GUEST COLUMN: OPINION: "Building Community Ties," Working Hard

Nevertheless, it is remarkable that the university is rarely credited for its many community service activities. There is, in fact, an enormous array of activities going on every day involving virtually every part of the university. These activities are part of volunteer service--by staff, facult, or students; part of academic or research programs; or represent the involvement of the "corporate" function of the university. Those who work with "us" in our communities are invariably enthusiastic about that interaction, but often still conclude that "Penn itself just isn't there." While what we do and who we are in our communities occurs all over the institution and involves many different individuals with divergent agendas, neither is our "community" by any means homogeneous. One of the factors that makes our city an exciting place to live is its diversity. There are many different groups, some of which--like those of us within the university, work together in coalition; others of which have conflicting or competing agendas. In fact, there is no single community--there are many communities. These communities have many legitimate spokespeople, many varied and legitimate agendas. They can do make enormous demands on the institution. While many of these demands on the may be legitimate and reasonable , they can also be substantial, and require a careful consideration about how the university decides to expend resources. Our various communities can and do approach the university in coalitions to ask for the cooperative interactions. Our various communities also can and do appraoch the university with conflicting requests and expectations. For all these reasons it is essential for the university to develop a comprehensive sense of what is going on at this complex institution. It requires genuine, substantive interactions with many community groups and individual spokespeople, whether they are elected or appointed officials, community leaders, or individual neighbors, to define and to agree upon the nature and scope of various community interactions. Members of the Penn community carry out, in cooperation with our many communities, a variety of programs and activities. These include, but are not limited to the DP's work with the Shaw Middle School and University City High School to produce the recent student newspaper, "Class Act." To illustrate this point further, let me cite some additional activities at the Shaw Middle School, one of a number of West Philadelphia public school sites which both volunteer and academic service have been combined. Student volunteers have been helping to staff a WEPIC Evening Community School and have been involved in Shaw Community Council cleanup activities. Penn staff members are involved in a career mentoring program with tweny-one Shaw students. Shaw teachers ans students are working with Penn faculty and students on environmental imporvement activities. Robert Giegengack, Professor of Geology and Director of Penn's Institute of Environmental Science, is teaching a seminar on Urban Health which involves Penn undergraduates and Shaw students in cooperative research and health promotion activites. These programs build upon "Keeping Teens Healthy" in which the Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Social Work have provided health counseling, education and referral fro Shaw students and their families since 1992. We also work closely with our communities as a "corporate" entity on such initiatives as:

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