OPENING OUR DOORS: Seminars help relations with community

Eleven years ago, then-University President Sheldon Hackney, History professor Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy, who now directs the Center for Community Partnerships, began an undergraduate honors seminar on "Urban University-Community Relationships: Penn-West Philadelphia, Past, Present and Future as a Case Study." The course examined the University's relationship with West Philadelphia and asked students to find solutions to various problems within the community. It also marked the beginning of the large-scale West Philadelphia Improvement Corps (WEPIC) effort. Harkavy is also the director of the Penn Program for Public Service and an assistant to University President Judith Rodin. The program is currently in the midst of creating several University-assisted community schools that will serve as a focus for the local neighborhoods and as a center for educational service. The relationship that has developed between Penn and University City High School signifies an ongoing effort to create University-assisted community schools. The Ford Foundation has issued a $350,000 three-year grant given to the Penn Program for Public Service and the College of Arts and Sciences. The program, known as the Undergraduate Social Science Initiative, has the goal of expanding the presence of academically based community service in the College. Assistant Director for the Penn Program for Public Service Cory Bowman and grant coordinator Pam King, a Sociology graduate student, have used funding from this donation to assist professors in creating classes which involve working with University City High School. For example, History Professor Michael Zuckerman has created a class requiring students to work as tutors and implement service programs at University High School as a part of their examination of cultural changes in America. The course, entitled "American National Character," compares revolutionary America with West Philadelphia in the 1990s. Zuckerman's course classically and conceptually assesses evidence of the American national character in West Philadelphia. "The students wrestle with the fact that West Philadelphia reveals limitations of American character," he said. "At another level, many things that they observe in the community are fairly continuous with things they see in revolutionary America. I am interested in how the students strike a balance." The students in Zuckerman's class also tutor the high school students in a variety of subject matters. "The students do much more than tutor academically," he said. "Some students have taught aerobics or cooking, and some have coached track and basketball." The students' semester-long work comes to fruition in their third and final paper. "The deprivation that my students see is eye-opening," Zuckerman said. "My students discover that these high school students are as smart as they are, and they simply don't have the same opportunities. With these students, it's one strike and you're out." He added that he hopes to hold a social policy workshop later this year. This would involve students from his class and students from the Law and Public Administration charter at the high school. In the workshop, University students would have the opportunity to speak about national political issues, and the high school students would discuss how national legislation affects their own communities. And Classical Studies Professor Ralph Rosen has created a class that focuses on the way in which the study of ancient Athens can provide a framework for evaluating the problems of modern Philadelphia. "I am interested in the larger sociological, political and philosophical problems that most societies confront in one way or another," he said. "We look at the way ancient Greeks dealt with these problems and the way in which modern Philadelphia deals with these problems as well," Rosen said. "Even when parallels do not exist, we come away with two models of political procedure addressing similar sets of concerns." The University students and ninth through 12th grade students who are also enrolled in the class discuss the readings in groups. "My goal is to show the high school students that we cannot simply study what is around us," Rosen said. "By studying ancient culture we can learn a lot about our own lives." Among the issues addressed by the class are school curriculum, tribalism in urban environments and the relationship between the city and the surrounding region. Rosen said modern-age schools are attempting to strike a balance between technical education and moral education. "A tension also exists between tribalism and the more open approach to the layout of a city," he added. "We explore whether or not tribalism encourages multi-culturalism. Looking at one culture and applying what we've learned to another culture can be very enlightening."