Fulfilling the goals of the Compact – increasing access for talented students of all backgrounds, integrating knowledge across multiple disciplines, and engaging our knowledge with communities locally and globally – is the focus of Penn’s current $3.5 billion Making History campaign, and will position the University to make the greatest possible contribution to our society and our world.
At Penn, the never-ending quest for innovation and academic distinction has found perfect Franklinian expression in “The Penn Compact,” President Amy Gutmann’s bold vision for propelling our University from excellence to eminence in all our core endeavors. And the first general-purpose electronic, digital computer – ENIAC – was invented right here at the University of Pennsylvania. The first medical and business schools in the United States were launched here. The modern liberal arts curriculum as we know it can trace its roots to Franklin’s innovation to have Penn students study international commerce and foreign languages. Throughout its history, Penn has extended the frontiers of higher learning and research to produce graduates and scholars whose work has enriched the nation and all of humanity. Penn has embodied and advanced Franklin’s revolutionary vision for 271 years. When pursued vigorously and simultaneously, the two missions – developing the inclination to do good and the ability to do well – merge to help form a more perfect university that educates more capable citizens for our democracy. His startling vision of a secular, nonsectarian Academy that would foster an “Inclination join’d with an Ability to serve Mankind, one’s Country, Friends and Family” has never ceased to challenge Penn to redefine the scope and mission of the modern American university. Nowhere does Franklin feel more contemporary, more revolutionary, and more alive than at the University of Pennsylvania. In the words of one elegiac tribute, “Great men have two lives: one which occurs while they work on this earth a second which begins at the day of their death and continues as long as their ideas and conceptions remain powerful.” These words befit the great Benjamin Franklin, whose inventions, innovations, ideas, writings, and public works continue to shape our thinking and renew the Republic he helped to create and the institutions he founded, including the University of Pennsylvania.