Penn Presidency
In her inaugural address, she launched the Penn Compact, her vision for making Penn both a global leader in teaching, research, and professional practice, and a dynamic agent of social, economic, and civic progress. The Compact articulates three central strategic goals: increasing access for the very best students of all backgrounds, regardless of economic means; recruiting and retaining the very best faculty members, who will integrate knowledge across multiple disciplines; and magnifying Penn’s intellectual and institutional impact throughout the Philadelphia region, the United States, and the world.
Since arriving at Penn, she has spearheaded a major campus development plan, Penn Connects, that includes 24 acres (97,000 m2) that Penn purchased from the U.S. Postal Service along the Schuylkill River, which opened as Penn Park in September 2011. Penn Connects is designed to boost the economic, educational and social capacity of Philadelphia and to create seamless gateways between West Philadelphia and Center City across the Schuylkill River.
Penn began an expansion east of the Schuylkill River with the purchase of the DuPont Marshall Laboratory in September 2010. Gutmann said that the Marshall Lab property has "infinite possibilities" as a place to nurture start-up businesses and "technology transfer," where faculty with "great discoveries can attract venture capital" and bring ideas to market.
Gutmann has been a leading national advocate for financial aid based on need to promote socioeconomic diversity in higher education. Gutmann made Penn one of the handful of universities in the country that substitute grants for loans for any undergraduate student with financial need. In September 2009, for the first time in Penn’s history, all undergraduates eligible for financial aid received grants rather than loans in their aid packages. Students from typical families with income less than $40,000 paid no tuition, fees, room or board. Students from typical families with incomes less than $90,000 paid no tuition and fees. Ten percent of the students in Penn's incoming class of 2013 are the first in their families to attend college.
On May 8, 2012, Penn announced that Gutmann's contract had been renewed through 2019. In announcing the extension, David L. Cohen, Chair of Penn’s Board, stated that Penn’s “Trustees feel very strongly that Amy Gutmann is simply the best university president in the country. Under her superb leadership, Penn is a stronger and more vibrant institution than at any time in its storied history."
Read more about this topic: Amy Gutmann
Famous quotes containing the words penn and/or presidency:
“Later you hear it wander the dark house
Like a mother who rises at night to seek a childhood picture;
Or it goes to the backyard and stands like an old horse cold in the
pasture.”
—Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989)
“... how often the Presidency has simply meant that a man shall be abused, distrusted, and worked to death while he is filling the great office, and that he should drop into unmerited oblivion when he has left the White House ...”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)