from University Housing at ag3453@drexel.edu or 215-895-6230.

Photo Courtesy: Drexel University

Drexel University welcomed incoming students at Welcome Week 2016. The orientation ran from Sept. 10 through Sept. 18 and hosted a wide variety of educational and social events for the incoming freshmen to help them adjust to campus life one week before fall term classes began.

On the first day, a Saturday, there were Drexel-shuttle-serviced shopping trips to Ikea and Target, as well as several parent information sessions. There were also immunization clinics open for freshmen. The day concluded with a welcome barbecue at Lancaster Walk.

Sunday was all about meeting fellow Dragons and exploring Philadelphia. The morning started with a Class of 2016 brunch, followed by a kick-off event in the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The event was followed by a “Taste of Philly” dinner on Lancaster Walk and later by a s’mores event hosted by Drexel Hillel. The social events seemed to dominate the scene at Welcome Week, both this year and last.

Interactive digital media sophomore Brendan Luu reflected on his experience at Welcome Week 2015. “When I was a student last year I liked Welcome Week a lot because it gave me a chance to meet different groups of people and I kept seeing those groups of people over and over again throughout the week, and those are the people that I’m still friends with now,” he said.

The following days were stuffed with volunteer opportunities, organization open house events, information sessions and more. Lunches and dinners were scheduled by time and location according to residence halls and floor numbers to keep crowds moving and avoid long lines.

Welcome Week serves to let students adjust to campus and build their social circles prior to the start of classes, and freshman Anna Cushing in the graphic design program felt that this was the case for her.

“It was a nice week to ease into things since we didn’t start classes right away,” Cushing stated.

Cushing also explained that not all events were required — in fact, many overlapped with one another on the official schedule.

“Being at the Welcome Week events, it was nice that only a few events were required; the rest were optional. So it didn’t feel like I was forced to do anything, and it helped me do stuff with my friends, and to go out and make more friends,” she explained.

Many of the events focused on orientation to the college process and the ins and outs of the different schools. Paris Gramann, a sophomore entrepreneurship major, felt that the mix of social and orientation events were very beneficial to her.

“Welcome Week was good because while you’re learning about the procedures, about what’s going to happen in the next few years, you’re also meeting the circles you’ll be in in the next few years in your time here at Drexel,” Gramann stated.

This year’s Welcome Week marks Drexel’s second time holding the extended orientation. All students began classes on Sept. 19.

Drexel University is an extremely fast-paced college, and that’s not limited to the quarter system. Over the last year alone, Drexel’s campus and administrative policies have grown and changed drastically. Just to give the incoming freshmen class an idea of what’s new, The Triangle has compiled a list of some of the things you missed last year while you were rotting away in the confines of high school.

Several new construction projects were either announced, started or completed during the 2015-2016 school year. The most notable of these  was Drexel’s Schuylkill Yards project announcement in March 2016. Schuylkill Yards is a 20-year, $3.5 billion project that will vertically expand Drexel’s campus by five million gross square feet. The idea is to take 30th Street Station, one of the nation’s biggest transportation hubs, and capitalize on its proximity to campus by transforming Drexel into an innovation neighborhood for businesses and students alike. President John A. Fry hopes to re-imagine University City and create a thriving community filled with businesses, classrooms, living spaces, retailers and more.

Additionally, The Summit, owned and operated by American Campus Communities, was open for its first year of residency starting in the fall of 2015. With the opening of the Summit came the addition of Urban Eatery to Drexel’s food and dining services. With only the Handschumacher Dining Center (Hans) for company, Urban Eatery became the largest dining center on campus and quickly became a student favorite.

The Study, a new hotel located at 33rd and Chestnut streets, will be open for business in fall of 2016. The Study broke ground in the spring of 2015, replacing the previous building which housed the James E. Marks Intercultural Center. The Study will be owned and managed by a third party developer, Hospitality 3 LLC.

Additionally, the new Korman Center expansion and Korman Quadrangle broke ground June 14. The New York architectural firm Gluckman Tang Architects will be responsible for the design of its renovation and expansion. Landscape architecture firm Andropogon Associates will design the brand new Korman Quadrangle. This project is expected to cost $16 million dollars and is slated to be complete in the fall of 2017. It was made possible by a gift of $8 million from the Korman family, which Drexel matched.

Aside from new construction, Drexel has also announced some very important policy changes in the past year. One which will impact students most directly and immediately is the add/drop  period policy change. Previously, students were able to add or drop a class from their course load during the first two weeks of the term through the Sunday of Week 2. Now, however, students will only be allowed to add and/or drop courses through the end of Week 1. Students will also have less time to decide if they want to withdraw from courses. Previously, students were given until the end of Week 8 to withdraw from a course. Now, students must withdraw by the end of Week 7.

A student advisory board for Provost M. Brian Blake, the Dragon ’24, was announced in the beginning of 2016. The Dragon ’24 initiative works by engaging a panel of 24 students for an 18-month term to provide student input and feedback to the Office of the Provost. The initiative was started by Blake, who just celebrated his first year at Drexel in August. The group meets with the Office of the Provost on a quarterly basis and the team is made up of students from a wide variety of majors and backgrounds.

A few crazy things have happened in the city of Philadelphia in the past year as well — and Drexel students have been on the sidelines for all of it. Most recently, the 2016 Democratic National Convention (DNC) was held in Philly’s Wells Fargo Center in July. The convention saw the nomination of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party’s presidential candidate and brought hordes of people to Philadelphia.

Almost a year ago now, was the incredibly notable and widely-attended Papal Visit (#PopeinPhilly) that began Sept. 22. Pope Francis delivered mass on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway the morning of Sept. 27, 2015. He spoke to an audience estimated to be between 80,000 and 140,000 people. City schools were shut down for a long weekend, streets were closed off, the National Guard was on every street corner and the world basically felt like it was ending. Students who were stuck at Drexel for the legendary “Pope-acolypse” are still talking about it.

In less holy, but still very exciting news, Drexel also welcomed a new therapy dog, Chai, to its team in 2016 after saying a sad goodbye to the previous therapy dog, Jersey. Jersey’s last day was Jan. 7 and Chai started her Drexel career May 31. Chai’s schedule is visible on her Facebook page, and she is also available for events held on campus. The name of the page is Drexel’s Therapy Dogs, but you can also find Chai on Instagram and Snapchat under the username chaiatdrexel.

Drexel clubs are known for being incredibly involved and great resume-builders, but the award for hardest-working club in 2015-16 definitely goes to the Drexel Hyperloop team. To get into all the intricacies of the story following the Hyperloop team would be an article in and of itself. If you haven’t read it yet, Drexel students have created a prototype of a pod that can travel at incredible speeds as part of a year-long design competition hosted by Elon Musk and SpaceX. Go check out their Facebook page, called Drexel Hyperloop, for more information.

For more information on all of these exciting developments from the past year browse through The Triangle’s website. We’re the newspaper of record for Drexel University and we document everything that goes on here. If you’d like to get involved in documenting campus history, reach out to us at staff@thetriangle.org.