Honorary Degree Process

The Office of the University Secretary manages the honorary degrees process at Penn. 

All members of the University community are welcome to submit nominations.  All nominations are confidential and potential nominees should not be contacted directly.  Review is ongoing and candidates may ultimately be selected several years after their initial nomination.

The University Council Honorary Degrees Committee, with a membership of faculty, staff and graduate and undergraduate students, is charged with reviewing nominations from the fields of scholarship and academic achievement and advising the Trustee Committee on Honorary Degrees and Awards.  The Trustee Committee considers recommendations from the Council Committee as well as other sources and makes final selections.  

It is University policy not to consider Penn standing faculty, trustees, or school and center advisors for honorary degrees.  

Penn emeritus faculty are eligible to receive honorary degrees through a special nomination process by University Deans.

List of previous University of Pennsylvania
Honorary Degree Recipients

Honorary Degree Qualifications

Candidates should exemplify the highest ideals of the University, which seek to educate those who will change the world through innovative scholarship, scientific discovery, artistic creativity and/or societal leadership. Please note that Penn does not offer Honorary Degrees posthumously or in absentia.

Nominations for Honorary Degrees

Nominations should explain how nominees meet the criteria for selection and outline the nominees’ achievements and contributions; Please include as much biographical and other supporting information as possible, but do not contact the nominees. The nomination process is confidential and nominees should not know that they are being considered.  We particularly encourage nominations from fields which have not been recognized by the award of honorary degrees in recent years. 

For general purposes, field of consideration for honorary degree nominations are as follows:

  • Arts and Culture
  • Business
  • Education
  • Entertainment and Media
  • Humanities and Social Sciences
  • Public Affairs (government, law)
  • Scholarship/Academia
  • Science, Technology and Medicine
  • Other

Speaker and Honorary Degree Recipients

The speaker and honorary degree recipients for The University of Pennsylvania's 269th Commencement ceremony include Elizabeth Banks, Lonnie G. Bunch III, Lene Vestergaard Hau, and Barbara D. Savage (see slideshow.)

Banks

Elizabeth Banks

Actress and director of film and television
Co-founder of Brownstone Productions, an American film and television production company

2025 Commencement Speaker and Honorary Doctor of Arts

Photo Credit: Robert Ascroft

Bunch

Lonnie G. Bunch III

Historian, educator, curator, author
Fourteenth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

Photo Credit: Robert Stewart

Hau

Lene Vestergaard Hau

Physicist and pioneer in quantum optics
Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics at Harvard University

Honorary Doctor of Sciences

Photo credit: Paul Horowitz

 

Savage

Barbara D. Savage

Historian, scholar of twentieth century African American history
Geraldine R. Segal Professor Emerita of American Social Thought, Department of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

 Photo credit: Schuyler Alig

Address
Office of the University Secretary 
1 College Hall, Room 211
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6303

Phone
Phone (215) 898-7005
Fax (215) 898-0103

Location
Campus Map