Approximately 6,000 graduates gathered at Franklin Field for Penn’s 270th Commencement. In his speech, Penn President J. Larry Jameson challenged students to cherish the arts, embrace nature, and choose people. Commencement speaker and historian Michael Beschloss advised students to embrace resilience during tough moments in life. “Try to get back on your feet, but most of all, get moving again,” he said.
Ask a graduate of the Class of 2026 how they succeeded in earning their degree, and the response is ‘with the support of my family and friends.’ Penn Today captured a celebration of that support in photos.
The Class of 2026 consisted of 7,457 diplomas awarded to 6,879 graduates, accounting for dual degrees and submatriculations; 80 countries represented in the undergraduate class; 74 Benjamin Franklin Scholars; and 260 graduating Penn Quakers involved in varsity sports.
Generations of Penn graduates enjoyed a walking tour of Old City, a celebration of Kelly Writers House’s 30th anniversary, a gallery hop at the ICA and Arthur Ross Gallery, and more during the annual Alumni Weekend.
The Class of 2026 Ivy Day Ceremony honored graduating seniors for exceptional leadership, service, and impact. The ceremony also marked the unveiling of the class Ivy Stone, celebrating both student achievements and the enduring connection between graduates and the Penn community. (Images: ImageFlo)
At an Alumni Weekend panel event, Penn President J. Larry Jameson moderated a discussion about how AI has influenced biology and education. The conversation featured Hamsa Bastani of the Wharton School and César de la Fuente of Penn Medicine, who spoke about AI as an opportunity for personalized education and a tool to uncover new antimicrobials to treat antibiotic-resistant infections.
Wharton alumnus Greg Mondre and his wife, Alexandra, gifted $20 million to advance financial aid and opportunity for middle-income students. “This gift is an acceleration of a vision to make higher education accessible to all, and it will help us set a new national standard for supporting middle-income families," said Penn President J. Larry Jameson.”
Gabrielle Fine, a May 2026 graduate in the Wharton School who studied in the Environmental, Social, and Governance Factors for Business program, has a passion for the environment and an ambition to aid businesses in their sustainability efforts. Penn’s financial aid expansion to middle-income students, the Quaker Commitment, she says, made that possible. “Without the financial aid, I wouldn’t be here,” she says.
In the third installment in the Chapters of Change limited series, recalling historical moments when Penn has responded to society’s needs, Penn Today explored major steps the University took from the 1980s to the early 2000s to work with and for its neighbors through mutually beneficial partnerships in West Philadelphia and beyond.
In the final installment of the Chapters of Change series, Penn Today looked back at how the University spent the past 30 years building a sustained effort to become a global leader in the life sciences—by aligning patient care, research, and education under Penn Medicine; advancing translational medicine; creating the Pennovation Center; and supporting today’s interdisciplinary research through infrastructure like Amy Gutmann Hall.
Perry World House hosted the first panel in a series: “’A Republic, If You Can Keep It’—Ben Franklin: A Celebration as America Turns 250.” The panel, moderated by Graduate School of Education Dean Katharine Strunk, featured former presidents and deans from across the country, as well as opening remarks from Penn President J. Larry Jameson. Jameson called higher education one of America’s most “enduring public goods.”
The Office of Social Equity & Community announced its sixth annual cohort of Projects for Progress award recipients. 2026 teams will receive up to $100,000 apiece to support access to community service, reproductive health, and clean water in Philadelphia.
Twenty-eight Penn students and alumni have been offered Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants for the 2026-27 academic year. Penn consistently ranks as a “Top-Producing Institution,” among those with the highest number of candidates selected for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.
May 2026 graduate Rachel Ou received a Schwarzman Scholarship, a one-year master’s degree in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing. She is one of 28 Penn students and alumni who have received the scholarship since it launched in 2016.
Three Penn faculty were elected to the American Philosophical Society. They include Ezekiel Emanuel, vice provost for global initiatives and the Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor; Elizabeth Magill of Penn Carey Law; and Sophia Rosenfeld, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History in the School of Arts & Sciences.
This spring, Emma Hart of the School of Arts & Sciences asked her students to dive deeply into the lives of Philadelphians at the center of Revolutionary activity. “The actual stories of people who lived at that time are, I think, very compelling to students,” Hart says. “They personalize the process in a way that grand, sweeping narratives fail to do.” The course collaborated with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Kislak Center.
Common Press’ Typography of Independence project is a collaborative, community-driven initiative offering public events including papermaking, typesetting, and letterpress printing, replicating the processes involved in the printing of the Declaration of Independence for the semiquincentennial. Alongside a Weitzman School class, Penn Today captured the five steps to making paper as it was done in the Revolutionary era.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Penn President J. Larry Jameson spoke about navigating uncertainty around federal research funding, strategic planning initiative Penn Forward as not just a diagnosis but a “treatment plan,” and his experiences on the job. “I feel like a freshman,” he said, smiling, “where every day, I’m learning in an exponential way.”
Food & Wine highlighted the research of Henry Daniell, whose lab in the School of Dental Medicine is developing a bioengineered chewing gum that targets microbes linked to head and neck cancers, including HPV and two bacterial species. “Our findings support the value of advancing these therapies to clinical trials as adjuvants with current treatments or as prophylaxis to prevent infection and transmission,” said Daniell.
In the Wall Street Journal, the Wharton School’s Peter Conti-Brown and Kevin Werbach co-authored an opinion piece about the risks frontier AI pose and the opportunity an “AI Risk Supervisor,” modeled after bank examiners, could offer to oversee advanced AI labs. The objective, they wrote: “… to make sure dangerous capabilities are identified, managed and constrained before they cause systemic harm.”