Penn’s community engagement progress at the turn of the century

By the late 20th century, cities across the country were changing as some universities looked to expand their roles beyond campus borders. Over the last several decades, Penn has elevated its local engagement, working to build a symbiotic relationship with the city of Philadelphia, invoking its core values of being continually “self-improving,” dedicated to “enhancing social good,” and “remaining anchored and committed” to its Philadelphia home.

Penn now enters a new moment of change through Penn Forward, a University-wide strategic initiative to plan for the next 10 years and beyond, proactively adapting to a rapidly changing world.

In this third edition of “Chapters of Change,” a limited series recalling key historical moments when Penn has responded to society’s needs, Penn Today explores major steps the University took from the 1980s to the early 2000s to work with and for its neighbors through mutually beneficial partnerships in West Philadelphia and beyond.

The path to community-engaged scholarship

When the Center for Community Partnerships, later renamed the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, launched in 1992, former Penn President Sheldon Hackney faced a complex social context.

“There was a sense that institutions of higher education could be better neighbors and had an important role to play. And by doing that work collaboratively with the community, they could also better fulfill their academic missions,” says Netter Center director and Penn alum Ira Harkavy, who has actively helped lead Penn’s engagement work for more than 40 years.

Hackney amplified Penn’s focus on helping to solve universal problems locally in areas like economic development, public education, health care, and environmental challenges by planting the seeds for community-responsive initiatives like the Netter Center.

Borne from a seminar taught by Hackney, Harkavy, and Lee Benson—three Penn historians—the West Philadelphia Improvement Corps (WEPIC), co-developed by undergraduates and community leaders, provided an early Netter Center prototype and example of Penn’s increased community engagement. WEPIC linked Penn students, faculty, and staff with local nonprofits and community leaders. It also hosted vocational workshops and cultural programming in local public schools for K-12 students, their families, and neighborhood residents.

Hackney championed this joint initiative, helping secure grants to expand WEPIC, an early step toward the development of today’s Netter Center. This laid the groundwork for University-assisted community schools (UACS) across West Philadelphia and Penn’s placement of academically based community service (ABCS) courses at these sites.

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Penn President Emerita Judith Rodin, a Philadelphia native and Penn alum, expanded and further prioritized engagement work.

“Rodin saw community partnerships as a core component of how Penn should function as an urban university,” Harkavy says.

He notes that Rodin appointed Penn deans and leadership to help drive Netter Center expansion and integrate ABCS into the University’s institutional priorities. In 1992, the Center offered four ABCS seminars. Today, the program has grown to more than 80 courses, immersing more than 1,800 students per year in community-responsive projects with UACS, local nonprofits, and neighborhood organizations that help address the evolving needs and interests of K-12 students and West Philadelphia residents.

These include workshops, education, and community programming for public school students and Philadelphia residents in literacy, nutrition, disease prevention, dance and physical activity, urban environmental issues, gardening and landscaping, music and arts, housing renovation, Black culture and history, and STEM fields.

In one example, the Netter Center works with Philadelphia’s Andrew Hamilton School, where Penn faculty and undergraduates teach nutrition education and environmental stewardship to elementary school students.

In 2003, Rodin convened a faculty task force that called for securing an endowment for the Center. Four years later, in 2007, Penn President Emerita Amy Gutmann helped secure that endowment as part of her Penn Compact, which highlighted local and global engagement. These efforts paved the way for Penn to learn from and help empower its neighbors well into the future.

This robust community engagement is now, says Harkavy, “embedded in the very strategy of Penn going forward.”

Powering local economies, schools, and neighborhoods

Rodin’s era of reimagined community engagement marked several milestones in economic development, business partnerships, and neighborhood prosperity. Three examples are the launch of the West Philadelphia Initiatives, the creation of the Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School (Penn Alexander), and Penn’s contributions to establishing the University City District (UCD).

Shortly after her 1994 inauguration, Rodin created the West Philadelphia Initiatives, comprised of five community engagement priorities: housing security and acquisition; retail development; area safety and cleanliness; investments in public education; and expansions to Hackney’s “Buy West Philadelphia” program in support of Philadelphia-based vendors.

“Helping to build the economies in West Philadelphia and Philadelphia through our construction, by who we’re hiring, what we’re purchasing, what we’re building—all those things matter,” says Glenn Bryan, assistant vice president of community relations in the Office of Government & Community Affairs (OGCA) who chairs Penn’s Local Economic Opportunity Program.

During this time, the University partnered with the School District of Philadelphia and Philadelphia Federation of Teachers to open Penn Alexander, a pre-K–8 school located in University City.

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Additionally, collaborating with other anchor institutions, businesses, and residents, the Rodin administration supported the launch and growth of UCD. This consortium aims to increase job opportunities, improve community development, and elevate quality of life in the West Philadelphia area surrounding the University.

One of many UCD programs is the Skills Initiative, launched in 2009 to connect area residents with job training, career readiness, and employment opportunities. UCD also offers public safety programs to support area security and well-being.

These community-responsive efforts, says Bryan, a Penn alum who grew up in West Philadelphia, reflect “a cultural shift in the University’s institutional perspective and work with its neighbors.”

Gutmann helped advance the University’s engagement efforts through an emphasis on renewed green spaces, expanded partnerships across Philadelphia, interdisciplinary education, and health-related community initiatives.

OGCA, Bryan says, leads current efforts to integrate “health engagement” into Penn’s community programming in collaboration with various Penn Schools—including Penn Nursing, the School of Social Policy & Practice, Penn Dental, and the Perelman School of Medicine—to develop initiatives designed to contribute to the health of the West Philadelphia community.

“What’s been exciting to me is to see our Schools and Centers engage in meaningful, beneficial ways—and more sustainable ways—with our neighbors,” Bryan says.

Community partnerships: A continuing work in progress

Penn’s community engagement is an evolutionary work in progress, with the University’s strides since the turn of the century marking just the start.

“We’re much more interwoven than we’ve ever been, which will help grow our engagement in even more meaningful ways,” Bryan says.

Bryan holds that in the coming decades, Penn will continue following West Philadelphia’s lead, creating effective two-way engagement.

“You build relationships [based] on strengths,” Bryan says. “That’s been the philosophy we’ve tried to use.”

Sources include:

• Lee Benson et al. Knowledge for Social Change: Bacon, Dewey, and the Revolutionary Transformation of Research Universities in the Twenty-First Century. Philadelphia, Pa., Temple University Press, 2017.
• Puckett, John, and Lloyd, Mark F. Becoming Penn: The Pragmatic American University, 1950-2000. Philadelphia, Pa., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
• Rodin, Judith. The University and Urban Revival: Out of the Ivory Tower and into the Streets. Philadelphia, Pa. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
• Kromer, John, and Kerman, Lucy. West Philadelphia Initiatives: A Case Study in Urban Revitalization. Philadelphia, Pa., University of Pennsylvania, 2005.