INTRODUCTION

Membership

 Contributing SCUE Members

Class of 2020: Esra Karamancı, Maggie Zheng, Tyler Larkworthy, Justin Iannacone, Nina Selipsky, Tyler Shevin, Max Hammer, Arman Ramezani, Ketaki Gujar

Class of 2021: Alice Goulding, Aditya Rao, Amanpreet Singh, Sophie Caplan, Daniel Gordon, Carson Eckhard, Karen Herrera, Jesse Liu, Bayley Tuch, Anthony Chen
Class of 2022: Kamran Elahi, Anjali Mahajan, Daniel Iglesias, Sireesh Ramesh, Maggie Tang, Hongbo (Tony) Wen, Avni Ahuja, Mary Sadallah, Lawrence Phillips, Jane Huang, Aidan Young, Zoey Weisman

Class of 2023: Kruti Desai, Oliver Stern, Alfredo Praticò, Favor Idika, Akshat Talreja, Lena Hansen, Aisha Irshad, McCarron Kincheloe

Class of 2024: Jiani Tian, William Zhang, Jenesis Cochrane, Iris Horng

 Contributing Alumni

Class of 2019: David Gordon, Radhika Gupta, Aliki Karnavas, Chirag Manyapu, Yasmin Mulla, Justin Bean, Paul Harryhill

Letter from the Chair

200 Houston Hall, 3417 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6306
scuedolphin@gmail.com

To members of the university community:

In 2020, the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education celebrated 55 years advocating for meaningful academic and educational policy change at Penn. We were excited to research important and impactful improvements we wanted to enact, and to begin our research process, we looked back at the past of SCUE’s reports. With a storied history dating back to the 1960s, our publications have been the catalysts for coeducation of the College of Arts & Sciences, Pass/Fail grading, preceptorials, course and professor evaluations, and fall break.

To better understand the new needs of students, SCUE got the detailed insight of nearly one-fifth of the undergraduate body through focus groups and a comprehensive survey. From there, SCUE members researched development areas by looking at our peer institutions, discussing with faculty and staff, and having follow-up conversations with students. This publication comes after eighteen months of iteration and preparation.

In it, we discuss some of the most pressing needs students face. We highlight the inequality of the wealth of resources students can access, ways to reduce barriers between the different schools and expand the One University theme beyond the classroom, initiatives that would better serve students and the Wellness at Penn initiative, and policies which would unite the undergraduate student body through shared experiences. Over the coming years, we want to actively partner with members of the Penn community to ameliorate these issues.

Thank you to the countless instructors, administrators, and staff members who gave us insight into their respective programs so we could develop suggestions for how they can better support the student body.

Moreover, I personally want to thank Katie Bonner, Dr. Gary Purpura, Dr. Rob Nelson, Deputy Provost Beth Winkelstein, Provost Wendell Pritchett, Leah Popowich, and President Amy Gutmann for their support and insight for the long endeavor of our White Paper. Lastly, this would be impossible without the commitment of the SCUE body and former SCUE Chairs, so I sincerely thank you all for the research and writing you put in to make the White Paper come to fruition.

I am extremely proud to present the 2020 White Paper on Undergraduate Education, as I know it will far outlast any current member of SCUE and will improve the experiences of Penn students for years to come. SCUE looks forward to working with everybody to bring these suggestions to fruition. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Arman D. Ramezani
Chair External, 2019

Letter From the Executive Editors

December 2020

Dear members of the University community,

The Student Committee on Undergraduate Education has published some version of this White Paper for over half a century. As executive editors, it is our job to uphold this tradition and produce the White Paper to address the most pressing and long-term needs of our Penn community.

It would be trite to say this final document has undergone major revisions between January and December of 2020. While the standard editorial jostling and rearranging certainly happened, we also release this 2020 White Paper knowing that some of the university offices and services we critiqued will look very different in the coming years.

That being said, our work is the product of a half-decade of SCUE steering committees and bodies, representing members of the classes of 2016 to 2024. It would have been a disservice to them and to the hundreds of other students involved in this publication to cut proposals which may seem far-off or impractical.

But the work on a White Paper never stops at publication. The lobbying and convincing that comes after continues years post-release and is taken up by administrators and students all across campus. As Penn’s ecosystem is rebuilt post-pandemic, we hope this document can serve as a template for the rebuilding and improvement of the offices and services assessed herein. We release this document understanding that while some of these proposals may seem unrealistic now, they will likely still be relevant and more actionable long into the 2020s.

While we do not expect a fifteen-thousand-word critique of Penn to necessarily “find you well during these unprecedented times,” we do hope you find our publication reasonable and, in the coming years, practical and necessary.

Sincerely,

Alice Goulding and Alfredo Praticò
Class of 2021 and Class of 2023