Six months into his term as the official head of the University, Penn President Larry Jameson announced a new campuswide strategic framework to shape the school’s future.
The plan — titled “Penn Forward” — marks Jameson’s first major institutional effort as Penn’s 10th president and comes amid mounting external pressures and intensifying questions about the value of higher education. It seeks to address both the “challenges and opportunities” facing higher education, according to a Wednesday announcement from Jameson, Provost John Jackson Jr., and Executive Vice President Mark Dingfield.
“Now, higher education faces new challenges and opportunities,” the senior administrators wrote in the announcement. “These include a rapidly shifting funding environment, virtual learning, artificial intelligence, new research tools, rising skepticism about higher education’s value, and the potential to serve more learners across more stages of life and more parts of the world.”
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, Jameson said that the decision to implement a new strategic framework for the University came as a “sigh of relief” to key stakeholders, indicating that Penn is “aggressively grabbing the reins to study what’s going on in higher education.” He highlighted key concerns for the University, including supporting research efforts and building partnerships with the private sector.
The initiative builds on the key pillars of the “In Principle and Practice” framework developed by former Penn President Liz Magill in 2023. The team behind “Penn Forward” designed the program using feedback from students, faculty, and alumni who expressed interest in refreshing Penn’s strategic planning, Jameson said.
“In Principle and Practice” was a “conceptual framework,” he told the DP, while the “Penn Forward” plan will serve as a way to “develop more tangible, concrete, actionable, timely projects and activities.”
When it was originally announced, “In Principle and Practice” outlined four principles — the ”Anchored University,” the “Interwoven University,” the “Inventive University,” and the “Engaged University” — and five practices: accelerating interdisciplinary pursuits, leading on contemporary challenges, growing opportunities and strengthening communities, deepening connection with neighbors and the world, and fostering leadership and service.
Those themes, according to Jameson, are “long lasting” and remain relevant to the development of “Penn Forward.”
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“It’s a natural part of this kind of planning to initially generate high-level ideas and then get progressively more granular,” he said.
The announcement outlined six working groups that will each focus on one of six domains of action: Undergraduate Education and Innovation; Graduate and Professional Training; Research Strategy and Financing; Global Opportunity and New Markets; Access, Affordability, and Value; and Operational Transformation.
According to the announcement, the groups have been charged with three tasks — “question[ing] [Penn’s] legacy assumptions,” “propos[ing] bold, implementable strategies,” and “staying grounded in Penn’s values.”
Each of the working groups will consist of undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral students, as well as faculty, staff, and administrative support. The working groups, Jameson said, will not be given “specific direction” but rather will bring together “different perspectives” that “curate the very best ideas.”
“There are subject matter experts in each of these working groups, but there are also people who don’t necessarily bring content expertise who bring innovation and a deep commitment to our missions,” Jameson said.
A similar structure will be used to develop Penn’s artificial intelligence policy, though it will not yet be implemented uniformly across the University. Jameson noted that while “there’s no question that AI is going to have a major impact on virtually everything that we do,” he will not “steer” the University’s policy on it.
Instead, rules surrounding AI use on campus will be left to the “Penn Forward” working groups, which will “study deeply, get information, speak with professors, [and] speak with students” to inform their decisions.
The groups are currently in the “charging” process, where they will plan out timelines for their projects and have them ready for review in early 2026. After these reviews, the implementation phase of the strategic vision will begin.
The announcement of Jameson’s new vision for the University comes after Penn’s Title IX resolution settlement with the federal government in July. The agreement has faced backlash from members of the Penn community who claim that the move undermines University values and makes transgender students feel “less safe” on campus.
When asked about the safety of Penn students with marginalized identities, Jameson said that there is “really nothing in these particular working groups that’s focused sharply on safety” and that he believes Penn is in a “very good place in that regard.”
Jameson added that safety is a topic that is “focused on continuously” at the University by various stakeholders, adding that “people are always concerned to some degree about safety, but I think the level of concern has gone down over the last couple of years.”
The official announcement also noted the need to bolster Penn’s role in diverse areas of study, practice, and industry.
“Success means producing strategic clarity and executable choices that reflect Penn’s distinctive strengths and rise to the scale of our moment,” the announcement read. “Success also means something harder to measure: fostering trust that the institution will act wisely, move with purpose, and adapt without losing the primacy of its values.”
The strategic framework’s future goals, according to Jameson, include establishing the University as a leader across higher education.
“I want Penn to be seen as a leader,” Jameson said. “If we can make it easier for other institutions to follow our lead, then the whole higher education sector can move more quickly.”
