University of Pennsylvania
EN-10: Community Partnerships

Three key strategies underpin our work. The first is academically based community service (ABCS), service rooted in and intrinsically connected to research, teaching, and learning. The second is university-assisted community schools (UACS), which educate, engage, empower, and serve not only students, but also all other members of the community, providing an organizing framework for bringing our programs, including ABCS courses, to West Philadelphia schools. Third, we view ABCS and UACS as core to a comprehensive anchor institution strategy in which universities engage in sustained, mutually beneficial partnerships with their communities. These strategies are shared with others across the country and around the world, serving as a model for democratic university-community engagement.

An emerging subnetwork, PHENND Sustainability, has convened to address the need for a coordinated approach to Education for Sustainability across the K-16 spectrum in the Delaware Valley. PHENND Sustainability aims to identify and build upon the great work happening in our schools and communities, and advocate for place-based, real world problem solving as a core pedagogical approach to sustainability education. http://phennd.org/wp2014/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/PHENND-Sustainability-Launch-Introduction-Final.pdf

The Penn Food and Wellness Collaborative is a new initiative bringing together partners from the Center for Public Health Initiatives, Facilities and Real Estate Services, Wellness at Penn, Penn Sustainability, Student Intervention Services, and others across Penn, as well as the Philadelphia Orchard Project. This year marks the expansion of the Penn Park Orchard into Penn’s first campus urban farm, the Penn Park Farm. The farm will be host to a wide variety of programming including class visits, internships, workshops, volunteer opportunities, and events, with an emphasis on promoting wellness on campus.

https://www.nettercenter.upenn.edu/
http://phennd.org/wp2014/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/PHENND-Sustainability-Launch-Introduction-Final.pdf
https://www.cphi.upenn.edu/Penn-Food-and-Wellness-Collaborative.html

The University of Pennsylvania is a major research institution, with over 3000 degrees granted annually from twelve professional and academic schools at the Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate levels. Penn is committed to engaging with both the campus and public community on sustainability, with a goal to make climate change and sustainability part of the Penn culture. This commitment and long standing tradition of both campus and public engagement around the issue of sustainability is seen through campus sustainability groups and community focused centers. Both public and campus engagement organizations partner with the Sustainability Office to create student internships, engage in environmental issues, and build knowledge around sustainability. For a more complete listing of engagement activities on campus, please see EN 10 to EN 14.

The submission relies on information related to the main, academic, West Philadelphia campus, but to more fully document efforts across the Penn system, information related to the Morris Arboretum and New Bolton has also been referenced and noted as outside the boundary in descriptions. The information is used to enrich examples of University efforts and is not intended to be the primary justification for credits. The responses for each of the questions and sub-questions are drawn from University materials, both internal and public documents. Each section notes the website where the information can be found.