two-decade-old program<\/a> housed by King\u2019s College London was made abruptly by Penn Abroad at the start of the fall 2025 semester. Though students majoring and minoring in English will still be able to study at King\u2019s College under a typical exchange format, students and alumni who spoke to The Daily Pennsylvanian expressed disappointment towards the termination of the program.<\/p>\nIn an interview with the DP, English department Chair Zachary Lesser said faculty were not consulted before the decision was finalized. He added that he had been in conversation with Penn Abroad over the summer about possible cost-saving measures, but that \u201cthe final word came down unexpectedly.\u201d Although the department hopes the program could return someday, it will not be active for the foreseeable future, Lesser said.<\/p>\n
PEPL combined full immersion at King\u2019s College with a weekly Penn-taught course that exclusively brought PEPL students together to study live theater productions in the city\u2019s West End. The program also included faculty-led excursions to cultural sites across England.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Students took three courses at King\u2019s College, lived alongside King\u2019s College students in residence halls, and met weekly with a Penn faculty member for the Theater in London course. The program typically included a graduate student as well who would pursue their own academic work while also serving as a resource for the cohort.<\/p>\n
In a written statement to the DP, Penn Abroad stated that the English Department\u2019s London program has been folded into a new exchange program with King\u2019s College. Under this format, English majors and minors can continue to study at King\u2019s College during the fall or spring semester, enrolling directly in up to four English courses.<\/p>\n
Lesser explained that while most study abroad programs follow one of two models \u2014 either full immersion in a foreign university or taking home-institution courses abroad with faculty from one\u2019s own college \u2014 PEPL combined \u201cthe best of both worlds.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMany students told us that it was the peak experience of their career at Penn,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Lesser said that while the new exchange program with King\u2019s College will still be a \u201cgreat experience\u201d for students, it won’t be \u201ceverything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The DP spoke with three students and alumni who are currently participating in or have previously participated in PEPL. All three individuals spoke positively of PEPL and expressed disappointment with its discontinuation, arguing that the restructured King\u2019s College exchange does not offer the same sense of community or depth of engagement that defined the original program.<\/p>\n
Penn junior and English major Julian Williams \u2014 one of seven students currently studying in the final PEPL cohort \u2014 said the group learned about the program\u2019s discontinuation while together at a play last week. The news prompted a long discussion among students about the program\u2019s value and the importance of keeping it alive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Williams described the program\u2019s small cohort and close faculty involvement as central to its impact, noting that it created a sense of community often lacking in other study abroad experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of study abroad things where you\u2019re kind of thrown in by yourself,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fact that there\u2019s a professor, a TA, and then a cohort of other students with me \u2014 it helps create a community that I probably wouldn\u2019t have [in another program].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said the weekly theater course introduced him to the art form for the first time and broadened his interests in ways he had not anticipated. Williams said that future English majors will miss out on \u201cthe cultural capital that this program offers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jennifer Jahner, who served as PEPL’s graduate assistant during the 2009-10 academic year and was a 2012 Ph.D. graduate of Penn\u2019s English department, described the program as a crucial aspect of both her academic career and personal development.<\/p>\n
“One of the reasons why I chose to come to Penn was the hope that I would have that year available to me,” Jahner said, now a professor of English and dean of undergraduate students at the California Institute of Technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The opportunity to conduct archival research at the British Library and other London institutions was “completely transformative” for her research, Jahner said.<\/p>\n
“It would have been a totally different dissertation, and my career track would have gone in a different way had I not had that time,” she said.<\/p>\n
Beyond academics, Jahner highlighted the importance of faculty leadership and the graduate student\u2019s role within the program. She said the graduate student often served as both a peer and a mentor, helping students navigate life in London while pursuing their own research.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were all, in different ways, students together,\u201d Jahner said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She added that the faculty member served as \u201cyour first port of call if anything is happening for you, positively or otherwise,\u201d creating \u201ca Penn family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking from her own administrative experience, Jahner said that she is \u201cdeeply, deeply cognizant\u201d of the \u201cbudget challenges\u201d challenges faced by institutions. However, she urged Penn to reconsider the decision’s finality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I would hope, genuinely hope, that if this is the budget answer of the moment, that it is not the final answer for Penn in London,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
2024 English program graduate Noah Lewine participated in PEPL during his senior fall. Lewine described the value in the theater component of the program, emphasizing the rarity of having a renowned theater professor curate months of play-going, which was “not really a thing that you could recreate in any other way.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
He highlighted the breadth of the experience \u2014 from seeing a moving one-woman show titled Elephant that exceeded his expectations to enduring what he described as \u201cmaybe the single worst performance I\u2019ve ever seen in my entire life.\u201d Lewine said both experiences were \u201cequally important and valuable,\u201d allowing students to engage with different forms of theater and develop their own preferences.<\/p>\n
Lewine added that the program fundamentally changed his relationship with theater. He explained that he rarely attended theater showings before the program \u2014 but due to the program, he now regularly attends plays.<\/p>\n
He would be “hard pressed to find a lot of people who can say that an abroad program had a more positive impact on their general life.”<\/p>\n
Lewine expressed disappointment with Penn\u2019s decision, describing it as an effort to \u201ccontinue to devalue and dilute the experience that actual undergraduates on their campus have on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a double major in English and ancient history \u2014 fields he acknowledged the University may not see as lucrative \u2014 he found the faculty and classes \u201cunparalleled.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Watching the administration continue to undervalue [the humanities] and cut away at them is really disappointing and honestly heartbreaking,\u201d Lewine said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn Abroad has discontinued funding for the Penn English Program in London, bringing an end to the English…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":301746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-301745","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115370703223884035","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}