Due to COVID-19 public health limitations, the in-person ceremony is only open to graduating seniors. Family, friends, and the community at large are invited to tune in to a live webcast online.
On Monday, May 17, Penn will host a limited, in-person Commencement ceremony in the morning at Franklin Field for Class of 2021 academically eligible seniors. For graduate students, family, friends, and anyone else in the community who wishes to take part, the University encourages tuning in to Penn’s live webcast, which will begin at 9 a.m. A recording will be available on the Commencement website after the ceremony.
Alumna and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs will deliver the address at the 2021 Penn Commencement on Monday.
Laurene Powell Jobs, a 1985 graduate of both the College of Arts and Sciences and the Wharton School, will be Penn’s 2021 Commencement speaker, and will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters. Powell Jobs is an impact investor and social justice advocate, founder and president of Emerson Collective, founder of College Track, and co-founder of The XQ Institute. Other honorary degree recipients include Elizabeth Alexander, Frances H. Arnold, David L. Cohen, Joy Harjo, David Miliband, John Williams, and Janet L. Yellen.
Although there will not be a traditional procession of graduates down Locust Walk to Franklin Field, a new, sentimental way to celebrate will take place: Parents, family members, and friends of graduating students have submitted videos with congratulatory messages that will play before the ceremony begins.
Students invited and registered to attend the event in-person—who should have already started screening testing for COVID-19—should arrive at their assigned times to check-in areas on Shoemaker Green and South Street, where they will be required to show their Green PennOpen Pass and Penn ID. In the event of severe weather, the event will move to Zellerbach Theatre in the Annenberg Center, where just the stage party will be in attendance. Such a decision would be made by 5:30 a.m. the morning of Commencement.
All school-based graduation ceremonies are being presented virtually. Information about these virtual ceremonies is available on the school ceremonies page.
The in-person plans are all contingent upon there being no major interim change for the worse in the course of the pandemic. For more information regarding Commencement in general and eligibility requirements, check out Penn’s detailed list of responses to frequently asked questions.
Penn engineers and collaborators have developed a transparent, micro-engineered device that houses a living, vascularized model of human lung cancer—a “tumor on a chip”—and show that the diabetes drug vildagliptin helps more CAR T cells break through the tumor’s defenses and attack it effectively.
Tumor-on-a-chip offers insight into cancer-fighting cells in immunotherapy
Penn engineers and collaborators have built a living tumor on a chip to expose how cancers block immune attacks, and how one existing drug could make immunotherapy like CAR T more effective against solid tumors.
Professor of city and regional planning Erick Guerra recently published a book exploring the economic and societal impacts of American highways. He explains some of the pitfalls associated with an ever-expansive highway system, arguing that spending more on highways might not be the solution to the country’s transportation issues.
Penn urban planner Erick Guerra’s new book, “Overbuilt,” argues that additional spending on building more highways might not be the solution to the country’s transportation issues. In a Q&A, Guerra shares his insights.
Xin Sun prepares samples collected from the Eastern Tropical North Pacific aboard a research vessel. By adding stable isotope tracers to these vials, Sun and her team can track how different microbial groups convert nitrogen compounds into nitrous oxide, revealing how subtle shifts in oxygen and organic matter change the ocean’s chemistry.
Can tiny ocean organisms offer the key to better climate modeling?
In the shadowy layers of the Pacific, microbes decide how much nitrous oxide—a potent greenhouse gas—rises skyward. New research from Penn’s Xin Sun offers an improved understanding of microbial ecology and geochemistry—key to forecasting global emissions in response to natural and man-made climate change.
Two X-ray plates from Arthur Goodspeed, believed to have created the world’s first X-ray image, were donated by his family to Penn’s University Archives.
