14 Years, Immeasurable Contributions: President John Fry’s Legacy at Drexel University

14 Years, Immeasurable Contributions: President John Fry's Legacy at Drexel University

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In his presidential inauguration address, Drexel University President John Fry promised to build on the institution's strengths and sense of community, remarking, "I believe all of us have been drawn to Drexel not just by our craving to acquire and create knowledge, but also by our resolve to put our knowledge to good use where it matters - and where it can do the most good."

And from 2010 to 2024, Fry accomplished that goal, leading the institution through transformational change that will continue to resonate throughout campus.

As Fry prepares to depart this fall to become president of Temple University, the time has come to recognize and celebrate his legacy.

On and Off Campus

The University City Campus - and University City as a whole - looks very different compared to what it was in 2010 when Fry joined the University. The enhanced campus now includes more spaces for academics, research and student life, benefitting all the Dragons who can now work, learn and live together in those buildings and outdoor areas. The result is a more vibrant Drexel for generations of Drexel students, faculty and professional staff members.

Drexel's newest state-of-the-art buildings include the Constantine N. Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building (PISB) with North America's largest living biowall; the Gerri C. LeBow Hall with innovative spaces for business education; and the URBN Center housing labs, studios and other facilities in media, arts and design fields. Many of Drexel's health-related programs are now in one building, on one campus, with the opening of the University City Campus' Health Sciences Building in 2022. Fry also brokered a partnership with American Campus Communities that led to additional on-campus student residence halls and retail shops at Chestnut Square and the Summit.

Throughout campus, existing spaces have also been renovated to house essential Drexel programs and offerings, often with new modernized facades that noticeably beautify the environment. For example, the new Korman Center was remodeled to accommodate the new Academic Resource Center (ARC) to house academic tutoring, coaching and advising services, which reduces barriers for students seeking support. Plus, new parklike areas such as Drexel Square and Raymond G. Perelman Plaza have added green space to campus, with more coming this fall once the former Myers Hall is converted into a multipurpose recreational space.

Among his most high-profile acts, Fry spearheaded plans to develop an innovation ecosystem on and around campus. This includes the creation of the $3.5 billion mixed-use development Schuylkill Yards on the eastern edge of campus with building partner Brandywine Realty Trust towards the eastern side of campus, and the development of uCity Square with Wexford Science & Technology to the west. The projects have attracted new neighborhood residents, potential partners and employers to West Philadelphia, seeding West Philadelphia's burgeoning life sciences industry with companies that could provide future job opportunities in University City, such as Spark Therapeutics' gene therapy innovation center.

New Partnerships in New Places

Drexel's impact reaches from the neighborhoods immediately situated by the University all the way to various continents and countries around the world.

In 2019, Fry faced a significant challenge when Drexel's teaching hospital partner, Hahnemann University Hospital, declared bankruptcy. A crisis for the city and for the University itself, he engineered an acquisition with Tower Health of St. Christopher's Hospital for Children that ensured the hospital would survive Hahnemann's sudden closure and secured the future of the College of Medicine, one of the most nation's most prolific teaching hospitals. This work has positioned Drexel to continue to grow its health sciences and health professions excellence for future professionals and the local communities they serve.

Several years later, Drexel ensured continued high-quality training for Drexel medical students with the opening of the Drexel University College of Medicine at Tower Health at its West Reading campus in 2021. The new training site increased the University's network of medical school campuses and clinical rotation sites throughout the country, placing the University at the forefront of a growing national trend. In his final years, he led Drexel through a merger with Salus University (now Salus at Drexel University), which was accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education in 2024 and added Salus' graduate health science programs to Drexel's academic portfolio.

During Fry's presidency, Drexel's scope of experiential learning expanded. Students gained new opportunities for paid co-ops and unique research engagements with industry partners in the Greater Philadelphia Area, across the country and around the world. The University's signature co-op program has flourished during this time, celebrating its 100-year anniversary in 2019.

In 2022, the University completed its most ambitious fundraising and engagement campaign ever, raising more than $800 million from over 42,000 alumni and 4,000 friends of the University in about nine years. More than half of that funding went toward benefiting student success, research and academics.

Fry also helped to advance Drexel's international reach, expanding the University's ability to educate global citizens and foster wide-ranging collaborations for Dragons and international partners to work on solutions to global challenges. The University now has more than 100 global partnerships with universities on six continents, which has increased opportunities for faculty research and exchanges as well as student co-op and educational options abroad. At the same time, Drexel has been welcoming more and more international students, faculty and professional staff to its campus; currently, there are over 1,675 international, full-time undergraduate students who came to the University from 117 different countries.

Community Relationships

Civic engagement has been one of the defining characteristics of Fry's presidency since the very beginning.

Most notably, Fry championed "cradle to career" educational access and opportunities for local K-12 students in the Promise Neighborhood, a 10-year U.S. Department of Education-funded program benefitting families in West Philadelphia. Drexel has partnered with the School District of Philadelphia to develop the facility housing two West Philadelphia public schools: Samuel Powel Elementary School and Science Leadership Academy Middle School. Drexel students, faculty and professional staff, including those from the School of Education, have offered expertise, programming and learning opportunities for the K-8 students and teachers.

Fry assembled an infrastructure across the University to encourage and support civic engagement and community partnerships, from community-directed scholarship and research to the establishment of "CIVIC 101" classes taken by thousands of first-year students each year.

On the northernmost edge of campus, he helped to open the Dana and David Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships to establish a home for community-driven programs and resources organized with Drexel schools and partners. The Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies (ExCITe) Center opened in 2012 for similar activities related to technology access and bridging the digital divide.

Drexel is now one of only 16 private institutions holding both R1 (very high research activity) and Community Engagement rankings from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, reflective of how research and civic engagement are interwoven in the University's mission. The University has also been recognized for its implementation of socially responsible purchasing throughout Procurement Services to benefit both the Drexel community and minority business owners who do business with the University.

Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

As Drexel's president, Fry always believed in backing big ideas with huge potential, and he has helmed an era of growing innovation and entrepreneurialism on and off campus. As a result, Dragons have advanced in their individual fields and interdisciplinary work, developed new companies with real-world implications and innovations, and collaborated with esteemed national and international institutions for academic and research projects.

The expansion of the current Office of Research & Innovation in 2019 formalized and empowered Drexel's research enterprise, resulting in increases in funding, sponsored research, awarded patents, technology transfer, student and faculty conference presentations, award-winning student poster competition entries and more. During Fry's tenure, Drexel was first nationally recognized as an R1 institution in 2018 and again in 2022, and was also designated a top-ranked mid-sized University for Innovation Impact in 2020.

Fry championed the creation of new centers of research that have yielded socially transformative prototypes, scholarship and advocacy, such as the Center for Functional Fabrics, the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute and The Environmental Collaboratory. He also oversaw the establishment of the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship in 2013, and his support of entrepreneurialism encouraged the growth and diversity of local startups through the Drexel University Innovation Fund, which provides financial support for alumni- and student-founded companies, and the Raynier Seed Fund, which backs underserved entrepreneurs.

Drexel is also one of just a small number of research universities endowed by the Coulter Foundation to bring promising biomedical inventions to market through its Coulter-Drexel Translational Research Partnership Program. Early in Fry's tenure, the University matched the Foundation's prestigious $10 million grant to create an endowment that continues to fund the tech-commercialization dreams of faculty inventors in the health sciences field.

Elevating Drexel's Arts and Culture

Since its founding as the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in 1891, Drexel has made its art and collections available to students and the general public through classes, campus galleries and exhibitions. Under Fry's leadership, those cultural offerings have been shaped and expanded like never before.

Toward the beginning of Fry's tenure, Drexel entered a historic affiliation with the Academy of Natural Sciences, the oldest natural history museum in North America whose operations and collections have since been incorporated into a variety of Drexel academic programs and co-ops. More recently, he guided Drexel through its stewardship of the collection of the former Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, now called the Atwater Kent Collection at Drexel University, to preserve and display over 350 years of Philadelphia artifacts.

Within the University, Fry united Drexel's various archives and collections through the Office of University Collections and Exhibitions, including the Founding Collection, Legacy Center Archives & Special Collections, Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection, Polish Poster Collections, Drexel University Archives, the Academy of Natural Sciences Archives, Drexel Audio Archives and the Atwater Kent Collection at Drexel University. With his wife Cara, he provided the lead gift for a $2 million endowment, which was also supported by 38 trustees and friends, to create the Cara Keegan Fry University Curator position in that office.

Inclusiveness and Belonging for All

Drexel has always been open to students of all genders, races, ages, religions and socioeconomic backgrounds. In recent years, under Fry's leadership and in response to the country's social landscape and internal reflections, Drexel has deepened how it upholds that commitment.

During the upheavals of the George Floyd marches, he honored his pledge to make Drexel an anti-racist University that offered a welcoming and wholly inclusive campus environment, most notably with the creations of the Anti-Racism Task Force and the Center for Black Culture in 2020. Inclusivity and equity figure prominently in the policies and structure of Drexel's 2030 strategic plan, and extended to areas of Student Life, pedagogy, recruitment, retention and experiential learning.

Leveling Up Drexel Athletics

In the world of college athletics, Drexel's reputation, amenities and offerings have made great strides over the years. And during Fry's presidency, the academic profile of Drexel's student-athletes received national and conference recognition.

In 2011, Fry and the University planted the seeds for internal and external opportunities in squash, starting varsity-level squash teams for men and women that have been perennial national championship contenders. Drexel has hosted the US Open Squash Championships through an innovative decades-long partnership with US Squash that led to the opening of the Arlen Specter US Squash Center on Drexel's campus. This space opens up the sport to local Philadelphians and increases Drexel's visibility to those using the facilities (including future Olympic contenders).

In 2021, both the men's and women's basketball teams won the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) championships and entered the NCAA March Madness tournaments. The women's team also won the conference and entered the tournaments in 2024, and in 2013 won the Women's National Invitation Championship, the first postseason title for Drexel and the first for any NCAA Division I women's basketball team in Philadelphia. And the city's famous Big 5 welcomed Drexel's men's and women's basketball teams in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

A Seamless Transition

Over his long tenure, Fry laid a foundation for Drexel to take on all the challenges that higher education is facing and will face. He has earned a reputation as a transformative and visionary captain at the helm of one of the city's most prominent universities, who has helped make West Philadelphia a new center of gravity within the city. He will be remembered not only for transforming Drexel into a more innovative and consequential University, but also for forging groundbreaking partnerships with neighborhood stakeholders and businesses and other organizations throughout the city and around the world to spur progress writ large.

That work will continue after Fry departs Drexel, as he is also working very closely with interim president Denis O'Brien, a former Exelon Corp. executive and long-serving member of Drexel's board of trustees, to ensure a smooth transition in presidential leadership. A search committee has been formed to recruit the next University president - its 16th in its 132-year history - to lead the institution into its next great stage.