Penn Integrates Knowledge Professorships

"The time has come to lower the barriers that separate departments and schools. Discipline must reach across to discipline and build bridges of common understanding and shared purpose across all 12 of Penn’s schools and throughout the campus."

Interim Penn President J. Larry Jameson

Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professorships

As the challenges of our time grow more complex and consequential, Penn is poised like no other to innovate and lead. Through the recruitment of faculty who cross disciplinary boundaries, Penn fosters innovation and expands the world’s knowledge in new and unanticipated ways. Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professors hold appointments in two or more schools at Penn, and draw on their breadth of knowledge to collaborate with colleagues on boundary-breaking research.

With 12 schools on one contiguous campus, our world-class faculty – especially PIK Professors – are masterful collaborators. As they pursue their path-breaking work, they bring knowledge together across disciplines and use that knowledge to illuminate some of the most fundamental issues of our time.

On Campus and in the World

A handwritten Joy Map on a table.

Journey to Joy

In a joint class within the School of Social Policy & Practice and the Annenberg School for Communication, PIK professor Desmond Upton Patton invites students to dream big in Journey to Joy: Designing a Happier Life.

Cartoon images of grownups in failed negotiations over a laptop.

Is ‘bypassing’ a better way to battle misinformation?

Bypassing involves offering accurate information that has an implication opposite to that of the misinformation. New research from APPC finds bypassing may be superior to correction in forming beliefs, but not in attitude about the delivered information.