Gift | A $30 million gift from the Annenberg Foundation and the Annenberg Trust will fund a new building on campus for the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC).
The building, which will connect by plaza to the Annenberg School for Communication at 3620 Walnut Street, will be completed in 2008. It will bring together under one roof the 10-year-old public-policy center’s programs in media and the developing child; political and health communication; and information and society. The facility also will include a large space for lectures, conferences, and public debates.
“This extraordinary gift from the Annenberg Foundation demonstrates its deep understanding of the important role that substantive dialogue and debate play in maintaining a strong and engaged democracy,” Penn President Amy Gutmann said.
Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Director of the APPC and the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication, noted that the center has grown beyond the space available in the Annenberg School. The gift will “make it possible for the scholars in the center to retain their close ties to the school and the campus,” she said.
The Annenberg Foundation also has given $500,000 for graduate student fellowships in the humanities and endowed a $2 million Vartan Gregorian Chair in the Humanities, honoring the former Penn provost, who is now president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
