Welcome Back From the President |
|
January 12, 2016, Volume 62, No. 18 |
Creativity and Achievement for Social Good
Welcome back from winter break. As we begin the spring semester, I want to remind our seniors and their mentors that the application deadline for the President’s Engagement Prizes is January 15 and the deadline for the President’s Innovation Prize is February 12. These Prizes—of a magnitude unparalleled anywhere in higher education—not only publicly recognize and reward creative projects that promote the greater good. They also proclaim our most cherished values as a university: To educate and support our students for meaningful leadership and lifelong citizenship.
Each Prize bestows a generous living allowance for one year after graduation and up to $100,000 in project expenses. All full-time undergraduates who will graduate in May, August or December of this award year are eligible to apply. I encourage seniors with a great idea to submit an application, and I also urge all our undergraduates to learn more about each Prize on CURF’s webpage. You can see how our inaugural President’s Engagement Prize winners have been putting their plans into action here: www.pennpep.upenn.edu I look forward to receiving some fantastic applications.
While we empower our students to build a better, more innovative society, Penn continues to build an ever better, more sustainable, beautiful and innovative campus. This year, we are putting the finishing touches on some beautiful new additions that will enhance the life of the University. We will complete the new Perry World House on Locust Walk this spring, which will be the campus destination for international scholars and visiting dignitaries, as well as a hub for our faculty and students. Soon after, during the summer, we will also cut the ribbon on the new Pennovation Center at Pennovation Works. The Works already provides creative and entrepreneurial space for several great enterprises. With the opening of the new Pennovation Center, we will further fuel Penn’s leadership in transforming good ideas into great applications.
Near the heart of campus, we are in the final stages of construction on the New College House. Opening in fall 2016, New College House will bring 350 new bedrooms for students, and it has been designed from the ground up to enhance the college house experience. At the same time, we will embark on major renovations to our historic Hill College House. Also in the fall, we will celebrate the opening of our Neural and Behavioral Sciences Building. This cutting-edge science facility will be the new home for the biology and psychology departments and will foster transformative interdisciplinary research on nothing less intriguing, complex and important than how we Homo sapiens think and behave.
Great buildings, no matter how ingeniously designed, can achieve little without ingenious people to give them creative purpose. I couldn’t be more proud of our Penn people and their countless achievements in any given year, and I want to highlight just a few. Seniors Jenna Hebert and Debi Ogunrinde have been named 2016 Rhodes Scholars and will pursue their graduate studies at Oxford University. Philip Cohen, a third-year medical student at Perelman, and Carla Winter, a senior in SEAS, have won George J. Mitchell Scholarships, which will support their graduate studies in Ireland or Northern Ireland.
Congratulations to our latest Rhodes and Mitchell Scholars and all our finalists this year for a job exceedingly well done. I know the entire Penn community also joins me in congratulating Coach Priore and our fantastic Quakers football team on their Ivy League championship.
From prestigious prizes for social good, to new buildings for world-improving research and teaching, to life-saving clinical practice that builds on Penn’s great research and teaching, 2016 promises to be a banner year for our University. Welcome back to campus, and welcome to a bright new year of creativity and achievement for social good at Penn!
|