About
Articulating Our Vision
Our strategic plan seeks to build strong foundations of faculty and education programs in the School. Those foundations enable the pursuit of new frontiers of interdisciplinary knowledge.
Planning Process
Faculty engagement has been a core principle of the development and implementation of the strategic goals of Our Foundations and Frontiers, the plan published in 2015. In conceptualizing the original goals, in implementing them, and now in assessing progress and next steps, a series of interdisciplinary faculty committees – each with representation from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and with faculty from other Penn schools – has been appointed.
The SAS Planning and Priorities Committee (the Dean’s faculty advisory committee) has served as the faculty executive committee for the planning process. Other faculty committees that have contributed to ongoing planning efforts include those on undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education, and the SAS Dean’s Council on Diversity.
Planning has been undertaken in three stages:
AY14
Plan Development
Committees
AY16-17
Implementation
Committees
AY20
Assessment
Committees
At each of the three planning stages, approximately one-third of the standing faculty has been directly involved in planning discussions.
Current Activities
In the 2020 Academic Year, the following committees met regularly to assess progress and consider next steps.
- Data-Driven Discovery
- Diversity, Inequality, and Human Well-being
- Energy, Sustainability, and Environment
- Global Inquiries (main committee plus regional committees)
- Africa
- China
- India
- Latin America
- New Directions in the Humanities
- Future Framework for Language and Literature Departments
- Mapping the Mind
- Public Policy and Social Impact
