Community-Engaged Scholarship: Reflections from Netter Center Alumni

A collection of stories by Penn alumni whose lives were transformed by engaging with the West Philadelphia community

For over thirty years, the Barbara and Edward Netter Center for Community Partnerships has served as the University of Pennsylvania’s primary vehicle for advancing civic and community engagement at Penn. The Netter Center develops and helps implement democratic, mutually transformative, place-based partnerships between Penn and its local geographic community of West Philadelphia. These partnerships advance research, teaching, learning, and service while improving the quality of life and learning in the community. One of the Netter Center’s primary objectives has been to educate Penn students to be creative, compassionate, ethical citizens who contribute significantly to improving the welfare of others--while they are students and throughout their lives and careers.

Community-Engaged Scholarship is a collection of stories told by alumni of the University of Pennsylvania whose lives were profoundly shaped by engaging with the West Philadelphia community as students. Their reflections trace the linear relationship between their involvement in democratic community partnerships through Penn’s Netter Center and their current professional activities, primarily in academia, where they remain actively engaged in the struggle to build a more democratic and equitable society. The mutuality and humility that pervade these autobiographical accounts are the core of the democratic aspiration to which the Netter Center is and has always been dedicated. The stories are testimony to the Netter Center’s and founding director Ira Harkavy’s enduring influence on the next generation of community-engaged scholars and practitioners.

Contributors: H. Samy Alim, Jeff Camarillo, Christina Cantrill, Tamara Dubowitz, Bernice Garnett, Rita Axelroth Hodges, John L. Jackson Jr., Jacqueline Kraemer, David Park, Jiyoung Park, Wendell Pritchett, Eric Schwartz, Margo Shea, Salamishah Tillet, Kim Van Naarden Braun, Michael Vazquez, Jason Yip, Andrew Zitcer, Michael W. Zuckerman.

Rita Axelroth Hodges is the Associate Director of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania.

Michael Zuckerman is a Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Pennsylvania.