Dear Penn Alumni,

While every Homecoming is special, this year’s celebration promises to be historic. On Friday, October 15, as we kick off Homecoming, Penn will inaugurate its eighth president, Amy Gutmann. The ceremony and symposium will combine the traditional, social and academic as we look forward to building on Penn’s extraordinary momentum. The timing of these events speaks, quite powerfully, to the vital role that alumni play in our University community.

Homecoming will celebrate all that is Penn with programs that will engage you in every facet of University life. Visit SEAS’s LiveActor Studio and discover how engineers create spectacular animation effects in films like Shrek and The Matrix, take a tour of WXPN’S newly designed World Cafe Live (destined to become one of the nation’s most impressive music venues), and for the second year in a row, explore the many and varied offerings of Penn in Print, a program series that highlights our thriving literary community. Of course, we all want to cheer the Quakers to victory as they take on the Columbia Lions at Franklin Field. Other perennial highlights will include the Alumni Award of Merit Gala honoring our outstanding alumni volunteers, the Taste of Penn diversity celebration and the post game Red and Blue Rendezvous for our young alumni, as well as many other receptions, lectures, tours and other opportunities to simply reconnect with Penn and with each other.

There has never been a better time to return to campus. For two days in October, the Inauguration and Homecoming provide us the opportunity to reconnect and to savor the University’s richness and diversity, its history and promise. We look forward to welcoming you to Penn to make this special community your own.