While most of us rarely think of mummies unless it’s Halloween, Sam Cox constantly has the cloth-wrapped creatures on her mind. A graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, Cox has been studying anthropology that uses the latest technology, like CT scans, to examine ancient specimens. She sat down with Knowledge@Wharton High School to discuss her path from high school to anthropology and how technology is changing her field.

Sam Cox Spends Her Sunday Mornings with High-Tech Mummies

All middle school students are not created equal. Enter the Breakthrough Collaborative, a national organization that gives 6th, 7th and 8th graders around the country the opportunity to improve their education and reach their dreams. Farish Sawyer, a senior program director of Breakthrough of Greater Philadelphia, talked with Knowledge@Wharton High School about enriching the lives of young students, while also mentoring high school and college students to become excellent teachers.

Farish Sawyer Inspires Better Students and Teachers with the Breakthrough Collaborative

Janet Monge says she was a born anthropologist. Even so, it took her many years of soul searching before she decided to make the stuff of skeletons her actual career. Now, as acting curator in charge of physical anthropology at the Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, she travels as close as Malvern, Pa., to research skeletal remains at a mass railroad worker gravesite and as far away as Croatia to study the biggest collection of Neanderthal fossils. KWHS talked to Monge about her fascinating work and her thoughts about how museums are challenged to move into the future.

Janet Monge Talks Skeletal Remains, the Museum Business and Her Career as a Physical Anthropologist

Carter Roberts is president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, a nonprofit group that works to conserve nature around the world. From his childhood exploring the woods near his home, to his career protecting habitats in the far corners of the earth, Roberts has fostered a connection to the natural world. His job is as diverse as the ecosystems he visits. One day he may be negotiating with the president of a corporation, and the next he is sitting on a dirt floor talking with villagers about the value of saving tigers. In the end his message is the same: we’d better start protecting nature before it’s too late.

Carter Roberts of the World Wildlife Fund Journeys to the Woods, the Amazon and a Legendary Place for Tigers