GUEST COLUMN: "Challenge for the Future"

The challenge is to reconstruct and readapt undergraduate education for the 21St Century. To accomplish this we must not focus on undergraduate education as an issue that only pertains to the University. The 21St Century poses many global and many local problems that our University must acknowledge, address, and even solve. The problems of Philadelphia, of our local community, are as fearsome as global problems: poverty, infant mortality, poor health care, racism, illiteracy, and apathy. My generation has witnessed these atrocities endlessly in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, and so on. Penn undergraduates have seen the gentrification of communities, the loss of jobs as the economy changes, and the crime on and off campus.. The community of Mantua, just north of campus, has an infant mortality rate comparable to a third-world nation. The University has been unable to form a local or a worldwide commitment to confront these problems. I raise these issues not with a message of doom, but with an invigoration of hope. Our new President and Provost have recognized that these problems are in fact within the X University's ability to address, and I propose, within the undergraduates' ability to begin the process of solving. The Provost's Council on Undergraduate Education Report declares that the union of theory and practice will mean an "engagement with the material, ethical and moral concerns of society and community defined broadly, globally, and also locally within Philadelphia." Merely an "engagement Provost Chodorow? As a current undergraduate, I believe I can do much more than just engage in the concerns of our society. This summer I "engaged" in a History seminar entitled, "Strategies Toward Revitalizing Urban Schools and Their Communities: West Philadelphia as a Case Study." While I found the course to be intellectually stimulating, its challenges and rewards paled in comparison to the service section of the seminar: running a summer camp at Turner Middle School at 59th and Baltimore. Instead of merely struggling to succeed on a test or a temm paper, I grappled with trying to form a relationship with a Philadelphia school-teacher teaching an entering 6th grader how to add, and communicating with often what seemed like another culture. The questions, the commitment, and accomplishments that came out of this project were more than I could ever muster within an academic setting. Yet the endeavor cannot be characterized as non-academic. It is the experience offered by any of Penn's 32 academically-based service classes. These classes not only allow students to engage with the moral and ethical concerns of society within the security of the classroom, but to change, both themselves and society, within our community. The basic philosophy behind academically-based service is not foreign to Penn. When pondering the educational qualities of his new American institution, Benjamin Franklin wrote, "The Idea of what is tone Merit, should also be often presented to Youth, explain'd and impress'd on their Minds as consisting in an Inclination join'd with anAbility to serve Mankind, one's Country, Friends, and Family." Truly, not all of Perm's undergraduates are taught in this marmer. Competition, selfcenteredness, and narrow thinking shadow this inclination and hinder this ability. The education Penn provides to its undergraduates, the world's future leaders in academia, business, and government, will reflect not just on the University, but will be indicative of how our society chooses to deal with the hardships of our global and local communities. Re-instituting Franklin's philosophy is a major part of our challenge of creating an undergraduate education and experience for the 21St Century. That is the challenge. My goal, however, for the Class of 1999 and for the rest of us engaged in the University, is to continue to question the function of this institution and our role in it. The collective talents and abilities in this University must not be confined to the campus. With one of the best medical institutions in the world, why do our neighbors suffer an intolerably high infant mortality rate? With the best business school in the world, why is our community's economy crumbling? No matter what club, activity, department, or school you are in, continually question how you can focus your talents in partnership with our comrnunity, to better our community, to better yourself Benjamin Franklin's self-written epitaph reads, "The Body of Benjamin Franklin... lies here, food for worms; but the work shall not be lost, for it will appear once more in a new and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author." My goal for us and the last Class of the millennium is to ensure that in our new, better undergraduate experience, Franklin's work and many others in Penn's history is not lost. On my last day at Turner, Hadiya, a sweet, very bright 6th grader asked me if I would be back during the year to work with her at school. While trying to get good grades to transfer into Wharton, being very involved in student government, and partying with my friends, did I have time for this? "Hadiya, you bet that I'll be back."

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