Just over a decade ago, two Penn faculty members had an idea: Urban universities can help solve community problems through service projects that bring together local youth and university students and faculty. From their idea emerged the West Philadelphia Improvement Corps (WEPIC), a project of the West Philadelphia Partnership, a nonprofit organization dedicated to revitalizing the surrounding community.

From its origins at Shaw Middle School, WEPIC has expanded to include nine West Philadelphia public schools. Its university-assisted community-school programs bring Penn students, faculty, public-school pupils and the community together to create opportunities for enriched learning.

Three years ago, the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, impressed by what they saw happening with WEPIC, awarded Penn a $250,000 grant to plan ways to duplicate WEPIC elsewhere. Last spring, three universities were selected to participate in a three-year program funded by a $1 million DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund grant. Now, almost one year later, each of the participants in the WEPIC Replication Project--the University of Kentucky in Lexington, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and Miami University, Ohio--are well on their way to creating successful university-assisted community-school programs.

Joann Weeks, director of the WEPIC Replication Project, noted that the three universities have made "excellent progress toward the goals they established in their proposals," and that "the ability of the projects to draw faculty and student participation, engage new partners from the community, and tap new sources of funding has exceeded expectations."

Miami's program operates from the Bloom Middle School in Cincinnati's West End, a neighborhood that project co-leader Katherine Hooper-Briar notes closely resembles West Philadelphia. The Bloom-Miami program seeks to create a comprehensive center for community service and development. It works with teachers and the community to identify children at risk of failure or dropping out, and help them get back on track. Last summer, 21 such students were placed in an intensive support and educational program at Bloom. All 21 successfully graduated from the eighth grade.

Dr. Hooper-Briar said of the group, "When we interviewed them [at the start of the program], they felt that the main block to their graduating was that they would be dead. Now they dream of college."

Like WEPIC, the Kentucky program began with one-on-one tutoring. It started as a project at Lexington's Winburn Middle School in 1993 and quickly expanded into a full-fledged community-school program, the Winburn Community Academy. The grant to Kentucky allowed the program to be expanded into the summer; the university is now working with the city of Lexington to create three additional summer community schools.

"The WEPIC grant has helped the University of Kentucky have a say in programs that affect the community and that link schools and communities using our human and other resources as a framework," said Ann Gerrity, project coordinator.

The city of Birmingham has a well-established community-school program, offering a wide variety of after-school and evening programs for youth and adults. UAB's Center for Urban Affairs had been working with West End residents on housing and development issues; the grant to UAB allowed the center to link its work to the community-school program. Undergraduates are now tutoring after school. Betty Bock, program coordinator, and Robert Corley, center director, are working with a team of West Enders and university faculty and staff to develop a peer mediation program focusing on conflict resolution and HIV/AIDS prevention. Students trained under the program will serve as mediators and mentors in West End High School and its feeder schools.

In addition to funding community-school programs, the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund also provides money for the WEPIC Replication Project staff to organize national conferences where participants can meet and compare notes. The National Conference on Community Service and University-Assisted Community Schools took place last November and drew over 150 people from schools, colleges, and communities across the country. At the conference, the participants discussed current community-service efforts of middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities; heard community-school advocates discuss the challenges they faced in setting up successful programs; and received status reports on the three replication sites.

There was also spirited discussion of a paper written by Ira Harkavy, director of the Center for Community Partnerships, and Lee Benson, emeritus history professor. The paper called for reorienting American education away from the Platonic ideal towards a more-practical, problem-solving approach based on the ideas of John Dewey. Nancy Rhodes--director of Campus Compact, a national coalition of educators promoting academic community service--said of the discussion, "The notion that we should focus on doing has been underdiscussed as a theoretical basis for learning. [Drs. Harkavy and Benson] put that back on the agenda in a forceful way."

Planning is now underway for a second national community-service/community-school conference to be held at Penn this coming fall.

Return to Compass Features for March 12/19, 1996