Provost-Netter Center Faculty-Community Partnership Award

Nomination Deadline: Friday, October 25, 2024

The Provost/Netter Center Faculty-Community Partnership Award is an annual award that recognizes local, productive, and sustained faculty-community partnership projects. The award includes $10,000 ($5,000 to the faculty partner and $5,000 to the community partner) in order to further develop the work. Junior and senior faculty as well as senior lecturers and associated faculty from any of Penn’s schools are eligible for nomination, along with their community partners. Please see below for the complete description and process of nomination. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this award, please direct them to the Netter Center's ABCS Coordinator at abcscoordinator@sas.upenn.edu.

Criteria for Selection

(1) The community partnership project must be affiliated with the Netter Center for Community Partnerships i.e., engaged with Academically Based Community Service (ABCS), Problem Solving Learning (PSL) or Participatory Action Research (PAR) style pedagogy and/or research.
(2) The partnership project must demonstrate record of sustainable engagement.
(3) The faculty member can be an be assistant, associate, or full professor, senior lecturer, or associated faculty.

Process of Nomination

(1) Nominations may come from members of the University and the wider community, though the strongest nominations will be those that represent both the university and the community.  
(2) Nominators should email a completed packet (as outlined below) to the ABCS Coordinator (abcscoordinator@sas.upenn.edu) at the Netter Center, who will submit applications to the review committee comprised of faculty and community members.
(3) The review committee will submit their recommendations to the Netter Center Director and the Provost, who will jointly make the final selection.

Nomination Packet

(1) Cover sheet including: name, title, department, school, email address of faculty member and name, title of organization, physical address, website (if available), and email address of the community partner
(2) A biographical sketch/organizational description that highlights community engagement work of the nominees: faculty member and community partner. 
(3) 500-1,000 word document detailing the following items:

  • Description of the project: Include how the project was formulated, who participated, the target audience at Penn, methods of engagement/pedagogy, and what products were created.
  • Impact of the Project: Outline the community and academic expectations, successes, failures, and impacts of the project, both for the community and for the university.
  • Sustainability of the project: Describe how long the project has been in place, the adjustments that have been made to increase sustainability, and any future plans for further engagement with this project or for new related projects.

Letters of Support 

In addition to the nomination packet, please submit two letters of support (at least one must be from the community). The letter of support may also be a letter co-signed by both university and community representatives.

Award Winners

(1) For this award to remain tax-exempt, the award for the faculty member will be deposited in a University of Pennsylvania account to support teaching and research related activity.
(2) As long as the community partner is a non-profit organization, the award remains tax-exempt.

See list of award recipients here.