Throughout Wharton's history, we have worked toward the same singular purpose: to impact the world through the generation and dissemination of business knowledge and the development of leaders of integrity. When I became dean, my responsibility was clear. I believed, as I do today, that to fulfill our mission in the 21st century, we had to focus on four key goals. First, Wharton must have the finest faculty. Second, we must be a truly global institution in both our engagement in the world and in the audience we reach. Third, we must create an academic environment that produces the highest learning outcomes. And fourth, we must cultivate life-long relationships among our vast alumni network.

I'm also focused on building value for the long haul. I want students and alumni to have access to the tools and knowledge that will help them get even better jobs as they go forward. I want to help Wharton's reputation continue to climb so that students' degrees are a valuable credential, not just on the day they graduate, but 20 and 30 years down the road. And I'm committed to strengthening the network of 76,000 Wharton alumni around the world so that they make up the Rolodex of business contacts that alumni can connect with throughout their careers.

Faculty strength

Our faculty is our most precious resource, and the ongoing strength of our faculty is essential to our mission. They create and deliver the academic programs that bring top students to Wharton in the first place. They are fully committed to the quality of education and to ensuring — through continued renewal of the curriculum — that Wharton remains known for educational excellence around the world.

We continue to add faculty in key areas and emerging disciplines to provide students with the most solid understanding of business basics in the core curriculum and expanded elective opportunities to sharpen their skills in specialized fields. But it's not enough to attract the brightest minds in every discipline to our faculty. We also must give them the resources for pioneering research.

The knowledge our faculty creates through research provides the intellectual raw material for business innovation. This pays off directly in the quality of education: we teach from our research, bringing students the freshest thinking on the broadest range of topics. I've worked very hard with our faculty to substantially increase research funding through research centers, new academic programs like the William and Phyllis Mack Center for Technological Innovation and the Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative, and our Alliance with INSEAD.

Globalization

The second major task we've undertaken in the last three years is to increase our global engagement. Getting our research into the hands of executives, policy-makers and other scholars throughout the world to fuel business growth is critical to our global strategy. We have a range of activities that promote our faculty research to a wide audience beyond the School, including conferences, executive memberships in research centers, and our executive education courses, which attract nearly 10,000 participants each year from around the world.

Knowledge@Wharton is our newest tool in sharing our research with international audiences. Since we launched the Web site in May 1999, our user base has grown to more than 260,000 subscribers in 189 countries. We also formed a collaboration with Universia.net to translate our Knowledge@Wharton articles into Spanish and Portuguese for Universia's 900,000 subscribers.

The establishment of our Wharton West campus in San Francisco is another important step in expanding our global outreach. Along with our alliance with INSEAD, with its campuses in France and Singapore, we now have four sites from which we can deliver executive education programs to previously untapped markets. These programs also bring our faculty in contact with new industry partners around the world. In turn, we can bring more global business content and increased exposure to a wider variety of industries into the curriculum than we could before.

The student exchanges with INSEAD have offered our students special opportunities to study abroad and to interact with INSEAD students who elect to spend sessions with us. Along with our globally diverse student body, these opportunities bring a variety of student perspectives to class discussions and social life on campus that we continue to feel is a defining feature of Wharton.

Learning environment

We also believe that the development of new technologies affords us an unprecedented opportunity to transform the learning experience for our students, the third major element of our overall strategy. With the volume of information and the array of skills needed to be successful business leaders, students need tools that will help them learn efficiently and effectively. We established the Alfred West Jr. Learning Lab to assist our faculty in creating new learning tools and experiential learning systems. Thirteen of these tools have already been deployed in the classroom.

We could not hope to improve learning outcomes without drastically improving our learning environment. With the opening of Jon M. Huntsman Hall in the fall of 2002, we have state-of-the-art classrooms to accommodate our enrollment, with consistent technology resources throughout the building.

Alumni engagement

Fulfilling the mission of the Wharton School requires more than vision and ideas. It requires money. Tuition covers less than half of the cost of students' education. And we must not only fund the programs that serve students today, but also build for the future, so that that the value of a Wharton education always exceeds its cost and continues to grow with the reputation of the School in years to come.

In 1996, the School embarked on its first concentrated alumni fund-raising effort. One of the most important steps we took three years ago was to increase the fund-raising goal for this capital campaign from $350 million to $425 million to support our strategic plans. I've spent more than half of my days since becoming dean raising nearly $200 million toward that campaign goal. I've been to more than 45 cities across the U.S. and internationally in the last year alone — some for multiple visits — and talked personally with well over 5,000 Wharton alumni. And I'll continue traveling and meeting with our graduates all over the world to ensure we meet our goal.

But it's not only about fund raising. It's fundamentally about fulfilling our mission to "develop leaders" by providing alumni with greater resources to continue to gain knowledge about business throughout their careers. I'm convinced that building a culture of life-long learning needs to be a critical goal. We want Wharton to be the place alumni turn for business knowledge along each step of their professional lives and where they can develop contacts among fellow alumni that will help them to be more successful every year.

Building the alumni network also is about having alumni actively involved with current students. The recently launched Wharton Alumni Student Network gives alumni a chance to share with students information about jobs and the industries in which they work, offer tips about managing career change, and give insights about the quality of life in the city or country where they reside.

When I talk to alumni, I tell them we have the finest faculty, that we are a truly global institution, and that we have created the best academic environment and learning tools available in business education. And I invite them to become more involved in our alumni network and with our students. These features are vital elements that help define the Wharton brand to the world, and we will remain focused on these priorities.

Wharton is an institution of unparalleled strength. I'm not talking about value that can be measured by the vagaries of the rankings. I'm talking about real lasting value, so that a Wharton degree will always be a credential that stands out, opens doors and defines business leadership around the world.

Dean Patrick T. Harker

Background: A faculty member since 1984, Harker has held numerous leadership positions at Penn, including serving as interim dean and deputy dean. He was named UPS Transportation Professor for the Private Sector in 1991, and served as chairperson of the Operations and Information Management Department from 1997 to 1999. Harker was named Wharton's 12th dean on Feb. 8, 2000.

Education: Harker earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering from Penn in 1981, then received a master's degree in economics and a PhD in civil engineering, also from Penn, in 1983.

Personal: Harker, 44, is a resident of Haddon Heights, N.J., where he lives with his wife, Emily — whom he met while both were students at Penn — and their three children.