I haven’t posted something new on Mappalicious for quite some time – but this is a piece of great news: Martin Seligman, co-founder and spiritus rector of Positive Psychology, has recently been awarded with the American Psychological Association’s “Award for Lifetime Contributions to Psychology”, APA’s highest award – joining luminaries such as Daniel Kahneman and Albert Bandura. Congratulations, Marty!
Penn
Positive Psychology News Digest | No. 14/2017
My favorite news and blog articles covering Positive Psychology and adjacent Topics from (roughly) the last seven days.
Penn News: Penn Researcher Awarded $2.5 Million to Study Well-being Effects of the Arts and Humanities by Michele Berger & Katherine Unger Baillie
New York Times: Turning Negative Thinkers Into Positive Ones by Jane Brody
Quartz: Knowing when to quit is as important as having grit by Susan David
Atlantic: How Loneliness Begets Loneliness by Olga Khazan
Fast Company: Want To Be Happier And More Successful? Learn To Like Other People by David Mayer
Psychology Today: Having a Religion Doesn’t Help You, But Practicing One Does by Ryan Niemiec
Psychology Today: Presidents and the Pursuit of Happiness by Benjamin Radcliff
New York Times: Check This Box if You’re a Good Person by Rebecca Sabky
Harvard Business Review: Meaningful Work Should Not Be a Privilege of the Elite by Richard Straub & Julia Kirby
Harvard Business Review: 6 Ways to Look More Confident During a Presentation by Kasia Wezowski
Feedback? You´re doing fine! Just keep on going…
A good friend of mine, Vivian Wagner, has founded a non-profit organization called 1World Social Capital Program (1WSCP). 1WSCP offers mentoring to aspiring female professionals and students, helping them to grow their social capital with 12 highly regarded and successful mentors who are doing amazing work to break the glass ceiling for women all around the world.
1WSCP regularly posts short videos of leaders who share important learning experiences from the careers. For my video, Vivian asked me to specifically think about how we can elevate and uplift the people around us.
I share a story that took place while still studying Positive Psychology at Penn. The video contains a shout-out to Professor Jane Dutton from the Center for Positive Organizations who facilitated our learning experience that day. An older written account of that experience can be found here.
Share and enjoy!
3 Questions for Angela Duckworth, Author of “Grit”
A few weeks ago, Penn professor Angela Duckworth has published her first book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. And while she´s typically busy shipping exceptional research, giving TED presentations, or talking to the New York Times, it says a lot about her character that she also takes the time to answer some questions for my little blog thingy. So, thank you, Angela!
What are you up to these days? Just kidding… What does it feel like to have published a bestseller? And what part did grit play in the process of writing up “Grit”
I’m devoting myself to Character Lab, a nonprofit I founded with educators Dave Levin and Dominic Randolph three years ago. The mission of Character Lab is to advance the science and practice of character development. This includes helping children develop intrapersonal strengths like grit and self-control but also interpersonal strengths like gratitude and pro-social purpose and, finally, intellectual strengths like curiosity and open-minded thinking.
While I’m thrilled with the success of the book, I can also tell you that my attention is entirely on the future and new challenges. And, as for grit while writing Grit? Writing this book is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I almost quit many times. So, yes, I used my grit to do it, and I learned a lot about grit in the process!
You´re incredibly successful as a researcher, but also as an educator, first via your TED talk, and now with the book. Clearly, a lot people are intrigued by the concept of grit. Still, I’ve read a couple of articles that give pushback to the concept for allegedly ignoring the socio-economic factors that lead to success in school and life in general. What’s your take on this?
At a recent conference, I sat down next to a sociologist. She knew my work, and it didn’t take long for her to express extreme disdain—even anger—for what she called the grit message. “What’s that,” I asked? “Well, put it this way,” she said. “I happen to think that poverty and inequality matter a heck of a lot more than grit.” I thought for a moment. Then I said, “I see your point.”
If you pit grit against structural barriers to achievement, you may well decide that grit is less worthy of our attention. But I think that’s the right answer to the wrong question.
Caring about how to grow grit in our young people—no matter their socio-economic background—doesn’t preclude concern for things other than grit. For example, I’ve spent a lot of my life in urban classrooms, both as a teacher and as a researcher. I know how much the expertise and care of the adult at the front of the room matter. And I know that a child who comes to school hungry, or scared, or without glasses to see the chalkboard, is not ready to learn. Grit alone is not going to save anyone.
But the importance of the environment is two-fold. It’s not just that you need opportunity in order to benefit from grit. It’s also that the environments our children grow up in profoundly influence their grit and every other aspect of their character. This is the grit message in my words:
Grit may not be sufficient for success, but it sure is necessary.
If we want our children to have a shot at a productive and satisfying life, we adults should make it our concern to provide them with the two things all children deserve: challenges to exceed what they were able to do yesterday and the support that makes that growth possible.
So, the question is not whether we should concern ourselves with grit or structural barriers to achievement. In the most profound sense, both are important, and more than that, they are intertwined.
I’ve pursued and completed a Ph.D. but the truth is: I entirely lost interest in the topic after the first year. Still, I hung in there for another 3.5 years for reasons that the founders of Self-Determination Theory, Ryan and Deci, would probably call “externally regulated”. And while I suffered emotionally during that time, I now do enjoy the upsides that having a Ph.D. entails at times. Was that grit? Or “stupid grit”? Or just stupid?
Good question. I might have asked myself, “Why am I pursuing this Ph.D.?” And in response, what would you have said? The answer gives you a higher-order goal—the “why” that gives meaning to the Ph.D. Was there a way to pivot in terms of your topic or research to achieve that higher-order goal?
And, in terms of pure interest, is there an adjacent topic to the one your pursued that you would have enjoyed more?* Interest and purpose are the drivers of passion, and I think if there is really no interest and no sense of purpose, you need not feel the compulsion to finish what you started.
Thank you, Angela – and best of luck with your book and the Character Lab!
Dr. Angela Duckworth is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies non-IQ competencies, including self-control and grit, which predict success both academically and professionally.
Prior to pursuing a career in academia, Angela was a McKinsey consultant and, for five years, a math teacher in several public schools. In 2013, she was selected as a MacArthur Fellow. Very recently, Angela has published her first book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance with Scribner. It was an instant New York Times best seller and remains on the best seller list today.
* The truth is: When you don´t want to work on your Ph.D., you start to put a lot of time and energy in other things, just to have your calendar really, really stuffed as an excuse. For me, this led to discovering Positive Psychology in the first place, which then led to studying at Penn, which led to meeting Angela.
This is one of my learnings: Whether something is truly good or bad for us should probably not be judged in the moment. It often takes a couple of years to connect the dots and see the real value of our life´s episodes.
Positive Psychology News Digest on Mappalicious | No. 25/2016
My favorite pieces covering Positive Psychology and adjacent from (roughly) the last seven days.
Psychology Today: What Would a Happiness Potion Do for You? by Michael Bishop
Positive Prescription: 7 Ways to make your Day a little bit better by Samantha Boardman
Guardian: The secret to happiness is all in your head by Julianne Chiaet
Greater Good Science Center: What Are Your Happiness Strengths and Weaknesses? by Tchiki Davis
Fast Company: You should probably compare yourself to others more, not less by David Mayer
Time Money: Empathy is the hottest trend in leadership by Denver Nicks
The Positive Organization: The Transformative Power of Purpose by Robert Quinn
The Smart Set: The Positive Psychology of Metal Music by Christine Ro
Time Health: Forgiving other people is good for your health by Alexandra Sifferlin
Greater Good Science Center: Can You Incentivize Generosity? by Jill Suttie
Penn LPS: Alumni Stories, no author
Mappsterview No. 7: Jessica Amortegui, Positive Business Champion
I was in the ninth cohort (2013/14) of the Master of Applied Positive Program at Penn – and the program is going strong. Consequently, there are tons of brilliant MAPP Alumni out there who have fascinating stories to tell: About their experience with the program, about Positive Psychology in general – and about themselves of course. I really want to hear those stories. That´s why I started Mappsterviews.
Please introduce yourself briefly:
I am an introvert masquerading as an extrovert who still gets deathly shy meeting new people. Luckily this all dissipates when speaking to large groups (the bigger the better!). I have spent the past five years working in Silicon Valley and seeing my uber active boys, age 7 and 4, grow up way too fast.
What did you do before joining the MAPP program at Penn?
I started my career in consulting, first as an external consultant and then moving in-house. I dabbled in different kinds of consulting, from management to organizational development, to change management and human capital. After about seven years, I made the move to inside a company, and really enjoyed it. Besides the reduced travel load, I was able to build deeper, more meaningful relationships with employees. I also loved the awesome employee discount perks (Nike and Victoria Secret were my favorites!) After three years at a software company I am grateful to back at a product company building cool tech gizmos that I can procure with the coveted an employee discount. 🙂
What got you interested in Positive Psychology in the first place?
I was actually an unconscious, quasi-competent practitioner for a few years without even knowing it! I was delivering these two-day culture shaping workshops that applied many concepts of positive psychology in powerful experiential learning exercises – gratitude, positive emotions, strengths-based perspectives, etc. I became so passionate about the content and delivery that I began to read more about the work. I serendipitously stumbled on the MAPP website in 2007. I was pregnant with my first child at the time and thought I would never be able to squeeze the program into life. In 2013, six years later, I finally made it happen!
You now work for Logitech. What´s your role there?
I lead the Global Talent Development function. I joined a little over a year ago, and started development at the company – they didn’t have anything for employees. It has been awesome to create and build from scratch. The foundation has very much been inspired by the MAPP program. I have had the most amazing sand box to test, learn, and apply what I learned. The company is just over 2,500 employees globally, so you are able to see and feel the systemic change. That has been the most rewarding part of my job – to work at scale and see the impact.
Very recently, your company was awarded with the grand prize at Ross School´s Positive Business Project competition. What´s your project about?
I think of the project like my MAPP capstone – it was nine months worth of work that came together in a variety of mutually reinforcing initiatives. I knew if I was going to imbue positive practices into the organization I would need to pull many levers, and do them simultaneously. I created a two-day workshop that provides all employees an entrée into positive psychology. Participants experience vulnerability and connection, create a team purpose statement, and uncover their character strengths, to name a few. This is what we called our signature Logitech program. In one year, we had nearly 800 employees around the globe go through it – all by word of mouth.
I believe investments like that – in the whole person – will never backfire. It breeds a kind of loyalty that no cafeteria and ping pong table can ever deliver.
This intensive experience was complimented with 90-minute positive deviant workshops that we ran globally. We also rolled out job crafting to the entire organization. Together, employees got hit with tools and techniques that began to build different ways of thinking about themselves and their jobs. They began to reflect on themselves as people – not just employees. I believe investments like that – in the whole person – will never backfire. It breeds a kind of loyalty that no cafeteria and ping pong table can ever deliver.
What are the future plans for your initiative?
We want to build more relevant touch points with our employees. Our first phase was broad and now we are trying to go deep. We are working on producing more custom experiences for different employee segments that can meet them where they are and then take them to where they want to be. We have some cool new tools we are piloting to make that happen; tools that will give every employee one-one-one support and encouragement so they can truly flourish. This story is being written now, so stay tuned!
Given that you’ve successfully implemented Positive Psychology practices at your workplace: What´s the most important piece of advice for HR colleagues who´d like to do the same?
Oh wow – I feel so humbled by this question. I am the one who is always needing the advice! I think, in general, I have to reveal a dirty little secret. I have found some Positive Psychology words can really turn people off – to say you are taking a strengths-based approach, can make some, sadly, immediately shut down. I actually shy away from using a lot of the positive psychology language (this feels like a shame, as I do believe that words create our worlds, à la David Cooperrider!).
I try to describe what I want to do in language that I know matters to the organization. What do they want to see happen? Even if I don’t agree, I know it’s what they need to hear to support my cause. I then craft experiences that have an equal amount of pathos and logos. The employees and leaders the experience and embody it. They begin to talk about gratitude, strengths, connection, autonomy, and purpose – not me. I think there always needs to be a sense of co-creation despite knowing our larger agendas. Sometimes my ego wants to “prove” that my way is the more “enlightened” way. I step back and remember that what’s important is that I am not proving myself, but rather improving my craft.
A Surprising Feature of the Human Condition: Do you suffer from “Fear of Happiness”?
I guess that most people would be willing to agree to a statement such as: “All humans strive to be happy.” But it turns out that might be wrong.
While most people certainly try to experience happiness (in all its different facets) most of the time, there are some individuals out there that consciously and unconsciously try to avoid being happy – at least when it happens too often and/or too long. Here´s the story…
A lot of scientists in the field of psychology readily admit that their research started out as me-search – that´s investigating a topic which is highly relevant to one´s own life. Now, I´m not a scientist (by profession), but that doesn´t keep me from conducting my own (quick and dirty) research projects on the side. And more often than not, those projects certainly qualify as me-search.
General Consent
Late in 2012, I published a book here in Germany (Lizenz zur Zufriedenheit = License for Satisfaction) that is based on a coaching study I conducted in 2009/10. Back then, I tried to measure certain “meta-themes” that frequently seemed to be perceivable with my coaching clients. I created and validated a questionnaire to assess the occurrence of these themes and then correlated those numbers (among other things) with Ed Diener´s Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS).
There was one theme that displayed a rather strong correlation with life satisfaction (.49) and it also turned out to be the strongest predictor in a step-wise regression model. Back then, I called this factor general consent. Here are two of the items I used (roughly translated from German):
- At times I believe that somehow, I am not allowed to reach my life goals.
- At times I believe that somehow, I am not granted to reach my life goals.
Satisfaction with life of those people who scored high on these questions was severely diminished on average – and they also earned significantly less money. That´s why – in the end – I chose “License for Satisfaction” to be the book´s title. Some people seem to have an internal permission to reach their life goals, to be happy, and satisfied. Basically, they are free to do whatever they want. With other folks, unfortunately that´s not the case.
Introducing Self-Permission
I took up the subject once again when it was time to pick a topic for my capstone thesis (Introducing Self-Permission: Theoretical Framework and Proposed Assessment) while being enrolled in the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at Penn. I decided to explore the idea of general consent in more detail, and to ground it in extant research. I tried to explain how it is similar and/or different from well-established psychological constructs such as self-efficacy, self-determination, optimism, self-esteem, self-acceptance, mal-adaptive schemata, and self-handicapping (among other concepts) – renaming it self-permission throughout the process. This in an overview of the nomological net I set out to explore in the paper:
To finish, I proposed a scale to measure a person´s level of self-permission – but I did not have the time to carry out an actual empirical study.* Here are a few sample items (some of them are framed in positive way, some point towards the other end of the continuum):
I do not have the permission to reach my life goals.
I have full approval to live a life full of purpose.
I am not granted to live up to my full potential.
I deserve to be everything that I can possibly be.
I do not have full endorsement to reach my life goals.
I have full consent to make the best out of my life.
Fear of Happiness
For some reason, while doing literature research back then, I did not stumble upon a very much related strand of research: In 2012, Paul Gilbert (Kingsway Hospital, Derby, UK) and colleagues published a paper where they explore a concept by the name of fear of happiness. Consistent with my own ideas, they conjecture that some individuals experience a kind of aversive conditioning with regards to positive emotional states such as contentment and happiness during childhood – where, e.g., a child is punished for being (overly) happy, or, in a milder version, where positive states are treated with indifference, e.g., because one or both parents are severely depressed (…and this is the point where research turns into me-search…).
Gilbert et al. proposed and validated a scale in order to measure fear of happiness. Here are some of their items:
Good feelings never last.
I feel I don’t deserve to be happy.
I don’t let myself get too excited about positive things or achievements.
When you are happy you can never be sure that something is not going to hit you out of the blue.
Now, here is the surprising and, to me, rather shocking news: When the researchers gave that questionnaire to a sample of about 200 people and calculated the correlation between their fear of happiness scale and an established measure of depressive symptoms, that number turned out to be .70. That´s a huge association. Here´s part of their conclusion:
[…] We were surprised by the size of the correlation at r = .70, this indicates that clinicians probably need to explore fears of happiness in detail and in terms of enhancing well-being. We should not assume that ‘challenging negative thoughts’ or increasing positive behaviours necessarily are experienced positively. […] Some depressed people really do struggle with allowing themselves to experience positive emotions in general and can have a ‘taboo on pleasure’.
I´m excited to see how, in the future, Positive Psychology might assist in helping people with this special “condition”. I sense that this will be about creating a learning process.
Learning to allow oneself to be happy, maybe even to “bear the pain” of being happy – until it hurts no more and becomes something completely normal, just the way it was meant to be.
*If you are a psychology researcher in search of an interesting research topic: I would still love to see an empirical study on self-permission come to life. In my current life as a manager, I do not have the capacity to carry out a full-blown research study – but I´d be glad to provide all of my theoretical spadework, and I could even provide funding to generate a sample via, e.g., mechanical turk. Please reach out if you´re interested…
From Penn with Love: The 3 Positive Psychology-Infused Books you need to read in 2016
2016 is going to be a really nice year for non-fiction aficionados. Below, you´ll find three upcoming books that were all written by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania: Angela Duckworth, Adam Grant, and Scott Barry Kaufman.
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
by Adam Grant will be out on February 2, 2016. About the content:
How can we originate new ideas, policies and practices without risking it all? Adam Grant shows how to improve the world by championing novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battling conformity, and bucking outdated traditions. Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt. Parents will learn how to nurture originality in children, and leaders will discover how to fight groupthink to build cultures that welcome dissent.
Here´s what Malcolm Gladwell has to say about the book: “Reading Originals made me feel like I was seated across from Adam Grant at a dinner party, as one of my favorite thinkers thrilled me with his insights and his wonderfully new take on the world.”
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
by Angela Duckworth will be out on May 3, 2016. About the content:
Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, MacArthur “genius” Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success. Rather, other factors can be even more crucial such as identifying our passions and following through on our commitments. Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently bemoaned her lack of smarts, Duckworth describes her winding path through teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not “genius” but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance. She takes readers into the field to visit teachers working in some of the toughest schools, cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance.
This is what Arianna Huffington thinks about the book: “At a time when our collective notion of success has shrunk to the point of being unrecognizable, Angela Duckworth arrives to restore it. With a mix of masterful storytelling and the latest science, she shows that perseverance and passion matter at least as much as talent and intelligence. And far from simply urging us to work harder for the sake of working harder, Grit offers a truly sane perspective: that true success comes when we devote ourselves to endeavors that give us joy and purpose.”
Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind
by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire will be out two days from now, on December 29, 2015. About the content:
The book offers a glimpse inside the “messy minds” of highly creative people. Revealing the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology, along with engaging examples of artists and innovators throughout history, the book shines a light on the practices and habits of mind that promote creative thinking. Kaufman and Gregoire untangle a series of paradoxes – like mindfulness and daydreaming, seriousness and play, openness and sensitivity, and solitude and collaboration – to show that it is by embracing our own contradictions that we are able to tap into our deepest creativity.
What Martin Seligman has to say about the book: “Scott Barry Kaufman has just written the go-to book on creativity and genius. With Carolyn Gregoire, he puts together the newest scientific findings from the brain, from mental life and from the messy world of emotion to whiz us to the cutting edge of the highest human accomplishments.”
Where can I get a University Degree in Positive Psychology?
If you have been following Mappalicious in the past, you´ll know that I was part of the 9th cohort of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology Program (MAPP) at University of Pennsylvania. To my knowledge, this program has been the first to offer a full-blown master´s degree in this specific area of psychology. And I guess it is save to say that – to this date – it is also the most renowned one, being (in part) taught by Marty Seligman himself, together with some of his closest co-workers.
Ever since running this blog, people have approached me to get info on alternative educational opportunities in the field of Positive Psychology. Accordingly, below you´ll find a list of university-based programs that offer an “official” degree (such as a Master´s) in or closely related to Positive Psychology.
If you are interested in obtaining additional information on alternative learning opportunities, I highly encourage you to visit Seph Fontane Pennock´s site. There, you´ll find a multitude of other programs, such as summer schools, graduate courses, certificates offered by private institutions, and online courses.
Positive Psychology Programs
Master of Positive Psychology at Aarhus University, Denmark: The information given is available in Danish only.
MSc in Applied Positive Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University: You’ll be introduced to research and interventions around topics like positive and negative emotions, character strengths, motivation, resilience, creativity, wisdom and other conditions shown to make a difference to the lives of individuals, groups and organisations. You’ll constantly test your skills and apply them to real-life situations, coming to understand which tools and strategies to use in delivering meaningful, high-impact interventions. The course is taught in Cambridge and Paris. The program is offered as a full-time program (12-15 months); or part-time (28-33 months).
MSc in Applied Positive Psychology at Bucks New University, Buckinghamshire (UK): The course will be of interest to individuals in a range of professions and occupational roles that include (but not limited to): teachers, human resources, organizational development, coaches in different disciplines (such as management or sports), psychologists, psychotherapists, counselors, and medical professionals. It´s a full MSc and can completed part-time over two years, though you may choose to study over three years and devote your final year to your dissertation.
M.A. Positive Developmental Psychology/M.A. Positive Organizational Psychology at Claremont Graduate University, California: Claremont offers several concentrations focusing on Positive Psychology as part of their M.A. program in psychology. For more info, please follow the link.
MSc in Applied Positive Psychology & Coaching Psychology at University of East London: The program fully integrates positive psychology and coaching psychology to create an innovative training programme for those promoting wellbeing. From the point of view of positive psychology, the course will have a strong foundation in cutting-edge theory and research relating to wellbeing. The coaching element will feature advanced training in working with clients and groups in professional capacities. The program is offered as a full-time program in one year; or part-time in two years.
Executive Master in Positive Leadership and Strategy at Instituto de Empresa (IE), Madrid: This program is designed for experienced executives interested in achieving outstanding business results via the proven, hands-on methods of positive leadership. By gaining a deep understanding of the hard science of positive psychology and human behavior, participants learn how to optimize overall strategy and business functions, architect new work processes, and design organizational structures to achieve optimal performance in themselves and the people they lead. The program is offered part-time over 13 months.
Executive Master in Applied Positive Psychology at University of Lisbon: The information given is available in Portuguese only.
Master of Applied Positive Psychology at University of Melbourne: The program will equip you to apply positive psychology principles in your professional and personal life, with a special focus on creating and evaluating positive and meaningful change, and promoting optimal leadership within organizations. Learning and assessment will take place through a range of tasks, including debates, case studies, role plays, videos, journal entries and research activities. In addition, you will be encouraged to apply positive psychology principles to your own life and to critically reflect on these experiences. The program is offered as a full-time program (12 months); part-time options are available.
Master of Arts in Positive Psychology (MAPP) at North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa: I´m not sure if the program is still offered as the link seems to be broken.
Master of Applied Positive Psychology at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: The original, so to speak. The program was the first in the world to offer a degree in this rigorous field of study. Dr. Martin Seligman, founder of the discipline of positive psychology, created the program to educate and train students at the cutting edge of the field. The program’s hybrid model allows you to explore the theory and practice of positive psychology without relocating to Philadelphia, so you can continue working full-time. The program consists of nine courses, completed during one year of full-time study.
Specialization in Positive Psychology & Technology as part of the MsC program in psychology at University of Twente (Netherlands): The information given is available in Dutch only.
Certificate of Advanced Studies in Positive Psychology at University of Zurich, Switzerland: The information given is available in German only.
Do you want to become a UPenn Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP)? This way, please…
Right now, the 11. cohort of Penn´s MAPP program is well on its way. I was in cohort No. 9 (here you can find a summary of my experiences over the two semesters in 2013/14). Our alumni association asked us to pass on this information to potential students:
1) There will be a live information session in Penn´s Huntsman Hall on November 5. For more info and registration:
https://www.applyweb.com/fixie/form/s/T8413mk
2) There will be a virtual information session on December 3. For more info and registration:
https://www.applyweb.com/fixie/form/s/T8513ml
3) You can now apply! Deadline is March 1, 2016. Info on the application requirements can be found here:
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/graduate/mapp/admissions/application
Mappalicious 