Netter Center Alumni Community Engaged Scholarship Symposium

Please RSVP here.

Upon the occasion of its 30th anniversary, the Netter Center is bringing 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.

Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) and other forms of Community-Engaged Scholarship (CES) contribute to solving significant universal problems as they are manifested locally (including environmental injustices, inadequate nutrition and health care, poor schooling, poverty and high levels of economic inequality). CES and ABCS are based on democratic relationships that involve transparency and trust, as well as the expertise of both the university and the community. This concept of democratic, place-based, mutually beneficial and respectful community engagement has been central to the work of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships since its inception. ABCS and CES contribute to the education of university students as compassionate, caring, creative democratic citizens and the advancement of knowledge for the continuous betterment of the human condition. Alumni speakers will provide critical reflection on their personal and professional experiences with ABCS and CES.

This symposium audience will include Penn faculty and administrators, undergraduate and graduate students working with Netter, and others interested in advancing community-engaged scholarship at Penn and across higher education. 

Penn Press will be publishing an edited volume of essays from the participants and other alumni.

Agenda At-A-Glance

8:45am - Coffee and Pastries Available
9:00am-9:10am - Opening Remarks 
9:10am-10:25am - Panel 1
10:25am-10:35am - Break
10:35am-11:50am - Panel 2 
11:50am-12:00pm - Closing Remarks
12:00pm-1:00pm - Lunch

Opening Remarks

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

Panel 1

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

Panel 2

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

Additional contributing authors:

H. Samy Alim, Penn C99 
David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology, Associate Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, and Faculty Director of the UCLA Hip Hop Initiative, UCLA

Jackie Kraemer, Penn C87
Director of Policy Analysis and Development, National Center on Education and the Economy

David Park, Penn E01
Director of Data and Business Analytics, National League of Cities

Guest Editor:

Michael W. Zuckerman, Penn C61
Professor Emeritus of History, University of Pennsylvania

Please contact ritaa@upenn.edu for more information.