Surrounded by friends and family, graduates of the Class of 2022 celebrated the 266th Commencement at Franklin Field. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns delivered the Commencement address, highlighting the life and values of Benjamin Franklin, and Penn Interim President Wendell Pritchett made remarks on the class’s “superpowers.” “Your shared experience as a class has been forged in the crucible of global change, enormous and at times quite scary,” Pritchett said. “This experience has granted your class certain gifts. Among them, your advanced ability to roll with the challenges, to navigate extreme uncertainty with resilient creativity.”
Roughly 3,500 Class of 2020 and 2021 graduates returned for an in-person Commencement celebration, with speaker Angela Duckworth invoking the paramecium to convey a message of exploration and persistence to alumni who’ve already had an opportunity to explore a path outside of Penn. “Graduates, my advice is not to worry if you don’t have your whole life mapped out right now,” Duckworth said. “If you feel a little lost, try something new—a new job, a new city, a new friendship. If you feel like things are getting better, keep going in that direction and, if not, change course.”
At a luncheon, the 12 recipients of the President’s Engagement, Innovation, and Sustainability Prizes gathered with mentors, previous Prize winners, and Penn leadership to recognize the teams’ work and accomplishments. Family members joined through Zoom. Eli Moraru, who won one of the Sustainability Prizes for nonprofit The Community Grocer, shared his thoughts after the event. “At Penn, we have all the resources, the education, and the support to make the changes we want to see in the world,” Moraru said. “We come to Penn not to do the safe thing but to change how we see the world. These President’s Prizes encourage students to take those risks and do something big.”
In a Q&A with Penn Today, Whitney Soule, vice provost and dean of admissions, discussed the University’s newly admitted class, the functions of the admissions office, and goals for the future. She also explained a recent change to how classes are announced, focusing less on admit rate and demographic proportions and more on “who—really who the students are—we admitted,” she said, instead referencing commitments to research, service, and jobs.
The Class of 2022 hosted its Ivy Day ceremony with remarks from Penn leadership; this year’s Ivy Day stone—traditionally affixed to campus buildings—was designed by J. Rachel Pierce, a recent graduate in the College of Arts & Sciences. “I have no doubt these students will change the world wherever they go,” said Vice Provost for University Life Mamta Accapadi, who gave the welcoming address. “They have already left their mark, here at Penn and beyond.”
The University announced the renovation of the Morgan Building on 34th Street. The building will have a new wing added on its south side, and will take the name of Stuart Weitzman, an award-winning designer and footwear icon. “Stuart Weitzman’s participation in this project reflects his belief in the power of design to improve lives and spark creativity,” said Interim Penn President Wendell Pritchett. “The Weitzman School has a pressing need for centrally located, state-of-the-art facilities and the Morgan Building offers the ideal solution.”
Twenty-five students, including 18 recent graduates from the Class of 2022, were awarded Fulbright grants for the 2022-23 academic year. The Fulbright Program is the United States government’s flagship international educational exchange program.
Dirk Trauner, a world-renowned interdisciplinary chemist, was appointed the George A. Weiss University Professor, with joint appointments in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Systems Pharmacology in the School of Arts & Sciences and Translational Therapeutics in the Perelman School of Medicine. “Dirk Trauner’s cutting-edge work in chemistry, physiology, and neuroscience epitomizes our Penn Integrates Knowledge initiative, which fosters collaboration and pathbreaking scholarship across schools and disciplines,” said Penn Interim President Wendell Pritchett.
The University announced the second cohort of awardees for the Projects for Progress grants, established by former Penn President Amy Gutmann and overseen by the Office of Social Equity & Community. Three teams were awarded $100,000 each to implement their initiatives focused on making an impact in West Philadelphia and the larger Philadelphia community. Projects include: a program to promote economic justice by training marginalized young people to be coaches for other young people, an initiative to reduce racial disparities in colorectal cancer in West Philadelphia, and a community partnership that helps to reimagine public school campus upgrades as equity infrastructure.
Stuart Weitzman Plaza, located between Meyerson Hall and the Fisher Fine Arts Library, was dedicated at a ceremony during Alumni Weekend. Among others, the dedication featured Stuart Weitzman, Weitzman Dean Fritz Steiner, Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli.
Ha-Nam Yoon, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, was named a 2022 Udall Scholar. She is among 382 candidates nominated nationwide; scholars are recognized for leadership, public service, and commitment to issues related to the environment or Native American nations.
A team of Penn scientists set out to understand why, beyond underlying medical conditions, COVID-19 severity can vary so greatly. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that dozens of genomic variants may drive these differences. The research is the first of its kind to include ethnically diverse Africans and a highly diverse dataset from the Penn Medicine BioBank.
Neuroscience News reported research led by scientists at Penn and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam that found both genetics and environmental factors played a role in shaping a socioeconomic status signature in the brain. “What we saw in the study is that some of the relationship between the brain and socioeconomic status could be explained by genetics, but there is a lot more to that relationship that remains even after you account for genetics,” says Gideon Nave, a marketing professor in the Wharton School and a study coauthor.
The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation announced its 2022 cycle of grantees, contributing to a total of $288,000 in funding for the year and 49 grants. Two new categories awarded alumni and applicants who planned community partnership projects. Projects include a “photovoice” project documenting caregiving at the beginning and end of life, a spring 2023 artist residency for the Asian American Studies Program, and a Philadelphia jazz oral history project.
Penn demographers Irma Elo and Samuel Preston of the School of Arts & Sciences, alongside Andrew Stokes of Boston University, and others, found that the age pattern of COVID-19 mortality changed markedly between March 2020 and October 2021, with rates significantly dropping for those 80 and older and increasing for those 25 to 54.
May graduates Robert Blend, Allan Cate, and Madeline McAvoy, who studied on NROTC scholarships, discuss their transition to military leadership after graduation and their time at Penn. “I feel like we really got the best deal of both worlds,” Blend says. “I found that the connections and the network that I’ve been able to make at Penn have been extremely impactful and probably will carry that through my naval career.”
Aman Husbands, a biologist in the School of Arts & Sciences who joined the faculty in January, discussed his interest in the “complexity and reproducibility” of plants, involving collaborations with computational biologists, mathematicians, and more. “How do you create these beautiful, complex shapes? Biology should go wrong all the time, and yet it doesn’t,” Husbands mused. “We’re interested in the mechanisms responsible.”
In Good Housekeeping, Salimah Meghani, a professor in the School of Nursing, commented on a Penn study about the disparities of who is treated for pain. “In our study, the disparities were greatest when the cause of the pain wasn’t readily verifiable, as in back pain and migraine,” says Salimah Meghani, a professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
