Dear Faculty, Staff and Students,

The arrival of a new academic year is always an exciting time here at Penn. Each new academic cycle offers us the welcome opportunity to greet new students and colleagues, and renew our purpose.

In renewing our purpose, we also update our communications to the world that is ever more avidly interested in Penn. I draw your attention to our new home page - a brighter, more contemporary gateway to Penn on the web.

Today more than ever, a university's web page is its front door, the portal through which prospective students and others make their first campus "visit." With its larger, more vivid photography and bold messaging, our new homepage will offer our virtual visitors a real sense of place for our beautiful urban campus, provide a glimpse of the remarkable research conducted here every day, and reinforce Penn's stature as one of the world's greatest teaching and research universities. The new homepage also highlights the principles that have brought the Penn Compact to life, and have guided our work together as a great university-wide community in taking Penn from excellence to eminence.

I am also pleased to introduce The Penn Digest, a centralized source for news and events at Penn. The Penn Digest will offer news and in-depth features from across our university and provide faculty and staff with regular updates from such offices as the Division of Human Resources and Information Systems and Computing. The Penn Digest, easily accessed from the new home page, is ready for you to explore.

These new initiatives reflect the good work of our web and publishing team in the Office of University Communications, and we hope that they augment our ability to communicate clearly and effectively to everyone who logs onto our website.

I welcome you back to Penn, look forward to seeing you on campus, and wish you all the best in the coming year.

Sincerely,

Amy Gutmann

President