After roughly six months of planning, the School of Arts and Sciences announced a new “vision for its future” on Wednesday.
SAS Dean Mark Trodden announced the framework — titled “SAS Horizons: Pathways for a Changing World” — in a Feb. 25 email. The plan is “aligned with” the University’s 2023 strategic framework, “In Principle and Practice,” and is committed to “pursuing excellence with empathy.”
“At a moment of sweeping change for society and higher education, it also reflects how we broaden opportunities for our students, empower scholars to venture beyond the boundaries of current knowledge, and channel discoveries into new avenues that allow society to see further and reach higher,” Trodden’s email read.
A new website launched alongside the announcement outlined two foundational commitments for the proposal — “fostering community, culture, and belonging” and “partnering with the public.”
“The School of Arts & Sciences cultivates forms of intelligence that transcend algorithmic reasoning: creativity, judgment, ethical thinking, and the capacity to discern which questions matter and why,” the website reads. “By enhancing ties and engaging questions raised by emerging technologies and cultural change, Arts & Sciences creates the conditions for sustained inquiry and dialogue, ensuring that innovation and discovery are guided by human understanding and serve the common good.”
The plan includes provisions for a “bold” reimagining of the College of Arts and Sciences’ undergraduate curriculum, the establishment of the “Dean’s Horizons Fund” to fund research at the school, and a project to renovate Penn’s laboratories and classrooms.
During the 2025-26 academic year, the College piloted College Foundations — a new general education curriculum that it aim to formally implement in 2027.
“The College curriculum redesign process is underway and a proposal for a new curriculum is being reviewed by our faculty,” a SAS spokesperson wrote to The Daily Pennsylvanian. “We expect the faculty to vote on the proposed changes later this spring, with a target implementation date of fall 2027.”
RELATED:
How the groups behind ‘Penn Forward’ are shaping the University’s future
Penn faculty discuss College Foundations pilot program, ’new era’ for general education curriculum
David Rittenhouse Laboratory is “one of the most heavily used teaching facilities on campus, yet its mid-20th-century classrooms and labs no longer meet the demands of modern science,” the description of “The Physical Sciences Complex Project” reads.
According to a SAS spokesperson, the Physical Sciences Complex Project — including the renovation of DRL — is “currently in the planning and design stage.”
“We’ve tried to come at it from a high level,” Trodden stated in a Wednesday press release, “not produce a list of line items that we’ll get done, but rather articulate what is important about the School, what principles underlie everything we do, and our philosophy about how we apply those principles to the world and to our students’ education.”
The announcement of “Horizons” comes after Penn President Larry Jameson unveiled Penn Forward — his first major institutional initiative — in September 2025. Jameson’s framework established six working groups, whose recommendations to the plan’s steering committee are set to be publicly released in “early 2026.”
Jameson’s initiative was meant to build on key pillars outlined in the “In Principle and Practice” framework developed by then-Penn President Liz Magill in 2023.
“Penn Forward was an opportunity to really take a bird’s-eye view of what the University is doing about undergraduate education across all schools and departments,” College senior and former DP staffer Max Annunziata — a member of the Undergraduate Education and Innovation working group — previously told the DP.
“I think there’s real promise that there could be really big and really positive shifts in what being an undergraduate at Penn might feel like,” Annunziata added.
“At a moment of sweeping change for society and higher education, it also reflects how we broaden opportunities for our students, empower scholars to venture beyond the boundaries of current knowledge, and channel discoveries into new avenues that allow society to see further and reach higher,” Trodden’s email read.
RELATED:
How the groups behind ‘Penn Forward’ are shaping the University’s future
Penn faculty discuss College Foundations pilot program, ’new era’ for general education curriculum
Staff reporter Kathryn Ye covers central administration and can be reached at ye@thedp.com. At Penn, she studies biochemistry and philosophy.
