Fall 2023 ABCS Courses

Penn students can browse and register for ABCS courses on Path@Penn. To find ABCS courses, select "Academically Based Community Service Courses" in the University Attribute dropdown menu. Due to the registrar transition, there are some courses not tagged as ABCS on Path@Penn that are still ABCS courses. The accurate course list is on this webpage. Click here to see ABCS courses from Fall 2022 - Spring 2023.

See at-a-glance which Fall 2023 courses fulfill undergraduate general education requirements HERE.

Download the Fall 2023 course list/flyer here.

Read a guest column published in the The Daily Pennsylvanian about ABCS here and find more article within this course list.

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES

AFRC 1780/HIST 0811/URBS 1780: FACULTY-STUDENT COLLABORATIVE ACTION SEMINAR IN UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY RELATIONS
Instructor: Ira Harkavy, Theresa Simmonds

This seminar helps students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real-world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom, on campus, and in the West Philadelphia community. Students develop proposals that demonstrate how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply "consume," societally-useful knowledge, as well as to function as caring, contributing citizens of a democratic society. Their proposals help contribute to the improvement of education on campus and in the community, as well as to the improvement of university-community relations. Additionally, students provide college access support at Paul Robeson High School for one hour each week.

AFRC 2325 / ENGL 2222 / THAR 2325: AUGUST WILSON AND BEYOND
Instructor: Suzana Berger, Margit Edwards
Penn Today article: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-s-netter-center-announces-faculty-... , https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/bridging-gap-between-penn-students-and-...

ANTH 0930 / ENVS 0054 / LALS 0093/ SPAN 0093 / URBS 0093: LATINX ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE (English version)
Instructor: Teresa Gimenez

This course explores the involvement of the Latinx environmental justice movement since the 1960s. It addresses theories and concepts of environmental racism and environmental justice, underscoring how Latinx have challenged, expanded, and contributed to the environmental justice discourse. In this course, students will explore national case studies of environmental and racial injustice as they bear on Latinx communities both in rural areas and in urban barrios throughout the United States. The course will analyze these case studies through the lens of Latinx artistic and literary texts (essays, paintings, short stories, documentaries, and short films) as they provide a unique historic and multicultural perspective of the Latinx experience with environmental injustice and of how Latinxs imagine alternative transitions and responses to environmental marginalization. In addition, the works of Latinx artists and writers will serve as case studies to deconstruct racial stereotypes of Latinxs as unconcerned about environmental issues, shedding light on how they share a broad engagement with environmental ideas. The case studies analyzed in this course emphasize race and class differences between farmworkers and urban barrio residents and how they affect their respective struggles. The unit on farmworkers will focus on workplace health issues such as toxic chemicals and collective bargaining contracts. The unit on urban barrios will focus on gentrification, affordable housing, and toxic substances in the home. We will also review current and past programs that have been organized to address the aforementioned problems. This is an Academically Based Community Service Course (ABCS course) through which students will learn from and provide support to a Latinx-serving organization in the City of Philadelphia on preventing exposure to hazardous substances, thus bridging the information gap on environmental justice issues in the Latinx community in Philadelphia. Information dissemination and education efforts will be conducted by collaborating with Esperanza Academy Charter School in Philadelphia to implement lessons on preventing exposure to hazardous substances. Studying environmental justice and pairing it with community service will heighten students' awareness of the complexities of culture, race, gender, and class while providing them with an invaluable experience of cross-cultural understanding.

ANTH 3930 / ENVS 3445 / LALS 3930 / SPAN 3930 / URBS 3930: LATINX ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE (Spanish version)
Instructor: Teresa Gimenez

This course explores the involvement of the Latinx environmental justice movement since the 1960s. It addresses theories and concepts of environmental racism and environmental justice, underscoring how Latinx have challenged, expanded, and contributed to the environmental justice discourse. In this course, students will explore national case studies of environmental and racial injustice as they bear on Latinx communities both in rural areas and in urban barrios throughout the United States. The course will analyze these case studies through the lens of Latinx artistic and literary texts (essays, paintings, short stories, documentaries, and short films) as they provide a unique historic and multicultural perspective of the Latinx experience with environmental injustice and of how Latinxs imagine alternative transitions and responses to environmental marginalization. In addition, the works of Latinx artists and writers will serve as case studies to deconstruct racial stereotypes of Latinxs as unconcerned about environmental issues, shedding light on how they share a broad engagement with environmental ideas. The case studies analyzed in this course emphasize race and class differences between farmworkers and urban barrio residents and how they affect their respective struggles. The unit on farmworkers will focus on workplace health issues such as toxic chemicals and collective bargaining contracts. The unit on urban barrios will focus on gentrification, affordable housing, and toxic substances in the home. We will also review current and past programs that have been organized to address the aforementioned problems. This is an Academically Based Community Service Course (ABCS course) through which students will learn from and provide support to a Latinx-serving organization in the City of Philadelphia on preventing exposure to hazardous substances, thus bridging the information gap on environmental justice issues in the Latinx community in Philadelphia. Information dissemination and education efforts will be conducted by collaborating with Esperanza Academy Charter School in Philadelphia to implement lessons on preventing exposure to hazardous substances. Studying environmental justice and pairing it with community service will heighten students' awareness of the complexities of culture, race, gender, and class while providing them with an invaluable experience of cross-cultural understanding.

ANTH 3376: ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACHES TO URBAN ATHLETICS AND HUMAN MOVEMENT
Instructor: Gretchen Suess

Rooted in the rubric of public interest social science and motivated by a commitment to social justice through original ethnographic research, this course will focus on kinesiology and the anthropology of sports and well-being through analysis of the Young Quakers Community Athletics (YQCA) program, a collaboration between the Netter Center for Community Partnerships and Penn Athletics.Guest lecturers from multiple disciplines will help to round out the course. The core learning objective is to foster a holistic examination of a complex institutional partnership intended to promote positve social transformation and improved human health and well-being.

ASAM 1020: THE ASIAN AMERICAN ENTREPRENEUR
Instructor: Rupa Pillai
Blog post: https://asam.sas.upenn.edu/news/2023/03/30/how-better-support-asian-amer...

From shopkeepers to motel owners, the Asian American entrepreneur is frequently celebrated and offered as proof that the American Dream is achievable and that the United States is a meritocracy. This seminar challenges this view. Through interdisciplinary texts, qualitative research assignments, and speakers, we will explore the transnational forces and structural limitations within the United States that produce Asian ethnic niches and the bamboo ceiling which limits the success of Asian Americans.

ASLD 1033: ASL/DEAF STUDIES - ABCS
Instructor: Jami Fisher

This Academically Based Community Service course is intended to be the final course in the ASL/Deaf Studies course sequence. Students will work with a Deaf community partner to learn about the organization and work on a mutually agreed on research project. Students will also have course meetings on a weekly basis with discussions and activities centering on reflection of community experiences through linguistic as well as cultural lenses. Ongoing reflections and discussions—formal and informal—on Deaf cultural/theoretical topics drawing from readings as well as community experiences will be integral to the course experience.

EDUC 2002: URBAN EDUCATION
Instructor: Andrew Schiera

This seminar focuses on two main questions: 1) How have US schools and urban ones in particular continued to reproduce inequalities rather than ameliorating them? 2) In the informational age, how do the systems affecting education need to change to create more successful and equitable outcomes? The course is designed to bridge the divide between theory and practice. Each class session looks at issues of equity in relation to an area of practice (e.g. lesson design, curriculum planning, fostering positive student identities, classroom management, school funding, policy planning...), while bringing theoretical frames to bear from the fields of education, sociology, anthropology and psychology.

EDUC 2140: EDUCATION IN AMERICAN CULTURE
Instructor: Charles Adams, Noemi Fernandez

This course explores the relationships between forms of cultural production and transmission (schooling, family and community socialization, peer group subcultures and media representations) and relations of inequality in American society. Working with a broad definition of "education" as varied forms of social learning, we will concentrate particularly on the cultural processes that produce as well as potentially transform class, race, ethnic and gender differences and identities. From this vantage point, we will then consider the role that schools can and/or should play in challenging inequalities in America.

ENGL 0051 / URBS 0051: COMMUNITY WRITING: POST-COVID UNIVERSITY
Instructor: Zita Nunes

Community Writing combines theory with practice: students will first study critical and creative writing pedagogy, and then visit a range of Philadelphia communities to write creatively together and form new kinds of community through writing. The moment seems ripe for assessing and planning for the [post] COVID university. The epidemic has challenged the certainties that undergraduate students may have expected about the role and form of their engagements with the university. This class provides a way to analyze and communicate about this experience, while building the individual and collaborative skills students need to thrive. The course would open with a discussion of short articles on the [post]Covid university and a selection of literature and films set on college campuses (with a focus on underrepresented minorities). Then, in concert with peers at local universities (Lincoln, Drexel, and Temple), students, individually and in groups, would research different aspects of their home institutions in their university archives as well as other sources—the university’s founding, its funding, mission, composition of student body, athletics, libraries, dorms, clubs, history of English (or other majors), Black, LGBTQ, etc. student activism. Students would then translate their research into forms (scholarly essay, white paper, policy proposal, grant proposal, video, podcast, art project, exhibition, etc.) of communication to a clearly identified audience (prospective students, administration, local community, legislature, scholars, etc). Student work for the course would be presented at an undergraduate conference during the subsequent term and students invited to serve as undergraduate TAs for future courses. Assignments will be scaffolded in preparation for a final project.

LALS 3020 / PSCI 2420: DIPLOMACY IN THE AMERICAS - THE PENN MODEL OAS PROGRAM
Instructor: Catherine Bartch
Penn Today article: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/latin-american-latinx-studies , https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/new-moas-program-promotes-international...

"Diplomacy in the Americas" an academically based community service course in which students work with Philadelphia and Norristown public school students to explore solutions to critical problems facing the Americas. Entrenched political, economic, and social inequality, combined with environmental degradation, weak institutions, pervasive health epidemics, weapon proliferation, and other issues pose formidable hurdles for strengthening democratic ideals and institutions. The Organization of the American States (OAS), the world's oldest regional organization, is uniquely poised to confront these challenges. "Diplomacy in the Americas" guides students through the process of writing policy resolutions as though the students were Organization of the American States (OAS) diplomats, basing their research and proposals on democracy, development, security, and human rights - the four pillars of the OAS. Students will also read literature about what it means to educate for a democracy and global citizenry, and they will have the opportunity to turn theory into practice by creating and executing curriculum to teach and mentor the high school students through interactive and experiential pedagogies.

LALS 4240 / SOCI 2931: LATINX COMMUNITIES AND THE ROLE OF CBO'S IN SOCIAL CHANGE
Instructor: Johnny Irizarry

The purpose of this course to create a Latino Studies/Service Learning ABCS course that cultivates dialogue and knowledge about the social, political, cultural and historical complexities of the Latinx experience in the United States (Philadelphia in particular) and the roles Latinx CBO's play in meeting the needs of Latinx communities and in impacting social change.

MATH 1234: COMMUNITY ALGEBRA INITIATIVE
Instructor: Mona Merling
Penn Today article: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/math-education-and-engagement-west-phil...

MATH 1234 is an academically-based community service (ABCS) course which provides the opportunity to Penn students to develop effective methods for teaching and understanding, to  enhance their math communication skills, and to share their passion for math by teaching fundamental concepts to students in one of our partnership schools. At the same time, the course aims to academically engage local high school students, sharpen their math skills while getting them excited about the subject, and ultimately promote their interest in STEM.

MGMT 3530: WHARTON FIELD CHALLENGE: FINANCIAL LITERACY COMMUNITY PROJECT
Instructor: Keith Weigelt 

Do you want to make a real difference in the lives of a student? Do you want to set kids on a path to becoming financially literate? Do you want to learn leadership skills in the classroom? Here at the Financial Literacy Community Project (FLCP) we are able to create an experience that achieves all three. We partner with various public schools around the West Philadelphia area and teach concepts integral to financial literacy. We teach a wide range of grades from middle school to high school, and work with students to help them learn how to be financially responsible. In addition to teaching in neighboring high schools, we also have group class meetings run by Professor Keith Weigelt on Mondays from 7:00 PM-8:30 PM. We learn about the disparity of wealth and how to best address it while also learning teaching techniques, classroom strategies, and overall basic financial literacy. A basic understanding of personal financial literacy is required.

MUSC 0180A/ URBS 0180A: MUSIC IN URBAN SPACES
Instructor: Molly Mcglone
Penn Today article: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/music-connects-penn-students-and-west-p... , https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/students-penn-s-netter-center-take-soun...

Music in Urban Spaces is a year-long experience that explores the ways in which individuals use music in their everyday lives and how music is used to construct larger social and economic networks that we call culture. We will read the work of musicologists, cultural theorists, urban geographers, sociologists and educators who work to define urban space and the role of music and sound in urban environments, including through music education. While the readings make up our study of the sociology of urban space and the way we use music in everyday life to inform our conversations and the questions we ask, it is within the context of our personal experiences working with music programs in public neighborhood schools serving economically disadvantaged students, that we will begin to formulate our theories of the contested musical micro-cultures of West Philadelphia. This course is over two-semesters where students register for .5 cus each term (for a total of 1 cu over the entire academic year) and is tied to the Music and Social Change Residential Program in Fisher Hassenfeld College House which will sponsor field trips around the city and a final concert for youth to perform here at Penn, if possible. Students are expected to volunteer in music and drama programs in Philadelphia neighborhood public schools throughout the course experience.

NRSC 1160: ABCS OF EVERYDAY NEUROSCIENCE
Instructor: Loretta Flanagan-Cato
Penn Today article: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-netter-center-science-and-service

This course is an opportunity for undergraduates to share their interest and enthusiasm for neuroscience with students in grades 9-12 attending urban public schools in West Philadelphia. The course will allow Penn students to develop their science communication and teaching skills. Students will prepare neuroscience demonstrations, hands-on activities, and assessment tools. In parallel, the course aims to engage local high school students, increasing their interest and knowledge in science, and ultimately promoting lifelong science literacy.

NURS 3520: CASE STUDY: A COMMUNITY-BASED APPROACH TO MITIGATING CLIMATE CHANGE AND FOOD INSECURITY
Instructor: Jennifer A. Pinto-Martin, Monique Dowd

The Penn Food and Wellness Collaborative (PFWC), including Penn Park Farm (PPF), was established through seed funding from the Your Big Idea Wellness competition in 2019. To date, we’ve grown nearly 2,500lbs of produce that has been distributed free of charge to food insecure students, HUP employees, and West Philadelphia residents. Using the PPF as a learning laboratory, this course will explore the link between climate change, food insecurity and physical and mental health across the lifespan. Students will engage with community partners to identify the best mechanism for meeting food insecurity and improving physical and mental health among students, faculty and staff on campus and among members of all ages in the communities surrounding Penn. In collaboration with the learning lab, instructor led seminars and discussions support the identification, development and completion of a community-based project.

NURS 3750: NUTRITION THROUGHOUT THE LIFE CYCLE
Instructor: Monique Dowd
Penn Today article: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-students-share-nutrition-and-healt...

Understanding and meeting nutritional needs from conception through adulthood will be addressed. Nutrition-related concerns at each stage of the life-cycle, including impact of lifestyle, education, economics and food behavior will be explored. As an ABCS course, students will be given the opportunity to address a real world nutrition-related issue in West Philadelphia in collaborations with Penn and/or local programs. Students will work in West Philadelphia with either senior citizens in the LIFE Program or with K-8 students for 2-4 hours/week outside of class time.

NURS 3800: NURSING IN THE COMMUNITY
Instructor: Alicia Kachmar, Steven Meanley

This course considers how nursing influences the health and healing capacities of both communities as a whole (populations) and of groups, families, and individuals living within particular communities locally and globally. It addresses the complexity of nursing practice using a public health paradigm. It requires students to draw from prior class and clinical knowledge and skills and apply this practice base to communities across care settings, ages, and cultures with different experiences of equity and access to care. It provides the tools needed to engage in collaborative community work and to give voice to the community's strengths, needs, and goals. It also moves students from an individual and family focus to a population focus for health assessment and intervention. Students consider the science, policies, and resources that support public health, and community based and community-oriented care. Clinical and simulated experiences in community settings provide sufficient opportunities for clinical reasoning, clinical care and knowledge integration in community settings. Students will have opportunities to care for patients and populations within selected communities.

PHIL 0902: HIGH SCHOOL ETHICS BOWL
Instructor: Dustin Webster
Penn Today article: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/learning-civil-discourse-and-open-minde... ,  https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/pint-size-philosophers

In this course, teams of Penn undergraduates, each joined by a graduate student in philosophy, will coach teams of high school students for participation in the National High School Ethics Bowl, an annual competitive yet collaborative event in which teams analyze and discuss complex ethical dilemmas. Cases for the Ethics Bowl will will serve as a foundational starting point for the undergraduate students' investigations into ethical theory, and the study of the Ethics Bowl itself will develop the capacities to provide coaching and mentorship to the teams of high school students from West Philadelphia and across the city. Undergraduates will travel to these school as part of the course, and there will be one or two Saturday sessions. This course will introduce the ethics bowl to many new Philadelphia School District schools and students, and it will provide Penn students with the opportunity to develop their teaching and communication skills, build collaborative relationships with community schools, and solidify their knowledge of ethical theory through coaching.

PPE 4000: RESEARCH IN PPE: PROSOCIAL ECONOMIC
Instructor: Jaron Cordero

Led by fellows in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program, this course teaches students how to conduct research in PPE with an emphasis on creating a well-formed research question, determining what kinds of data or scholarly research bears on that question, and how to carry out an interdisciplinary, research-driven project on that question. In this course, we will work together to contribute to the well-being of others. Each student will choose a subset of concepts related to prosocial economics to study, such as cooperation, trust, and reciprocity. They will have opportunities to learn practical skills, from dialogue and contemplative practices to mathematical modeling and experiment design. Students will integrate the concepts and skill development through regular community service. By the end of the semester, each student will have explored the potential to work for the benefit of others.

SOCI 2960 / URBS 3140: PARTICIPATORY CITIES (SNF Paideia Program Course)
Instructor:  Marisa Denker
Penn Today article: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/empowering-community-engagement-through...

What is a participatory city? What has that term meant in the past, what does it mean now, and what will it mean going forward? Against the backdrop of increasing inequality and inequity, and the rise in a search for solutions, what role can citizens play in co-creating more just cities and neighborhoods? How can citizens be engaged in the decision-making processes about the places where we live, work, and play? And most importantly, how can we work to make sure that all kinds of voices are meaningfully included, and that historically muted voices are elevated to help pave a better path forward? This course will connect theory with praxis as we explore together the history, challenges, methods, and approaches, and impact of bottom up and top down approaches to community participation and stakeholder involvement in cities. Multiple opportunities will be provided to be involved in community engagement work for live projects in Philadelphia.

URBS 1400: INEQUITY AND EMPOWERMENT: URBAN FINANCIAL LITERACY
Instructor: Brian Peterson

This course provides students with a rich look at the historical and contemporary factors that have shaped America's wealth gaps. By studying the economic impacts of systemic forces such as discriminatory housing, predatory lending, and unbanking, students will develop a deep financial understanding of today's urban communities. Students will also explore their own financial awareness and exposure, creating personalized financial histories and empowerment plans. By breaking the silence on topics such as credit scores, auto purchases, renting vs. owning a home, insurance, retirement plans, debt management, and investing, Urban Financial Literacy will prepare students for a financially healthy life at Penn and beyond. The course will also explore larger financial examples and case studies, including endowment funds and major foundations, the promises and perils of sports and entertainment, start-ups and the gig economy, and more. In contrasting the opportunity and excess that is possible, with the debilitating realities of intergenerational poverty in America, the idea is that students will end the course with a robust appreciation for financial literacy, a portfolio of practical strategies, and a commitment to create new possibilities for financial wellness.

URBS 2020: URBAN EDUCATION
Instructor: Michael Clapper

This seminar focuses on two main questions: 1) How have US schools and urban ones in particular continued to reproduce inequalities rather than ameliorating them? 2) In the informational age, how do the systems affecting education need to change to create more successful and equitable outcomes? The course is designed to bridge the divide between theory and practice. Each class session looks at issues of equity in relation to an area of practice (e.g. lesson design, curriculum planning, fostering positive student identities, classroom management, school funding, policy planning...), while bringing theoretical frames to bear from the fields of education, sociology, anthropology and psychology.

UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE COURSES

ANTH 5830 / EDUC 5466: ETHNOGRAPHIC FILMMAKING
Instructor: Amitanshu Das
See recent films produced through the course: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=SPD+-+Penn+Film+Program

This ethnographic methodology course considers filmmaking/videography as a tool in conducting ethnographic research as well as a medium for presenting academic research to scholarly and non-scholarly audiences. The course engages the methodological and theoretical implications of capturing data and crafting social scientific accounts/narratives in images and sounds. Students are required to put theory into practice by conducting ethnographic research and producing an ethnographic film as their final project. In service to that goal, students will read about ethnography (as a social scientific method and representational genre), learn and utilize ethnographic methods in fieldwork, watch non-fiction films (to be analyzed for formal properties and implicit assumptions about culture/sociality), and acquire rigorous training in the skills and craft of digital video production. This is an ABCS course, and students will produce short ethnographic films with students in Philadelphia high schools as part of a partnership project with the School District of Philadelphia. Due to the time needed for ethnographic film production, this is a year-long course, which will meet periodically in both the fall and spring semesters.

EDUC 2100/5100: MATH TUTORING IN URBAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
Instructor: Caroline Ebby, Joy Anderson Davis

Not yet published on Path@Penn

This course is a collaborative tutoring partnership between public elementary schools in West Philadelphia, Penn GSE faculty, and Penn undergraduate and graduate students.  The service component of the course is focused on the provision of one-to-one high-impact tutoring for foundational math concepts and skills in the early grades. Competence with early math has been shown to be predictive of later math achievement as well as academic success in general.  The overall goal of the tutoring component is to increase math confidence, engagement, and number sense and will include conducting a pre and post assessment and up to 12 in-school tutoring sessions.  In the course students will learn about mathematics education and the communities in which they will serve, unpack and reflect on conceptions of help in academic contexts, interrogate the "achievement gap" and racialized experiences with mathematics, develop understanding of important concepts in early mathematics as well as research on how students learn those concepts, and refine their tutoring skills (e.g., how to ask effective questions, how to support productive struggle, the role of concrete and visual models).  Students will also be guided to reflect on the implications of their work as tutors within the context of the longstanding, dynamic relationship between Penn and the West Philadelphia community. 

ENVS 1650: THE ROLE OF WATER IN URBAN SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIENCY
Instructor: Howard Neukrug

This course will provide an overview of the cross-disciplinary fields of civil engineering, environmental sciences, urban hydrology, landscape architecture, green building, public outreach and politics. Students will be expected to conduct field investigations, review scientific data and create indicator reports, working with stakeholders and presenting the results at an annual symposium. There is no metaphor like water itself to describe the cumulative effects of our practices, with every upstream action having an impact downstream. In our urban environment, too often we find degraded streams filled with trash, silt, weeds and dilapidated structures. The water may look clean, but is it? We blame others, but the condition of the creeks is directly related to how we manage our water resources and our land. In cities, these resources are often our homes, our streets and our communities. This course will define the current issues of the urban ecosystem and how we move toward managing this system in a sustainable manner. We will gain an understanding of the dynamic, reciprocal relationship between practices in an watershed and its waterfront. Topics discussed include: drinking water quality and protection, green infrastructure, urban impacts of climate change, watershed monitoring, public education, creating strategies and more.

ENVS 1665: AIR POLLUTION: SOURCES & EFFECTS IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS
Instructor: Maria Andrews

This is an ABCS course designed to provide the student with an understanding of air pollution at the local, regional and global levels. The nature, composition, and properties of air pollutants in the atmosphere will also be studied. The course will focus on Philadelphia's air quality and how air pollutants have an adverse effect on the health of the residents. The recent designation by IARC of Air Pollution as a known carcinogen will be explored. How the community is exposed to air pollutants with consideration of vulnerable populations will be considered. Through a partnership with Philadelphia Air Management Service (AMS) agency the science of air monitoring and trends over time will be explored. Philadelphia's current non-attainment status for PM2.5. and ozone will be studied. Philadelphia's current initiatives to improve the air quality of the city will be discussed. Students will learn to measure PM2.5 in outdoor and indoor settings and develop community-based outreach tools to effectively inform the community of Philadelphia regarding air pollution. The outreach tools developed by students may be presentations, written materials, apps, websites or other strategies for enhancing environmental health literacy of the community. A project based approach will be used to include student monitoring of area schools, school bus routes, and the community at large. The data collected will be presented to students in the partner elementary school in West Philadelphia . Upon completion of this course, students should expect to have attained a broad understanding of and familiarity with the sources, fate, and the environmental impacts and health effects of air pollutants.

NURS 3130/5130: OBESITY AND SOCIETY
Instructor: Colleen Tewksbury

This course will examine obesity from scientific, cultural, psychological, and economic perspectives. The complex matrix of factors that contribute to obesity and established treatment options will be explored.

NURS 3570/5730: INNOVATION IN HEALTH: FOUNDATIONS OF DESIGN THINKING
Instructor: Marion Leary

Innovation, defined as a hypothesis-driven, testable, and disciplined strategy, is important to improve health & healthcare. Employing new ways of thinking, such as with design thinking, will help open up possibilities of ways to improve health & the process of healthcare. Incorporating current & emerging social & digital technologies such as mobile apps, wearables, remote sensing, and 3D printing, affords new opportunities for innovation. This course provides foundational content & a disciplined approach to innovation as it applies to health & healthcare. A flipped classroom approach has the in-class component focusing on group learning through design thinking activities. The course is open to undergraduate nursing students as a case study & upper-level undergraduates and graduate students from across the Penn campus. The course provides a theoretical foundation in design thinking & may provide an overview of innovation technology & digital strategies as well as social & process change strategies. To enhance the didactic component, students will actively participate in a design case study. Students will be matched by interest and skill level with teams & will work with community-based organizations, healthcare providers and/or innovation partners. Student teams will meet their partners to identify & refine a health or healthcare problem to tackle. Students will work throughout the semester to create an innovative solution that will be pitched to their community-based organization, healthcare provider, and/or innovation partner at the end of the semester.

GRADUATE COURSES

ARCH 7280 / IPD 5280: DESIGN OF CONTEMPORARY PRODUCTS: DESIGN FOR EQUITY, INCLUSION AND ACCESSIBILITY
Instructor: Sarah Rottenberg
Enrollment limited to students in the Weitzman School Professional division.

The power of design to shape the world we live in is increasingly obvious, as is the responsibility of designers to challenge our assumptions about who designs, who is included or marginalized by our designs, and how we can make sure that all design is inclusive design. This course will address issues around designing for equity, inclusion and accessibility and co-design. We will ask, What is inclusive design? Who does it serve? What should it look like? To answer these questions, we will engage with the current discourse around designing for equity, inclusion and accessibility, with a particular focus on accessibility. We will engage with disability justice frameworks and critical disability studies to challenge our assumptions about disability and engagement. And we will connect with members of the disability community and co-design along with them. This course is intended for anyone who considers themselves a designer: of physical or digital products, places, or services who wants to prioritize inclusion in their practice.

CLST 3307 / ANTH 3307 / NELC 3950 / CLST 5620 / ANTH 5220: INTRO TO DIGITAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Instructor: Jason Herrmann
News article: https://www.mainlinemedianews.com/2021/09/30/students-from-penn-digital-...

Students in this course will be exposed to the broad spectrum of digital approaches in archaeology with an emphasis on fieldwork, through a survey of current literature and applied learning opportunities that focus on African American mortuary landscapes of greater Philadelphia. As an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course, we will work with stakeholders from cemetery companies, historic preservation advocacy groups, and members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to collect data from three field sites. We will then use these data to reconstruct the original plans, untangle site taphonomy, and assess our results for each site. Our results will be examined within the broader constellation of threatened and lost African American burial grounds and our interpretations will be shared with community stakeholders using digital storytelling techniques. This course can count toward the minor in Digital Humanities, minor in Archaeological Science and the Graduate Certificate in Archaeological Science.

DENT 6101: LOCAL, PUBLIC HLTH, ETHIC
Instructor: Joan Gluch, Kathleen Boesze-Battaglia

Lectures, seminars and community experiences provide students with foundation knowledge in general principles of public health and community health, with specific application to the following dental public health concepts: access to care, cost, quality of care and international health. Students complete community experiences that provide foundation experiences in developing and implementing community oral health promotion activities.

DENT 7101: HEALTH PROMOTION
Instructor: Joan Gluch

DENT 8121: COMMUNITY ORAL HEALTH
Penn Today article: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/dental-schools-joan-gluch-promotes-acad...

Community Oral Health Experiences in alternate oral health care delivery settings provide students with the opportunity to develop and expand their skills in providing comprehensive oral health care in community based settings under the direct supervision of faculty members. Students are scheduled in the mobile dental vehicle, PennSmiles, and are also scheduled at Community Volunteers in medicine, a community based medical and dental treatment facility in West Chester, PA. Students attend small group seminars to discuss their experiences and theoretical underpinnings of community oral health activities.

EDUC 5281: LANGUAGE TEACHING & LITERACY DEVELOPMENT IN MULTILINGUAL COMMUNITY CONTEXT
Instructor: Anne Pomerantz

Immigrant youth often face the dual challenge of learning a new language and learning academic content in that language simultaneously. Many educators, however, struggle to identify and implement instructional practices that acknowledge learners' strengths, while also attending to their communicative, academic, and social needs. This course brings insights and findings from sociolinguistics to bear on research on language and literacy teaching to develop a situated, interactionally mindful approach for supporting emergent bi/multilinguals. An intensive service-learning project offers course participants the opportunity to "learn by doing" by working closely with children and adolescents in one multilingual, community-based after-school setting. Although the course takes the case of English learners attending U.S. elementary and secondary schools as its starting point, discussion of the implications and applications to other national/ educational contexts is encouraged. The goal of this course is to prepare participants to provide language and literacy instruction in contextually sensitive, theoretically informed, and interactionally attuned ways.

EDUC 5300: LITERACY IN ACTION (READING/WRITING/LITERACY)
Instructor: Alesha Gayle

Join the class 'Literacy in Action: Literacy Internship Experience' for the opportunity to examine literacies in situated contexts through hands-on action. An internship experience with local partners forms the cornerstone of the class, allowing students to pursue interests in preK-8 classroom and out-of-school practice, curriculum development and professional learning, or policy and research. Students will consider their own interests and positionalities, emic and etic perspectives, and the particularities of Discourse(s) within their field sites. Together, they’ll unpack literacies to partner meaningfully both inside and outside of educational spaces– that is, entering communities respectfully, assessing organizations’ needs, aligning with stakeholders’ missions and visions, and creating programming that adds to the overall success of their field site. This class provides all students with an interest in literacy with a supportive space to study and explore contemporary issues in literacy policy, research, and practice that are crucial in creating more just, equitable spaces for learning in Philadelphia and globally. No prior experience necessary.

EDUC 5500: APPLIED QUALITATIVE METHODS IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Instructor: Laronnda Thompson

No restrictions on graduate student enrollment. Graduate students should not request special permission. How is and might Qualitative Research be used to develop and improve interventions? Understanding that Basic Research seeks to expand upon theory and knowledge, and Applied or Practical Research operates to address current concerns, we will explore new, emerging, and lesser-known approaches to Applied Qualitative work. This course is interested in research that understands all participants as agentic stakeholders with equal power. In that we understand the research process to be one of humility, reflection, and inquiry and that its teether to its stated purpose. Centering their own career goals, students will have the opportunity to analyze current interventions as well as make innovations or develop their own research proposal. Having background knowledge in methodologies and/or standard qual. or quant. methods is not a prerequisite to the course but is likely to help.

EDUC 7323 / AFRC 7230: MULTICULTURAL ISSUES IN EDUCATION
Instructor: Vivian Gadsden

This course examines critical issues, problems, and perspectives in multicultural education. Intended to focus on access to literacy and educational opportunity, the course will engage class members in discussions around a variety of topics in educational practice, research, and policy. Specifically, the course will (1) review theoretical frameworks in multicultural education, (2) analyze the issues of race, racism, and culture in historical and contemporary perspective, and (3) identify obstacles to participation in the educational process by diverse cultural and ethnic groups. Students will be required to complete field experiences and classroom activities that enable them to reflect on their own belief systems, practices, and educational experiences.

IDT 2530: FOUNDATIONS OF CULINARY MEDICINE
Instructor: Horace Delisser 

Foundations of Culinary Medicine is a one-year elective course for first year medical students at the Perelman School of Medicine. Taught by a team of culinary experts, physicians, and registered dietitians, Foundationsintegrates advanced nutrition science and the culinary arts into a hands-on, interdisciplinary experience. Each session will run during a Module 2 organ system and disease block in order to integrate nutrition education with the basic science and clinical medicine concepts of a particular organ system. This training will provide students with the knowledge to understand the impact of healthy eating on normal human physiology and disease. Through evidence-based research, case-based discussions and in-the-kitchen, hands-on training, students will learn about the role of nutrition in integrated biological systems, with a focus on dietary recommendations for real-life patient care. Students will also learn by teaching, partnering with Philadelphia schools and families to facilitate food educational programs and community dinners. It is anticipated that this course will provide a foundation for students to both understand and communicate the impact of good nutrition on their own health, as well as the health of their future patients.

NURS 7210: ADVANCED PHYSICAL ASSESSMENT AND CLINICAL DECISION MAKING: NURSING OF CHILDREN
Instructor: Sura Lee

This clinical course is designed to help prospective advanced practice nurses develop advanced skills in physical and developmental assessment both across the lifespan and with a specific focus on children in a variety of settings. Data collection, data interpretation, and hypothesis formulations are emphasized for the purpose of clinical decision making. The role of the advanced practice nurse in assessment of child health care issues and health promotion is incorporated throughout the course. Community collaboration and evaluation of social determinants of health, as integral aspects of assessment, will be an ongoing focus.

Additional courses in City Planning, Architecture, and Landscape Architecture will be added to this list in the near future.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMER 2023

EDUC 5841: ACCESS AND CHOICE IN AMERICAN EDUCATION
Instructor: Marcus Wright

College enrollment is a complex process that is shaped by the economic, social and policy context, higher education institutions, K-12 schools, families, and students. The course will examine the theoretical perspectives that are used to understand college access and choice processes. The implications of various policies and practices for college access and choice will also be explored, with particular attention to the effects of these policies for underrepresented groups. As an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course, this course is also designed to generate tangible recommendations that program administrators and institutional leaders may be used to improve college access and choice.

EDUC 5580: DEVELOPMENTAL THEORIES & APPLICATIONS WITH CHILDREN
Instructor: Laronnda Thompson

The purpose of this course is to provide students with an opportunity to consider the educational policies & practices shaping the learning and development of preschool through early elementary school children. This course emphasizes the application of development psychology and multicultural perspective to the design of effective classroom-based strategies. This course is uniquely designed for those with tangential to no classroom or young child experience, as well as those planning to go into or seeking to improve their teaching. Taking “whole child” stances, students will gain real world experience volunteering in K-4 spaces. Assignments will include the development of an educator journal. (Path@Penn description is slightly outdated)

URBS 2080: PENN - WEST PHILADELPHIA SUMMER INTERNSHIP
Instructor: Ira Harkavy

Summer enrollment is limited to students interning with the Penn Program for Public Service Summer Internship. This course is also available for students every fall and spring semester under AFRC 1780/HIST 0811/URBS 1780. This seminar helps students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real-world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom, on campus, and in the West Philadelphia community. Students develop proposals that demonstrate how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply "consume," societally-useful knowledge, as well as to function as caring, contributing citizens of a democratic society. Their proposals help contribute to the improvement of education on campus and in the community, as well as to the improvement of university-community relations.