BY Daniel Shu BY Daniel ShuIn recent years, the University has made efforts to improve the school's relationship with West Philadelphia. Among those efforts, Academically Based Community Service courses have offered students an opportunity to take a role in this change. Through these courses, students engage in action research and community service by working on real-world problems related to West Philadelphia. Every day, as I go to class on Locust Walk, I am greeted by the gaping hole that will be Huntsman Hall. Next I see four or five fraternities, several academic buildings, the Women's Center, Steinberg-Dietrich Hall and a few administrative buildings. And every day, I also see the FIJI house and the Christian Association, lonely for student activity during the day and desolate and empty at night. Why dedicate those facilities to Academically Based Community Service? Currently, there are about 100 ABCS courses, and this number grows each semester. More than 45 are offered in an academic year, serving approximately 1,000 enrollees, some of whom might take more than one. Last year the School of Arts and Sciences commissioned a survey of graduating seniors to rate their satisfaction with academic programs at Penn. ABCS received a rating of over 70 percent satisfaction, second only to study abroad. The next-highest program received a rating of only 40 percent. I can vouch for the quality of this program. Take my internship last summer. As an intern for the Penn Program for Public Service, I spent 12 weeks on campus living, learning and working with 20 other undergraduates. Through the Center for Community Partnerships, we enrolled in an Academically Based Community Service seminar, worked in a local community organization and lived in a rented fraternity house together. Our challenge: to create equal, mutually beneficial partnerships among ourselves and between our group and our West Philadelphia neighbors. One group of students was interested in exploring health in the West Philadelphia community. After interviewing teachers and students from Sulzberger Middle School at 48th Street and Fairmount Avenue and identifying local health needs, they created a middle school peer education program focusing on issues including teen pregnancy, drug addiction and violence. Through the internship, these Penn students used their academic interest in medicine and health to create an ongoing, sustainable, service-based research project -- one that fits their own Penn curriculum and one that to this day continues to promote health within the Sulzberger community. But over the summer, the academic and real-world aspects were never distinct from the residential experience. Discussions of Dewey and Plato spilled over into the living room. Debates about integrated diversity and the social obligations of universities became conversations at the dinner table. Reflection on both our successes and our obstacles at school occurred at home and in seminar, and house issues often had to be addressed just before class began. Each facet of the internship complemented the others to create one integrated learning experience. Additionally, the internship was my first experience with true socially integrated diversity at Penn. My fellow interns were of all different colors, shapes and sizes. They would identify as Muslim, short, African-American, Buddhist, extrovert and Korean, to name a few. Together, we faced routine problems such as unwashed dishes left in the sink, a cockroach infestation and the hottest Philadelphia summer in years. At the same time, we faced the challenge of building bonds with our radically diverse community partners. Out of these struggles came some of the most serious dialogues I have had here at Penn and my deepest interactions ever with the West Philadelphia community. The summer program sought to improve University-community relations, foster integrated diversity and promote undergraduate research. An Academically Based Community Service Living-Learning program during the academic year would do the same year-round. More than any existing residential program, such a house would seamlessly merge the living, learning and public service aspects of the University. And placing the program in the FIJI house would introduce a desperately needed non-Greek residential presence to Locust Walk. What about the Christian Association? Why put an ABCS hub there? There is no better way to use these buildings than to fill them with programs that foster undergraduate research and better the Penn-West Philadelphia relationship.
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