University of Pennsylvania

Introduction

The University of Pennsylvania (commonly referred to as UPenn or just Penn) is a private

research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Penn is the first university
and the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Penn is a member of
the Ivy League and is one of the Colonial Colleges.

Benjamin Franklin, Penn's founder, advocated an educational program that focused as much
on practical education for commerce and public service as on the classics and theology. Penn
was one of the first academic institutions to follow a multidisciplinary model pioneered by
several European universities, concentrating multiple "faculties" (e.g., theology, classics,
medicine) into one institution. Penn is today one of the largest private universities in the
nation, offering a very broad range of academic departments, an extensive research enterprise
and a number of community outreach and public service programs. Penn is particularly well
known for its business school, law school, education school, medicine school, health school,
social sciences/humanities, and its biomedical teaching and research capabilities.

In FY2009, Penn's academic research programs undertook more than $730 million in
research, involving some 3,800 faculty, 1,000 postdoctoral fellows and 5,400 support
staff/graduate assistants. Much of the funding is provided by the National Institutes of Health
for biomedical research. Penn tops the Ivy League in annual spending, with a projected 2009
budget of $5.542 billion. In 2008, it ranked fifth among U.S. universities in fundraising,
bringing in about $475.96 million in private support.

Incorporated as The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn is one of 14 founding

members of the Association of American Universities.

History

In 1740, a group of Philadelphians joined together to erect a great preaching hall for the
evangelist George Whitefield. Designed and built by Edmund Woolley, it was the largest
building in the city and it was also planned to serve as a charity school. The fundraising,
however, fell short and although the building was erected, the plans for both a chapel and the
charity school were suspended. In the fall of 1749, eager to create a college to educate future
generations, Benjamin Franklin circulated a pamphlet titled "Proposals for the Education of
Youth in Pennsylvania," his vision for what he called a "Public Academy of Philadelphia."
However, according to Franklin's autobiography, it was in 1743 when he first drew up a
proposal for establishing the academy, "thinking the Rev. Richard Peters a fit person to
superintend such an institution." Unlike the other three American Colonial colleges that
existed at the time — Harvard, William and Mary, and Yale — Franklin's new school would
not focus merely on education for the clergy. He advocated an innovative concept of higher
education, one which would teach both the ornamental knowledge of the arts and the
practical skills necessary for making a living and doing public service. The proposed program
of study became the nation's first modern liberal arts curriculum.

Franklin assembled a board of trustees from among the leading citizens of Philadelphia, the
first such non-sectarian board in America. At the first meeting of the 24 members of the

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Board of Trustees (November 13, 1749) the issue of where to locate the school was a prime
concern. Although a lot across Sixth Street from Independence Hall was offered without cost
by James Logan, its owner, the Trustees realized that the building erected in 1740, which was
still vacant, would be an even better site. On February 1, 1750 the new board took over the
building and trusts of the old board. In 1751 the Academy, using the great hall at 4th and
Arch Streets, took in its first students. A charity school also was opened in accordance with
the intentions of the original "New Building" donors, although it lasted only a few years.

For its date of founding, the University uses 1740, the date of "the creation of the earliest of
the many educational trusts the University has taken upon itself" (the charity school
mentioned above) during its existence.

The institution was known as the College of Philadelphia from 1755 to 1779. In 1779, not
trusting then-provost the Rev. William Smith's loyalist tendencies, the revolutionary State
Legislature created a University of the State of Pennsylvania. The result was a schism, with
Smith continuing to operate an attenuated version of the College of Philadelphia. In 1791 the
legislature issued a new charter, merging the two institutions into the University of
Pennsylvania with twelve men from each institution on the new board of trustees. These
three schools were part of the same institution and were overseen by the same board of
Trustees.

Penn has three claims to being the first university in the United States, according to university
archive director Mark Frazier Lloyd: the 1765 founding of the first medical school in
America made Penn the first institution to offer "undergraduate" and professional education;
the 1779 charter made it the first American institution of higher learning to take the name of
"University"; and existing colleges were established as seminaries.

After being located in downtown Philadelphia for more than a century, the campus was
moved across the Schuylkill River to property purchased from the Blockley Almshouse in
West Philadelphia in 1872, where it has since remained in an area now known as University
City.

Motto

Penn's motto is based on a line from Horace’s III.24 (Book 3, Ode 24), quid leges sine
moribus vanae proficiunt? ("of what avail empty laws without [good] morals?") From 1756
to 1898, the motto read Sine Moribus Vanae. When a wag pointed out that the motto could be
translated as "Loose women without morals," the university quickly changed the motto to
literae sine moribus vanae ("Letters without morals [are] useless"). In 1932, all elements of
the seal were revised, and as part of the redesign it was decided that the new motto
"mutilated" Horace, and it was changed to its present wording, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae
("Laws without morals [are] useless").

Educational innovations
Penn's educational innovations include: the nation's first medical school in 1765; the first
university teaching hospital in 1874; the Wharton School, the world's first collegiate school
of business, in 1881; the first American student union building, Houston Hall, in 1896; the
country's second school of veterinary medicine; and the home of ENIAC, the world's first
electronic, large-scale, general-purpose digital computer in 1946. Penn is also home to the

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oldest psychology department in North America and is where the American Medical
Association was founded.

Academics
Undergraduate Schools
The University of Pennsylvania has four undergraduate schools:

• School of Arts and Sciences (SAS)

• School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS)
• School of Nursing
• Wharton School of Business

The College of Arts and Sciences is the undergraduate division of the School of Arts and
Sciences, which also contains the Graduate Division and the College of Liberal and
Professional Studies, Penn's division for non-traditional undergraduate and graduate students.

Penn has a strong focus on interdisciplinary learning and research. It emphasizes joint-degree
programs, unique majors, and academic flexibility. Penn's "One University" policy allows
undergraduates access to courses at all of Penn's undergraduate and graduate schools, except
the medical and dental schools. Undergraduates at Penn may also take courses at Bryn Mawr,
Haverford, and Swarthmore, Penn's fellows in the Quaker Consortium.

Penn's arts & science programs are all well-regarded, with many departments ranked amongst
the nation's top 10. At the undergraduate level, Wharton, Penn's business school, and Penn's
nursing school have maintained their #1, 2 or 3 rankings since U.S. News began reviewing
such programs. In the School of Engineering, top departments are bioengineering (typically
ranked in the top 5 by U.S. News), mechanical engineering, chemical engineering and
nanotechnology. The school is also strong in some areas of computer science and artificial
intelligence.

Graduate and Professional Schools

The following schools offer graduate programs:

• Annenberg School for Communication

• Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
• Graduate School of Education
• Law School
• School of Dental Medicine
• School of Design (formerly the Graduate School of Fine Arts)
• School of Engineering and Applied Science
• School of Medicine
• School of Nursing
• Social Policy and Practice
• School of Veterinary Medicine
• Wharton School

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Penn's graduate schools are among the most distinguished schools in their fields. Penn's
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is generally regarded as one of the top schools in the
nation (see 1995 rankings by the National Research Council). A study updated the NRC
rankings and adjusted them for faculty size and also factored out reputational surveys (saying
that such surveys were lagging indicators of academic quality). That study, "The Rise of
American Research Universities: Elites and Challengers in the Postwar Era," ranked Penn's
arts, humanities, and sciences departments 7th in the US.

Among its professional schools, the schools of Design, business, communication, dentistry,
medicine, nursing, and veterinary medicine rank in the top 5 nationally (see U.S. News,
National Research Council, and Planetizen and DesignIntelligence magazines). Penn's Law
School is ranked 7th, and its School of Education and School of Social Policy and Practice
are ranked in the top 10 (see U.S. News).

Joint-degree and Interdisciplinary Programs

Penn offers specialized joint-degree programs, which award candidates degrees from multiple
schools at the University upon completion of graduation criteria of both schools.
Undergraduate programs include:

• The Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology

• The Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business
• Nursing and Health Care Management
• The Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management

Dual Degree programs which lead to the same multiple degrees without participation in the
specific above programs are also available. Unlike joint-degree programs, "dual degree"
students fulfill requirements of both programs independently without involvement of another
program. Specialized Dual Degree programs include Liberal Studies and Technology as well
as a Computer and Cognitive Science Program. Both programs award a degree from the
College of Arts and Sciences and a degree from the School of Engineering and Applied
Sciences.

For graduate programs, there are many formalized joint degree graduate programs such as a
joint J.D./MBA. Penn is also the home to interdisciplinary institutions such as the Institute for
Medicine and Engineering, the Joseph H. Lauder Institute for Management and International
Studies, the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, and the Executive Master's in
Technology Management Program.

Academic Medical Center and Biomedical Research Complex

Penn's health-related programs — including the Schools of Nursing, Medicine, Dental

Medicine, and Veterinary Medicine, and programs in bioengineering (School of Engineering)
and health management (the Wharton School) - are among the university's strongest
academic components. The combination of intellectual breadth, research funding (each of the
health sciences schools ranks in the top 5 in annual NIH funding), clinical resources and
overall scale ranks Penn with only a small handful of peer universities in the U.S.

The size of Penn's biomedical research organization, however, adds a very capital intensive
component to the university's operations, and introduces revenue instability due to changing

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government regulations, reduced Federal funding for research, and Medicaid/Medicare
program changes. This is a primary reason highlighted in bond rating agencies' views on
Penn's overall financial rating, which ranks one notch below its academic peers. Penn has
worked to address these issues by pooling its schools (as well as several hospitals and clinical
practices) into the University of Pennsylvania Health System, thereby pooling resources for
greater efficiencies and research impact.

Libraries

Penn's library began in 1750 with a donation of books from cartographer Louis Evans.
Twelve years later, then-provost William Smith sailed to England to raise additional funds to
increase the collection size. More than 250 years later, it has grown into a system of 15
libraries (13 are on the contiguous campus) with 400 FTE employees and a total operating
budget of more than $48 million. The library system holds 5.7 million book and serial
volumes. It subscribes to 44,000 print serials and e-journals.

Penn's Libraries, with associated school or subject area:

• Annenberg (School of Communications), located in the Annenberg School

• Biddle (Law), located in the Law School
• Biomedical, located adjacent to the Robert Wood Johnson Pavilion of the Medical
School
• Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, located on Walnut Street at Washington Square
• Chemistry, located in the 1973 Wing of the Chemistry Building
• Dental
• Engineering
• Fine Arts, located within the Fisher Fine Arts Library, designed by Frank Furness
• Lea Library, located within the Van Pelt Library
• Lippincott (Wharton School), located on the second floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich
Library Center
• Math/Physics/Astronomy, located on the third floor of David Rittenhouse Laboratory
• Museum (Anthropology)
• Rare Books and Manuscripts
• Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center (Humanities and Social Sciences) - location of the
David B. Weigle Information Commons
• Veterinary
• High Density Storage

Admissions Selectivity

Penn is one of the most selective universities in the United States. For the Class of 2012
entering in fall 2008, the university received 22,935 applications and admitted 16.95 percent
of the applicants, 99% of whom were in the top 10% of their high school classes. 63% of the
admitted applicants matriculated. In 2007, Penn's acceptance rate was 15.9%, with 96% of
incoming freshmen ranked in the top 10% of their high school classes. In the last 5 years,
Penn has received 18,000–20,000 applications for each freshman class, has admitted on
average 17 percent of applications and saw about 65 percent of admitted applicants
matriculate. Further, Penn consistently ranks among the 10 toughest schools to get into,
according to the Princeton Review. The Atlantic also ranked Penn among the 10 most
selective schools in the country.

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At the graduate level, Penn's admissions rates, like most universities', vary considerably
based on school and program. Based on admission statistics from U.S. News and World
Report, Penn's most selective programs include its law school, the health care schools
(medicine, dental medicine, nursing), and its business school.

Rankings

U.S. News & World Report ranked Penn #6 (tied with Cal Tech) for undergraduate education
in 2009 rankings. Also, Penn is ranked fourth in the Ivy League behind Harvard, Princeton,
and Yale, respectively. Penn was ranked #4 by U.S. News in 2005 and sixth in 2006.

In 2008, the British Times Higher Education magazine ranked Penn 11th in the world and 7th
among U.S. universities. In 2007, Penn placed 15th on the Shanghai Jiao Tong University's
Academic Ranking of World Universities. The Center for Measuring University Performance
ranks Penn in its top cluster of research universities in the nation, tied with Columbia,
Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. In 2007, The Washington Monthly ranked Penn 17th overall,
and 4th among private institutions (behind Cornell, Stanford, and MIT) on its list of
universities' contributions to national service (Research: total research spending; Ph.D.s
granted in science and engineering; Community Service: the number of students in ROTC,
Peace Corps, etc.; and social mobility: percentage of, and support for, Pell grant recipients).

University of Pennsylvania's undergraduate business program at Wharton has retained its #1

ranking in U.S. News for many years.

The University Museum

The University Museum was founded in 1887. During the early twentieth century UPM
conducted some of the first and most important archaeological and anthropological
expeditions to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Africa, East Asia and South America, thus the collection
includes a very large number of antiquities from ancient Egypt and the Middle East. Its most
famous object is the goat rearing into the branches of a rosette-leafed plant, from the royal
tombs of Ur. The museum also has a strong collection of Chinese artifacts. Features of its
Beaux-Arts building include a dramatic rotunda and gardens that include Egyptian papyrus.
UPM's scientific division, MASCA, focuses on the application of modern scientific
techniques to aid the interpretation of archaeological contexts.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, which is based on Penn's campus, showcases various art
exhibitions throughout the year.

Residences

University residences include DuBois College House, Fisher Hassenfeld College House
(formerly Woodland), Gregory College House, Harnwell College House, Harrison College
House, Hill College House, Kings Court English College House, Riepe College House
(formerly Spruce House), Rodin College House (formerly Hamilton College House), Sansom
Place East / West, Stouffer College House, and Ware College House. Within the college
houses, Penn has nearly forty themed residential programs for students with shared interests
such as world cinema or science and technology.

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Many of the nearby homes on 40-42nd are often rented by undergraduate students moving off
campus after freshman year.

Student Organizations

The Philomathean Society, founded in 1813, is the oldest student group in the United States.
The student-run TV station UTV13 is the oldest college TV station in the country. The Mask
and Wig Club is the oldest all-male musical comedy troupe in the country. Also, the
University is home to the only all female collegiate musical sketch comedy troupe in the
nation, Bloomers, founded in 1978. The University of Pennsylvania Glee Club, founded in
1862, is one of the oldest continually operating collegiate choruses in the United States. Its
best-known and longest-serving director was Bruce Montgomery, who led the club from
1956 until 2000.

The University of Pennsylvania Band has been a part of student life since 1897. The Penn
Band performs at football and basketball games as well as university functions (e.g.
commencement and convocation) throughout the year. It has a current membership of
approximately 80 students. "The Red and the Blue" and "Fight On Pennsylvania" are notable
songs commonly played and sung at university events and games.

Penn Publications

• CUREJ - College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal

• The Daily Pennsylvanian - Penn's independent, student-run newspaper; published
since 1885; regularly wins Pacemaker and CSPA Gold Circle awards
• First Call Magazine - Penn's undergraduate magazine
• Knowledge@Wharton - online business journal of the Wharton School
• Penn History Review - undergraduate history journal
• Penn Triangle - science and technology magazine founded in 1899; oldest of Penn's
student-run journals; a student-run SEAS publication
• PennScience - undergraduate science research journal
• Pennsylvania Punch Bowl - Penn's humor magazine, founded in 1889; one of the
nation's oldest and most acclaimed humor magazines
• PoliComm - journal of political communication
• Res - undergraduate journal of research writing
• The Soapbox Sociopolitical Magazine - Penn's primary outlet for student
sociopolitical thought
• Sound Politicks - undergraduate political science journal
• Under The Button - online blogs written by staff of The Daily Pennsylvanian

Sports

Penn's sports teams are nicknamed the Quakers. They participate in the Ivy League and
Division I (Division I FCS for football) in the NCAA. In recent decades they often have been
league champions in football (12 times from 1982 to 2003) and basketball (22 times from
1970 to 2006). In 2004, Penn Men's Rugby won the Eastern Pennsylvania Rugby Union
championship. The first athletic team at Penn was its cricket team.

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Football

Penn first fielded a football team against Princeton at the Germantown Cricket Club in
Philadelphia on November 11, 1876.

Penn football made many contributions to the sport in its early days. During the 1890s, Penn's
famed coach and alumnus George Washington Woodruff introduced the quaternick kick, a
forerunner of the forward pass, as well as the place-kick from scrimmage and the delayed
pass. In 1894, 1895, 1897, and 1904, Penn was generally regarded the national champion of
collegiate football. The achievements of two of Penn's outstanding players from that era —
John Heisman and John Outland — are remembered each year with the presentation of the
Heisman Trophy to the most outstanding college football player of the year and the Outland
Trophy to the most outstanding college football interior lineman of the year.

In addition, each year the Bednarik Award is given to college football's best defensive player.
Chuck Bednarik (Class of 1949) was a three-time All-American center/linebacker who
starred on the 1947 team and is generally regarded as Penn's all-time finest. In addition to
Bednarik, the '47 squad boasted four-time All-American tackle George Savitsky and three-
time All-American halfback Skip Minisi. All three standouts were subsequently elected to the
College Football Hall of Fame, as was their coach, George Munger (a star running back at
Penn in the early '30s). Bednarik went on to play for 12 years with the Philadelphia Eagles,
becoming the NFL's last 60-minute man. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in
1969. During his presidency of the institution from 1948 to 1953, Harold Stassen attempted
to recultivate Penn's heyday of big-time college football, but the effort lacked support and
was short-lived.

ESPN's College GameDay traveled to Penn to highlight the Harvard-Penn game on

November 17, 2002, the first time the popular college football show had visited an Ivy
League campus.

Basketball

Penn basketball is steeped in tradition. Penn made its only (and the Ivy League's second)
Final Four appearance in 1979, where the Quakers lost to Magic Johnson-led Michigan State
in Salt Lake City. (Dartmouth twice finished second in the tournament in the 1940s, but that
was before the beginning of formal League play.) Penn is also is one of the teams in the Big
Five, along with La Salle, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova. In 2007, the men's
basketball team won its third consecutive Ivy League title and then lost in the first round of
the NCAA Tournament to Texas A&M.

Facilities

Franklin Field is where the Quakers play football, field hockey, lacrosse, sprint football, and
track and field (and formerly soccer). It is the oldest stadium still operating for football games
and was the first stadium to sport two tiers. It hosted the first commercially televised football
game, was once the home field of the Philadelphia Eagles, and was the site of early Army–
Navy games. Today it is also used by Penn students for recreation such as intramural and
club sports, including touch football and cricket. Franklin Field hosts the annual collegiate
track and field event "the Penn Relays."

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Penn's home court, the Palestra, is an arena used for men's and women's basketball teams,
volleyball teams, wrestling team, and Philadelphia Big Five basketball, as well as high school
sporting events. The Palestra has hosted more NCAA Tournament basketball games than any
other facility. Penn baseball plays its home games at Meiklejohn Stadium.

The Olympic Boycott Games of 1980 were held at the University of Pennsylvania in response
to Moscow's hosting of the 1980 Summer Olympics following the Soviet incursion in
Afghanistan. Twenty-nine of the boycotting nations participated in the Boycott Games.

Notable people
Notable University of Pennsylvania alumni include 9 signers of the Declaration of
Independence: George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Francis Hopkinson, Thomas McKean,
Robert Morris, William Paca, George Ross, Benjamin Rush, and James Wilson; 11 signers of
the Constitution: George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimons, Benjamin Franklin, Jared Ingersoll,
Rufus King, Thomas Mifflin, Gouverneur Morris, Robert Morris, George Washington, Hugh
Williamson, and James Wilson; 3 United States Supreme Court justices: William J. Brennan,
Jr., Owen Roberts, and James Wilson; and 1 president of the United States: William Henry
Harrison. Other notable Penn alumni include entrepreneurs Warren Buffett and Donald
Trump, poets Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, and various Nobel laureates. From
1997 to 2007, 9 Penn affiliates have won Nobel Prizes, of whom 4 are current faculty
members and 2 are alumni.

Penn in popular culture

Novels

• Dave Eggers's suicidal childhood friend Tom from the novel A Heartbreaking Work
of Staggering Genius attends Penn.
• Much of Jonathan Franzen's novel, The Corrections, takes place in Philadelphia and
mentions Penn a number of times. Gary Lambert, one of the main characters, attends
Penn as an undergraduate.
• The main character's sex fantasy in Jennifer Weiner's novel, Good in Bed, involves a
Penn film professor.
• Tom Wolfe's novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, is based in part on the particular
collegiate subculture found at Penn. Wolfe researched the novel by talking to students
from Penn, and even attended a party at one of Penn's secret societies.[citation needed]

Movies

• A number of scenes from the 1993 Academy Award-winning film Philadelphia were
filmed inside the Fisher Fine Arts Library, which doubles as the law school library for
the movie.
• A chase scene in M. Night Shyamalan's 2000 film Unbreakable starring Samuel L.
Jackson and Bruce Willis features the exterior of Franklin Field.
• In the 2000 film The Skulls, one of the crew teams during the boat race at the
beginning of the movie is from Penn.
• In the 2003 film Mona Lisa Smile, Tommy (Topher Grace) is scheduled to attend
graduate school at Penn.
• In the 2004 Bollywood film Swades, Mohan (Shahrukh Khan) is a student at Penn.

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 • In the 2006 film Invincible starring Mark Wahlberg, Franklin Field acts as a substitute
for the now razed Veteran's Stadium.
• In the 2008 film Baby Mama, Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler) gives birth at the
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
• A number of scenes at the beginning of the 2009 film Transformers: Revenge of the
Fallen were filmed in the freshman quad as well as in front of The Castle, a Psi
Upsilon fraternity house and a prominent example of gothic-collegiate architecture.

Television

• Penn is often mentioned in the NBC drama American Dreams. Two of the main
characters, Sam and Beth, attend the school. In the second and third seasons, several
of the recreations take place at The Lair, a Penn campus coffee house/student union
facility.
• In an episode of the The Cosby Show titled "Off to the Races," Cliff Huxtable
competes in the Penn Relays. Many portions of the episode were filmed at Franklin
Field.
• Several It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episodes were filmed at Penn, with the
characters Dennis and Dee having attended university there.
• In an episode of The Office, Dwight Schrute mentions the Penn football game in order
to upset Andy Bernard, a Cornell alumnus.
• In the television series Queer as Folk, Ted Schmidt often references the fact that he is
a graduate of the Wharton School.
• Penn is mentioned in the series Law and Order (episode: Castoff) as the alma mater of
an Ivy League murder victim.

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