Paul Richards

Even when not the path planned Philadelphia can have a lot to offer a recent college grad.

I’m going to offer a little bit of advice. Take it, leave it, mock it, it doesn’t matter that much to me.

Penn is leading the way in learning how the mind works. The University is part of a consortium that received a $10 million grant for five years from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to establish a 21st Century Center for Cognition and Science Instruction.

Wharton Computing performed a major upgrade to the school's e-mail server last month by switching to Microsoft Exchange 2007, which offers more space, advanced security and other new features to Wharton students. The upgrade is a response to "student requests for more e-mail storage space," according to the Wharton Computing Web site.

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there is such a thing as free admission. At least at Penn's Institute of Contemporary Art, that is, where a donation from '88 Wharton alumnus Glenn Fuhrman will eliminate admission costs for the next five years, beginning July 1.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em, because in three months you'll be out of luck. Last Friday, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell signed into law the Clean Indoor Air Act, which will prohibit smoking in most public places, such as restaurants, workplaces and certain parts of casino floors.

Philadelphians affected by the mortgage foreclosure crisis now have more options, thanks to a new public outreach program from Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. Nutter unveiled the Philadelphia Mortgage Foreclosure Protection Program on Tuesday. The plan aims to help struggling Philadelphians hold onto their homes.

Disclaimer: I don't know that much about Italian food. It was only about a month ago that I learned how to pronounce gnocchi, and I'm still not entirely sure what prosciutto is. (Google tells me it's ham, but I'm not convinced) Basically, I'm pretty easy to please.

Earlier this week College sophomores Melissa Gunderson and Kristen Lange stood in the Penn Bookstore with a bad case of sticker shock. The price tag of their new Chemistry 101 book: nearly $300. "It's highway robbery," Lange said. And though alternative electronic textbooks - high-tech substitutes to pricey print versions - have been available for more than a decade, they have not yet taken root at Penn.

The chair recognizes the ambassador from the University of Pennsylvania. Penn President Amy Gutmann joined 24 other university presidents from around the globe at the third annual United Nations Global Colloquium of University Presidents, held yesterday at New York University, to discuss climate change.