ABCS Courses

CHEM 010 is an opportunity for undergraduates to share their interest and enthusiasm for science, specifically chemistry, with students in grades 6-12 attending urban public schools in West Philadelphia. In this course, undergraduates will create and facilitate chemistry outreach experiments in Penn’s general chemistry labs, as well as prepare and implement effective chemical demonstrations and hands-on activities in local public school classrooms. CHEM010 will allow undergraduates to develop science communication and teaching skills applicable to all facets of their education and future careers.

This case study offers students experiential learning to develop an in depth understanding of social determinants of health invulnerable, undersereved populations and to collaboratively design and refine existing health promotion programs based on the needs of the community site. Grounded on an approach that builds upon the strenths of communities, this course emphasizes the development of techniques to lead effective, collaborative, health-focused interventions for underserved populations. Students are required to draw on skills and knowledge obtained from previous classes related to social determinants of health and community engagement and will engage in specific creative, innovative community based programs develped for populations across the life span. These culturally relevant programs, which have been shown to positively impact communities, create opportunities for students to address the social determinants of health, build engagement and leadership skills and increase program success and sustainability. Prerequisite: Completion of sophomore year nursing requirements

From the fall of the Roman Empire to Love Canal to the epidemics of asthma, childhood obesity and lead poisoning in West Philadelphia, the impact of the environment on health has been a continuous challenge to society. The environment can affect people's health more strongly than biological factors, medical care and lifestyle. The water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the neighborhood we live in are all components of the environment that impact our health. Some estimates, based on morbidity and mortality statistics, indicate that the impact of the environment on health is as high as 80%. These impacts are particularly significant in urban areas like West Philadelphia. Over the last 20 years, the field of environmental health has matured and expanded to become one of the most comprehensive and humanly relevant disciplines in science. This course will examine not only the toxicity of physical agents, but also the effects on human health of lifestyle, social and economic factors, and the built environment. Topics include cancer clusters, water borne diseases, radon and lung cancer, lead poisoning, environmental tobacco smoke, respiratory diseases and obesity. Students will research the health impacts of classic industrial pollution case studies in the US. Class discussions will also include risk communication, community outreach and education, access to health care and impact on vulnerable populations. Each student will have the opportunity to focus on Public Health, Environmental Protection, Public Policy, and Environmental Education issues as they discuss approaches to mitigating environmental health risks.

Along with a study of theories, strategies, and methods for teaching and tutoring writing in diverse communities, this course will also interrogate our own social locations and the ways we engage with the realities of teaching and learning. To enable this, this course will provide opportunities for community engagement and reflection beyond the walls of our classroom by working with nearby high school students to prepare them for college-level writing. Please note that 8 of our weekly classes will be held at Robeson High School (4125 Ludlow School, Philadelphia, PA 19104). In addition to fieldwork, students will read and discuss key texts on community-engaged writing instruction, keep a weekly reflection and reading response journal, and engage in a scaffolded semester-long research project on community-engaged writing theory and practice.

Prerequisite(s): Satisfactory completion of the critical writing seminar

Students will learn about basic residential energy efficiency measures and practices from an established community based energy organization, the Energy Coordinating Agency of Philadelphia. Identify and understand fundamental core STEM energy concepts. Develop a short "energy efficiency" curriculum appropriate for middle or high school students. Teach three (3) sessions in a science class in the School District of Philadelphia.

A central premise of the "American Dream" is economic freedom, implying opportunity, security, and in the minds of many, wealth. The statistical and experimental reality, vividly evidence throughout the nation's urban cities, is a staggering inequitable distribution of resources and growing economic instability for scores of households, including those identified as middle class. Educational policy makers and organizations working to address national poverty often rally that "destiny shouldn't be defined by one's zip code," yet, due to numerous factors, it is remarkably difficult for this not to be case. Place matters. Through an analysis of ethnographic texts, policy reports, academic studies, and popular media pieces, URBS 140 will help students explore the hidden factors that have formed and sustain inequity in American cities. By studying the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of policy decisions and practices such as discriminatory housing, predatory lending, unbanking, and deindustrialization, and contextualizing the vast (and growing) wealth gaps in America and the critical importance of intergenerational wealth, URBS 140 will shed new light on how our current economic reality has been shaped. At the same time, URBS 140 will also break the silence on personal finance, helping students map present an future decisions (building credit scores, when and how to shape a retirement plan, home ownership vs. renting, financing college and graduate school, and more) as they more fully investigate the broader policies and histories that have framed their choices, and contrast their options - as future Penn alumni - with those of other Americans with significantly less income earning potential. As an ABCS course, students will share their knowledge about inequality and financial empowerment with area high school students. Students will also generate a policy analysis and/or program proposal as part of their final project that addresses an inequity theme that we have studies in the course.

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. This course satisfies the Society & Social Structures Sector for Nursing Class of 2012 and Beyond.

In recent years professional philosophy has witnessed numerous efforts to break down the barriers that stand between the academy and its neighboring communities. Such work has invited a lively debate across the discipline about the role philosophy can and should play outside the classroom. This course gives students the opportunity to make a substantive contribution to this timely issue both by reflecting upon and by engaging in 'public philosophy.' Undergraduates will have the opportunity to read, discuss, and distill philosophical texts on a range of topics in moral and political philosophy, especially topics that pertain to civic life in democratic society. Topics include duties and obligations (e.g., the duty to vote), oppression and injustice, cosmopolitanism, patriotism, civil disobedience, propaganda, and political liberalism. Students will also engage with public-facing work done by philosophers on these topics, with the aim of preparing students from a West Philadelphia high school (details TBA) to produce a written piece of public philosophy of their own at the end of the semester. Guest speakers will on occasion visit the seminar to discuss public philosophy or pre-college pedagogy. This course is an Academically Based Community Service course. Registration requires a permit from the instructor.

This course is designed to equip students with the major tenets of rhetorical studies and peer education necessary to work as a CWiC speaking advisor. The course is a practicum that aims to develop students' abilities as speakers, as critical listeners and as advisors able to help others develop those abilities. In addition to creating and presenting individual presentations, students present workshops and practice advising. During this ABCS course, students will practice their advising skills by coaching and mentoring students at a public school in Philadelphia.

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.

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.

Legal advocacy for children and adolescents involves a dynamic range of substantive legal issues informed by the most recent research and practice in the fields of social work, medicine and mental health. Students in the clinic represent adolescent and youth clients on a variety of matters including child welfare cases, immigration proceedings, education issues and health related matters. As part of an interdisciplinary legal team with graduate level social work students and a social work supervisor, clinic students will identify legal issues, use interdisciplinary practice skills to advocate for their clients and appear in a variety of ve. As part of the seminar, clinic students will also have access to experts and guest lecturers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn’s School of Social Policy and Practice to assist with their interdisciplinary representation of clients and examination of laws and policies affecting children and families. Under Pennsylvania’s student practice rule, students will serve as primary counsel for children and youth responsible for interviewing and counseling clients, identifying legal issues, developing case theories, and providing legal representation in formal adjudicatory hearings. Working in interdisciplinary teams, students will meet regularly with the Professor and social work supervisor to receive guidance and feedback on their casework and advocacy. As part of the classroom seminar, students will develop interviewing, counseling, and oral advocacy skills through simulations and mock hearings. Students will also explore the legal and policy landscape for poor children and families with regards to child welfare, education, immigration and health care with guest lecturers from Philadelphia, CHOP and SP2. Students will work on a cornerstone policy project focusing on issues impacting children and adolescents across disciplines. Finally, students will tackle important ethical issues that arise in interdisciplinary practice with doctors, teachers and social workers. Students must appear at the first meeting of the course, or may be automatically dropped from the course (unless you have advance permission from the instructor).

The purpose of this course is to provide students with an opportunity to consider mandates, models, and methods related to enhancing the learning and development of preschool and early elementary school children. This course emphasizes the application of developmental psychology and multicultural perspectives to the design of effective classroom-based strategies. Students will consider a "whole-child" approach to understanding children's classroom behavior in context. Major assignments will involve gathering and synthesizing information about children in routine classroom situations. This information will be used to better understand children's needs and strengths and how they are manifested in transaction with classroom contexts. Students will focus on one or more students to conduct a comprehensive child study of the child in context. This contact must include opportunities to observe children in a natural setting and interact with them on a regular basis through out the semester. The placement needs to be approved by the professor. If students do not have a regular classroom contact, one will be arranged.

This elective course will afford students the opportunity to develop and implement health education workshops for incarcerated women in the Philadelphia jail system. Students will explore the social and historical framework and trends in the incarceration of women, as well as the needs of this population, and will identify specific areas that need to be addressed by particular disciplines or professions. Students will have direct contact with the jail system, its staff, and female inmates.

Students in this course will develop and implement health and wellbeing education programming for incarcerated men in the Philadelphia Department of Prisons. Most of the classroom time is in the Philadelphia Prison interacting with male inmates. Evidence suggests improved self-regulation may enhance other therapeutic methodologies consequently reducing the frequency of reoffending. Students will explore the social and legal trends driving the incarceration of urban men and the resulting health and wellbeing needs of this population. Students will have direct contact with the jail system, its staff, and male inmates.

This is a Public Interest Ethnography workshop (originally created by Peggy Reeves Sanday - Department of Anthropology) that incorporates an interdisciplinary approach to exploring social issues. Open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students, the workshop is a response to Amy Gutmann's call for interdisciplinary cooperation across the University and to the Department of Anthropology's commitment to developing public interest research and practice as a disciplinary theme. Rooted in the rubric of public interest social science, the course focuses on: 1) merging problem solving with theory and analysis in the interest of change motivated by a commitment to social justice, racial harmony, equality, and human rights; and 2) engaging in public debate on human issues to make research results accessible to a broader audience. The workshop brings in guest speakers and will incorporate original ethnographic research to merge theory with action. Students are encouraged to apply the framing model to a public interest research and action topic of their choice. This is an academically-based-community-service (ABCS) course that partners directly with Penn's Netter Center for Community Partnerships.

In EDUC 722 (a new ABCS course), students will be paired with a local school to teach about civics, local governance and voting to high school students in social studies classes. Beyond teaching, students will also work with their high school students to organize peer-to-peer voter registration drives in the school communities, in advance of the primary elections this spring. Students will simultaneously have the opportunity to conduct actionable research surrounding youth civic engagement with broad policy relevance in the education sector, presenting this work to a public audience. This course is designed as a practicum because our school consultancies are meant to engage high school students civically with the goal of boosting youth voter engagement in Philadelphia. The course is suitable for both graduate and undergraduate students with an interest in education, politics, and civics.

Activism Beyond the Classroom (ABC) is a course co-designed with Penn students and Philadelphia community activists. In working groups, l we engage in participatory inquiry and public scholarship related to grassroots activism and advocacy around educational issues and social justice. Together, we produce a podcast, op-eds, and a website. Learn more at: www.activismbeyondtheclassroom.com. Undergraduate students are welcome.

From the inception of the discipline, anthropologists have applied their ethnographic and theoretical knowledge to policy issues concerning the alleviation of practical human problems. This approach has not only benefited peoples in need but it has also enriched the discipline, providing anthropologists with the opportunity to develop new theories and methodologies from a problem-centered approach. The class will examine the connection between anthropology and policy, theory and practice (or 'praxis'), research and application. We will study these connections by reading about historical and current projects. As an ABCS course, students will also volunteer in a volunteer organization of their choice in the Philadelphia area, conduct anthropological research on the organization, and suggest ways that the anthropological approach might support the efforts of the organization.

For this course, students will attend Pennsylvania School for the Deaf on a weekly basis where they will participate in and contribute to the school community via tutoring or other mutually agreeable activities. Students will also have formal class on a weekly basis with discussions and activities centering on reflection of community experiences through linguistic as well as cultural lenses. Additionally, drawing from the required Linguistics and other ASL/Deaf Studies coursework, students will develop an inquiry question and conduct preliminary community-based research to analyze sociolinguistic variations of ASL and Deaf cultural attitudes, behaviors, and norms. 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. LING 078, Topics in Deaf Culture and permission from the instructor, are required for this course.

Self-care is done by lay people to prevent or manage chronic illness. In this case study, we will discuss the history, definitions, predictors, and outcomes of self-care in various chronically ill populations. A focus of discussion will be an in depth exploration of the factors that influence self-care. Understanding these factors will prepare nurses for their role in promoting self-care. Fieldwork experiences are designed to provide practical experience in engaging well individuals in preventing illness and helping chronically ill perform self-care.

Studies of landscape are at the core of multiple fields of fine art making, historical inquiry, and environmental research. Christopher Tilley defines "landscape" as "a holistic term" that frames relationships between living beings and locales, "forming both the medium for, and outcome of, movement and memory." For interdisciplinary arts practitioners in Philadelphia, the landscape may conjure such relationships at points of convergence: when the physical and symbolic layers of the city lay bare social dynamics and truths. Such a range of landmarks - including rivers, neighborhoods, the viewshed, the skyline - are impacted by the deep histories of the region itself, as well as the human-activity that traffics upon it. To produce work about and from Philadelphia is to inherit long-standing questions of civic belonging, make sense of shifting demographics and ecological conditions, and to balance aims for innovation and coexistence. Converging Landscapes - Art, Ecology, and History is a civic studio and structured as a socially-engaged art praxis experience: students will meet weekly for group facilitations, civic dialogues, and special guest lectures. In lieu of midterms and a final exam, students in the course will participate as members of specialized research teams, working a set number of hours per week, write reflection papers, and produce a final site-specific research portfolio. Together, they will explore and produce work at and about sites of convergence. Students will pursue group projects and cross-disciplinary independent work, around selected arts and municipal contribute toward a class wide exhibition, as well as collaborations with artists, archives, and organizations. The course is ideal for students invested in issues of socially-engaged public art, environmental humanities, history, and civic engagement.

"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.

A service course intended to integrate concepts of basic physics, biology and electronics and systems engineering for the benefit of Penn engineering students, teachers and students from two minority centered community public schools. The course will engage the participants in the design and implementation of indoors cultivating systems using photo-voltaic (PV) technology to energize LED emulating the needed solar radiation for plant growth, a liquid nutrient distribution system, sensors / actuators capable of selecting the harvestable plants and keeping track of overall system parameters.

In this course, teams of undergraduate students, 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 2019-20 Ethics Bowl will be released in September 2019, and these will serve as a foundational starting point for the undergraduate students' investigations into ethical theory and the study of the ethics bowl itself, to develop the capacities to provide coaching and mentorship to the teams of high school students from schools in 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 when all high school convene on Penn's campus for practice scrimmages. 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.

Students in this course will develop and implement health and wellbeing education programming for incarcerated men in the Philadelphia Department of Prisons. Most of the classroom time is in the Philadelphia Prison interacting with male inmates. Evidence suggests improved self-regulation may enhance other therapeutic methodologies consequently reducing the frequency of reoffending. Students will explore the social and legal trends driving the incarceration of urban men and the resulting health and wellbeing needs of this population. Students will have direct contact with the jail system, its staff, and male inmates.

Music in Urban Spaces 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 musicologists, cultural theorists, urban geographers, and sociologists who work to define urban space and the role of music and sound in urban environments.

Understanding and meeting nutritional needs from conception through adulthood will be addressed. Nutrition-related concerns at each stage of the lifecycle, including impact of lifestyle, education, economics and food behavior will be explored.

The purpose of this course is to engage students in the rigorous process of mining experiences for material that can be transformed into a public performance piece. In-class writing, group discussions, and field work in the Philadelphia area. AUGUST WILSON AND BEYOND. The people need to know the story. See how they fit into it. See what part they play. - August Wilson, King Hedley II. In this seminar, students will read groundbreaking playwright August Wilson's 20th Century Cycle: ten plays that form an iconic picture of African American traumas, triumphs, and traditions through the decades, told through the lens of Pittsburgh's Hill District neighborhood. Other readings include supporting material on Wilson's work and African American theatre, the works of contemporary playwrights whom Wilson has influenced (such as Suzan-Lori Parks and Tarell Alvin McCraney), and context on Penn's relationship with West Philadelphia. As an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course,this seminar gives students the opportunity to enhance their understanding of the plays, and history and culture that shaped them, by forming meaningful relationships with West Philadelphia residents. Wilson's plays provide the bridge between the two groups. The course culminates with students writing an original theatre piece inspired by the readings and relationships, which they will share at an end-of-semester performance.

What role can business play in helping to meet global societal needs, whether it involves the environment, improving health, expanding education or eradicating poverty? Is there any responsibility on the part of business to help meet those needs? What are models of successful business engagement in this area? How should success be measured? Are there limits to what businesses can and should do, and what institutional changes will enable businesses and entrepreneurs to better succeed? This survey course provides students the opportunity to engage in the critical analysis of these and other questions that lie at the foundation of social impact and responsibility as an area of study. The course involves case studies, conceptual issues, and talks by practitioners. The course is designed to help students develop a framework to address the question: How should business enterprises and business thinking be engaged to improve society in areas not always associated with business? The course is required for the secondary concentration in Social Impact and Responsibility.

In this hands-on course students will work with active researchers in the Communication Neuroscience lab at Penn to gain experience in how research works. Research topics will depend on student interests, with emphasis on one or more of the following: social influence and persuasion, health communication, peer influence in teens, mobile technology, social media, emotion regulation, peace and conflict resolution, mindfulness, interpersonal communication, political communication, adolescent brain development, communication neuroscience. Students will have the opportunity to interact closely with a mentor and will gain experience conceptualizing research questions, designing experiments, collecting data, and making an analysis plan.

Prerequisites: COMM 210 (Communication Research Methods) or permission of the instructor.

The course provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to participate in academically based community service learning. Student will be studying early childhood development and learning while providing direct, one-to-one tutoring services to young students in Philadelphia public elementary schools. The course will cover foundational dimensions of the cognitive and social development of preschool and elementary school students from a multicultural perspective. The course will place a special emphasis on the multiple contexts that influence children's development and learning and how aspects of classroom environment (i.e., curriculum and classroom management strategies) can impact children's achievement. Also, student will consider a range of larger issues impacting urban education embedded in American society. The course structure has three major components: (1) lecture related directly to readings on early childhood development and key observation and listening skills necessary for effective tutoring, (2) weekly contact with a preschool or elementary school student as a volunteer tutor and active consideration of how to enhance the student learning, and (3) discussion and reflection of personal and societal issues related to being a volunteer tutor in a large urban public school.

Lead poisoning can cause learning disabilities, impaired hearing, behavioral problems, and at very high levels, seizures, coma and even death. Children up to the age of six are especially at risk because of their developing systems; they often ingest lead chips and dust while playing in their home and yards. In ENVS 404, Penn undergraduates learn about the epidemiology of lead poisoning, the pathways of exposure, and methods for community outreach and education. Penn students collaborate with middle school and high school teachers in West Philadelphia to engage middle school children in exercises that apply environmental research relating to lead poisoning to their homes and neighborhoods.

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.

Lectures, seminars, clinical sessions and community field experiences are provided so that students gain the necessary knowledge and skills in oral health promotion and disease prevention activities with individuals, communities and populations. Course topics include discussion of the philosophy, modalities, rationale and evaluation of health promotion and disease preventive activities related to caries, periodontal diseases and oral cancer. Focus is placed on assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of strategies designed to target the individual patient, the community and a population perspective. This is a full year course open to Dental students only.

Studies of landscape are at the core of multiple fields of fine art making, historical inquiry, and environmental research. Christopher Tilley defines "landscape" as "a holistic term" that frames relationships between living beings and locales, "forming both the medium for, and outcome of, movement and memory." For interdisciplinary arts practitioners in Philadelphia, the landscape may conjure such relationships at points of convergence: when the physical and symbolic layers of the city lay bare social dynamics and truths. Such a range of landmarks - including rivers, neighborhoods, the viewshed, the skyline - are impacted by the deep histories of the region itself, as well as the human-activity that traffics upon it. To produce work about and from Philadelphia is to inherit long-standing questions of civic belonging, make sense of shifting demographics and ecological conditions, and to balance aims for innovation and coexistence. Converging Landscapes - Art, Ecology, and History is a civic studio and structured as a socially-engaged art praxis experience: students will meet weekly for group facilitations, civic dialogues, and special guest lectures. In lieu of midterms and a final exam, students in the course will participate as members of specialized research teams, working a set number of hours per week, write reflection papers, and produce a final site-specific research portfolio. Together, they will explore and produce work at and about sites of convergence. Students will pursue group projects and cross-disciplinary independent work, around selected arts and municipal contribute toward a class wide exhibition, as well as collaborations with artists, archives, and organizations. The course is ideal for students invested in issues of socially-engaged public art, environmental humanities, history, and civic engagement.

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 with 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.

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.

This course explores historical and contemporary challenges involved in the policy and practice of non-school education agencies and factors that work in service to local school/community settings. Students will explore several historical case studies, conceptual frames, and current policy challenges, culminating in a community-based research project.

The history and practice of the contemporary mural movement couples step by step analysis of the process of designing with painting a mural. In addition students will learn to see mural art as a tool for social change. This course combines theory with practice. Students will design and paint a large outdoor mural in West Philadelphia in collaboration with Philadelphia high school students and community groups. The class is co-taught by Jane Golden, director of the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, and Shira Walinsky, a mural arts painter and founder of Southeast by Southeast project, a community center for Burmese refugees in South Philadelphia.

Advanced Writing for Children is a response to our fast-and-faster learning culture. We ll take the term to write and re-write several fiction and non-fiction pieces for children or teens. Let s call it Slow Write, like the Slow Food movement. The idea is to take time to write better, deeper, more beautifully, funnier, to respect stories and how you choose and render them. Using community among ourselves and with select partners outside the university we will work to help you harness various intelligences to figure out the stories you need to write. Trips and collaborations will refresh and surprise. You ll be writing, but also taking time: to remember, sketch, connect with others, research, meditate, assess, develop, discard. Slow writing respects difference. Some of us need to get honest, others to pull back; some to learn fluency and others restraint. Most of us need support to work harder, but as Thomas Wolfe defined it for artists: an integrity of purpose, a spiritual intensity, and a fine expenditure of energy that most people have no conception of. When stories are ready, you will be invited to submit them to SafeKidsStories.com, because as Pippi Longstocking author Astrid Lungren has said: Children perform miracles when they read. On the side, for funsies, and to assuage the must-write fast urge, you will also write bits and blogs.

Civic Studio is an engaged research praxis that delves in the significant theories, methodologies, and practices of public and socially-engaged artwork. Students draw from arts- and place-based modes of inquiry toward collaborative projects with fellow classmates, artists, and organizations in Philadelphia and beyond, while pursuing semester-long individual research. Each semester, students work with and as embedded practitioners in exhibitions, installations, and other artistic platforms throughout the city. In turn, through readings, site visits, and site-specific work, students gain creative and critical capacity for producing their own final projects about a particular street, intersection, or site in the city . Through Civic Studio students are able to reflect upon and practice public work with artistic, scholarly, and civic aims.

This course allows Penn students to teach a series of hands-on activities to students in math classes at University City High School. The semester starts with an introduction to successful approaches for teaching math in urban high schools. The rest of the semester will be devoted to a series of weekly hands-on activities designed to teach fundamental aspects of geometry. The first class meeting of each week, Penn faculty teach Penn students the relevant mathematical background and techniques for a hands-on activity. During the second session of each week, Penn students will teach the hands-on activity to a small group of UCHS students. The Penn students will also have an opportunity to develop their own activity and to implement it with the UCHS students.

This course is an advanced/conversational ASL course that explores several key topics related to Deaf Culture. Using only ASL in class, students will read and discuss books, articles, and films related to the following topics: Deaf History, Deaf Identity, Deafness as Asset, Communication Issues and Pathological Perspectives on Deafness, Deafness and Education, Deaf/Hearing Family Dynamics. Language growth will stem from direct instruction as well as through the course of class conversation. Students will collaborate with the instructor and our Deaf community liaison to develop and host an event that is accessible to both Deaf and hearing people alike.

*Prerequisites: LING 074 or permission from coordinator; Penn Language Center permission needed; prior language experience required

*Fulfills the Cultural Diversity in the US Foundational Requirement

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

The primary goal of the freshman seminar program is to provide every freshman the opportunity for a direct personal encounter with a faculty member in a small sitting devoted to a significant intellectual endeavor. Specific topics be posted at the beginning of each academic year. Please see the College Freshman seminar website for information on current course offerings http:// www.college.upenn.edu/courses/seminars/freshman.php.

*Fulfills the Cultural Diversity in the US Foundational Requirement

*Two terms; students must enter first term; Special permission needed from instructor

This course will combine an intensive practical and intellectual investigation of some area of the making of theatre: performance techniques, theatrical styles, a particular period of theatre history. Please visit the Theatre Arts Program website for current topics for Thar 275 and other Theatre Arts Courses and special topics: https://theatre.sas.upenn.edu Please visit the Theatre Arts Program website each semester for information on the available THAR 275 special topics courses: https://theatre.sas.upenn.edu

*Benjamin Franklin Seminar

The history and practice of the contemporary mural movement couples step by step analysis of the process of designing with painting a mural. In addition students will learn to see mural art as a tool for social change. This course combines theory with practice. Students will design and paint a large outdoor mural in West Philadelphia in collaboration with Philadelphia high school students and community groups. The class is co-taught by Jane Golden, director of the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, and Shira Walinsky, a mural arts painter and founder of Southeast by Southeast project, a community center for Burmese refugees in South Philadelphia.

*Fulfills the Cultural Diversity in the US Foundational Requirement

*Auditors need permission from instructors

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.

*Prerequisites: ENVS 100, GEOL 100 or equivalent

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.

*Fulfills the Cultural Diversity in the US Foundational Requirement

Lectures, seminars, clinical sessions and community field experiences are provided so that students gain the necessary knowledge and skills in oral health promotion and disease prevention activities with individuals, communities and populations. Course topics include discussion of the philosophy, modalities, rationale and evaluation of health promotion and disease preventive activities related to caries, periodontal diseases and oral cancer. Focus is placed on assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of strategies designed to target the individual patient, the community and a population perspective. This is a year-long course open only to Dental students.

*Open only to LAW and SP2 students

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. This is a full year course open to Dental students only.

This ABCS course explores religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue and action on college campuses. It brings together students with diverse faith commitments (including atheism) to engage with and learn from one another in academic study, dialogue, and service.

*Permission needed from department; Greenfield Intercultural Center 

Experiences in selected community settings provide students with the opportunity to develop and expand their skills in community oral health promotion. Students are scheduled to visit local elementary and middle schools and participate in the oral health education, screening and referral programs under the direct supervision of faculty members. In addition, students complete activities from a selected list of programs at local community agencies and/or schools. Students attend small group seminars to discuss their experiences and theoretical underpinnings of community oral health activities. This is a full year course open to Dental students only.

The history and practice of the contemporary mural movement couples step by step analysis of the process of designing with painting a mural. In addition students will learn to see mural art as a tool for social change. This course combines theory with practice. Students will design and paint a large outdoor mural in West Philadelphia in collaboration with Philadelphia high school students and community groups. The class is co-taught by Jane Golden, director of the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, and Shira Walinsky, a mural arts painter and founder of Southeast by Southeast project, a community center for Burmese refugees in South Philadelphia.

*Fulfills the Cultural Diversity in the US Foundational Requirement

*Auditors need permission from instructors

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 improvethe 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.

*Benjamin Franklin Seminar; Fulfills Natural Sciences & Mathematics Sector Requirement 

The purpose of this course is to engage students in the rigorous process of mining experiences for material that can be transformed into a public performance piece. In-class writing, group discussions, and field work in the Philadelphia area. AUGUST WILSON AND BEYOND. The people need to know the story. See how they fit into it. See what part they play. - August Wilson, King Hedley II. In this seminar, students will read groundbreaking playwright August Wilson's 20th Century Cycle: ten plays that form an iconic picture of African American traumas, triumphs, and traditions through the decades, told through the lens of Pittsburgh's Hill District neighborhood. Other readings include supporting material on Wilson's work and African American theatre, the works of contemporary playwrights whom Wilson has influenced (such as Suzan-Lori Parks and Tarell Alvin McCraney), and context on Penn's relationship with West Philadelphia. As an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course,this seminar gives students the opportunity to enhance their understanding of the plays, and history and culture that shaped them, by forming meaningful relationships with West Philadelphia residents. Wilson's plays provide the bridge between the two groups. The course culminates with students writing an original theatre piece inspired by the readings and relationships, which they will share at an end-of-semester performance.

*Benjamin Franklin Seminar; Fulfills the Cultural Diversity in the US Foundational Requirement

In this hands-on course students will work with active researchers in the Communication Neuroscience lab at Penn to gain experience in how research works. Research topics will depend on student interests, with emphasis on one or more of the following: social influence and persuasion, health communication, peer influence in teens, mobile technology, social media, emotion regulation, peace and conflict resolution, mindfulness, interpersonal communication, political communication, adolescent brain development, communication neuroscience. Students will have the opportunity to interact closely with a mentor and will gain experience conceptualizing research questions, designing experiments, collecting data, and making an analysis plan.

Africana Studies 134 is an improvisational workshop in creative nonfiction that connects you to current reporting opportunities; gives you structured choice in assignments; and teaches you how to write about hard subjects for and about young people. Big Questions about the social, emotional, relational and physical structures that affect young people require clear, engaging prose that avoids self-importance. Sometimes it’s even funny. Throughout this course, you’ll practice real-world skills without which even excellent writers may founder: initiative, scheduling, public reading preparation, and a meditative habit of observing—as if the same old world were born fresh every day. Which it is. This course is designed as a group internship in association with SafeKidsStories.com, a blog and social movement devoted to promoting safe havens for children and youth. You will work on and off campus, conduct workshops, curate, write, research, and publish. You will promote stories and events. You will write compact and engaging prose for blogs. You will also write Facebook posts and Tweets to accompany your own and your colleagues’ work. You will give a workshop to high-school or middle-school students, and you will edit their work for possible publication, too. If we do the job right, we will shine a light on those among us who make young people safe in an era of fear. If we make it fun to read, look at, and listen to, then, we’ll be on our way to creating community—and stealth culture change. This class is cross-listed with English 135 and is an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course.

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.

One of the goals of this seminar is to help students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real-world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom, on campus, and in the West Philadelphia community. Research teams help contribute to the improvement of education on campus and in the community, as well as the improvement of university-community relations. Among other responsibilities, students focus their community service on college and career readiness at West Philadelphia High School and Sayre High School. Students are typically engaged in academically based community service learning at the schools for two hours each week.

*Benjamin Franklin Seminar; Fulfills the Cultural Diversity in the US Foundational Requirement

This course presents a broad overview of the Latino population in the United States that focuses on the economic and sociological aspects of Latino immigration and assimilation. Topics to be covered include: construction of Latino identity, the history of U.S. Latino immigration, Latino family patterns and household structure, Latino educational attainment. Latino incorporation into the U.S. labor force, earnings and economic well-being among Latino-origin groups, assimilation and the second generation. The course will stress the importance of understanding Latinos within the overall system of race and ethnic relations in the U.S., as well as in comparison with previous immigration flows, particularly from Europe. We will pay particular attention to the economic impact of Latio immigration on both the U.S. receiving and Latin American sending communities, and the efficacy and future possililities of U.S. immigration policy. Within all of these diverse topics, we will stress the heterogeneity of the Latino population according to national origin groups (i.e. Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Latinos), as well as generational differences between immigrants and the native born.

*Fulfills the Cultural Diversity in the US FOundational Requirement

What is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia? This question is the central prompt for Fall 2017 citywide public art and history project, as well as a specifically designed community-based and engaged research course in Fine Arts. Students in Monument Lab: Public Art & Civic Research Praxis will participate as members of specialized research teams, in partnership with local high school research fellows, embedded in iconic public squares, West Philadelphia sites, and neighborhood parks around the city; serve as trained art guides to facilitate learning around over twenty temporary monument installations by internationally and locally-based artists; collect research proposals as a form of creative datasets managed by Penn's PriceLab and Library; and engage civic partners and public audiences around key issues of the project, including issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, social justice, and civic belonging. The class is structured as a socially-engaged art praxis experience: students will meet weekly for group facilitations, civic dialogues, and special guest lectures by participating artists. In lieu of midterms and a final exam, students will work at research "labs" throughout the city for a set amount of hours per week, write reflection papers, and producea final site specific research portfolio. The course is ideal for students invested in issues of socially-engaged public art, history, and civic engagement.

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.

*Prerequisites: NURS 225; NURS 235; NURS 245; NURS 255

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. This course satisfies the Society & Social Structures Sector for Nursing Class of 2012 and Beyond.

The philosophy of education asks questions about the foundational assumptions of our formal institutions for the reproduction of culture. It ranges therefore, from epistemology and philosophy of mind to ethics and political philosophy. For instance: What is the nature of learning and teaching? How is it possible to come to know something we did not know already--and how can we aid others in doing that? How, if at all, should formal institutions of education be concerned with shaping students' moral and civic character? What is the proper relation between educational institutions and the state? We also ask questions more specific to our own time and context. For example: how, in a multicultural state, should we educate students of varied social identities, like race, gender, and religion? What is the relationship between education and justice.

*Permission needed from instructor

This is an ABCS (academically based community service) class, one that will engage in a community related arts project as a part of your learning, but it is also one that will enable you to reflect on your own beliefs about music, the arts more generally, and the capacity of the arts cross culturally to work as a force of self/individual and collective understanding and, perhaps, healing.  The class will move between personal reflection, academic writing, and a team ethnographic project focused on two South African jazz musicians who will come to Penn—the Arthur Ross Gallery and the Music Department—and the West Philly community in October, 2018.  We will begin the class with reflections on the work of music/the arts in your own lives, then do intensive reading on the music/the creative and expressive arts as mechanisms of therapeutic healing cross culturally.  The second part will focus on South African jazz as a case study in the use of music for individual and collective political and therapeutic purpose.  The core project for the course will happen here: it will involve attending performances, community events, and interviewing/filming South African jazz musicians.  The third part of the class will be hands on team production of an ethnographic film/blog of materials generated around the South African musicians, plus a journaling of what you have learnt from the variety of materials engaged with in the semester.  The assignments are twofold: reflective and creative writing for parts one and three; and completion of the team ethnographic project from part two.  The course ties into a national conference on the arts and trauma being held in Spring 2019 at Penn.

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. Among the theoretical frames students will learn will be the tools of systems thinking (Bertalanffy, 1968). While most of us have internalized the key lesson of the industrial revolution-that to understand something we must break it into its parts; systems thinking, in contrast, is about understanding the parts in relation to whole. The power of systems thinking is that each point of connection also serves as a point of intervention. By showing the importance of decisions of those within classrooms and those outside of them, this course is well-suited to students of education, but also any who seek a role in creating a more just society.

*Fulfills the Cultural Diversity in the US Foundational Requirement; Permission needed from instructor

Asthma as a pediatric chronic disease is undergoing a dramatic and unexplained increase. It has become the number one cause of public school absenteeism and now accounts for a significant number of childhood deaths each year in the USA.The Surgeon General of the United States has characterized childhood asthma as an epidemic. In ENVS 408, Penn undergraduates learn about the epidemiology of urban asthma, the debate about the probable causes of the current asthma crisis, and the nature and distribution of environmental factors that modern medicine describes as potential triggers of asthma episodes. Penn students will co-teach asthma classes offered in public schools in West Philadelphia and survey asthma caregivers,providing them with the opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world situations,promotecommunity education and awareness about asthma, and use problem-solving learning to enhance student education in environmental health.

*Communication within the Curriculum (CWiC) Course

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. This is a full year course open to Dental students only.

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. This is a full year course open to Dental students only.

This course offers a discourse-based approach and hands-on introduction to the field of intercultural communication, from the micro-level of interpersonal interaction to the macro-level of institutional practice. Through a series of readings and service learning projects in multicultural settings, students will hone their observational and analytic abilities, while gaining an appreciation of and facility for participating in the communicative diversity around them. Topics will include a repertoire approach to examining language in use, interpretation and metacommentary, and the possibility of intervention to facilitate new communicative patterns.

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.

*Two terms; students must enter first term; Permission needed from department

This course introduces participants to a range of theoretical and practical issues related to language teaching and literacy development in bi/multilingual contexts, with an emphasis on providing instruction that takes a contextually sensitive, integrated skills approach. An intensive service-learning project offers course participants the opportunity to work with young learners and adolescents in a bilingual, after-school setting. Although the course takes elementary/secondary educational policy and practice for immigrant students in the United States as its starting point, discussion of the implications and applications to other bi/multilingual contexts is encouraged. The goal of this course is to prepare participants to support learners’ communicative and academic needs through the use of language-focused instructional practices.

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.

This course explores historical and contemporary challenges involved in the policy and practice of non-school education agencies and factors that work in service to local school/community settings. Students will explore several historical case studies, conceptual frames, and current policy challenges, culminating in a community-based research project.

The history and practice of the contemporary mural movement couples step by step analysis of the process of designing with painting a mural. In addition students will learn to see mural art as a tool for social change. This course combines theory with practice. Students will design and paint a large outdoor mural in West Philadelphia in collaboration with Philadelphia high school students and community groups. The class is co-taught by Jane Golden, director of the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, and Shira Walinsky, a mural arts painter and founder of Southeast by Southeast project, a community center for Burmese refugees in South Philadelphia.

*Fulfills the Cultural Diversity in the US Foundational Requirement

CHEM 010 is an opportunity for undergraduates to share their interest and enthusiasm for science, specifically chemistry, with students in grades 6-12 attending urban public schools in West Philadelphia. In this course, undergraduates will create and facilitate chemistry outreach experiments in Penn’s general chemistry labs, as well as prepare and implement effective chemical demonstrations and hands-on activities in local public school classrooms. CHEM010 will allow undergraduates to develop science communication and teaching skills applicable to all facets of their education and future careers.

For this course, students will attend a local Deaf community partner organization on a weekly basis where they will participate in and contribute to the organization via mutually developed activities. Students will also have formal class on a weekly basis with discussions and activities centering on reflection of community experiences through linguistic as well as cultural lenses. Additionally, drawing from the required Linguistics and other ASL/Deaf Studies coursework, students will develop an inquiry question and conduct preliminary community-based research to analyze sociolinguistic variations of ASL and Deaf cultural attitudes, behaviors, and norms.  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.  Concurrent or past experience in LING 078, Deaf Culture, and permission from the instructor are required for this course.

This case study introduces the role of self-care by patients with chronic illness. We will discuss the history, definitions, predictors, and outcomes of self-care in various chronically ill populations. A focus of discussion will be an in depth exploration of the factors that influence self-care. Understanding these factors will prepare nurses for their role in promoting patient self-care. Fieldwork experiences will enable students to gain practical experience in engaging chronically ill individuals in self-care.

Math 123, Learning Math by Teaching Math, is an academically-based community service course which provides the opportunity to Penn students to both learn and teach fundamental mathematics concepts to high school students in Philadelphia. In this course, students will learn new ideas in algebra, geometry, and related mathematics topics; develop effective methods for teaching with understanding; and explore the context in which mathematics is taught in public high schools in the greater Philadelphia area. The course meets every Tuesday and Thursday, and separate evening tutoring sessions with the high school students are held each week at Education Commons. During the tutoring sessions, Penn students work two-on-two or one-on-two with the high school students to complete a math activity and reinforce mathematics concepts.

A service course intended to integrate concepts of basic physics, biology and electronics and systems engineering for the benefit of Penn engineering students, teachers and students from two minority centered community public schools. The course will engage the participants in the design and implementation of indoors cultivating systems using photo-voltaic (PV) technology to energize LED emulating the needed solar radiation for plant growth, a liquid nutrient distribution system, sensors / actuators capable of selecting the harvestable plants and keeping track of overall system parameters.

This academically based community service research seminar will develop a pilot program to test the efficacy of using service-learning teams of undergraduates and graduate students to facilitate the development of School Health Councils (SHCs) and the Center for Disease Control's School Health Index (SHI) school self-assessment and planning tool in two elementary schools in West Philadelphia. This process is intended to result in a realistic and meaningful school health implimentation plan and an ongoing action project to put this plan into practice. Penn students will involve member sof the school administration, teachers, staff, parents and ocmmunity member sin the SHC and SHI process iwth a special focus on encouraging participation from the schools' students. In this model for the use of Penn service-learning teams is successful, it will form the basis of on ongoing partnership with the School District's Office of health, Safety & Physical Education to expand such efforts to more schools.

Music in Urban Spaces 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 musicologists, cultural theorists, urban geographers, urban educators and sociologists who work to define urban space, arts education and the role of music and sound in urban environments. While the readings we do will inform our conversations and the questions we ask, it is within the context of our personal experiences working with a group of students in the music programs at West Philadelphia High School and Henry C. Lea Elementary that we will begin to formulate our theories of the musical micro-cultures of West Philadelphia and education’s role in shaping socio-economic realities. Students should expect to support music programming at either Lea or West for 2-4 hours a week outside of regular classtime. 

*Freshman Seminar; Fulfills the Cross Cultural Analysis Foundational Requirement  
*Two terms; students must enter first term; Special permission needed from instructor
 

What does it mean to live in poverty in the "land of plenty" and experience inequality in the "land of opportunity?" From a sociological perspective, this Freshman Seminar explores these questions and others related to poverty and inequality in contemporary America. We will first focus on economic deprivation, addressing topics such as poverty (mis)perceptions, poverty measurement and trends, causes of poverty, and anti-poverty policy. We will also focus on inequality more broadly, examining how inequality is defined and what it looks like in the U.S. We will compare the “Haves" and the "Have Nots” and discuss issues of social class, mobility, wealth, and privilege. Lastly, we will explore how inequalities in different domains related to poverty (e.g. education, labor markets, housing and neighborhoods, the criminal justice system, and health) produce, maintain, and reproduce poverty. Throughout the semester, we will consider the roles of race/ethnicity, gender, age, and place, and how they help deepen our understanding of poverty and inequality. Although course materials focus primarily on the U.S., we will also pay special attention to issues of poverty and inequality in our Philadelphia locale. As such, students will complete weekly community service in Philadelphia and will reflect on their experiences as they relate to course concepts.

* Freshman Seminar

An intensive approach to current methods, curricula, and trends in teaching science as basic learning, K-8. "Hands-on" activities based on cogent, current philosophical and psychological theories including: S/T/S and gender issues. Focus on skill development in critical thinking. Content areas: living things, the physical universe, and interacting ecosystems.

This course is designed to equip students with the major tenets of rhetorical studies and peer education necessary to work as a CWiC speaking advisor. The course is a practicum that aims to develop students' abilities as speakers, as critical listeners and as advisors able to help others develop those abilities. In addition to creating and presenting individual presentations, students present workshops and practice advising. During this ABCS course, students will practice their advising skills by coaching and mentoring students at a public school in Philadelphia.

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.

This course represents an opportunity for students to participate in academically-based community service involving tutoring in a West Phila. public school. This course will serve a need for those students who are already tutoring through the West Phila.Tutoring Project or other campus tutoring. It will also be available to individuals who are interested in tutoring for the first time.

Cigarette smoking is a major public health problem. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Control reports that more than 80% of current adult tobacco users started smoking before age 18. The National Youth Tobacco Survey indicated that 12.8% of middle school students and 34.8% of high school students in their study used some form of tobacco products. In ENVS 407, Penn undergraduates learn about the short and long term physiological consequences of smoking, social influences and peer norms regarding tobacco use, the effectiveness of cessation programs, tobacco advocacy and the impact of the tobacco settlement. Penn students will collaborate with teachers in West Philadelphia to prepare and deliver lessons to middle school students. The undergraduates will survey and evaluate middle school and Penn student smoking. One of the course goals is to raise awareness of the middle school children to prevent addiction to tobacco smoke during adolescence. Collaboration with the middle schools gives Penn students the opportunity to apply their study of the prevention of tobacco smoking to real world situations.

Grounded in a social justice perspective, this inter professional course aims to provide the student with a foundational overview of the field of community health and leadership skills in public health advocacy. The course encourages critical thinking about health outcomes framed by the broad context of the political and social environment. This course analyzes the range of roles and functions carried out by leaders in healthcare advocacy for marginalized communities; integrates knowledge of health policy and the key influence of government and financing on health outcomes; explores community-based participatory research and interventions as tools for change; and discuss ways to develop respectful partnerships with community organizations. An assets-based approach that draws upon the strengths of communities and their leaders provides a foundation for community-engagement skill building. The course emphasizes the development of skills and techniques to lead effective, collaborative, health-focused interventions for disenfranchised groups, including residents of urban neighborhoods. *Prerequisites: Enrollment in a Masters or Doctoral Program  *Undergraduates need permission

Students in the clinic represent adolescent and youth clients on a variety of matters including child welfare cases, immigration proceedings, education issues and health related matters. As part of the seminar, clinic students will also have access to experts and guest lecturers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn’s School of Social Policy and Practice to assist with their interdisciplinary representation of clients and examination of laws and policies affecting children and families.

*Open only to LAW and SP2 students

This ABCS course explores religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue and action on college campuses. It brings together students with diverse faith commitments (including atheism) to engage with and learn from one another in academic study, dialogue, and service.

From the inception of the discipline, anthropologists have applied their ethnographic and theoretical knowledge to policy issues concerning the alleviation of practical human problems. This approach has not only benefited peoples in need but it has also enriched the discipline, providing anthropologists with the opportunity to develop new theories and methodologies from a problem-centered approach. The class will examine the connection between anthropology and policy, theory and practice (or 'praxis'), research and application. We will study these connections by reading about historical and current projects. As an ABCS course, students will also volunteer in a volunteer organization of their choice in the Philadelphia area, conduct anthropological research on the organization, and suggest ways that the anthropological approach might support the efforts of the organization.

This case study introduces the role of self-care by patients with chronic illness. We will discuss the history, definitions, predictors, and outcomes of self-care in various chronically ill populations. A focus of discussion will be an in depth exploration of the factors that influence self-care. Understanding these factors will prepare nurses for their role in promoting patient self-care. Fieldwork experiences will enable students to gain practical experience in engaging chronically ill individuals in self-care.

The goal is to develop a course that links practical and theoretical attributes of some fundamental physics concepts to engage students in significant research and service activities between Penn students and local high school students.  Penn students learn theoretical and practical physics by creating and teaching hands- on physics lessons to high school students. Students spend half of their weekly lecture hours mastering physics fundamentals and preparing lesson plans. The other half will be spent implementing lessons at school sites in West Philadelphia and other city schools.

What does it mean to educate for a democracy, and for what type of democracy should we educate for? This course will examine these central questions and others pertaining to citizenship, democracy, and education as it relates to Latin America and Latino/as in the U.S. The course will first examine theoriesof education for democracy comparing and contrasting the works of persons including U.S. progressive-era writer John Dewey, Brazilian scholar Paolo Freire, and Penn President and political scientist Amy Gutmann. The course will delve into a civic and political education curriculum and pedagogies that have beencarried out in institutions, inequality, and culture in the region. The latterpart of the course will examine civic education practices of Latino/as here in the U.S. from primary schools to higher education. This course offers a service-learning component where students will be encouraged to volunteer with educational organizations in the Philadelphia community.

A course intended to integrate concepts of basic physics, biology and electronics and systems engineering for the benefit of Penn engineering students, teachers and students from two minority centered community public schools. The course will engage the participants in the design and implementation of indoors cultivating systems using photo-voltaic technology to energize LED emulating the needed solar radiation for plant growth, a liquid nutrient distribution system, sensors / actuators capable of selecting the harvestable plants and keeping track of overall system parameters.

For more information, please contact Professor Santiago-Aviles, santiago@seas.upenn.edu

How do qualitative social scientists study urban communities? What kinds of powerful tales can be told about urban lifestyles and social issues in places like Philadelphia? This course will allow students to study various ethnographic treatments of urban communities in the United States, using films, articles, TV serials, and books as guides for the framing of their own independent research on the streets of Philadelphia. Students will also form production teams of two or three people, and these production teams will be responsible for (i) identifying and researching an important urban issue in contemporary an important urban issue in contemporary Philadelphia and (ii) turning that research into a 15-30 minute video documentary or pod cast. Mixing video/audio journalism with ethnographic methods will enhance their skills at archival and social research, from participant observation and interviewing techniques to sound editing and production. This course is intended to be a rigorous and exciting opportunity for students to tell empirically grounded stories using the voices of their participants and the sounds of the city.

This course presents a broad overview of the Latino population in the United States that focuses on the economic and sociological aspects of Latino immigration and assimilation. Topics to be covered include: construction of Latino identity, the history of U.S. Latino immigration, Latino family patterns and household structure, Latino educational attainment. Latino incorporation into the U.S. labor force, earnings and economic well-being among Latino-origin groups, assimilation and the second generation. The course will stress the importance of understanding Latinos within the overall system of race and ethnic relations in the U.S., as well as in comparison with previous immigration flows, particularly from Europe. We will pay particular attention to the economic impact of Latio immigration on both the U.S. receiving and Latin American sending communities, and the efficacy and future possililities of U.S. immigration policy. Within all of these diverse topics, we will stress the heterogeneity of the Latino population according to national origin groups (i.e. Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Latinos), as well as generational differences between immigrants and the native born.

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.

Music in Urban Spaces 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 musicologists, cultural theorists, urban geographers, urban educators and sociologists who work to define urban space, arts education and the role of music and sound in urban environments. While the readings we do will inform our conversations and the questions we ask, it is within the context of our personal experiences working with a group of students in the music programs at West Philadelphia High School and Henry C. Lea Elementary that we will begin to formulate our theories of the musical micro-cultures of West Philadelphia and education’s role in shaping socio-economic realities. Students should expect to support music programming at either Lea or West for 2-4 hours a week outside of regular class time.

Freshman Seminar; Fulfills the Cross Cultural Analysis Foundational Requirement

*Two terms; students must enter first term; Special permission needed from instructor

Understanding and meeting nutritional needs from conception through adulthood will be addressed. Nutrition-related concerns at each stage of the lifecycle, 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 K-8 students through the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative's Fruit Stands for 2-4 hours/week outside of class time.

*Prerequisites: NURS 054, NURS 112, or comparable nutrition or introductory course

The history and practice of the contemporary mural movement couples step by step analysis of the process of designing with painting a mural. In addition students will learn to see mural art as a tool for social change. This course combines theory with practice. Students will design and paint a large outdoor mural in West Philadelphia in collaboration with Philadelphia high school students and community groups. The class is co-taught by Jane Golden, director of the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, and Shira Walinsky, a mural arts painter and founder of Southeast by Southeast project, a community center for Burmese refugees in South Philadelphia.

Students will use course readings and their community service to analyze the institutions, ideas, interests, social movements, and leadership that shape the "politics of food" in different arenas. Service opportunities include work with the Urban Nutrition Initiative, Community School Student Partnerships, and the possibility of other placements as approved by the professors.

Requires community service in addition to class time. Asthma as a pediatric chronic disease has undergone a dramatic and unexplained increase. It has become the number one cause of public school absenteeism and accounts for a significant number of childhood deaths each year in the U.S. The Surgeon General of the United States has characterized childhood asthma as an epidemic. In ENVS 408, Penn students learn about the epidemiology of urban asthma, the debate about the probable causes of the current asthma crisis, and the nature and distribution of environmental factors that modern medicine describes as potential triggers of asthma episodes. Penn students will co-teach asthma classes offered in public schools in West Philadelphia and survey asthma caregivers, providing them with the opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world situations, promote community education and awareness about asthma, and use problem-solving learning to enhance student education in environmental health. Students should expect to commit 1.5-2 hours per week for 6 weeks for student teaching plus survey time for a community research project.

Communication with the Curriculum (CWIC) Course

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.

What is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia? This question is the central prompt for a Fall 2017 citywide public art and history project, as well as a specially designed community-based and engaged research course in Fine Arts. Students in Monument Lab: Public Art & Civic Research Praxis will participate as members of specialized research teams, in partnership with local high school research fellows, embedded in iconic public squares, West Philadelphia sites, and neighborhood parks around the city; serve as trained art guides to facilitate learning around over twenty temporary monument installations by internationally and locally-based artists; collect research proposals as a form of creative datasets managed by Penn's PriceLab and Library; and engage civic partners and public audiences around key issues of the project, including issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, social justice, and civic belonging. The class is structured as a socially-engaged art praxis experience: students will meet weekly for group facilitations, civic dialogues, and special guest lectures by participating artists. In lieu of midterms and a final exam, students will work at research "labs" throughout the city for a set amount of hours per week, write reflection papers, and produce a final site specific research portfolio. The course is ideal for students invested in issues of socially-engaged public art, history, and civic engagement.

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. This course satisfies the Society & Social Structures Sector for Nursing Class of 2012 and Beyond.

This is a Public Interest Ethnography workshop (originally created by Peggy Reeves Sanday - Department of Anthropology) that incorporates an interdisciplinary approach to exploring social issues. Open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students, the workshop is a response to Amy Gutmann's call for interdisciplinary cooperation across the University and to the Department of Anthropology's commitment to developing public interest research and practice as a disciplinary theme. Rooted in the rubric of public interest social science, the course focuses on: 1) merging problem solving with theory and analysis in the interest of change motivated by a commitment to social justice, racial harmony, equality, and human rights; and 2) engaging in public debate on human issues to make research results accessible to a broader audience. The workshop brings in guest speakers and will incorporate original ethnographic research to merge theory with action. Students are encouraged to apply the framing model to a public interest research and action topic of their choice. This is an academically-based-community-service (ABCS) course that partners directly with Penn's Netter Center Community Partnerships.

The history and practice of the contemporary mural movement couples step by step analysis of the process of designing with painting a mural. In addition students will learn to see mural art as a tool for social change. This course combines theory with practice. Students will design and paint a large outdoor mural in West Philadelphia in collaboration with Philadelphia high school students and community groups. The class is co-taught by Jane Golden, director of the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, and Shira Walinsky, a mural arts painter and founder of Southeast by Southeast project, a community center for Burmese refugees in South Philadelphia.