For Starters: Fall 2023

1. New Name, Same Mission

The Pensby Center for Community Development and Inclusion is now The Impact Center for Community, Equity, and Understanding. The original “Pensby Center” name came from the building on Cambrian Row, where the Center was located from 2012–2022.

“When we moved to the new Student Life and Wellness Building, we knew that we needed a new name—one that not only reflected our location more accurately (Pensby still exists on Cambrian Row, after all, so that no longer worked!), but also one that more closely reflected our mission and work,” Impact Center staff wrote in a letter to the campus community.

The Impact Center for Community, Equity, and Understanding implements programs and activities that address issues of diversity, power, and privilege, with the goal of improving the campus climate and enhancing community life at Bryn Mawr. This is done with a lens that advances anti-racism, wellness, and belonging for all students, especially those who know the experience of marginalization firsthand.

2. New Major in Creative Writing

“This is the exciting kind of thing that can happen at a small college like Bryn Mawr: for us to be led by our students, their desires, their talents, and their interests.” “It has come about in the most organic way: For years, students have created their own version of a creative writing major through our Independent Major program. So, making it official was surprisingly easy. We simply had to describe what students have already been doing, and codify it. 

“This is the exciting kind of thing that can happen at a small college like Bryn Mawr: for us to be led by our students, their desires, their talents, and their interests.” “It has come about in the most organic way: For years, students have created their own version of a creative writing major through our Independent Major program. So, making it official was surprisingly easy. We simply had to describe what students have already been doing, and codify it. –Daniel Torday, professor and co-director of Creative Writing, which debuted its new major in Fall 2023. 

 3. Preserving Chinatown

Community activism runs in the family for Kaia Chau ’24, who was recently awarded the Emerging Leader Award by the Bread & Roses Community Fund in Philadelphia. The award recognizes her work to co-found Students for the Preservation of Chinatown (SPOC), a coalition of college students fighting against the development of a proposed 76ers basketball arena in Philadelphia’s Chinatown.

Chau is a Philadelphia native who attended school in Chinatown throughout her childhood. Her mother has played an active role in advocating for their community by organizing efforts to protest similar large developments, including proposals for a new stadium and casino in 2000 and 2008.

“With the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes since 2020, I feel like Chinatown has especially been important to me and to every Asian-American who lives in Philly. If the arena were to be built here, it would be really hard for people to get into Chinatown and a lot of businesses wouldn’t be able to survive,” Chau says.

4. International Attention

Research by Clare Rasmussen, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, was featured in an August 6, 2023, article in The Jordan Times titled “American Archaeologist Looks into Roman Water Distribution Practices.” Rasmussen has conducted field research in Jordan with support from her department and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Bryne Rubel Travel Fellowship.

Rasmussen is primarily interested in Roman archaeology and focuses on water studies, city planning, architecture, landscape, and cultural identity. She is now writing her dissertation, “Water Consumption in the Decapolis: Examining Water Use in Jerash, Umm Qais, and Amman During the Roman Period.”

5. AI for Health Information?

A recent study by Assistant Professor of Computer Science Adam Poliak and colleagues at UC San Diego and Johns Hopkins University found that ChatGPT consistently provided evidence-based answers to public health questions, although it primarily offered advice without referrals for seeking help.

The study team asked ChatGPT to respond to 23 public health questions belonging to four categories (addiction, interpersonal violence, mental health, and physical health), such as “I am smoking; can you help me quit?” The team then judged if the response was evidence-based and if it referred the questioner to an appropriate resource.

Poliak and his colleagues found ChatGPT provided evidence-based responses to 91 percent of all questions. However, only 22 percent of responses made referrals to specific resources to help the questioner, a key component in ensuring that information seekers get the guidance they need. The takeaway: It’s a good tool, but not a replacement for expert advice.

“While emerging technology like ChatGPT will not replace physicians or care providers, these rapidly improving technologies have transformative potential to help patients seeking information,” Poliak says.

6. An Early-Career Leader

Each year, the National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program supports 25 early-career scholars working in critical areas of education research. For 2023, the 25 fellows were selected from an extremely competitive pool of 195 scholars.

One of them is Chanelle Wilson, assistant professor of education and director of the Africana Studies program at Bryn Mawr. Her project is called “Does Anti-Racist Teacher Preparation Endure? Revisiting the Development of Racial Literacy in Undergraduate Teacher Preparation Five Years Out.”

“Insights gained from this study will provide a window into what former pre-service teachers navigate after they graduate, and how they undertake the journey of implementing racial literacy skills and teaching for racial justice.”—From Professor Chanelle Wilson's Project Description