On Wednesday, April 19, University Council held its last meeting of the semester. Provost Vincent Price enumerated the eight recommendations that he and President Amy Gutmann recently received from the Task Force on a Safe and Responsible Campus Community chaired by Valarie Swain-Cade McCoullum, vice provost for University life; Maureen Rush, vice president for public safety, superintendent of Penn police; and Beth A. Winkelstein, vice provost for education. Provost Price said that he and President Gutmann are enormously grateful to the Task Force and that they have accepted the recommendations. He noted that one of them has already been implemented with the appointment of Senior Vice President Joann Mitchell as the chief diversity officer (Almanac March 28, 2017). Penn will collaborate with student leaders to ensure that identified off-campus student groups adhere to Penn’s policies and regulations. VPUL McCoullum pointed out that the privilege of being a Penn student comes with responsibilities. There is one main reason for this, according to Ms. Rush, and that is safety. Provost Price added that Vice Provost for Faculty Anita Allen has been charged with developing training for faculty and staff to be comparable to the online program Thrive at Penn (TAP) for students.

The bulk of the meeting was then devoted to the chairs of the Council committees giving summaries of their year-end reports (Almanac April 18, 2017). Ani Nenkova spoke about the report of the Committee on Academic and Related Affairs; Emily Hannum spoke about the report of the Committee on Campus and Community Life; Ezekiel Dixon- Román summarized the Committee on Diversity and Equity’s report; Masao Sako talked about the work of the Facilities Committee and Reed Shuldiner highlighted the focus of the Committee on Personnel Benefits.

President Gutmann thanked the committee chairs for their work and said that their recommendations have been extremely helpful and  would be taken up by Steering and the Administration in the coming months.

Santosh S. Venkatesh summarized the work of the Council Committee on Committees.   

Ed. Note: See the Council Supplement in the April 18 issue for the 2016-2017 Year-end Reports of the Standing Committees.