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| navigate: home: magazine: spring 2002: article | |
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Penn State’s urban face By Celena E. Kusch | ||||||||||
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Although other universities may dominate the Philadelphia landscape, Penn State is an integral part of the city. Three University campuses serve the greater Philadelphia area with traditional credit and noncredit courses and a range of graduate and undergraduate degrees. Together these campuses — Penn State Abington, Penn State Delaware County and Penn State Great Valley — enroll more than 6,500 students and reach several thousand more through their community outreach programs. Within the city of Philadelphia, Penn State Cooperative Extension has had a downtown office for 49 years, and several nontraditional University programs designed to provide innovative, education-based solutions to many issues facing the urban community are centered at the Penn State Philadelphia Resource Center. Nevertheless, there is little widespread recognition of Penn State’s role within the Philadelphia community. Penn State Philadelphia Resource Center
William Asbury, vice president for Student Affairs and the executive in charge of the Philadelphia Resource Center, remarked, “Penn State already has a strong presence in Philadelphia, but our constituents do not always associate our programs with the University. Penn State’s largest 4-H enrollment in the state is in the Philadelphia region, with more than 10,000 children involved, but the youth and parents do not always recognize that they are working with Penn State. There are over 500 urban gardens in Philadelphia, serving more than 2,700 local families with educational opportunities and nutritional resources, but the community does not generally know that the gardens were developed by Penn State Cooperative Extension.
“Our goal is to be a valued educational asset in Philadelphia, to have a clearly focused Penn State presence — without a traditional campus,” Asbury added.
Located in downtown Philadelphia at 46th and Market streets, the Philadelphia Resource Center reaches more than 150,000 people a year through its four main offices: Penn State Cooperative Extension, the Community Recruitment Center, the Educational Opportunity Center (EOC) and the College of Education’s Penn State Educational Partnership Program. Resource Center programs currently reach all 10 Philadelphia Districts and plans are to expand partnerships among Penn State units to increase offerings and create a more unified Penn State presence.
In Asbury’s vision, community members of all ages will come to the center for credit and noncredit courses that expand their employment opportunities, access to information technology to help them stay in touch with families and friends, help in applying to Penn State online, educational assessments and support through EOC and a variety of relevant educational opportunities for the whole family.
“By expanding the Philadelphia Resource Center as a single point of access to the many services Penn State provides in Philadelphia, we can achieve greater recognition of what we already do and expand our capacity as an engaged institution that makes a difference in urban communities,” Asbury said.
“I see the center as connecting the University and the Philadelphia community, serving as the gateway to the land-grant institution through which the faculty and units from throughout the University can fulfill the urban land-grant mission,” he added.
Dr. Diane Athanas, director of the Educational Opportunity Center, views community education as an important part of that mission. The EOC helps adults in the community, many of whom work and raise families, to complete high school or enter and find funding for college or vocational schools. Counselors travel to sites throughout Philadelphia County to assist adults in gaining access to postsecondary education.
Athanas noted that the key word in Educational Opportunity Center is “Opportunity,” and she is dedicated to making higher education accessible to adults in the Philadelphia community. She believes education is a fundamental right and a lifelong experience, and promoting it is also part of the University’s land-grant mission to serve all Pennsylvanians.
Service and engagement in the community are as important to the life of the University as it is to the local constituents, added Julie Fabsik-Swarts, director of Penn State Cooperative Extension in Philadelphia County.
“Any state university that does not reach into all of the community is destined to die. Twenty-five percent of Pennsylvania’s population is centered in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, so I am glad that Penn State has continually made a commitment to this area and that President Graham Spanier has said that we need to focus on our urban communities,” Fabsik-Swarts said.
“Philadelphia has a tremendous cultural richness, a great history and a lot of issues ripe for research,” Fabsik-Swarts stressed. “There is a rich diversity here that faculty and students can tap for professional development and personal growth.” Colleges Engage with Urban Outreach Agenda
In the past, the majority of faculty working with the Philadelphia center has come from the College of Agricultural Sciences. These faculty members have contributed to programs in nutrition, urban entomology, school enrichment, training for childcare providers, welfare-to-work programming and youth development opportunities. Asbury’s goal is to increase outreach partnerships with many more colleges and departments.
Dr. Frederick D. Loomis, associate professor of information sciences and technology (IST) and coordinator of IST programs in the Philadelphia Region, is currently working on a study of ways to expand the urban outreach agenda. The project is sponsored by Asbury and Dr. James H. Ryan, vice president for Outreach and Cooperative Extension.
As part of the study, Loomis has brought together more than 40 faculty, staff and students from 10 colleges to form a virtual community of interest around the Philadelphia outreach agenda.
Loomis said the goal of the group is “to focus energy and expertise on ways we can work collaboratively to better meet the needs in urban communities. Faculty want to develop new models of outreach scholarship and community engagement that will have lasting impact on the community and students who participate. There is enormous potential to realize our vision of the scholarship of engagement through targeted outreach activities in Philadelphia.”
The group, which includes several representatives from the Philadelphia Resource Center, has developed new models for involving students, faculty and community leaders in project-based learning, service research and public scholarship.
“These programs will enhance our curriculum, better identify community needs and develop the civic leaders of tomorrow,” Loomis added. “With the work we do in this area, we can develop models and best practices that Penn State can replicate in urban communities across the Commonwealth.”
The group plans to develop a Web site where members of the Penn State community can exchange ideas and disseminate information.
Several colleges are planning research- or teaching-based outreach programs in Philadelphia in the coming year.
For the College of Health and Human Development, for instance, establishing an urban presence is part of the strategic plan, and college faculty and administration are vigorously pursuing connections with the Philadelphia community. Dr. Linda Burton, professor of human development and family studies and director of the Center for Human Development and Family Research in Diverse Contexts, Dr. Keith Whitfield, associate professor of biobehavioral health, and other college faculty from the Gerontology Center and the Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development are working with the Philadelphia Resource Center to develop meaningful partnerships and long-lasting alliances with community organizations in areas of Penn State expertise.
In addition to faculty-focused programs, several units are also considering urban-based community learning and scholarship projects for students from throughout the state. Students would use the center as a base from which to learn about poverty, school reform, aging, health and other urban issues, then apply their knowledge in projects designed to meet the needs of community groups. Students might complete internships with government, schools, business and nonprofits or study and provide support for existing Philadelphia Resource Center programs.
“In the future, Penn State students from campuses throughout the state could have the opportunity to learn in Philadelphia for a week, a summer or even a full semester to supplement their residential education. Our goal is to have an urban Penn State presence through the students, while the students make valuable connections between what they learn in the classroom and how they address issues in a real-world setting,” Asbury explained.
Already Michael Rios, assistant professor of architecture and landscape architecture and director of the Hamer Center for Community Design Assistance, has hosted a weeklong student research and neighborhood planning project in West Philadelphia. Under the direction of Rios and Christine Gorby, assistant professor of architecture, a group of students conducted community meetings and workshops, produced design recommendations and submitted a report to the Friends Rehabilitation Program, a local community development corporation.
This model of learning in the community asks students and faculty to revise traditional ideas about universities and scholarship, with the potential to improve undergraduate and graduate education, as well as faculty teaching and research.
“For years,” Rios noted, “universities have operated as if they were banks for depositing knowledge into campuses, but now we need to build other sites of knowledge throughout communities. That is our civic responsibility as a land-grant university.
“We have to move from a model of outreach that provides services to a community as a client to one that works with communities as an equal partner. Unless we listen to communities, the scholarship we produce here in the University will not be as relevant,” Rios said.
Community engagement is especially important in the area of community design. “We have to move from metaphors of community to the actual places where people live,” he said.
Rios believes the civic responsibility to engage with communities makes it imperative for programs to have a presence in Philadelphia yearlong. “It is necessary to build trust and create opportunities to hear from the community, so we can best respond to their needs,” he said.
As a model of this partner-based outreach, Dr. Lakshman “Lucky” Yapa, associate professor of geography, has directed a public scholarship and community-based research program in Philadelphia with firm connections to Penn State Cooperative Extension, the Friends Rehabilitation Program’s Sarah Allen Home for women and several other community groups. Yapa’s five-year-old Philadelphia Field Project: Rethinking Urban Poverty began as a Schreyer Honors College program and has since received support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and other funding agencies. This year, the Philadelphia Field Project is expanding to include students from throughout the University.
Based on the success of earlier student fieldwork projects, members of the Public Scholarship Associates, including Rios and Yapa, are also collaborating with the Philadelphia center to develop an interdisciplinary Semester of Public Scholarship to be piloted in the next academic year. Students would live in Philadelphia during the semester and complete 15 credits through research, internships, courses offered at local campuses and courses delivered through online and distance learning.
“By combining the expertise and resources of the entire University — all colleges and all outreach units — the potential of these urban programs is endless,” commented Ryan. “We hope that the Philadelphia Resource Center will become a model of blended University experiences in which students and faculty transition seamlessly from traditional teaching, research and service to newer outreach models that engage external audiences and stakeholders. We could see campus-based groups connected by information technology to teams of faculty, students and community members in the city and working collaboratively to meet community needs. This is the potential of integrating outreach into the mainstream of the University.”
Asbury noted that the urban-based learning opportunities could include students from nearly every discipline — architecture, agriculture, health and human development, education, engineering, environmental studies, nursing, business, law and many more.
“We hope that Penn State departments will make greater use of the base in Philadelphia to provide urban learning experiences for their students,” Asbury said.
Well-planned student service-learning projects would also benefit the community, Fabsik-Swarts added. “There is such tremendous need in this area, I could find places for a whole campus full of students working on service-learning projects and internships,” she said. Addressing School and Community Needs
As the largest school system ever to be taken over by the state, Philadelphia’s 267 schools are in particular need. Penn State has a history of supporting K-12 education in Philadelphia.
Under Director Carolyn Boswell, the Penn State Community Recruitment Center in the Philadelphia Resource Center works closely with more than 65 high schools in the Philadelphia area to provide students and their families with college recruitment/ admissions information and assistance in filing forms for financial aid and admissions. The Community Recruitment Center opened in Philadelphia in 1977 and has grown to include programs delivered in high schools, area community organizations and the Resource Center itself. In addition to providing information regarding all Penn State majors, programs and locations, center staff host student bus trip visits to Penn State campuses.
Elmore Hunter, special assistant to the vice president for Student Affairs and director of the Philadelphia branch of the Penn State Educational Partnership Program (PEPP), works with younger students in area elementary and middle schools to provide after-school tutoring and lab experiences. About 25 students from Penn State Delaware County and Penn State Abington, area high schools and other universities in the Philadelphia area provide instruction through PEPP to a total of 80 students from four schools. 4-H science projects delivered by Cooperative Extension agents supplement the tutors’ work to improve study skills and increase enthusiasm for learning.
But there is still much room for engagement with Penn State.
“As a major university in the Commonwealth, we need to be at the forefront of helping to reform education across the state,” Hunter said. “If we do what we already know and do best, the University can make real inroads in communities.”
“School systems want universities to help support the work they do,” Fabsik-Swarts remarked. “Penn State outreach can do tremendous good there — we have the research and the experience. Fostering partnerships with school systems in the area can benefit the students in both the urban schools and the University. This is especially true for future teachers who need experience teaching in an urban environment.”
Recognizing that many of the new teaching jobs are in cities, the Commonwealth College is currently working to expand the Urban Education Program developed at Penn State Delaware County. The program trains future teachers to work in an urban school, and the Commonwealth College hopes to build on relationships between the Philadelphia Resource Center and the Philadelphia School District to bring Penn State education students into the area.
According to Fabsik-Swarts, collaboration with the Philadelphia Resource Center can pave the way for new partnerships between colleges and the community. The center can provide academic units interested in the area with a Penn State home base in the city, complete with facilities, conference rooms and even office space for longer projects.
Frederick W. Davis, regional director for the Southeast Region of Cooperative Extension and Outreach, stated, “It is the goal of all of the partners in the Resource Center to increase our visibility to the community, city agencies and, in particular, city government. To that end, close relationships have been fostered with many members of the City Council and with industry leaders connected with the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.” City Council members are regularly invited and do participate in youth and urban gardening events throughout the year, and they are kept abreast of the activities of Philadelphia County Cooperative Extension programs.
“The city organizations that work on the ‘greening’ of Philadelphia are also part of our network. These agencies, such as Fairmont Park and other businesses, provide meeting space and sponsorship of extension’s annual meetings and other Penn State events,” Davis said.
“Between the directors of Penn State units in this center, we have the contacts to the community,” Fabsik-Swarts added. “We can help faculty get connected.”
Already several faculty members and academic colleges are establishing relationships with the Philadelphia Resource Center, with even greater opportunities for urban engagement in the future. Currently, center staff are working with the Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center on a proposed Urban Service Adventure camp to provide an urban alternative to the successful ORION wilderness-based freshman orientation program. Programs like these will continue to make the Penn State-Philadelphia connection a foundation for the Penn State experience. | |||||||||
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