UA and Civic House plan NSO activities focused on civic engagement

Next Year, the Undergraduate Assembly and the Civic House Associates Coalition are making New Student Orientation more civic-minded.

The UA's Civic and Community Engagement committee is introducing five new proseminars - courses taken by incoming freshmen during NSO for no credit - that will focus on community service and civic involvement.

These service seminars will each feature a guest speaker and the opportunity to take part in hands-on service activities in five areas: environmental sustainability, art and beautification, education, nutrition and health and homelessness and urban poverty.

A different campus community service group related to each of the five categories will run the applicable seminar.

CHAC will help bring community service groups both on campus and in the community together through the classes.

Civic House Associates Coalition co-chairman and College junior Nick Eng explained that CHAC is using its expertise in community partnership and campus groups to plan the most meaningful seminars.

"We bridged the gap between the lectures, the faculty and the community groups," he said.

College freshman Kristen Santerian, a volunteer member on the UA committee, developed the seminars because she said she wanted to give incoming students the chance to take part in service meaningful to them.

"Coming into school, I was interested in education, so I would have chosen that seminar," she said. "Students this year will be able to choose from a range of activities that meet what they like to do."

Santerian came up with the idea for these seminars after being overwhelmed by the community service options she found when she arrived at Penn.

"There are so many community service options here that it's easy to miss some," she said. "Hopefully these seminars will narrow down the community service options, help make the options clear cut and inspire people to get involved."

The UA committee researched to determine what was missing from NSO, Santerian said. Once the group found a way to fit service into the program's mission, it made the decision to go beyond a simple lecture and actually have the students lend a hand to the community.

"We view community service as interactive and voluntary, and we want to expose as many students as possible to that," she said.

While committee members will oversee the organization of the seminars and work closely with the groups involved - what Santerian called "quality control" - they will give each group independence to decide how each seminar will be run and what activities to include.

"We want a level of quality to make sure it fits the purposes that NSO coordinators are trying to achieve," she said. "[But] we wanted to give the groups autonomy to do what they wanted to do during the two-hour period."

The UA committee and CHAC hope these seminars will help new students wander out of what Eng called "the Penn bubble."

"In the safety presentation every year, students are told not to go passed 40th Street," he said. "The point of the proseminars is to get them more knowledgeable about the community."

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