Campaign for Community |
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April 7, 2015, Volume 61, No. 29 |
The Penn community is large and diverse, demographically, socially and academically. This diversity is a great strength, creating the vibrant environment so essential to a great University. Yet recent national events that have divided communities call for our undivided attention and underscore the importance of our longstanding campus commitment to be a model of constructive conversations about difficult issues.
In an effort to meet this challenge, we are announcing a Campaign for Community, to come together and collectively address questions such as: Who are we? Who do we want to be? What do we share? How do we interact with one another? How do we value our differences? How can we best talk about those differences?
We call this a “campaign” to underline that it will be conducted across a significant amount of time and will require coordination and collaboration across many parts of our campus. Faculty, undergraduates, graduate students and staff will all have roles to play in these discussions. A Campaign for Community Steering Committee will include faculty, staff and students working collaboratively and in partnership with groups across campus. It will be jointly chaired by the Vice Provost for Education, the Vice Provost for University Life and the most recent past chair of the Faculty Senate.
The full Steering Committee will be assembled this spring and will begin planning a major campus event for the 2015-2016 academic year. It will also administer a program of grants for Campaign events, for which Penn faculty, students and staff can apply, either individually or in groups.
The inaugural event of the Campaign will be a Town Hall on the topic Having Difficult Conversations in the Academy, held on April 14 at 4:30 p.m. in Fitts Auditorium at the Law School. Dean John Jackson (School of Social Policy & Practice) will lead the discussion with Dean Michael Delli Carpini (Annenberg School for Communication), Dean Steven Fluharty (School of Arts & Sciences), Dean Pam Grossman (Graduate School of Education), Dean Wendell Pritchett (Law School) and Dean Antonia Villarruel (School of Nursing).
The Campaign may also spotlight ongoing programs and activities, such as the Academic Theme Year and Penn Reading Project, which are for 2015-2016 the Year of Discovery and The Big Sea by Langston Hughes. Published in 1940, The Big Sea is Hughes’ poetic memoir chronicling his self-realization as an African-American growing up in the Midwest and New York before traveling the world.
Through such activities, we hope to strengthen our community, finding ways to discuss and understand key issues that are too often avoided because they appear to be difficult or intractable. We invite you to join us in this Campaign.
—Vincent Price, Provost
—Claire Finkelstein, Senate Chair |