We are immensely grateful for the effort and leadership provided by our Faculty Directors.
Dr. Marc Meredith
Faculty Director, Undergraduate Research
Marc Meredith is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, where he has been a professor since 2009. He holds a BA in Economics and Mathematical Methods in the Social Science from Northwestern University, a MA in Economics from Northwestern University, a MA in Political Science from Stanford University, and a PhD in Political Economics from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to coming to the University of Pennsylvania, Marc was a visiting lecturer of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds a secondary appointment in the Business Economics and Public Policy Department in the Wharton School.
Marc’s research examines the political economy of American elections, with a particular focus on the application of causal inference methods. His substantive research interests include election administration, election law, political campaigns, and voter decision-making. Marc’s research appears in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, among other outlets. He teaches classes on American government, policy making, business and government, and statistical methods.
Dr. Alain Plante
Faculty Director, University Scholars
Alain Plante received his Ph.D. in Soil Science from the University of Alberta, in Canada. His research interests lie in the field of terrestrial carbon biogeochemistry, soil science, ecosystem ecology, environmental science and global change. He teaches a large introductory course in environmental science, and courses in soil science, biogeochemistry, and the Anthropocene. As Faculty Director of the University Scholars, Prof. Plante seeks to foster an inclusive and passionate fellowship of undergraduates interested in conducting research in any filed spanning the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences in all of the undergraduate schools. He helps direct programming through the academic year, coordinates the applications process into the program, and the funding of summer research projects.
Plante LabDr. Sarah Kagan
Faculty Director, Fellowships
Sarah H. Kagan is the Lucy Walker Honorary Term Professor of Gerontological Nursing at Penn and Gerontological Clinical Nurse Specialist in the Joan Karnell Supportive Care Program for the Abramson Cancer Center at the Pennsylvania Hospital. She holds several international appointments in Nursing and in Public Health, in countries spanning Europe to Asia. These appointments, like her primary appointments at the University of Pennsylvania entail analysis and synthesis of considerations for aged populations, health and well-being in later life, and improving clinical practice in health and social care to the benefit of older people and their families. Professor Kagan is Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Older People Nursing. She serves on the Editorial Boards of four other journals – Cancer Nursing, Cancer Care Research Online, Geriatric Nursing, and Research in Gerontological Nursing. Professor Kagan’s education and training includes a Bachelor of Arts in Behavioral Science from the University of Chicago, a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Rush University, and a Master of Science degree in Gerontological Nursing and a PhD from the University of California San Francisco. Since arriving at the University of Pennsylvania over two decades ago, Professor Kagan has focused her scholarship on undergraduate nursing education, care of older people, and qualitative research. She currently directs the University of Pennsylvania Benjamin Franklin Scholars in Nursing Program and two clinically-based undergraduate international exchange programs in nursing – one in the United Kingdom and one in Australia. In addition, Professor Kagan teaches virtually for the University of Pennsylvania in partnership with the University of Hong Kong focusing on comparative elder care and in a multinational nursing and midwifery exchange focused the Climate Crisis to achieve healthy climate. Professor Kagan maintains an active program of clinical scholarship and practice in Gero-Oncology nursing - a term she introduced into the literature in 2004. Her practice serves as a wellspring for her clinical scholarship and pedagogy as well as anchoring her understanding of the clinician-patient relationship and provision nursing care that is centered on the person and family. Commentators acknowledge Professor Kagan’s nationally and internationally as innovative, sophisticated, and clinically relevant. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the American Academy of Nursing. Among the awards she has received for her practice, research, and teaching are the Sigma Theta Tau International Founders Award for Excellence in Nursing Practice. Professor Kagan was named a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow in October 2003 and received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Oxford Brookes University in June 2013.
Dr. Kagan's Faculty Page
Dr. Peter Struck
Faculty Director, Benjamin Franklin Scholars
Peter T. Struck is Professor and Chair of the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is director of the Benjamin Franklin Scholars program and founder of its Integrated Studies curriculum. He is cofounder (with Sarah Igo) of the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education, and has worked with foundations, media organizations, and scholarly societies to promote the liberal arts. He works on the intellectual history of Greek and Roman antiquity. His book Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts (Princeton 2004) won the C. J. Goodwin Award from the American Philological Association for best book in Classical Studies. His most recent book is Divination and Human Nature: A Cognitive History of Intuition in Antiquity, (Princeton 2016), for which he also won the Goodwin Award, becoming the first person to win the award twice. He edited Mantikê (with Sarah Iles Johnston, Brill 2006), the Cambridge Companion to Allegory (with Rita Copeland, Cambridge 2010), and is general editor (with Sophia Rosenfeld) of the six-volume Cultural History of Ideas forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic in 2020. He is currently writing a popular book on mythology for Princeton University Press. He has given dozens of lectures at universities in the United States and Europe, and has held fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Whiting Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and the American Academy in Rome. He has won multiple teaching awards at Penn, including the Lindback Award, the university's top teaching prize.
Dr. Struck's Faculty Page