Penn’s Board of Trustees held its first two public meetings of the 2025-26 academic year on Thursday.
The Sept. 25 meeting included reports from the board’s Budget and Finance Committee. The Budget and Finance Committee reviewed financial results from the 2025 fiscal year for both the University academics and health system, while the Executive Committee approved several administrative and faculty appointments.
Among the administrative approvals were Mark Dingfield’s confirmation as executive vice president and Trevor Lewis’ confirmation as interim vice president for finance and treasurer, both of whom presented at the meeting.
The committee emphasized its “critical support” for the University’s endowment, which aids 16% of the total graduate and undergraduate financial aid budget. In fiscal year 2025, the endowment had returns of 12.2% — far over its 7.5% target — which led to a $24.8 billion increase in total asset value.
Penn’s capital expenditures totaled $979 million, which Dingfield attributed to infrastructure projects such as the recent opening of Amy Gutmann Hall and the Jane and David Ott Center for Track and Field. He also cited the continued Quad and Stuart Weitzman Hall renovations.
The committee attributed the University’s debt increase — totaling $463 million — to “uncertainty in the funding environment.”
According to Dingfield, some of the debt increase is due to federal funding cuts following 1968 Wharton graduate and President Donald Trump’s administration’s pause of $175 million to Penn over the University’s policies on transgender athletes.
Despite the uncertainty, Dingfield remained confident about the University’s balance sheet leverage and operating margins — especially in comparison to peer institutions.
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“We’re in a very favorable position relative to our peers, both on the academic and health system side,” Dingfield said.
Both Dingfield and Lewis highlighted Penn’s “strong operating performance” throughout the academic financial report review. The two noted that the University’s net assets are valued at $33.9 billion, and that Penn has experienced significant growth in strategic investments over the past few years.
The senior administrators cited the Quaker Commitment program — which was reported to have provided increased financial aid by $6,000 on average for 200 to 700 current students — and Penn Advanced Research Computing Center, a high-performance computing cluster available across campus.
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of University of Pennsylvania Health System Julia Puchtler presented the health system’s financial results, which generated $240.7 million in operating income, outperforming its budget by $32 million. According to Puchtler, growth was strongest in areas such as cancer treatment, neurosciences, and cardiac care.
However, Puchtler pointed out that overall inpatient activity fell short of the budget — finishing 0.8% below projections — while inpatient and outpatient surgical volumes were down 4.6% and 3.4% respectively.
Lewis presented trends in staffing — faculty and staff had growth rates of 2.5% and 2.2%, respectively. Around 65% of these staff are employed at schools, where growth has been faster than in administrative or support units.
“We’re bringing in different kinds of faculty, different sorts of tracks, ” Provost John Jackson said in a separate comment. “It’s not all tenure-track faculty.”
Faculty salaries also grew by an average of 5.6% in fiscal year 2025, generally driven by gifts and endowments.
The Budget and Finance Committee unanimously approved all infrastructure funding resolutions, including $25 million for a new ambulatory facility at Penn Medicine Wilmington and $16.5 million for laboratory and facility upgrades in the Towne Building.
Executive Committee members also unanimously approved all faculty appointments in Penn President Larry Jameson’s report. The votes included Sara Bachman as dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice; Thomas Murphy as senior vice president and chief transformation officer; Lehigh Whitaker as vice president for government and community affairs; and Josh Beeman as interim vice president for information systems and computing and University chief information officer.
