Announcements

With the semester’s end and our moving, bittersweet virtual Commencement for the Class of 2020 only days behind us, we are writing to update you on our planning and preparations for the fall. At this time, predictions for the fall of the pandemic’s progression and our society’s capacities for testing, contact tracing and treatment are sufficiently uncertain that we cannot say with perfect clarity what the fall semester will look like.

Dear Deans J. Larry Jameson, Antonia Villarruel, and Mark Wolff, We, the Deans of schools at the University of Pennsylvania, on behalf of our communities of employees and students, want to thank the Deans and their faculty and staff at the Perelman School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and School of Dental Medicine for their brave and commendable response to the pandemic. 

As we approach the end of the spring semester, we write to update you with the latest information on our planning and the important elements that will influence the decisions about how we move forward during this pandemic.

As is true for all universities in the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant financial impact on the University of Pennsylvania. Penn has experienced a substantial increase in costs to support students in the move from campus to online learning, combined with lost revenue across many areas of the University.

The guiding priority of the University, from the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been to protect the health and safety of Penn students, faculty, staff, postdocs, patients, and visitors. Moving to a virtual learning platform and depopulating the campus in a matter of days required an unprecedented effort. We are profoundly grateful to everyone at Penn who contributed to facilitate this extraordinary transition.

We are grateful to all of you for your hard work and creativity in resuming classes—and for your patience in navigating the many unwanted disruptions to our semester. We are writing now to let you know that our current remote learning plan will extend to all credit-bearing courses scheduled to begin on May 26, including both Summer Session I and the 11-week Summer Session. This decision, while not taken lightly, arises from the indefinite stay-at-home order in Philadelphia and the need to resume campus activities only when it is considered safe do so.

Today we are announcing that the University of Pennsylvania’s interruption of all onsite operations, except for those that are life-sustaining essential employees, will continue until further notice. We will keep you updated well in advance when more information is available on an exact date for returning to onsite operations.

We are enormously grateful for your patience and understanding during the events of the past few weeks. None of us expected—or wanted—the disruptions to this semester. We are now excited to return on Monday to teaching and learning, our most important work together as a Penn community.

Consistent with an order issued by Governor Wolf late Thursday afternoon, the University of Pennsylvania is suspending all operations performed onsite except for those that are life-sustaining. Remote work is not impacted by this order and is expected to continue. Effective 12:01 a.m. on March 21, 2020, only those University employees who are performing life-sustaining work are permitted to be physically present at the University. This includes, but is not limited to, those employees performing the following services for the University:

This is a generation-defining moment. And like every such moment that has gone before, it is not only the crisis itself but also how we respond that matters most. The Penn community has responded heroically.