Engaging Globally

The Penn Compact, launched at the inauguration of President Amy Gutmann in October 2004, expresses the Penn community's aspiration to move "From Excellence to Eminence." The Compact embraces the notion that a great 21st-century American university engages dynamically with communities all over the world to advance the central values of democracy and to exchange knowledge that improves quality of life for all.

With outstanding international faculty, the largest international contingent of students in the Ivy League, and a strong track record of translating cutting-edge theory into effective practice, Penn is a leader in contributing vital research and on-the-ground support to communities in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Many of our schools and centers collaborate with partner institutions around the world. Penn is now moving forward to nurture these networks and to encourage more innovative, cross-disciplinary solutions to global problems.

During the second year of her presidency, Amy Gutmann made the first official visits by a Penn president to alumni and families in India, China, and Singapore to enlist their support for the University's global agenda. Penn's international alumni are prominently positioned to play vital roles in promoting their nations' growth and progress across many sectors.

To advance the Penn Compact's commitment to global engagement, Penn is launching several initiatives that leverage our global network to enhance opportunities for students to study abroad and to bring additional outstanding international faculty and students to campus. Such exchanges will enhance the entire Penn community's global perspective.

• Penn Advancing Global Progress

• Penn Enhancing Student Opportunities Abroad

• Bringing the World to Penn

• Seeing The World Through Arts And Culture

 

Penn Advancing Global Progress

• Supporting developing communities with research and hands-on experience
• Fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS in Botswana
• Advising governments and NGOs on policy development
• Leading the way toward integrated responses to global issues

While governments, multinational corporations, and international and nongovernmental organizations are largely responsible for flattening the world socially and economically, constructive global engagement also must occur locally among individuals and communities. Penn is leveraging its vast experience by engaging individual communities, organizations, and governments to promote positive global change.

Penn’s presence in Botswana, an African nation with one of the world’s highest HIV/AIDS infection rates, is a model for our future global engagement initiatives. In 2001, a group of School of Medicine faculty members traveled to Botswana to set up a program to train local healthcare providers. Since then, other Penn schools and departments have become involved and now support a broad, interdisciplinary healthcare program in that nation. Penn has partnered with the University of Botswana to construct a new medical school, the first in the nation, and has helped establish an NIH-funded Center for AIDS Research.

Penn's Center for Advanced Study of India is the only research center in the United States devoted to the study of contemporary India, where Penn has the strongest ties of any American university. The Wharton School's customized executive education programs in India are models for expansion throughout Asia.

Penn is working collaboratively with the Ministry of Education in the People's Republic of China on research focused on the U.S. student loan system. Through its Graduate School of Education, Penn recently launched China's first Doctor of Education programs jointly with Beijing and East China Normal universities. Students will begin studies at these schools and complete them at Penn. Penn has also collaborated with domestic and foreign policy experts to explore ways of building healthcare workforce capacity around the world and tailor policies to specific regional situations.

 

Penn Enhancing Student Opportunities Abroad

• Encouraging students to engage internationally
• Building cultural bridges through study-abroad programs
• A new global focus for the College curriculum
• Promoting progress through international research projects

The number of Penn students studying abroad has increased 14 percent since 2004, putting Penn at the top of the Ivy League for study abroad. Penn undergraduates also make important contributions to communities around the world by participating in international research projects and internships.

The College’s new undergraduate curriculum includes foreign languages, cross-cultural awareness and global studies. Students are using these requirements as a springboard to explore their global interests.

In 2007 Penn students won prestigious Rhodes, Marshall and Fulbright scholarships. The Rhodes Scholar worked both at Taishan International Bank in Taiwan and Credit Suisse in Hong Kong and spent a summer in Mexico doing field research with FINCA International before co-founding an innovative bank and business incubator for street youth in Lagos, Nigeria. The Marshall scholar earned a degree in philosophy, politics and economics and planned to pursue a master’s in comparative social policy at Oxford University in England. Seventeen other extraordinarily impressive Penn students won Fulbright fellowships to study, teach, and conduct research in their choice of more than 150 countries.

 

Bringing the World to Penn

• Promoting interdisciplinary study that enhances global engagement
• Recruiting promising international students from developing countries
• Bringing global leaders to campus to probe international issues

Penn's global campus does not consist of buildings, centers, and parks. Rather, it defines itself through the pursuit and exchange of ideas that lead to deeper understanding and effective solutions to the pressing global issues of our time. Penn's global campus includes an internationally diverse community of scholars and practitioners who collaborate routinely with distinguished counterparts around the world. The University is launching several new initiatives that will foster an even more dynamic global perspective.

Penn was among the first Ivy League schools to enroll international students and remains a school of choice for students from around the world. International students currently comprise 14 percent of undergraduates and international student enrollment has increased 20 percent since 2004; enrollments from China and India are up 50 percent.

The Penn World Scholars Program broadens our international student body. The class of Penn World Scholars that entered Penn in 2008 hails from Australia, El Salvador, Egypt, India, Romania, Turkey and Vietnam.

Another new program will bring to campus renowned global leaders who have made a significant impact on important issues. Each guest will be invited to remain for a week to deliver lectures, meet with faculty and students, and be integrated into the College House programs.

 

Seeing The World Through Arts And Culture

• Holding a prism to the past at the University Museum
• Nurturing the creative spirit at Annenberg Center
• Showcasing avant-garde international artists at ICA
• Advancing interdisciplinary knowledge at the Morris Arboretum

Civilizations past and present express core values through their artistic and cultural activity. Penn is home to outstanding cultural resources that enhance our understanding of the global human condition and of our natural world.

A globally renowned focal point for scholars of ancient cultures, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology reveals how ancient peoples perceived their role on earth. The Museum integrates its rich collection of artifacts from every continent with themed presentations that allow us to see more deeply into today's world through the prism of past cultures and civilizations.

At the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts culturally diverse theater, music and dance presentations transcend time and place. Ranging from world music to Asian dance troupes to multi-media performances, the Annenberg's year-round parade of performers spices up Penn's campus with a heady international flavor and a deeper appreciation of the global creative spirit.

For more than 40 years, Penn's Institute of Contemporary Art has presented innovative exhibitions of artists, architects, photographers, and designers of international renown. The ICA recently assembled the works of three generations of European and American artists to explore the mythic and art historical significance of Cologne, Germany, which served as the global epicenter of contemporary art in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The Morris Arboretum extends our appreciation of the world's ecology with its collection of exotic international plants and through interdisciplinary and scholarly programs. Each year interns from all over the world come to study the complex relationships between plant life and human life. Many of the Arboretum's international interns have gone on to assume key environmental and horticultural leadership positions throughout the world.

Download Impact of the Penn Compact brochure (PDF format)