{"id":312109,"date":"2026-10-22T18:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T18:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312109\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T18:58:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T18:58:13","slug":"an-epic-beginning-the-pennsylvania-gazette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312109\/","title":{"rendered":"An Epic Beginning \u2013 The Pennsylvania Gazette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Photo by Eric Sucar courtesy Penn Communications<\/p>\n

The Class of 2030\u2019s \u201cPenn odyssey\u201d kicks off for bold new explorers.<\/p>\n

Between earning their admission to Penn and starting their college classes, the Class of 2030 faced a different sort of intellectual challenge.<\/p>\n

In welcoming first-year and transfer students to the University, President J. Larry Jameson shared with them three riddles during the late-August Convocation ceremony that formally began Penn\u2019s 286th academic year.<\/p>\n

\u2022 What could a starfish, a spaceship, and the packaging in your Amazon deliveries have in common?<\/p>\n

\u2022 How might something dangerous, like venom, save more than a million lives a year?<\/p>\n

\u2022 Why is an ancient poem, 3,000 years old, new today?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe answers,\u201d Jameson told the crowd that had gathered at Franklin Field, \u201cwill reveal something fundamental, even exhilarating, about Penn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Delivering his final Convocation address before stepping down from office in June, the Penn president didn\u2019t expect the students to ace the pop quiz, noting the first riddle was especially challenging. The answer: a team at Penn Engineering, led by materials science professor Ling Li, recently found that the skeleton of a chocolate chip starfish senses and concentrates light, which \u201ccould inspire next-generation materials that are tough, lightweight, and responsive to the environment,\u201d Jameson said. \u201cIt might protect passengers during space flight and precious cargo in your household deliveries.\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer to the second riddle also informed the University\u2019s newest students of a recent faculty discovery: Penn Medicine researchers used AI to explore more than 40 million peptides found in snake and spider venom to \u201csynthesize powerful new antibiotics \u2026 that could counter antibiotic resistance and ultimately save millions of lives,\u201d Jameson said.<\/p>\n

And the last (\u201cthe easy\u201d part of the test) spotlighted Penn classics professor Emily Wilson, whose renowned 2017 translation of Homer\u2019s epic [\u201cAn Odyssey for Our Time<\/a>,\u201d Mar|Apr 2018] made headlines (and sold more than a million copies this year) with the release of the summer blockbuster film The Odyssey. \u201cTimeless human stories endure because new generations find ways to share and learn from them,\u201d Jameson said, adding that \u201cthese examples are just three stars in the vast constellation of Penn\u2019s research and the student experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Penn president encouraged the Class of 2030 to find more\u2014and to make their own mark on the University as their \u201cPenn odyssey\u201d begins. \u201cLike Odysseus in the face of setbacks and challenges, you will persevere,\u201d he said. \u201cYou will have fantastic adventures. You will see and do wonderful things. It will be epic.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his welcome remarks, Penn Provost John L. Jackson Jr. also went deep into history, reminding the students that their time at Penn will be \u201castonishingly brief\u201d when compared to \u201cPenn\u2019s 286-year run\u201d or the universe\u2019s 13.8 billion years.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut during your brief time here,\u201d he said, \u201cyou have the chance to do something extraordinary: to experiment intellectually, to push yourself ideologically, to question your assumptions, and to learn how to engage the world with both rigor and humility.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition to taking advantage of \u201ceverything Penn offers,\u201d including a trip to \u201cour one-and-only Palestra,\u201d which will soon mark its 100-year anniversary, \u201cmy advice to you,\u201d Jackson continued, \u201cis to cultivate both humility and empathy. And to develop habits of mind that allow you to navigate political times without being negatively consumed or debilitated by them. To learn how to listen deeply, argue honestly, and recognize the humanity in people whose experiences and worldviews differ profoundly from your own.\u201d \u2014DZ<\/p>\n

\"Share<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Eric Sucar courtesy Penn Communications The Class of 2030\u2019s \u201cPenn odyssey\u201d kicks off for bold new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-312109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}