CLC-Conference-Proceeding-2018

community-identified local problems functions
as a curriculum, text, and performance test for a
truly engaged university’s research, teaching,
and learning activities. No urban university, as
far as we can tell, presently meets these criteria.
Nonetheless, progress has occurred over the past
30 or so years with an increasing number of
universities taking meaningful, if insufficient,
steps in the right direction. Because we know it
best, we will focus on the University of
Pennsylvania, which has been recognized as a
leader for its involvement with West
Philadelphia, its local geographic community. 3
TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED
DEMOCRATIC ANCHOR INSTITUTION-
COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS APPROACH:
PENN AND THE NETTER CENTER
The Netter Center for Community Partnerships
The Center for Community Partnerships
(renamed in 2007 as the Netter Center for
Community Partnerships) was established in
1992 by then Penn President Sheldon Hackney
as a university-wide center that would identify,
mobilize, and integrate Penn’s vast resources in
order to help transform West Philadelphia,
particularly by improving the public schools
while helping to transform teaching, research and
service at the University.
The Center’s work was building on
efforts begun in the early 1980s, particularly the
development of two core concepts: academically
based community service and university-assisted
community schools. Through Academically
Based Community Service (ABCS) courses,
service is rooted in and intrinsically tied to
research, teaching, and learning, and the goal of
these courses is to contribute to structural
community improvement. University-Assisted
Community Schools educate, engage, empower,
and serve not only students, but also all other
members of the community, providing an
organizing framework for bringing university
programs, including ABCS courses, to West
Philadelphia schools. We have come to view
ABCS and UACS as core to a
comprehensive anchor institution strategy in
which universities engage in sustained, mutually
beneficial partnerships with their communities.
We will first provide further background
on ABCS. Over the past few decades, an
increasing number of faculty members, from a
wide range of Penn schools and departments,
have revised existing courses, or have created
new ABCS courses, providing innovative
curricular opportunities for their students to
become active learners, creative real-world
problem solvers, and active producers (as
opposed to passive consumers) of knowledge. In
2016-2017, the Netter Center helped coordinate
70 ABCS courses taught across 31 departments
and programs in 8 of Penn’s 12 schools,
engaging approximately 1700 Penn students
(undergraduate, graduate, and professional).
The Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative
is an example of an evolving Netter Center
program that was catalyzed through ABCS. In
1991, Professor Francis Johnston, a renowned
expert on nutritional anthropology who had
recently concluded a lengthy tenure as chair of
the Anthropology Department decided to
redesign a course, Anthropology 210, to address
the community-identified problem of poor
nutrition, with the initial work at Turner Middle
School. It became the prototype for
Academically Based Community Service
courses. A widening circle of Penn faculty and
students began working with Johnston over the
next few years in collaboration with local middle
school teachers and students to understand the