In 1749 in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin presented his vision of a school in a pamphlet titled Proposals for the Education of Youth in Pensilvania. Unlike other American Colonial colleges, the new school would not focus on education for the clergy. Instead, it would prepare students for lives of business and public service. The proposed program of study would become the nation’s first modern liberal arts curriculum.

More than 250 years later, The University of Pennsylvania continues to blaze trails in education. It is home to the nation’s first medical school, which added as early as 1874, a university teaching hospital. The University is also the birthplace of technological invention. In 1946, Penn introduced ENIAC, the world’s first electronic, large-scale, general-purpose digital computer.