Penn Forward is a University-wide initiative to shape Penn’s future.
For nearly three centuries, Penn has adapted to the world’s changing needs—innovating in education, research, and service. Today, higher education stands at a pivotal moment, shaped by shifting funding, rapid advances in virtual learning and artificial intelligence, powerful new research tools, rising public skepticism, and expanded opportunities to reach learners worldwide and throughout their lives. Penn Forward brings focus and momentum to this moment. Explore the priority initiatives guiding our work and learn how these areas of focus came to be below.
Fostering belonging, purpose, and deep engagement for all students.
Clear costs. Predictable aid. No surprises.
Making health and health care easier for Penn families.
Simplifying work, clarifying accountability, reducing institutional risk.
Advancing discovery and societal benefit through partnership.
AI in service of impact and human insight.
Connection and growth to support lifelong learning.
A West Coast hub for innovation and impact.
Doubling down on Penn's engagement with the world.
“Penn Forward empowers us to proactively shape our future and restore trust in the value we bring to society.”
Penn President J. Larry Jameson
In September 2025, six working groups of faculty, staff, students, and postdoctoral scholars were convened and charged with challenging legacy assumptions and proposing bold, actionable strategies to advance Penn’s mission and strengthen operations. Their work generated more than 30 recommendations, nine of which have been prioritized for immediate action. Initiative leaders and cross‑functional teams—selected for their deep subject‑matter expertise and capacity to drive execution—are now guiding these priority initiatives into implementation. Additional recommendations will advance in subsequent phases. This page will be updated as the work progresses.
Browse Penn Forward news below or read more on Penn Today.
In a Q&A, President J. Larry Jameson discusses how Penn Forward’s initial nine priority initiatives aim to build trust with the people Penn serves, enable bold discovery, and extend Penn’s reach geographically and across a lifetime.
In a Q&A, Provost John L. Jackson Jr. explains the relationship between the strategic framework In Principle and Practice and Penn Forward—a new University-wide process and action plan that will advance Penn forward for the next decade and beyond.
Rottenberg, executive director of the Integrated Product Design Program and an adjunct associate professor in the Weitzman School, collaborated with three Penn Forward working groups to optimize idea development.
As co-chairs of the Penn Forward Research Strategy and Financing working group, David Meaney, vice provost for research, and Michael Ostap, chief scientific officer of the Perelman School of Medicine, are collaborating to expand Penn’s research impact.
Penn Forward is a strategic initiative to reshape how the University fulfills its missions of education, research, and service in a rapidly changing world. We are not starting from scratch, but we are not tinkering at the margins either. The effort will examine fundamental aspects of how Penn operates, how we engage with learners, how we generate knowledge, and how we sustain excellence. Our goal is to design a future for Penn that is academically vibrant, financially viable, publicly engaged, and organizationally sound.
No. In Principle and Practice remains our strategic foundation. Penn Forward is how we put that framework into motion—developing the structures, investments, and commitments necessary to deliver on its vision.
Many of the forces affecting higher education today, such as declining public trust, skepticism about cost and value, increasing regulatory complexity, and unstable research funding, have been building for years. Others, like the rapid emergence of generative AI, have arrived more suddenly. In this shifting landscape, Penn has an opportunity and a responsibility to help define what excellence in higher education looks like for the decades ahead. That means acting now, and with intention.
Penn Forward has been organized and set in motion by the President, the Provost, and the Executive Vice President with direct support from faculty and staff leaders. Each of the six topical domains has working group leads—members of the Penn community with deep knowledge and institutional experience. Those working groups are at the heart of the initiative, and will lead the process. They comprise faculty, staff, senior leaders and thinkers, students and post-doctoral scholars in regular consultation with the organizers and the University Board of Trustees. The overall effort is coordinated by Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and John Morgan Professor, David A. Asch, and Senior Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer, Thomas Murphy.
Working groups are composed to reflect a wide range of perspectives, and there will be structured opportunities for engagement, feedback, and idea-sharing throughout the fall. We recognize that Penn is a pluralistic institution, and good strategy must emerge through dialogue and deliberation.
Each school has its own ambitious strategic plan that advances the aspirations put forward in In Principle and Practice. Those more discipline-specific plans continue to complement and work in harmony with Penn Forward.