On Saturday, May 6, TEDXDrexelU hosted Blueprint, its biggest annual conference, in Drexel University’s Main Building. 

The conference aimed to share stories about how speakers in different lines of work blazed their trail by creating blueprints for their lives.

Some speakers came from other parts of the world, such as Shilpa Kulshrestha, an Indian-Australian professional career coach and best-selling author of the book “Play it Full.”

“I deal with people who have spent 20-30 years in their career, and I realize in that point in their life, when they interview in a room, they feel very powerless and they are being tested. My coaching and mentoring is about helping people step into their power zone and get them into a flow state [so that during an interview] their words are flowing, their achievements are flowing, their actions are flowing, and their lips are flowing,” said Kulshrestha.

Other speakers wereDrexel-affiliated, including Dr. Veronica Carey, a clinical professor and the Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at the Drexel College of Nursing and Health Professions. 

According to Carey, “My talk is about the fact that students often experience what I call ‘academic pain points’ to be successful [and I] want them to understand that you don’t have to have synonymous pain with higher education, [as well as] a strategy called the ‘first five words’ so they can figure out ways to advocate for themselves and for their peers, changing the culture and climate of the university.”

Students speakers were able to share their stories as well. One such student was Paige DeAngelo, a senior communication major with a public relations concentration and an entrepreneurship minor who founded Aer Cosmetics during her co-op. 

According to DeAngelo, “The company was founded to create sustainable makeup [and] my invention, the dissolving mascara tablet, so I made a formula for a mascara that holds the shape of a tablet and is water soluble so a customer can refill it rather than throwing it out and buying a new one.”

Behind all these speakers is the support of the TEDXDrexelU E-board and its desire to bring TED Talks to Drexel. 

 “TEDx conferences are independently organized events that run under an official license from the TED organization [and] as TEDxDrexelU. We get to shape our conference in a way that we think will be the most impactful to those in our immediate community but have the benefit of the talks living on forever and being shared with the entire world because they are then posted on TED’s website and the TEDx YouTube channel,” says Eva Kraus, a third-year biomedical engineering major, and the TEDXDrexelU president and curator.

The TEDXDrexelU E-board takes pride in exposing new ideas to the students of Drexel through the power of localized TED talks. 

“My favorite part of TEDxDrexelU has to be the people I work with!” says Ina Shah, the TEDXDrexelU event coordinator. “The individuals we collaborate with are talented, imaginative, and compassionate [and] there is much to learn in their company and conservations.”

They also have a unique take on what a TED Talk is supposed to be like.

“Part of the reason you watch [TED Talks] is to get something out of it [and] even though I don’t completely agree with every speaker with everything they say, you can find meaning in what they are saying,” said Gabrielle Remo, a senior majoring in international business and minoring in business analytics. 

The TEDXDrexelU Blueprint conference brought several speakers, Drexel-affiliated and otherwise, to tell their unique career stories to students. More exclusive events are in store for TEDXDrexelU’s vision of the future. 

“My dream goal for TEDxDrexelU is that it becomes a recognizable name on campus and that the stories we share hold significance in the Drexel and Greater Philadelphia community – whether that be because of the norms they challenge or the lessons they teach,” said Kraus.

On April 12, Sky Harper became the second student in Drexel history to win the Harry S. Truman Scholarship. Recipients of this prestigious award have demonstrated an unprecedented commitment to public service throughout their undergraduate education that they plan to continue through their careers. Currently, there are over 3,300 Truman Scholars who work in a range of places from the West Wing to the Armed Forces. In 2023, the Truman Foundation received 705 applications from 275 institutions across the country. 199 of these college juniors were then selected to interview with the Foundation’s Regional Review Panels before the Foundation narrowed down its competitive applicant pool to 62 scholars. 

Yet Harper’s unique skills and work ethic made him stand out among the many talented applicants, and not for the first time After earning both the Goldwater Scholarship for STEM students pursuing careers in research and the Udall Scholarship for public service and commitment to issues of Native American nations in 2022, Harper’s addition of the Truman Scholarship completes the coveted triad of scholarships distinguishing a triple-crown scholar, making him the first in Drexel’s history.

A week before the scholars were formally announced, Harper received unofficial word of his selection from John Fry, who had been notified by the Truman Foundation. Recalling the moment he learned of his achievement, Harper explained, “I just sat there because it didn’t feel real to me.”

A few weeks earlier and one day after taking the MCAT, Harper flew out to his home state of Arizona for his finalist interview. In a crammed waiting room, he watched the other candidates nervously pacing back and forth in anticipation of their appearances before the Arizona Attorney General and First District Judge of Arizona, amongst other high-profile public servants. Remaining calm and collected during a nail-biting wait and a high-stakes interview, Harper still ponders one question posed: Why Drexel?

“No one else was asked about their undergraduate institution,” shared Harper, wondering if the interview panel was really asking: “As a motivated and accomplished student, why would you go to a university without the highest prestige?” 

Despite the numerous offers Harper received in the college application process, he defends his decision of choosing the school that chose him. During his junior year of high school, Harper received a full-tuition scholarship from Drexel for his work in the sciences. 

“Drexel supported me before any other school. I don’t understand why I wouldn’t be thankful for that and take their offer,” he explained. 

It is clear that Harper’s dedication fostered by a Drexel education served him well. At the end of the interview process, Harper recalls the judge who exited with a “Goodbye, Sky,” after uttering a plethora of nameless farewells. “That was my little sliver of hope I was holding onto,” he said afterwards. 

As a Truman Scholar, Harper has the opportunity to participate in the Truman Summer Institute, where he hopes to intertwine his specialty in STEM with new experience in public policy and civil service by working in the Department of the Interior. 

Looking further ahead, Harper intends to enroll in an MD/PhD program and then work for the National Institute of Health to gain experience in community-based research. In the long term, he aspires to return to his community in Arizona to establish research centers that Native American tribes often lack. 

Ambitious and industrious like the school he hails from, Sky Harper plans to continue proudly representing Drexel.

On Thursday, April 20, Drexel University hosted the Emerging Graduate Scholars (DEGS) Conference at Bossone Research Enterprise Center, where 61 master’s and Ph.D. students across several Drexel departments presented their research projects.

The conference is one of several demonstrations of Drexel’s prestige as a research university. According to Sandra Strang, the director of communication & events at the Graduate College, “Drexel is designated as an “R1 Doctoral University: Very High Research Activity” in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education [and] one of 146 institutions out of approximately 3,900 to receive this prestigious classification, indicating the highest level of research activity.”

Graduate students in the conference displayed the kinds of research they have been doing through a poster showcase. 

“It’s a very interdisciplinary space, and you get to learn about other things within your field, so it’s cool to come together in a conference like this,” says Elliot Dickman, a graduating student of the Master’s Program in Digital Media at the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design.

During the showcase, participants shared how their research correlates with elements of the field they study. 

“The purpose of this project matches my interests, and the machine learning methods applied in many fields hold the potential to improve the accuracy of a diagnostic for human disease,” says Jintong Hou, a Ph.D. candidate in the biostatistics program at the Dornsife School of Public Health. 

By presenting these projects at the conference, these graduate students are not just proving their worth as researchers to their higher-ups, but also to themselves. According to Karthik Narasimhan, a graduating student of the Master’s Program in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the College of Computing and Informatics, “[My project] should represent that I can work independently and that if I have an idea I am willing to pursue it even if people aren’t willing to join me on that project.”

Behind the projects are unique perspectives the grad students have on the potential of their projects. 

“[My] research can push forward the need and importance of having nature around us,” says Dahlia Stott, a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the nutrition sciences program at the College of Nursing and Health Professions, “that way, we can interact with it more to not only benefit our mental health but our physical health too so I think it’s a very tangible and hopefully easy thing people can go and do.” 

There are also compelling reasons why the student researchers chose their topics. “My background is textiles, so I work a lot already with fibers, and with a new material called MXene, I can make the fibers conductive with many more functions like chemical and electrical detection,” says Lingyi Bi, a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the materials science and engineering program at the College of Engineering.

Some of these students’ projects’ goals are broadly aimed at benefiting entire societies, like those of Casey Hanna, a first-year Ph.D. candidate in the educational leadership and policy in the School of Education. 

“I would love other school districts that do have community schools, such as the School District of Philadelphia, to consume this research and think about what is the sum of the assumptions that we make about community schools and how we can be considerate about those in the planning, implementation, and design of community schools so that we are implementing them with fidelity for the benefit of the people that we serve which are students and communities,” she says.

While trying to make their research ideas come to life, these students tap into their desire to make something they are passionate about possible.

“I’ve always been interested in cancer studies, so finally working on something related so it kind of defines everything I have been building up all my life, and I love to be a researcher,” says Jana Sri Havya, a first-year master’s student in the molecular and cell biology and genetics program of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and Professional Studies at the College of Medicine.

Aside from the projects’ meanings, the students behind them were attracted to making them possible at Drexel due to the accomplishments of its graduate programs. 

According to Youngdai Won, a marketing Ph.D. candidate at the LeBow College of Business, “The faculty in the Marketing department have published a considerable amount of peer-reviewed publications in top journals of the highest quality, and disseminated their work through conferences, seminars, and colloquia.”

While many of these graduate students are from other universities, some have graduated from Drexel and decided to continue expanding their visions at the university. 

“My [thesis] project started as a senior design project from there when I was doing it [me and my primary advisor] used this co-polymer coating, and with that coating, we found it was very anti-microbial, so we thought that was very interesting because this coating itself we did not expect it to have those types of properties and we decided to continue studying them, and I decided to take it on as my thesis project,” says Jamie Trinh, a fourth-year biomedical engineering Ph.D. candidate at the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems. 

Drexel’s DEGS is a yearly event that expresses the graduate students’ dedication and creativity in developing projects that aim to one day bring about positive change in our society. 

In Strang’s words, “Students are challenged to present their work in general terms to a broad audience allowing them to share more about themselves and their journey [making this] truly a celebration of our graduate community and their research.”

UC Townhomes residents and organizers held a rally on Friday, April 21 to discuss their new demands following a settlement between property owner Brett Altman and the City of Philadelphia announced on Wednesday, April 19. 

On the lawn in front of the “People’s Townhomes”, residents took turns speaking about the progress of their fight and addressing what still needs to be accomplished following the recent settlement. 

A resident named Sheldon took the mic to explain “what the settlement is and what it is not.” The agreement includes 19% of partial preservation of the site for affordable housing, compensation for the residents, and affordable housing at 80% average median income (AMI). 

The redeveloped property will have 75 units with a mix of one, two, and three-bedroom units allocated to affordable housing. “100% of the units in the new project must be affordable at an average of 60% AMI but can go up to 80% AMI,” Sheldon said.

Sheldon explained how these conditions fall short of the residents’ expectations. “Our goal was to preserve the entire property. Less than a fifth is not nearly enough to meet the great need for affordable housing in our community.”

In addition, residents have continuously fought for housing at 30% of their average median income, citing that “the way the city and other stakeholders define affordability is not the way we define it.” Sheldon explained that “80% AMI means residents, seniors, and people living on fixed incomes will be left behind.”

Furthermore, residents are not satisfied with the conditions of their compensation. According to Sheldon, the settlement includes a $3.5 million tenant fund or roughly $50,000 per family. Tenants must sign a release form with conditions, including taking a financial consultancy class before they can receive the money. 

The settlement will also be taxed, significantly reducing the amount of money for each family. Sheldon claims this is not enough, stating that it won’t cover relocation costs for housing and schools, transportation, and “seek[ing] out support for the trauma of this experience.”

Meanwhile, Brett Altman, the current owner of the UC Townhomes site, could “earn up to $100 million from the sale of this property.” 

While residents have emphasized that the fight’s not over, they consider the settlement a victory. “Had we not fought back, we would likely have received zero percent of this site for affordable housing,” Sheldon claimed. To the residents, this is “just another beginning.”

Mel, another resident of the Townhomes, then took the mic to list the people’s current demands: That the UC Townhomes residents are involved in any discussion regarding the new development, that residents are guaranteed a “Right to Return” to the new development for all current residents in writing, and there is prioritization of housing for families on fixed incomes at 30% average median income or lower. 

Mel also expressed frustration with the role of Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania’s gentrification in West Philadelphia, saying, “Drexel and Penn are abusing us… y’all owe this community.” 

Mel and residents demand that Drexel President John Fry and Liz McGill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, “commit to this community like y’all haven’t done for the last seven decades.” 

While those are their main demands, residents would also like to see “tenant control and governance of the new development,” according to Mel’s speech. “This is all about the people. And whether we get through it or die trying, we will continue to stand for the people.”

As for the next steps, the City Council must pass two ordinances before Brett Altman can start redeveloping his share of the property. According to Sheldon, the ordinances were introduced on April 27 and must be passed by July 1, 2023. 

On the one hand, if these ordinances pass, it will allow Altman to “build up to 400 units,” and “only 15% of those units would have to be affordable.” The residents fear Altman will replace the community “with yet another lab or mega-development.”

If these ordinances do not pass, “or if there is an appeal or lawsuit, the settlement agreement is void,” said Sheldon. Either way, they “are still being forcibly displaced with no clear relocation plan or written right to return.”

Despite the unclear future of their presence at the UC Townhomes, resident Miss Lyles explained the resident’s vision for the redeveloped site. “Our vision has been to preserve our community and create a model for resident-centered development without displacement.”

Their plan includes making the site permanently affordable for low-income seniors and families, adding accommodations for seniors and residents with disabilities, multiple-room units to accommodate families, a community center, and access to “green space for healthy living.” 

Furthermore, they envision that residents will benefit from the redevelopment, including access to jobs and resources and “residents’ inclusion in the design and control of this site.” 

When residents finished their speeches, they took to the streets, chanting, “When we fight, we win.” 

Residents and supporters marched down 40th Street, turning left onto Chestnut Street. They  chanted numerous phrases, such as “housing is a human right, housing is a people’s fight.” 

Police cars followed the crowd, blocking off intersections to control traffic flow. They didn’t interfere with the march. 

Residents and supporters marched up 38th Street and Market Street, circling back to the UC Townhomes, where residents concluded by thanking the crowd for supporting them.

A resident addressed the crowd, saying, “Don’t disappear, because it’s not over.”

Leaving the familiarity of home for college is often jarring, but Black students experiencing the added isolation of life at predominantly white institutions face an additional very specific, yet daunting, challenge: losing access to people and products with expertise in maintaining the health and style of their hair. Sussie Addo, a 2021 graduate of Drexel University and current teacher’s assistant, recalls struggling with this issue alone as a student. 

“My mom did my hair growing up so I didn’t really know what to do with it on my own,” Addo said. “So throughout the years it was, ‘I don’t know, use a pick and some water,’ and that was kind of all I knew.” 

Knowing firsthand how common experiences like Addo’s are, a group of Black hair care business owners made the journey to arrange product stations in Drexel’s Behrakis Grand Hall on the overcast morning of Sunday, April 30 for Pride in Your Pattern: A Black Hair Expo. Co-sponsored by Drexel’s Center for Black Culture (CBC), the Student Center for Diversity and Inclusion (SCDI) and Campus Engagement, the event that the CBC described as a “celebration of Black hair”  invited students to participate in a marketplace, product giveaways, and workshops catered to their needs. 

Students were greeted with a spread of locally-made refreshments and baked goods before sitting for a welcome address from Rae Coleman, assistant director of the CBC. After welcoming them, she explained the program’s specialized structure, which let students choose between concurrent workshops based on their interests.

The set of opening workshops featured a panel of local barbers and the interactive seminar  “Untangling: Loosening the Knots that Bind Black Beauty and Self-Esteem,” led by Drexel’s embedded BIPOC mental health specialist Robia Smith-Herman. She educated students on both the history and ongoing conversation around Black hair including the hair-typing system’s origins in eugenics and current criticism of celebrities with afro-textured hair, but also encouraged students to share personal relationships with their hair and confidence. According to Smith-Herman, who pitched the idea for the Expo to Coleman when she joined Drexel’s Counseling Center in 2021 and was instrumental in the planning process, the topic was already a major point of discussion in her conversations with BIPOC students.

“I talk a lot in therapy sessions with folks who come and see me about texturism, colorism, featurism and how that affects them. So I just felt like that would be a natural thing for me to talk about here, and as part of the planning committee I felt like I needed to not only plan but do my part to see that the event went well by doing these workshops and panels,” said Smith-Herman. 

The next set of workshops consisted of a panel on “Transitioning Your Hair,” which Smith-Herman also participated in, and a headwrapping workshop led by Netfah Bell, owner of the hair care and fashion business Simply Netfah. Bell quickly involved students by demonstrating various methods of tying colorful headwraps on volunteers of different hair lengths and styles, making sure to choose colors that students resonated with. It was important to Bell because she also emphasized the impact that hair care practices could have on mental health, such as making students feel “empowered, confident, valued, and self-loved.”

For Bell, volunteering her time and services for the expo was “an easy yes” because she “loves the vision, what they’re trying to promote through Pride in Your Pattern.” Having done well-received workshops for Drexel’s Center for Black Culture in the past, Bell values spaces for BIPOC expression and wellness on campus. “Anything that supports, encourages wellness and well-being is something I stand for,” she said. 

As the workshops concluded, students and vendors alike poured into the main hall for an address from keynote speaker Wendy Greene, a professor in Drexel’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law and legal architect of The Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (C.R.O.W.N.) Act of 2022 that now prohibits race-based hair discrimination in professional and educational settings in 20 states and many cities nationwide, including Philadelphia. While proud of the progress that the legislation has made, Greene stressed that there was more work to be done in eradicating hair discrimination such as expanding protections to include protective styles classified as unregulated “mutable cultural characteristics” and beginning international legislative efforts. 

As Greene describes, “The ultimate goal of all the collective movements around the world is not only to secure social, legal and policy change, but for personal reform. So that Africans and others around the world can freely wear our natural hair or freely wear our hair according to our personal needs and desires, and ultimately so that we can universally declare that all hair is good hair.” 

For students like Drexel senior Katelyn Odoms, the message hit home, especially after discovering newfound confidence in her hair while at Drexel. “I would’ve never worn my natural hair in high school, but after taking an Africana Studies class, African-American Literature, I began to really value my hair as a part of my culture,” she explained. “My high school was mostly white so I changed my hair to fit in, but now I love my hair.”

In a schedule filled with student-focused workshops, the planning committee aimed to ensure attendees knew how to retain confidence in their hair after graduation. Following the keynote address, audience members were invited to ask questions of a “Hair in the Workplace” panel consisting of Greene, Don’t Touch My Crown founder and CEO Brit Abisdid, psychotherapist Tiara Rodia, and Ursinus College enrollment management VP Michael Keaton. Drawing from personal experience, they each gave advice on dealing with microaggressions in the workplace and evaluating self-worth in professional environments.

Closing out the day’s program was a raffle of four packages of hair care products, one of which Addo won. As students bought armfuls of merchandise from vendors and began filing out of Behrakis Grand Hall, many also left with business cards and phone numbers of stylists, entrepreneurs and mental health professionals with the resources to help them improve their relationship with their hair.

In Addo’s words, “It was nice to learn more about how to work with your hair and what resources are out there and who you can talk to. I think it’s great for students of all years to have that space to discuss it.”

On Tuesday, April 11, Drexel University released a statement outlining new changes to its vaccination policy, announcing that it will now no longer require all students, faculty and staff members to be vaccinated against COVID-19. 

This decision follows the closure of the Race Hall COVID testing site on March 24, relegating COVID testing solely to the Drexel Student Health Center on Market St. The change also reflects a shift in policy by The Philadelphia Department of Public Health, which lifted its own mandate on COVID vaccination for all institutions of higher education in the city in March.

Drexel first instituted its mandate in July of 2021, making it one of the first universities in Philadelphia to require vaccination for all members of its campus community, with its decision even pre-dating the official mandate from the City of Philadelphia. In Drexel’s announcement of their shift to a vaccination-optional policy, the administration makes clear that the university still strongly recommends that all students, faculty and staff get vaccinated and remain up to date on any recommended boosters, including the more recent bivalent boosters. 

With such a strong push that community members continue getting vaccinated, why change the policy at all? 

Dr. Marla J. Gold, Chief Wellness Officer and Senior Vice Provost for Community Health acknowledges this seeming contradiction, but expresses that the situation has drastically changed since the early days of the pandemic. 

“For starters, the data was just coming in. We were sort of in the alpha-delta era…the first and the second delta variants caused pretty significant illness, even in young people,” said Gold. 

She went on to explain that early variants targeted different sections of the airways, making people sicker. At the time, data was lacking, but health officials at Drexel and around the city kept faith in the COVID vaccine’s ability to mitigate sickness and help save lives. And Gold believes that is precisely what it did. 

“Our mandate before was because there was so much more disease…there were still a lot of students who were getting sick, who were going into isolation, and who were ill. It’s a very different disease now…we’re dealing with a different virus, at least for now,” she says.

In the eyes of Drexel’s health experts, the need to uphold the vaccination mandate lessened as they received data showing that the campus community was continuing to rebound from the high COVID infection rate experienced in the early days of the pandemic. 

“We now have what I refer to as a nuanced wall of immunity. What I mean by that is, the vast majority of our campus population has at least had the basic vaccine. The vast majority of employees are up to date and have been boosted…the vast majority of our student population have been boosted at least once… a lot of young people have had COVID,” Gold continued. 

With the presence of this “nuanced wall of immunity” and the city’s recent decision to lift its vaccination mandate, Gold and other health officials at Drexel believe now is the right time to alter the University’s guidelines, placing medical advising in the hands of personal physicians. 

“I believe as a physician, as a public health expert, absolutely everyone should be up to date,” said Gold. “But there isn’t enough evidence to have a business mandate for its employees.”

Drexel administration says they will continue to carefully monitor the data regarding COVID-19 and take action if they need to reinstate the vaccination mandate again in the future. 

On Saturday, April 15, Drexel Community for Justice (DCJ) organizers handed out flyers on the sidewalk by the Daskalakis Athletic Center during Drexel University’s Admitted Students Day.  

Student organizers spoke with prospective students and families about their fight to save the UC Townhomes. In a post to their Instagram account, @drexelforjustice revealed that later that evening, participants received an email from Drexel’s Student Conduct threatening them with disciplinary action for violating the University’s disorderly conduct policy. 

This policy states “behavior that disturbs the peace,” including “interfering with a University activity” such as public events are prohibited. 

Two days following their distribution of flyers, DCJ released a statement in response to Student Conduct’s reaction. In the statement, DCJ claims they did not interfere with nor disrupt the Admitted Students Day event, clarifying “this was not a protest,” but an “attempt to let admitted students know the role that Drexel plays in the displacement of Black, brown, poor and working-class communities in West Philly.” 

During the event, an administrator confirmed that organizers did not have to leave, nor were they explicitly asked to. DCJ left the area “of [their] own accord” when “most families were inside of the DAC.” 

DCJ is now calling on students and the Drexel community to “sign a statement of solidarity” for their following demands: Drexel University drop all current Student Conduct cases against student protestors, stop “intimidating” and charging students “peacefully demonstrating on campus” with disciplinary actions, and separate the Office of Student Conduct and Care from “Drexel administration and disciplinary processes.”

This latest news follows DCJ’s decision to end their 35 day sit-in protest at the Main Building on March 26. 

In a previous post published to their Instagram account, DCJ revealed that on March 24, more than 20 student demonstrators involved in the sit-in received an email from Drexel’s student conduct. The administration threatened participants with suspension or a ban from campus if they did not vacate the Main Building by Sunday, March 26. 

The decision to end the sit-in, which began on Feb. 21, was not easy. “Drexel administration was clearly relying on student conduct as a means to end our organizing,” said Chelsea Martin, a DCJ organizer. 

After analyzing the risks of disciplinary action, student organizers ultimately decided to end their sit-in. “We didn’t want to limit how we’d be able to continue this fight,” said Martin.

Students faced a variety of student conduct policy violations and disciplinary meetings are ongoing. “Chelsea and I were the first to get hit with something,” Shane Mosley, a DCJ organizer explained. It happened after they had a chance encounter with a Drexel Board of Trustees member in the Main Building. 

The short discussion with Martin and Mosley appeared to leave the unidentified Board of Trustees member “incredibly scared,” and he threatened to call the police. Martin and Mosley thought they had de-escalated the situation, but soon after that they received the first string of student conduct emails. 

The first emails the administration sent out were directed to three students of color, including Martin, Mosley and Hana Kobyashi-Shapiro “much prior to any other students,” Martin claims. DCJ has a larger white population in the organization, and “despite us all acting the same,” students of color were targeted first.

“I think it’s racial profiling,” Mosley chimed. 

“It’s not our interpretation of what happened — it materially did happen,” Martin added. Although the reasons for this remain unclear, Martin believes the administration’s priority to target students of color first is “in alignment with why they’re failing to act to help preserve the townhomes.” 

As for the UC Townhomes residents, they agreed that ending the sit-in was the right decision. Mosley said, “Once the administration ramped up their threats, that’s when residents stepped in and said they don’t want us getting in trouble.” 

“They’re definitely proud of us and share similar sentiments in terms of Drexel’s administration and their absolute disrespect for the residents of the townhomes,” Martin claimed. 

The residents had been trying to contact the Drexel administration for months and finally met with President John Fry in January. “During that meeting… John Fry said he was so sorry but then proceeded to do nothing,” Mosley said. 

Since that meeting with John Fry, neither DCJ nor residents have heard anything from the administration about “material changes or steps that Drexel would be taking to help preserve the townhomes.” 

After the sit-in began, organizers and residents only heard from former Senior Vice Provost for University and Community Partnerships Lucy Kerman. She spoke to organizers with the “sole purpose of getting us to leave,” Shane explained. It was revealed to DCJ that Kerman, who was in contact with a resident, texted them asking for help to get the student protestors to leave.

In the Student Conduct emails, the administration referenced a Philadelphia Inquirer article that claimed Drexel and the Townhomes residents reached a settlement.

“Drexel using that article as proof that things are solved is incorrect and incredibly ridiculous,” Mosley said. 

Moving forward, DCJ plans to take their protests out on the streets and continue organizing on campus. Though they did not reveal much about their next steps, Martin said, “Expect to see us soon.” 

“We’re not going anywhere. You haven’t seen the last of us,” Mosley stated. 

As for Drexel students, DCJ hopes to see more involvement across campus. “I’m sure you have a gripe or grievance with Drexel,” Mosley quipped. Whatever the issue, “we oughta be talking, we oughta be working together, and we oughta be organizing so that these problems don’t exist anymore.”

As Drexel University continues to expand its mental health resources, students are taking the opportunity to get involved. On Tuesday, April 11, the Drexel Counseling Center officially announced its new peer counseling service, staffed by eight students trained in counseling students through their personal struggles. 

These student volunteers understand firsthand how crucial mental wellness can be during college. 

According to peer counselor and senior health sciences major Heather Do, “It really determines everything in your life if you don’t have good mental health, then it’s pretty hard to move on, especially for college students and their academic performance.”

Recognizing this motivated Drexel’s Counseling Center to seek counselors who can relate to students’ problems on a personal level. 

In the words of Staff Psychologist of Enrollment Management and Student Success Sarah Maver, “The goal of the peer counseling program is for students to have a space where they can access support from fellow students who really understand the stress, worries, joys, questions, and mishaps of college life.” 

The service’s effectiveness depends on the peer counselors’ personal expertise in counseling a student’s unique situation. 

“Peer Counselors are there to provide peer-based confidential support for navigating life transitions, decision-making processes, relationships, and other challenges of life as a student,” says Maver.

Like any therapy service, peer counselors received training to follow the regulations of consent and confidentiality. “Every time a student schedules an appointment with us, we take that as consent, and all the conversations are confidential, so we have a lot of training in confidentiality, so students are confident coming up to us,” says Do.

Becoming a peer counselor is a lengthy process. After applying, all peer counselors must receive extensive training. “After we got interviewed, we all came in on a Saturday and were there for 8 hours where we got this big packet that had a bunch of strategies and protocols teaching us therapeutics,” says Olivia Henningsen, a peer counselor and senior psychology major.

It’s not just students seeking guidance who benefit from the service; the peer counselors do as well. Many peer counselors without psychology experience find being able to help students rewarding. 

“People coming to Drexel and college in general sometimes have things they want to talk about or are having stress about, and that is a way we would like to help them out: by talking through that with them, being there for them, and supporting them mentally,” says Do. 

Peer counselors who major in psychology also find great learning experiences in applying their learned skills outside the classroom. As Henningsen describes, “Since I want to go into psychology as a field, a lot of the classes haven’t really touched on more application-based procedures, so I haven’t really learned about what goes into the therapy or how to talk to people in that kind of context, so this has been really good in providing insight on what this is going to be like.”

Peer counseling is a major step in Drexel’s effort to provide new ways to meet students’ mental health needs. “We continue to try to bolster the support that students can access on campus, and we see peer counseling as a great way students can build their support system,” says Maver.

On Feb. 23, Drexel University announced their three Truman Scholarship nominees: Sky Harper, Rida Memon and Anna Vallarta. The three students have demonstrated a commitment to careers in public service, a goal for global impact, and unprecedented leadership potential— all hallmarks of former President Harry S. Truman’s life of civil service from the Senate floor to the Oval Office.

Since its inception in 1975, the Truman Foundation has recognized thousands of students. Each year, the Truman Foundation receives hundreds of applications; however, fewer than 60 undergraduates receive this prestigious award. Once nominated for the Truman Scholarship by an undergraduate institution, students must complete a rigorous application process, which includes crafting a policy proposal. Selected scholars earn up to $30,000 toward graduate education as well as a lifelong network of Truman scholars. In 2023 the Truman Foundation selected 199 finalists out of 705 total applications, and for the second time in history, one of Drexel’s own, Sky Harper, has emerged from the competitive applicant pool as a finalist. 

Harper, a junior in the Pennoni Honors College, has found a passion for research and its predictive, progressive powers. As a chemistry major with minors in biology and interdisciplinary problem solving, Harper has spent countless hours researching polymers and working at the Agricultural Research Service, but his impact expands beyond the lab. In an effort to expand the resources available for indigenous students, Harper founded Drexel Indigenous Students of the Americas, an organization focused on raising awareness for indigenous cultures, traditions, and beliefs on campus and throughout the city. 

While most Truman Scholars have public policy backgrounds, Harper believes in bridging the divide between social and scientific fields. 

“Interdisciplinary work is something that doesn’t happen as often as it should,” Harper told the Triangle. “I believe that by integrating both fields, you can make a difference.”

When approaching the application process, Harper adopted a unique angle: one that triangulated scientific research, public service and healthcare. Harper’s policy proposal includes three prongs and addresses the director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, an overseer of the Native American Research Centers for Health. First, Harper proposes internal capacity building on reservations that often lack the infrastructure to house research. He then seeks to increase personnel at these severely understaffed research centers and bolster resources that would expedite the application process for funding. Finally, Harper’s policy funds outside scientists to review findings and validate problems that are so often overlooked. 

“Some of the issues we [Native Americans] have are not well researched, and people aren’t motivated to help address these issues because they feel there is not enough evidence to support these things really being issues,” Harper explains.

After graduating, Harper will enroll in an MD/PhD program. He then aspires to return to his home reservation in Arizona to establish research programs at tribal colleges. 

“I really want to do research in my own community to say yes! These issues are issues, these are the reasons why, and this is what we need to do now,” says Harper.

For now, he will prepare for his upcoming interview in Arizona — the final stage of the selection process until scholars are announced at the end of April. 

Another nominee, Rida Memon, a junior global studies major, recalls how it felt to earn a  nomination. “To know that Drexel was supporting me felt really good,” said Memon.

Through her first co-op at nonprofit HIAS Pennsylvania, Memon worked to provide refugees and asylum seekers with social and legal services. There, she exercised her Spanish minor when immersed in the language with some of her clients. Memon also drafted several policies while working with SEPTA, and she plans to complete her third and final co-op at Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity. 

Through her experience in the nonprofit sector, Memon discovered that Pennsylvanianians retain a criminal record even if their case is dismissed or they are found not guilty. “These criminal records are available on the Internet,” explains Memon. “They affect people’s abilities to get housing and find jobs, and the process to get those records removed from the Internet is very long and complicated.” 

Memon believes this is one of the state’s most pressing problems, which is why she focused her policy proposal on expunging these records. 

In ten years, she hopes to balance a law career with broad-scale advocacy. In the meantime, she will continue to make her mark in Philadelphia, happily passing up a paycheck for her principles.

“People try to convince me to steer away from public service sometimes because of the money. But for me, it’s not about the money. This is just the work I like to do,” says Memon. 

Drexel’s third nominee, Anna Vallarta, is a third year student studying biology with minors in music theory and composition. In pursuing a medical career as an endocrinologist, Vallarta seeks to represent and support the trans community in a healthcare system riddled with inequities and hamstrung by anti-trans legislation.

“Hormones for gender dysphoria is a new and emerging field. Even though it’s been around for a while, it has not been prioritized,” explains Vallarta. “I would also like to have more trans faces in the field.”

Although Vallarta wants to transform medicine from the inside out, she finds tremendous value in enacting change from a federal level. 

“The scholarship wasn’t initially on my radar,” says Vallarta. “I’m used to reading scientific papers with experimental results and probability, and then this was looking at a lot of legal language.” 

But when an advisor suggested applying for the Truman Scholarship, Vallarta took a chance, even in the midst of challenging courses and MCAT preparation. In an address to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Vallarta introduced legislation that would require military healthcare insurance to cover gender-affirming procedures for its transgender soldiers.

“For cis-gendered people, these surgeries might be cosmetic, but for trans people, these surgeries are mental-health improving,” explains Vallarta. 

On campus, Vallarta finds community in the Filipino Intercultural Society and participates on the fencing team. For her co-op, Vallarta worked at Rutgers University on the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine trial.

While only 55-65 students receive the Truman scholarship each year, hundreds more like these three Drexel undergraduates demonstrate an admirable commitment to global improvement that is bound to pay dividends. 

On Feb 25, Drexel University’s Society of Artificial Intelligence (AI) hosted a symposium in Nesbitt Auditorium where four professors and four researchers from various institutions commented on how AI is becoming more common in our society. 

Arranged by the Society of AI vice president Satvik Tripathi, a second-year computer science major and the lead organizer of the AI symposium, the conversation focused on the applications of AI and how the speakers incorporate it into their various fields of study.

The event’s first half featured the four professors of AI-based college courses who each provided unique takes on AI’s benefits and the ways we can evolve and simplify the field of artificial intelligence. Dr. Edward Kim, an associate professor at Drexel, spoke first about his research on neuro-justified machine learning. The next speaker was Dr. Chris Callison-Burch, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Computer and Information Science exploring Chat GPT’s capabilities. Following them were Dr. Eric Eaton, a research associate professor in UPenn’s Department of Computer and Information Science researching new machine learning applications and Karl Schmeckpeper, a Ph.D. student at UPenn creating technologies incorporating the intersections of robotics, computer vision and machine learning. 

The four also had critical remarks on AI changing the job market. As Dr. Kim shared, he had heard of someone whose job is to summarize data and information by inputting it into Chat GPT.

According to Dr. Kim, “[AI is] definitely transforming the way people interact with each other and their jobs.” 

Four medical researchers who study ways to use AI to augment medical-based practices built on this idea by presenting their research during the second half of the symposium. Dr. Rafe McBeth, a medical physicist and UPenn assistant professor, presented first on exploring the use of AI to determine the best course of radiation-based cancer treatments. The second presentation was by Dr. Birkan Tunç, a computational scientist at the Center for Autism Research of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who is creating AI-based screening technology to detect signs of autism. The third presentation was given by Ameena Elahi, the Application Manager of the Medical Imaging Management Team for Penn Medicine’s Information Services Department, who is developing new AI-based clinical imaging applications. The fourth and final presenter was Dr. Hualou Liang, a Drexel University biomedical engineering professor researching AI to screen for early signs of neurological-based diseases like Alzheimer’s. 

All four share the same principle of having their research methods approved by medical professionals to avoid ethical or philosophical disagreements. When doing research, Dr. Mcbeth “signs on a [AI-generated] chart, and a physician signs off on a chart validating it in that case.”

None of them could have shared their insights at the symposium without the ambition of the Society of AI’s e-board members to provide a broader perspective on AI’s capabilities for the students at Drexel University.

According to Suhani Dheer, a second-year psychology major and the Society of AI’s event coordinator, “[The AI Symposium] stands to promote the AI community in University City because we do not have a lot of AI-centric labs or organizations on campus that focus so much on it.” 

The e-board members have unique takes on AI’s potential. 

“Data science is a thing that has always existed and only has been getting bigger,” says Ritvik Sukumaran, a second-year data science major and the Society of AI’s community chair. 

These dedicated students also have interesting perspectives on their passion for being familiar with AI as it becomes more frequent in our society. 

For Sanjna Srinivasan, a first-year biomedical engineering major and Society of AI organizational committee member, “It’s eye-opening for students to learn about what you can do with research.” 

The Society of AI members took it upon themselves to educate others about the growth of AI in fields of study besides technology with the help of a few other unique minds inside and outside of Drexel by holding the AI symposium. With the members’ admiration for AI’s presence in this rapidly changing world, the Society of AI is flying high to accomplish the mission of promoting the power of AI and machine learning at Drexel.