David Grossman - Finding Common Ground
Education Policy, Ph.D., 2004
To David Grossman, GR’04, founding director of Penn’s Civic House and Civic Scholars Program, one goal of civic education is to find shared values amidst difference and division. “It’s important, as we’re an increasingly diverse and increasingly stratified world, that we work at understanding what it is we share in common,” says Dr. Grossman, also a Penn GSE adjunct assistant professor in the Higher Education division. He sees Civic House, located at 3914 Locust Walk, as an important way in which Penn helps students learn to work toward a more equitable society.
Penn established Civic House in 1998 as a hub to build upon existing community service programs, with Grossman as director and a mission to “promote service as a means of preparing students for their roles as citizens and leaders,” according to Civic House’s charter. Today, Civic House is home to a range of initiatives that engage students in service and advocacy. Its work aims to promote mutually beneficial collaborations between Penn and the communities of West Philadelphia, other Philadelphia neighborhoods, and the larger world.
That mission is about much more than mere volunteer hours, according to Grossman. “It’s about providing opportunities, both formal and informal, for students to learn about, to explore, and to practice what it means to be part of a broader society, and in that process, ask challenging questions of themselves,” he says. Programs attract hundreds of students each academic year.
Highlights include the West Philadelphia Tutoring Project, through which Penn students provide free tutoring to local K–12 students, and the Community Engagement Internship, which provides funding for Penn students to undertake internships at community organizations, among them Bread & Roses Community Fund and VietLead. In addition, the signature Civic Scholars Program recognizes up to fifteen Penn undergraduates in each class with a special four-year experience integrating civic engagement and scholarship. These and other Civic House programs adapted to operate virtually during the pandemic.
Community partnerships are key to the work of Civic House and were the topic of Grossman’s doctoral research in Penn GSE’s Education Policy program. Through studying the efforts of nonprofits to address longstanding issues in West Philadelphia, such as racial and economic inequity, he concluded that the best chance to improve outcomes arises from a shared understanding between community partners.
“It’s about providing opportunities, both formal and informal, for students to learn about, to explore, and to practice what it means to be part of a broader society.” —David Grossman, GR’04
“It’s important that we not position ourselves as experts, but rather value the local community as having assets, such as vital experiences and knowledge of their own, that should drive partnerships,” he says. His hope is that such a model of civic engagement will strengthen our democracy through greater connection and collaboration.
“We have to be walking through the world in a way that we understand ourselves as part of the whole,” Grossman says. “Then we’re going to be better members of our communities. That is the point of this work.”
This article appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of The Penn GSE Magazine.
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