(soft marimba music)
- Each year, we invite our newest undergraduates
to explore an important theme.
This year is like no other.
The pandemic, a national movement against racial injustice
and a presidential election combine to make this clear.
How fitting it is for Penn to be embarking
on the most urgent and unique discussion
in the history of this program.
This is the year of civic engagement.
Our students' experience during this year
will lay the foundation for an education like no other,
their Penn education.
- Civic engagement is always relevant
because it's part of Penn's DNA.
We have to be engaged as a campus in our world.
- At Penn, there are deep, deep roots to civic engagement.
It begins with Benjamin Franklin,
who in 1749 wrote proposals
for educating the youth of Pennsylvania.
And in that, he created the first institution of its kind,
an institution dedicated to service
and dedicated to citizenship.
- Civic engagement for a lot of students
is the glue that brings together their Penn experience.
It helps them understand better
what they're studying in class.
It helps them connect to their role in the world.
It sets a framework for a career of meaning.
There's a whole lot of challenges
when it comes to inequities in the world,
and Penn is not an island.
So, the challenges that we face
are the challenges that the world faces.
- We are a campus that is situated in a broader context.
And if that broader context isn't thriving,
then we're not thriving as a university.
- For me, it's been really empowering to know that,
yeah, there are huge issues going on in the world,
but I still have the power to make a difference
where I am right now.
- We can't turn a blind eye to what's happening
in the community that surrounds us.
Our campus is open
and West Philadelphia runs right through the middle of it.
- Students at Penn have multiple opportunities,
service learning courses, clubs and organizations,
activities that are developed
outside of the formal structure of Penn,
to engage in the larger West Philadelphia
and Philadelphia communities.
(soft piano music)
- Being at Penn has really taught me
I can further civic engagement.
I'm always really interested in dialogue
and how do you frame questions.
We should be able to come together
and have conversations in a way that's productive.
- What's really exciting
is that what students study in the classroom
and what they experience working out in the community
come to have this sort of symbiotic relationship.
When you see students working through that,
it's really a wonderful thing.
- It's important to be engaged
elsewhere beyond the classroom
because that's what makes your experience at Penn
truly so special.
- Whether that's people, whether that's a project, planning,
I'm using what I learned in my education
to make an impact on other people.
- My hope is that I can help sort of fan the flames,
that where there's sort of smaller sparks
of folks who wanna do good on and around campus,
I can sort of fan that flame and make that grow
into a benevolent kind of raging fire
that does some even better good.
- How many things are in pairs; two.
- No matter how much good work each of us may do separately,
it is small compared to all that we can achieve
when we work together.
Even as we physically distance,
we come together, we partner with our neighbors,
we address inequities,
and that's the way we improve our world.
- When you collaborate, you don't have a single agenda.
So, those of us who are affiliated with Penn
don't walk into a community discussion
and impose our agenda on that discussion.
We have to collaborate and become partners.
- It's mutually beneficial and mutually transformative.
It's really both the institution
and the communities improving.
- Hey!
(laughing)
- Young people across the world are picking up the bat.
They're taking it and they're saying,
"I want to do something."
We will step up to bat and it's our time to do something
because, in the end, it is our world.
- And this next generation that's coming up,
I think, is one of the most engaged, caring,
passionate, active groups of young people
that we've had in a very long time.
I'm excited that we get to witness
young people stepping up and grabbing the reins.
- We wanna make sure that students know
that they can make a difference,
and the only way you can kind of know that is if you do it.
Go out there, try something, take a course,
take a service learning course, do a fellowship.
- Nothing is more important than educating our students
to be citizens who can make a difference now,
while they're students, and nothing is more appropriate
than for that to happen at Benjamin Franklin's university,
which, from its beginning, has been dedicated
to the civic development of young people.
- We just have to be a little bit creative
and a little bit innovative.
Now is the time.
The need is greater now than ever
for us to enter in and contribute.
- I have definitely learned so much being at Penn
and being able to work with different organizations
in Philly that I've seen my self-growth,
and that's really instilled confidence in me
that I'm capable of doing this.
- A lotta Penn students know what they're passionate about,
if it's nursing, if it's engineering or maybe tutoring,
and they're able to kind of find
civic engagement opportunities through their passions.
- There is a lot of opportunity to explore
how the existing programs that we have
can adapt to these new virtual environments
and trying to find those new ways of engagement,
new ways of learning that could go into the future.
- The civic engagement of Penn students,
faculty, and staff makes us a more inclusive,
a more innovative, and a more impactful university.
- The major problems facing the world are transdisciplinary.
And I think that's why we're successful
in engaging and dealing with fundamental problems,
because we bring different people
with different kinds of knowledge to the solution.
- Engagement was getting directly involved
and trying to resolve some of the issues
and problems we have today.
The problems won't go away by themselves.
Every day, we can wake up and choose to make an impact.
- Don't let the circumstances stop you
and remember that there's always a way to make a difference.