Outreach

Now in its third year, a partnership between GRASP and the Roxborough Library called Fun with Robots introduces robotics to kids through workshops led by Penn Engineering graduate students.

Taking place April 21-27, Earth Week events include origami with bioplastics, birding, networking, a culinary session, and more.

Marking a milestone block build, 70 Penn volunteers combined forces with Rebuilding Together Philadelphia, a nonprofit with roots at the University, to revitalize owner-occupied houses in the West Philadelphia community. The momentous two-day event involved a block build and speaking program—with a local homeowner sharing a heartfelt message.

When Brigitte Weinsteiger became the vice provost and director of the Penn Libraries last year, she took the helm of what she characterizes as “one of the most consequential research libraries in the country.” With 19 libraries, 300-plus staff, a $95 million budget, and 10 million volumes across print and digital formats, she now leads an intellectual ecosystem that reaches across Penn’s campus and beyond.

Penn’s Cora Ingrum Center for Community and Outreach, founded in the 1970s, aims to introduce as many Philadelphia students as possible to the kind of science happening within Penn Engineering, and bridges the gap between the University’s research capacity and its ability to mentor young students.

A collaboration between the Thermal Architecture Lab at Penn’s Weitzman School of Design, the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, and the Annenberg School has been awarded an Environmental Protection Agency Thriving Communities Grant for $137,000 to work with William L. Sayre High School, a University-Assisted Community School, on measurement of urban heat and solution design.

The School District of Philadelphia’s High School of the Future and Horace Howard Furness have been selected as the inaugural participants in “The Academy at Penn,” a new initiative designed to create a national and scalable model to transform high school education and expand college and career opportunities for students from underserved communities. The $8 million-funded project is a partnership between Foundations, Inc., Penn GSE, the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at Penn GSE, and the School District of Philadelphia.

Penn Carey Law’s Externship Program supplements traditional classroom study with experiential learning and meaningful lawyering.

How the Penn Libraries Community Engagement team is improving the classic “storytime” or “read-aloud” experience for elementary school students in Philadelphia.

Penn’s Center for Engineering Mechanobiology is a summer program for K-12 teachers in Philadelphia to work with scientists and engineers to develop innovative, hands-on lessons to engage students in STEM-integrated education.