Penn’s new strategic plan focuses on magnifying the University’s strengths and extending its impact in the future—while also sending a message that “we’re in control of our destiny” in a turbulent time.
You could be excused for not being aware of the University’s latest strategic framework, In Principle and Practice: Penn’s Focus on Tomorrow. Successor to the long-running Penn Compact, which guided the administration of President Amy Gutmann Hon’22 during her 18-year tenure, In Principle and Practice was first introduced in November 2023 in the midst of the controversies then raging on campus, soon followed by the resignation of former Penn president Liz Magill in December.
The product of a collaborative and inclusive effort launched by Magill at the start of her administration to collect advice and information on the University’s future direction from all sectors of the Penn community—through the Red & Blue Advisory Committee, chaired by then Annenberg School Dean and current Penn Provost John L. Jackson Jr.—the new plan was by design less identified with a single leader than was Gutmann’s Compact, which she unveiled at her inauguration in 2004. And Penn Interim President J. Larry Jameson—who recently agreed to stay in College Hall through the 2025–26 academic year—has embraced it as Penn’s path forward.
“In Principle and Practice announces and advances Penn’s values and strengths. It channels our academic missions and the power of our world-class schools, centers, and Health System,” Jameson wrote recently in the Gazette [“From College Hall,” May|Jun 2024]. “It also encompasses how we’re combating hate and ensuring safety and wellbeing on our campus.”
In Principle and Practice (in-principle-and-practice.upenn.edu) lays out four principles that represent “the essence of who we are,” defining Penn as a university that is anchored, interwoven, inventive, and engaged. Those lead on to a list of five practices through which Penn will “act on our principles with passion and urgency”:
• Accelerate interdisciplinary pursuits by seeking “exponential growth” in such efforts, already a distinctive part of Penn culture; finding new ways to strengthen and integrate arts and humanities as a core part of the University; and further enhancing Penn’s role as an “epicenter for translating knowledge into actions and solutions.”
• Lead on the great challenges of our time, including a focus on climate science and the human impacts of climate change; health issues from research to technology transfer, patient care, and public policy; data-driven research and teaching and work to ensure that technology is deployed in ways that are just and beneficial; and democracy, trust, and truth, which involves initiatives to promote values, seek truth, and uphold the role of higher education in society.
• Grow opportunity and strengthen community by supporting a diverse community of students, faculty, and staff; working to overcome hate in all its forms; and continuing efforts to expand opportunity and affordability.
• Deepen connection with neighbors and the world by pursuing “all that a collaborative urban institution and caring neighbor can do” and striving “to be a model global citizen.”
• Foster leadership and service by cultivating service-minded leadership among students, faculty, and staff; seeking to advance instruction and learning and living initiatives to prepare future generations to think critically and lead effectively; and expanding existing and seeking out new means for convening, communicating, and collaborating across divisions and divides.
“First and foremost, I think this was an incredibly collaborative process,” says Jackson, looking back on the work of the Red & Blue Advisory Committee. It brought together “the perspectives and opinions of a wide swath of the folks who care about this institution, in a way that allowed us to have a true and comprehensive sense of what people were thinking about both where Penn is now and what we should be prioritizing in the future.”
The committee collected anonymous surveys through an online portal that were later collated and mapped onto data from in-person sessions with students, faculty, and staff. The University’s various schools, centers, and institutes did their own information gathering, which was added to the mix. “Any group on campus that wanted to meet with the committee, we met with them,” Jackson says, and a particular effort was also made to include community input. Meetings involved one committee member serving as a kind of moderator, while another acted as scribe, recapping the major points made, so that people would know “that the committee really did understand what they were hearing.”
Rather than push for any change in direction for the University, a common theme was an intensification of efforts in areas where Penn is already distinguished. That included the University’s relationship with West Philadelphia and the rest of the city. “We kept hearing different articulations of this idea that Penn has to be thinking in a much more proactive and partner-based way with the local community,” Jackson says. While that has been a longtime focus, “we can always do it better,” he adds. Similarly, when it came to the subject of fostering interdisciplinary efforts, the emphasis was on “things we can and should do to make sure we’re not just talking about it but really rolling back the barriers to do it easily and well.”
A report detailing what the committee had learned then made its way to the president’s office, where it was shaped into a form that articulated the identified goals. The question, says Jackson, was “how do we take all of these really important contributions, this valuable input, and frame it in a way that gives people handles to hold on to them?” The concept of principles and practices combines “the sort of lofty ideal versions of how we hear people talking about Penn and its value today and then the very specific ways we can concretize that into actions.”
Rather than “the brainchild of one individual,” the framework “really is something that is emanating from the campus and from the community in ways that make it, as far as we’re concerned, a really good beacon for the kinds of things that should keep us focused in the future.”
While the committee’s work predated much of the controversy that marked campus last year, he adds, some concerns that were raised anticipated those issues. “We talked a lot about misinformation, about media literacy, about thinking through questions of civic engagement, what form it should take,” Jackson says. “[We] spent a lot of time really trying to understand what it means to teach students how to talk across difference. And so all of those were issues that were important then and that remain important, with maybe a slightly different kind of urgency to them with all of the attention on higher ed right now.”
In addition to speaking to the current moment, the document goes beyond that in ways that “allow us to think not just about short-term gains and benefits, but what are the ways in which we can set the institution up to continue to be this incredibly important contributor to knowledge production and circulation for decades to come,” Jackson adds.
One example is artificial intelligence, which got an explosion of attention following the release of ChatGPT as the committee was doing its work [“Alien Minds, Immaculate Bullshit, Outstanding Questions,” May|Jun 2023]. There has been plenty of work going on at Penn on big data, large language models, and similar topics, Jackson says, but highlighting them in the plan helps focus on “how can we make the case to people not just about the sort of expertise we already have, but about the difference it can make when we lean into it even more substantially.”
In the case of the focus on climate, “clearly, we’re trying to think about climate science and policy in ways that are comprehensive and multidisciplinary,” Jackson says. “So that’s another space where we feel like part of what we’re trying to figure out is how to build on the strengths of our traditional disciplines.”
The plan foresees an even more extensive and wide-ranging commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration in Penn’s future. “We can always make it easier to attract the kind of scholars who will not just be good at the stuff they were trained at but who help us to recalibrate and reimagine ways of organizing our approach to knowledge production,” Jackson says. “So we can create different opportunities to rethink what kinds of sparks might fly from putting seemingly far-flung corners of the campus into more consistent conversation around some of these questions.”
Back when he was serving as the senior vice dean for strategic initiatives at the Perelman School of Medicine and overseeing the school’s latest strategic plan, Serving a Changing World, David Asch GM’87 WG’89 was also made a member the Red & Blue Advisory Committee to “release some synergies if there were any,” he says. When Jameson moved to College Hall, Asch followed, with a new title of senior vice president for strategic initiatives and the rollout of In Principle and Practice added to his portfolio.
Asch sees the story of the University’s plan as a kind of mirror image of the Penn Medicine effort. Work on that plan started in July 2022, in the waning days of the COVID-19 pandemic. In that environment, one possible reaction to starting work on a new strategic plan might have been “Really? Now?” Asch suggests. “Don’t we want to have a break?” Instead, though, “the response we all had was that what is exhausting is this sense of reacting. What’s energizing is actually taking the reins and plotting your own path forward.”
In contrast, the University’s planning process was initiated out of “a sense of energy with the new president.” But by the time it was announced in November, “no one was paying attention,” he says. In the wake of the University’s subsequent “abrupt” leadership transition, the decision could have been made “to put the strategic plan aside and focus on some other things. But Larry made a different decision, which I think was the right one, which was, Let’s use this as our offense,” Asch says. “The idea was, Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. I think that is what’s energizing. And I think it sends a message that we’re in control of our destiny.”
One of the ways the University is now trying to raise awareness and “give In Principle and Practice the birthday party it didn’t get” originally has been to “do some bold things early on,” says Asch. He cites the creation of two new vice provost positions, one overseeing the arts and the other focusing on climate science, policy, and action—for which searches were under way as of July, possibly to be completed by the start of the academic year. Also in the works are plans to “move a lot more boldly into data and AI,” Asch says.
He also points to the June announcement of the launch of Penn Washington as the “physical and programmatic home of the University of Pennsylvania’s engagement in the nation’s capital.” Under the leadership of Vice Provost for Global Initiatives Ezekiel Emanuel, it will incorporate the existing Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy & Global Engagement with a new Penn Franklin Initiative involving courses, scholarships, and events on domestic policy issues, tying into the plan’s focus on democracy, trust, and truth.
That area “has a lot more meaning now,” says Asch. “Obviously, there are threats to democracy.” The 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia is coming up in 2026, and that may be an occasion for some programming around issues of democracy, but Penn has “a lot of activity there already,” he adds. “We have [SNF] Paideia [“Creating Civil Citizens,” May|Jun 2024]. We’ve got great historians of democracy. We have a really strong presence there.”
To generate more new ideas, the administration has set aside roughly $3 million over three years to make grants for projects that would “advance the content of In Principle and Practice,” Asch adds. “It could be a new curricular program, it could be new civic engagement scholarship—anything—and can be originated by students, staff or faculty, or some combination, across schools. We’re leaving it really open.” Asch has been working on the logistics and application process for the program, which likely will offer two levels of award for projects of up to $50,000 and up to $250,000, with funding spread between the central administration and the schools. Along with initiatives being pushed from the top, such as in climate and the arts, “there are a bunch of things that need to come from the grassroots,” says Asch. “The grant mechanism is a good catalyst for that.”
Asch believes that the final reports from the Task Force on Antisemitism and the Presidential Commission on Countering Hate and Building Community, released in May [“Gazetteer,” Jul|Aug 2024], complement each other and the overall strategic plan. “When you read the reports, they’re substantially, directionally in the same place,” he says. “There’s no conflict and, they overlap with In Principle and Practice.”
A lot of what alumni have heard about the University lately has been “about congressional inquiries, and encampments, and abrupt leadership changes—and those are really important, but they’re not the story,” Asch says. “I think we want alumni to feel like Penn intends to be here serving the community forever. And that we are constantly planning and aiming toward our future, and that the big directions don’t change—but you do tack a little bit. To use a ship analogy, we’re staffing the bridge. And we’re moving forward to serve the world.” —JP
