Thousands of students gathered at Franklin Field for Penn’s 268th Commencement. Paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, Interim President J. Larry Jameson encouraged students to continue to “strike while the iron’s hot and heat the iron while striking it.” Physician, researcher, and writer Siddhartha Mukherjee dared students to “return love and forgiveness to an unforgiving, unforgiven world.”
The Class of 2024 filled Irvine Auditorium for the interfaith Baccalaureate Ceremony with speeches, song, dance, and readings from sacred texts. “From your first year learning at a distance, to this final year with its historic challenges, you have excelled,” said Interim President J. Larry Jameson. “You achieved your goals with meaning, purpose, and ambition. Above all, you’ve remained committed to one indispensable constant: Joy.” (Image: Eddy Marenco)
Seven graduating students were recognized at an annual luncheon for the President’s Engagement and Innovation prizes, the largest of their kind in higher education. “We know they are going to take what they’ve learned at Penn and put it to work and make their ventures thrive,” remarked Interim President J. Larry Jameson. “But it’s not the size or the prestige of the award that makes them unique; it’s really their focus on excellence and service in combination.”
Two inaugural vice provost roles will advance the In Principle and Practice strategic framework, affirming Penn’s principles as an anchored, interwoven, inventive, and engaged university. The roles include the Vice Provost for the Arts and the Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action.
Alumni returned for an Alumni Weekend full of panels, parades, tours, parties, and more. Ned Weiser, a 1982 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences in attendance, said simply: “The Penn campus is my happy place.”
Third-year students became seniors at the annual Hey Day tradition. Students gathered holding bamboo canes and wearing custom red T-shirts and mock skimmer hats. Sri Pinnamareddy, who served as junior class president for the Class of 2025, noted from the podium, “Convocation, U-Night, and now Hey Day: These are rare but precious opportunities where we come together across our different schools, identities, extracurriculars, and passions and unite as one class, one Penn to celebrate.”
Tyshawn Sorey, the Presidential Assistant Professor of Music in the School of Arts & Sciences, was awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his musical composition “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith).” The song premiered in March 2023 at Atlanta Symphony Hall and was described by the awarding committee as “an introspective saxophone concerto with a wide range of textures presented in a slow tempo, a beautiful homage that’s quietly intense, treasuring intimacy rather than spectacle.”
Under the umbrella of the Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative, a new initiative will have Wharton collaborating with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT Enterprise licenses to all full-time and executive MBA students this fall to further enable their exploration of generative AI. Wharton will also establish two new funds to jumpstart efforts in research and teaching.
Thirteen Penn students and alumni have been awarded 2024 Fulbright grants. They will conduct research, pursue graduate degrees, or teach English in countries that include Argentina, Austria, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, and Tuvalu. Penn is consistently ranked as a “Top-Producing Institution” for the program.
A new meta-analysis of 29 randomized controlled trials by neurocriminologist Adrian Raine shows that omega-3 supplementation can reduce aggressive behavior across age and gender. “Omega-3 is not a magic bullet that is going to completely solve the problem of violence in society. But can it help? Based on these findings, we firmly believe it can, and we should start to act on the new knowledge we have,” says Raine. (Image: iStock/Dmitrii Ivanov)
A roundup of undergraduate and graduate student profiles highlights the achievements and hard work of students throughout the 2023-24 academic year, from student-athletes to community advocates, innovators and educators.
PennMOVES, operated by Business Services, ensured the Move-Out season was more clean, green, and convenient. Students could drop clothes, furniture, books, housewares, and unopened, nonperishable food for Goodwill and their partners at various locations near College Houses.
Nader Engheta and Firooz Aflatouni of the School of Engineering and Applied Science use regular tea time to discuss academic life, history, politics, and science. “A lot of times we get together,” says Aflatouni, of his and Engheta’s teatimes, “basically talking about the really interesting ideas coming from Nader and his group, and have a back-and-forth of me saying, ‘Oh, this, we can do this. We cannot do that.’”
Penn’s 5th annual U-Night brought second-year students together to celebrate the midway point in their journey to graduation. They celebrated with food, T-shirts, lights, music, speeches, and photo booths.
Penelope Lusk, a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate School of Education, was awarded a 2024 Queen Elizabeth Scholarship, covering all fees for a year of study at the University of Oxford in addition to a stipend. The scholarship is made possible by funding from Walter Annenberg; Penn and Oxford alternate sending one Ph.D. student to the other university as a non-degree visiting student.
Penn Today spoke with three first-generation college students who graduated as part of the Class of 2024. “It’s an identity that you honor because it is a triumph to be at an institution like Penn as a first-generation student, and it’s up to us to have a community and have a support system,” says Lynn Larabi, president of the First-Generation/Low-Income Dean’s Advisory Board.
The Ivy Day Ceremony is one of Penn’s longest held traditions, with the oldest award, the Spoon, dating to 1865. This year’s Ivy Stone was designed by Vereta Gour and was unveiled at Baccalaureate. “The Ivy Day Award Ceremony is an anchor to mark what is best about Penn: the students,” says Karu Kozuma, vice provost for University Life. “We celebrate their contributions and accomplishments while acknowledging the support network of family and loved ones who helped the recipients reach this point in their lives.” (Image credit: Prestige Portraits)
At a celebratory event, The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation recognized 21 projects awarded grants for the 2023-24 cycle, totaling $210,000 in support, in addition to $80,000 of support for 17 students and nine first-year seminar faculty. “What art offers are pathways for moving in spaces of discomfort,” said Sharon Hayes, Sachs board chair, “pathways for navigating encounters with difference, for lingering in relation to objects, systems, words, signs, shapes, forms, stories that we do not understand.” (Image: DWade Took That Photography)
Class of 2024 School of Engineering and Applied Science graduates Yash Dhir and Rahul Nambiar were awarded the President’s Innovation Prize for their web-based education management tool, Jochi, to help middle and high school students with learning differences, like ADHD. “I had learning differences in high school, and I had gone through a lot of obstacles to get to Penn,” Dhir says. “A lot of what we’re doing with Jochi, it’s really resonated with me.”
Since 1873, each graduating class has placed an Ivy Stone on campus to commemorate their time at Penn; there are more than 200 Ivy Day stones installed across campus. This year’s design was revealed during Baccalaureate, where students were also able to receive a pin bearing the likeness of this year’s stone.
Penn Global handed out the Penn Global Student Citizenship Award at the International Student and Scholar Services graduation reception at Perry World House, celebrating the more than 2,100 international students at Penn. Aishwarya Pawar, a Ph.D. candidate at the Perelman School of Medicine, is the graduate student winner, and David Kato, a fourth-year political science major in the School of Arts & Sciences, is the undergraduate winner.