Netter Center for Community Partnerships

A group of students working on a project at Cobbs Creek.

Bolstering environmental education in Cobbs Creek

Through a Projects for Progress award and other University support, students in West Philadelphia are gaining greater access to STEM learning resources at the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Center.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・

Side-by-side portraits of two smiling women

35th annual Women of Color at Penn award

The Women of Color at Penn held their 35th annual award ceremony with a virtual celebration hosted by the African American Resource Center. This year’s awards honored six women who have fostered and supported community.

Kristina García ・

people outside wearing masks taking surveys on their phones while standing next to a table covered with donuts

Empowering community engagement through theory and practice

This fall, students applied community participation and stakeholder involvement processes to conduct their own outreach activities on campus as part of Participatory Cities, a Stavros Niarchos Foundation Paideia Program course.

Erica K. Brockmeier ・



Media Contact


Kristina García

Kristina García News Officer
klg@upenn.edu

In the News


Philadelphia Inquirer

Here’s what these youth advocates have to say about Philly’s truancy problem, and how they would fix it

The Netter Center for Community Partnerships has more than 30 years of investment in connecting resources that address truancy, such as establishing after-school programming.

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Billy Penn

A real art project at Quinta Brunson’s former school in West Philly mirrors the ‘Abbott Elementary’ Mural Arts episode

Thanks to the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, Shira Walinsky of the Weitzman School of Design designed and created a mural at West Philly’s Andrew Hamilton Elementary with help from volunteers and Penn students.

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Chronicle of Higher Education

Cities and the urban university

Penn is lauded for organizing a University-Assisted Community Schools Network and for offering roughly 80 academically-based community service courses through the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, with a quote from the Center’s founding director Ira Harkavy.

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The New York Times

Community schools offer more than just teaching

The Netter Center University-Assisted Community Schools Network, founded in 2015, is noted as a valuable partnership between community schools and about 70 universities.

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Philadelphia Inquirer

News Penn partners with West Philly High to give it a new ‘front porch’ and teach students about careers

Daniel Flinchbaugh of the Weitzman School of Design manages Design to Thrive, a Weitzman summer program in collaboration with the Netter Center for Community Partnerships. The project teamed Weitzman grad students with West Philadelphia High School students to build a new outdoor rec area for their high school.

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Inside Higher Ed

The fight for diverse, inclusive, antiracist, and just democracies

Ira Harkavy and Rita Hodges of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships and others co-wrote an op-ed about higher education and systemic oppression. “Just as many colleges and universities are reckoning with their own institutional histories of exclusion, higher education as a field must recognize where it has failed and come up short. Only then can it come honestly to tables with communities, governments, and citizens to build inclusive, antiracist democracies together,” they wrote.

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