Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development 
3451 Walnut Street, Suite P-117, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6205
215-573-2379 / 215-573-1134 fax

Senior Projects Initiative

Senior Projects Initiative
The School District of Philadelphia is ramping up the quality and academic rigor associated with the "Senior Project" and PHENND is trying to match each participating school with a university partner.  These partners will provide project mentors and other resources to help the schools and students succeed. 

Schools participating in this year's pilot phase and their partners are:

Fels High School no higher ed partner as of this date
Kensington High School for Business Temple University
Kensington High School for Culinary Arts Temple University
Olney High School Cabrini College
Parkway Northwest no higher ed partner as of this date
Parkway West University of Pennsylvania
Roxborough High School Chestnut Hill College
Simon Gratz High School no higher ed partner as of this date
South Philadelphia High School Eastern University in the City
Strawberry Mansion High School no higher ed partner as of this date

The Senior Project

The new, more academically-rigorous senior project is comprised of four key parts:
  • Research Paper (typically 8-10 pages)
  • Fieldwork (15 hours of experience related to the research topic, possibly service oriented)
  • Portfolio
  • Oral Presentation (before a panel of judges at least one of which is not from the school)

College Student Role
Within each partnership, college students play the role of "academic coach."  They assist high school seniors with various aspects of the senior project in small groups, one-on-one, or by facilitating workshops for whole classrooms. 

Train-the-Trainer Workshops
A series of "train-the-trainer" workshops were developed by PHENND and a team of student interns during the summer of 2007 which cover all aspects of the senior project from preliminary research to oral presentations.  PDFs of each workshop, in the order they were intended to be used, are below.  However, this does not mean that these workshops must be used in a particular order or even used in their entirety.  They are simply a set of resources that most of our college and high school partners have found useful.



For more information about this initiative, please contact Hillary Aisenstein or Bradley Leposa.


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