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Initiatives to Support Your Academic and Scholarly Pursuits

A Message To Graduate and Professional Students, September 1, 2020

It is our pleasure to welcome you to the start of a new academic year at Penn. While this semester will be unlike any other fall, we look forward to providing you with the very best graduate and professional education and Penn experience. As the year begins, we want to update you on new and ongoing initiatives to support your academic and scholarly pursuits and to provide you with a secure and healthy environment.

The General Fee has been reduced by 10% for the Fall 2020 semester for all graduate and professional students, as you may already know, and PhD and research master’s tuition will remain at 2019-2020 levels for the Fall semester. Professional schools and programs set their own tuition, so we advise you to follow up directly with your program if you have any questions.

We are also giving all PhD and research master’s students an expanded option to take courses pass/fail during the Fall 2020 semester. Research students may take an unlimited number of classes pass/fail, and any courses taken on a pass/fail basis during Spring and Fall 2020 will not count against the total number of courses you may take pass/fail. You must opt in to this expanded pass/fail option by Friday, October 30, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time, using  Penn InTouch. Professional students should check with their schools and programs to learn what grading options are being offered.

In addition, we are currently offering three grant programs; all have a September 18 deadline:

Penn is committed to the wellbeing of our students all over the world. Please see our Wellness at Penn resources for information about COVID testing, contact tracing, etc. We require all students to participate in PennOpen Pass, a daily symptom checker. We also expect all students to adhere to public health requirements and follow the Campus Compact. The Student Health Service and Counseling and Psychological Services remain available to students regardless of where you are located. PhD students who have advanced to candidacy may submit a petition to travel if absolutely necessary to support research and academic progress.

We’d also like to remind all students about the Graduate Group Feedback Form for Students. This form is open all the time and can be filled out by any graduate student, anonymously or not, to provide feedback on their graduate experience.

We work closely with the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GAPSA) to identify and implement solutions to the most important concerns of graduate and professional students. We appreciate GAPSA’s partnership over the years and would especially like to acknowledge GAPSA’s help in providing support for COVID-related grants to graduate and professional students in the spring and fall of this year. We encourage you to work with GAPSA to share your ideas and suggestions in the year ahead—and to interact with the University’s Graduate Student Center on Locust Walk, as well as the Family Resource Center, which provides resources and support for students with children.

We invite all of our new graduate and professional students to watch a special “Welcome to New Students from the President and Provost,” and we wish all of you a safe, healthy, and academically engaging semester!

—Wendell E. Pritchett, Provost
—Beth A. Winkelstein, Deputy Provost

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