Upon the occasion of its 30th anniversary, the Netter Center has brought together a group of alumni whose careers are primarily in academia, with some involved in related fields, such as research, policy, and education organizations. These alumni, from a wide variety of disciplines, will participate in interactive panel conversations about their academic experience while at Penn with Academically Based Community Service and Community-Engaged Scholarship through the Netter Center. They will also discuss how that experience shaped their careers, including their current or recent community-engaged research, teaching, and learning. Penn Press will be publishing an edited volume of essays from the participants and other alumni.  

Laura Perna, Penn C88 W88
Vice Provost for Faculty and GSE Centennial Presidential Professor of Education, University of Pennsylvania

Tamara Dubowitz, Penn C96 G00
Senior Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation and faculty at the Pardee RAND Graduate School

Bernice Garnett, Penn C05
Adam and Abigail Burack Family Green and Gold Professor, College of Education and Social Services, University of Vermont 

Rachel Heiman, Penn C92
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Coordinator of Prior Learning Program, The New School

Salamishah Tillet, Penn C96
Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies & Creative Writing, Director of Express Newark and Founding Director of the New Arts Justice Initiative, Rutgers University - Newark  

Jason Yip, Penn C01 GED02
Associate Professor of Digital Youth at The Information School and Adjunct Associate Professor in Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington; Senior Research Fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop 

Andrew Zitcer, Penn C00 GCP04 CGS07 WEV07 WEV08
Associate Professor of Arts Administration and Museum Leadership and Director of the Urban Strategy Graduate Program, Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, Drexel University

Jeff Camarillo, Penn C01
Assistant Director of Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP), Secondary Program, Stanford Graduate School of Education

Christina Cantrill, Penn C92
Associate Director for National Programs at the National Writing Project and Lecturer in the Writing Graduate Program, Johns Hopkins University  

Eric Schwartz, Penn C08 GRW13
Associate Professor of Marketing and the Arnold M. and Linda T. Jacob Faculty Fellow, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan 

Margo Shea, Penn C95
Associate Professor of History, Salem State University 

Michael Vazquez, Penn GR20
Teaching Assistant Professor & Director of Outreach, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 

Kim Van Naarden Braun, Penn C95
Senior Scientific Director, Translational Epidemiology, Informatics and Predictive Sciences at Bristol Myers Squibb

April 20, 3:30-6:00pm
West Philadelphia High, 4901 Chestnut Street 

This spring celebration at West Philadelphia High School will bring together local high school students and community and Penn partners to celebrate University-Assisted Community School (UACS) programming that occurs during the school day, after school, and summer for youth and adults. Students from West, Sayre, and Robeson high schools who are engaged in a range of UACS activities – including music, art, design, robotics, health and sports – will showcase their work. The event will include awards presented to UACS part-time staff, students, and teacher partners, as well as Penn student leaders. The event will also include a health and wellness fair. 

RSVP for the UACS Celebration

Saturday, May 13, 10:00 - 11:30 am EST
Tent near the Button and College Green
Drop by and join the Netter Center, Penn Arts & Sciences, and the Class of '88 in making care packages for local homeless shelters. All welcome!

Sponsored by the Netter Center and the Class of 1973 as part of their 50th Reunion

Join Provost-designate John L. Jackson, Jr., the Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and Richard Perry University Professor and Netter Center founding director Ira Harkavy (C’70, GR’79) for an animated conversation about the past, present, and future of university-community engagement. They will discuss Penn’s relationship with West Philadelphia as it has evolved in the last 50+ years, particularly the development and work of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships. They will also discuss the Netter Center’s leadership in supporting a democratic civic and community engagement movement that has spread across higher education in the U.S. and around the world.

Netter Center alumni, including a graduating senior, will then respond and provide critical reflections on the personal impacts of civic and community engagement on their Penn experience and beyond. Respondents include: 

Lincoln Ellis, C03, Civil Rights and Employment Attorney, based in Santa Monica, CA.
Janeé Franklin, C13, Employee Experience Specialist at Catholic Relief Services, based in Baltimore, MD.
Alisa Ghura, C23, 2023 Thouron Scholar and outgoing Chair of the Netter Center Student Advisory Board, from Washington, D.C.

Light reception to follow celebrating the Netter Center’s 30th anniversary. 

Registration encouraged.

Penn Today features an article and video on the garden and edible food forest at Andrew Hamilton, a university-assisted community school.

“'The kids love it,' says Torrence Rothmiller, principal of Andrew Hamilton. 'They love seeing the things they’ve planted grow, and not only that, that they can eat it. We’re looking to expand on that, to show them what kind of changes something like this can have in the community they live in.'”

Penn Today features ABCS course taught by Lori Flanagan Cato, Everyday Neuroscience, which pairs Penn students with 10th graders at Paul Robeson High School in West Philadelphia. The course complements the Robeson students’ regular coursework, while boosting test scores and promoting a lifelong interest in science. 

"Everyday Neuroscience is one of 13 ABCS courses that have been offered at Robeson. They help prepare the students for the Keystone exams in all three subject areas (also including literature and algebra) and the partnership has helped 'every student in the school improve their academic performance,' says Richard Gordon, Robeson’s principal. Paul Robeson High School has outpaced state and district student performance averages on the Keystones for the past five years, Gordon says."  

Lori Flanagan-Cato and the science program at Paul Robeson High School, led by Louis Lozzi, Brian Horn, and David Rowe, were named the recipients of the 2022 Provost/Netter Center Faculty-Community Partnership Award. 

As noted in 34th Street Magazine, "There’s something about the Netter Center that makes people want to stay, keeping its former volunteers tied to Penn. Year after year, graduated students mark their work with Netter as the start of their careers, trailing years of undergraduate involvement. There’s no better example to look to than Netter’s founder,  Ira Harkavy (C ‘70), who attended Penn as an undergraduate and founded the center in 1992.

"30 years later, Harkavy looks back on the work that Netter has done to promote Penn’s civic and community engagement within West Philadelphia via student and institutional programming."

Members of the Netter Center Student Advisory Board wrote this guest column in the Daily Pennsylvanian encouraging their classmates to sign up for an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course.

Penn Today featured Higher Education's Role in Democracy, highlighting the 2022 Global Forum that was co-sponsored by the International Consortium for Higher Education, Civic Responsibility, and Democracy, which is chaired by Ira Harkavy and housed at the Netter Center. The article also described the Netter Center’s role in fostering democracy. 

The leadership of Penn Leads the Vote (PLTV), housed in the Netter Center since 2018, has helped Penn receive numerous awards for institutionalizing nonpartisan democratic engagement and increasing student voter turnout. Most recently, Penn was named one of 258 colleges and universities across the U.S. named a "Voter Friendly Campus" by NASPA - Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education and Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project. Penn was also recognized as a “Most Engaged Campus for College Student Voting” by the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, a distinction given to only 394 campuses across the U.S.