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Provost John L. Jackson Jr. appointed a new Advisory Committee on Community Engaged Scholarship to advance community-engaged scholarship at Penn.
Provost John Jackson Jr. appointed a new advisory committee focused on community engaged scholarship, with the goal of advancing effective and mutually supportive partnerships between the Philadelphia community and the University.
The committee will make recommendations to the Office of the Provost about connecting academic and community expertise, building on an initial report on community engaged scholarship from 2022. The group consists of eight faculty members across Penn’s schools and is chaired by Deputy Dean, professor of Education, and Board of Advisors Chair of Education Matthew Hartley.
Jackson wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian that the committee’s work will contribute to Penn’s implementation of its new strategic framework, In Principle and Practice: Penn’s Focus on Tomorrow. The framework, first announced in November, outlines several priorities for the University based on the findings of a Red and Blue Advisory Committee that Jackson led last semester.
In the statement, Jackson highlighted that the new committee’s work will align with the plan’s goal to “emphasize Penn’s place as an anchored university that seeks to deepen connections with our neighbors.”
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“[The committee’s] recommendations will therefore be discussed and implemented in tandem with the implementation of In Principle and Practice over the next year and beyond,” he wrote.
The new committee is the second University-wide group in the last few years convened to study mutually beneficial partnerships between Penn and the surrounding community. In fall 2020, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee passed a resolution encouraging departments and schools to consider “engaged scholarship” during annual faculty review. In January 2021, the Provost’s Office established an ad hoc committee charged with providing a definition of “community engaged scholarship.” The definition the group arrived at was “working in partnership with the community in a relationship of transparency and trust in order to draw on the expertise of the partners to address a pressing real-world problem.”
Hartley, who also chaired the ad hoc committee in 2022, told the DP that the new committee will use this definition as a starting point for its work. The group will aim to encourage more conversations around community engagement and provide training for faculty who are interested in starting this kind of work. The committee met in March for the first time and will meet again in April, according the Hartley.
He said that the committee will seek to support faculty discussions on community engagement across Penn’s schools, departments, and centers, despite differences between their areas of focus.
“Ultimately, each school and each department is going to have to kind of figure out for themselves how this fits into their unique work,” he said.
The eight-person group includes faculty members spanning several schools, include Senior Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Perelman School of Medicine professor Lisa Bellini and Julie Beren Platt and Marc E. Platt President’s Distinguished Professor of English and Africana Studies Herman Beavers.
The committee will work closely with the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, mainly through Academically Based Community Service courses. These courses, which embed students and faculty in West Philadelphia to help solve community issues, have grown from 38 courses and 925 students in 2001 to 84 courses and 1900 students in 2023, according to Netter Center Associate Director Cory Bowman.
Bowman added that the Netter Center has also been supporting professors from STEM backgrounds to “simultaneously improve community health and well-being while advancing teaching and learning both in the community and Penn.”
Melissa Wilde, Sociology department chair and a member of the newly appointed committee, said that she plans to encourage faculty in her department to teach ABCS courses and take advantage of the resources provided by the Netter Center.
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“Our University has had an incredible tradition of engaged scholarships stemming from Ben Franklin. And I’m proud to be a member of a University that values and seeks to figure out ways to encourage it whenever we can,” Wilde said.
Hartley said that while the work ahead will be challenging, he believes it will be extremely meaningful for the Penn community.
“The next step is to figure out how we can help support students who want to do this work as well,” Hartley said.
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