At Penn, success is a family affair.
That appeared to be the subtle yet prevailing theme Friday afternoon, as President Amy Gutmann addressed parents and families inside Irvine Auditorium to kick off the University’s annual Family Weekend.
With stories and statistics, and punctuating with personal perspective, Gutmann presented a wide-ranging view not only into the unprecedented advances happening at the University, but into the bonds within the Penn family that help make them reality.
“One thing that’s distinctively Penn is how we bring the greatest talent together, across an incredible range of disciplines, of ambitions, of passions, and work together,” she said, “to make something so much better—in individual people’s lives and in the lives of their families, their community, our society, and the world.”
Gutmann—who highlighted the Penn Compact 2022 pillars of inclusion, innovation, and impact—pointed to the President’s Innovation Prize-winning students who created a nanotechnology-based implant to treat glaucoma.
“This gives you some sense of the amazing creativity and innovation of our Penn undergraduates,” she said. “This team was mentored and connected to faculty in medicine, in engineering, in Wharton, and in the College.”
Such innovation is familiar to Penn, which is home to nearly $1 billion in sponsored research annually, and to the first-ever FDA approval for a gene therapy treatment for cancer.
“The faculty your students study with are among the most innovative in the world,” she said.
That’s how you might describe the perennially improving campus and resources at Penn. Gutmann noted the millions of square feet added under the master plan Penn Connects, the developing New College House West, and a renovated Hill College House.
At the same time, the University this year opened the Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics and launched the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy & Global Engagement.
But it’s more than just world-class facilities that support students, Gutmann made clear.
Penn is dedicated to continue enhancing the whole student experience—including a new program for second-year students, and the University’s emphasis on wellness, she said. “We’re not just about the mind, we’re about the spirit here at Penn.”
That means getting students to balance their academic drive with the freedom to simply take a break and relieve stress. Seeking help, she said, is no sign of weakness.
It wasn’t advice offered without experience. Gutmann offered her own recollection of personal trial when an attendee asked what the president might tell her 18-year-old self, given the chance.
Gutmann recalled how her father died the year before she went to college and how, in hindsight, she should’ve asked for help. “My mother was widowed and alone,” she said. “I toughed it out and my mother toughed it out, but it wasn’t easy.”
“I talked to nobody about it,” she admitted, “and that wasn’t the easiest way of making it through.”
Her own experience also proved something else, she said: That the lessons learned in college are truly ones that stick for life. She mentioned courses she took on Spanish literature, physics, and the Revolutions of 1848 (a class she once cited in a dinner conversation about the Arab Spring with New York Times writers, she remembered).
“Everything I learned in college has served me incredibly well,” Gutmann said. “Every relationship I made with my mentors, my faculty… and with my fellow students has been not only enlightening and edifying, but has actually been a part of my stress relief in life.”
Encouraging students to foster such ties, she added: “Relationships are really what help us get through.”
Gutmann also reminded the room of Penn’s ever-growing relationship with the world: 88 countries are represented in the Class of 2022. The number of international students has ballooned 182 percent since 1990. Penn alumni living abroad number 28,000. And 34 students and alumni last year were offered prestigious Fulbright Awards—a record number at Penn.
“Our goal is to bring Penn to the world,” she said, “and also bring the world to Penn.”
Responding to an audience question, Gutmann stressed that students get a global experience every day, not only through studying abroad. She talked about the programming at Perry World House, which recently featured Nick Clegg, the former U.K. deputy prime minister, as well as former U.S. national security advisers H.R. McMaster and Susan Rice.
She reminded, too, that former Vice President Joe Biden and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush were named Penn Presidential Professors of Practice—and that the two had participated in an forum on refugees and immigration, just one example of the University’s bringing together different perspectives.
“We are absolutely dedicated to being a place that fosters free speech, robust disagreement and dialogue, and learning from people with whom you disagree,” she said. “Our students welcome it, and we protect it and encourage it.”
Gutmann’s address, put simply, was “eye opening,” said Kevin Germain, whose son, Liam, is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Her speech got me excited about what he has in front of him.”
Germain and his wife, Karin, along with two younger children, had trekked some 2,000-plus miles from Big Sky, Mont., to attend Family Weekend—with plans to watch Penn Football take on Yale, explore the city, and perhaps see the Eagles in action.
But for a moment Friday, before a weekend of fun, the parents just reflected on the opportunities their son had in store at Penn.
“He chose this because of all the choices,” Karin Germain said. “Even though he grew up in the mountains of Montana, he was ready to come explore the world.”
— Angelo Fichera
