Youth organizers of Temple's University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia have created a news program to fight negative perceptions of themselves: "What's POPPYN" is a quarterly, half-hour online news show by teenagers about teenage issues in Philadelphia. "We highlight how young people are positively contributing to their schools, communities and organizations," said Natalia Smirnov, the initiative's media productions and communications manager. UCCP is a youth leadership nonprofit founded by Temple political science professor Barbara Ferman.
The recession has been tough on college students and recent graduates looking to land that first job. Rachel Brown, director of Temple's career center, said it's important to see the opportunities that are out there. "Being open to more contract work, project-based work, one term I've heard is 'the gig economy.' That's the shift that we've seen," she said. "It's not necessarily a bad shift, because if students are utilizing the skills, and they are really learning and building their brand, it can be a really wonderful thing."
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter bestowed the honor of poet laureate, the city's first, on poet Sonia Sanchez, calling her the longtime conscience of the city. Sanchez, professor emerita at Temple, said she seeks to explore what it means to be human in the 21st century. To her, that means trying to instill peace in yourself and others. "Philadelphia can go around the world exporting peace," said Sanchez.
The limestone rock under much of the Lehigh Valley is riddled with sink holes which has caused problems for the construction of large structures in the past. Currently, engineers are exploring ways to prevent these sink holes from causing problems in the area of a newly proposed hockey arena in Allentown. "Houses can sometimes get away with being on a shallow foundation," said Temple geologist Jonathan Nyquist. "When you are building a big structure, you need to anchor it."
New York Times' columnist Charles Blow recently used Census data to refute Newt Gingrich's claim that "really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works." Richard Heiberger, a statistics professor at Temple's Fox School of Business, worked with Forbes' contributor Naomi Robbins to redesign the Times' graphic of the data — improving its labeling, alignment and other features to "increase the effectiveness of the presentation and to illustrate that a good figure can lead directly to pol
As the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, which just wrapped its second season, gains popularity, it has made the 1920s the latest decade worth emulating. Come Dec. 31, Roaring Twenties parties will abound. "There is an enduring appeal to the images of the Twenties, added to by Boardwalk Empire, of this boozy, frolicking sexual awakening that has value right now," says Bryant Simon, a professor of history at Temple. "There is something about the formality, illicitness and exclusiveness that is popular," says Simon.
Researchers at Temple's Infant Lab found that when youngsters played with construction blocks with parents, they use words such as "under" and "on"—concepts which doctors say are important for understanding math, engineering and science.