Presentation:

The aim of this session was to examine ways in which a university can build community partnerships through graduate/undergraduate research projects that are built into courses. At the University of Pennsylvania, such partnerships develop in large part through Academically Based Community Service (ABCS), a program that offers courses in which students work with and in the interest of West Philadelphia residents, often teaming up with specific local institutions such as schools or faith-based organizations. These courses operate with the support and supervision of the Center for Community Partnerships (CCP), an institution at UPenn that has worked to improve the quality of life for the larger Philadelphia community since its founding in 1992. The Center benefits immeasurably from the oversight of its founding director Ira Harkavy, a politically motivated and passionate Penn alumnus who as a student led protests to steer the university toward building a more sensitive and collaborative relationship with West Philadelphia, the area in which UPenn is located. In addition to creating the Center and implementing many of its programs, Director Harkavy has contributed significantly to literature on service learning. Service learning is an active creative pedagogy that integrates learning and community service in order to improve the quality of life of the community and nurture ethical and democratically-minded students. Towards these ends, ABCS courses emphasize the development of mutually beneficial and respectful collaborations/relationships between class and community and stimulate thoughtful reflection on the goals and activities of the courses along the way. Their approach fosters creative learning, problem solving, and the acquisition of real-world skills; it also teaches students to see outreach not as mission work, but as an intrinsic part of democratic citizenship in which everyone brings something to the table and different forms and types of knowledge contribute to collaborative learning and efforts in the interests of all involved.

ABCS music research courses are still in their infancy at UPenn, and thus nearly all are somewhat experimental. This makes their implementation quite challenging, as it can take two or three years to get a project under way and develop an effective strategy and syllabus. Students often enrol in a course expecting a complete package, and the unpredictability of many ABCS courses dismays some students. For many, the instruction they encounter is a radical departure from the teaching they experience in their other courses. Change is difficult and often painful, but the country itself is constantly changing and universities need to prepare students to meet future challenges. Issues of immigrant marginalization and language barriers matter in the United States, and students need to learn to address difference in real and meaningful ways. This should include dissemination of knowledge beyond the university: ABCS courses provide a framework and opportunity for just that.

Gospel Projects

Five years ago, CCP Director Harkavy and session leader Muller began to discuss a possible project involving a Gospel church in Philadelphia. UPenn had had a poor relationship with West Philadelphia residents in the past, and it had had virtually no dialogue with many of the long- established and venerable communities and organizations in the neighborhood, including some of the oldest Black churches in Southeastern Pennsylvania. CCP was established in part to remedy the situation by healing old relationships and creating new ones. Although CCP’s efforts have had their ups and downs, a project with a local Gospel church seemed to have the potential to bridge two important neighboring communities. Professsor Muller, who had been looking for a way to incorporate hands-on work into her course on field methods in ethnomusicology, agreed to work with Director Harkavy to establish an ABCS field methods course in which students would work with church members to create ethnographic projects.

This initial project proved challenging in several respects. Registration was open to both graduate and undergraduate students, but the course proved too demanding for the undergraduates who tended to have busier schedules and who were mostly non-music majors. Anthropology and ethnomusicology have a history of "mining cultural knowledge," and it was necessary to work vigilantly to steer students away from this practice toward more collaborative and reciprocal efforts; the amount of one-to-one work in this project and the relationships formed helped in this respect. It was also challenging to convince students who were accustomed to the secular and scientific environment of the research university to respect knowledge learned from members of a church and to rely on fieldwork as an appropriate means for such learning.

Nonetheless, the project yielded some exciting developments. As students worked with the archives of Philadelphia’s first African American Methodist church, they discovered an important and largely unacknowledged local history. There were signs of personal and scholarly growth among several of the students. One student, for example, who did archival work on hymnbooks learned how to respectfully negotiate with the church’s somewhat guarded archivist; another student conducted an excellent project on African American Gospel quartets in Philadelphia. The project seemed promising overall, and two years later one of Professor Muller’s colleagues taught a similar ABCS course, this time working with two very different local churches. Graduate students in the class divided into two groups, each of which created films documenting church traditions such as hymn singing. The films were debuted at a highly attended viewing put on before both congregations.

Professor Muller next decided to re-focus on undergraduate education and designed a comparative religious musical study for students particularly interested in non-western classical traditions. Twenty-two undergraduates took the course, which began with comparative studies of music and spirituality and culminated in ethnographic work at a Baptist church in Philadelphia that had not been part of the first project. The students were divided into four- or five-member groups, each of which worked on short documentary videos that were ultimately compiled into a larger film. It was interesting to see how classically trained students reacted to a very different musical experience. Although some expected to get little out of the project, they admitted afterward that they felt humbled by the experience. One student of Jewish faith said that he had enrolled in the course because he wanted to “help” the church members, but felt that the experience had changed his outlook. Students were generally amazed by the congregation’s warmth and eagerness to incorporate them into their lives.

The benefits the UPenn students derived from the course were clear in most cases: working at these churches encouraged them (some more than others) to open their minds and hearts. But besides validating their presence in Philadelphia, what was the value for community members? The next project helps to illuminate the potential for reciprocity in these courses.

Jazz Project

Session leader Muller next focused on jazz musicians in Philadelphia, incorporating ethnographic work into her section of Music 50: “World Musics and Cultures.” The project brought students together with members of a senior assisted living community in UPenn’s vicinity that was home to several important jazz musicians. UPenn was in the process of resolving security issues affecting these residents, and it was interested in building partnerships with the community. A project on the oral history of jazz as told by members of the community provided an opportunity to establish important relationships between students and musicians and shed light on Philadelphia’s largely neglected role in the history of jazz. Students in the course documented the stories of four or five individuals and connected their stories to other important people and developments in the history of jazz. The ethnographic component allowed students to get involved with music on a more personal level. They also were able to develop skills with electronic media such as Web design and digital video and to utilize concepts learned in class to think critically about the state of jazz and jazz history in Philadelphia. An administrator who is a jazz pianist, for example, gave a talk to the students about the history of Philadelphia as a “neighborhood history.” When he expressed his nostalgic desire to reinstate jazz into the community, a student in the class suggested that perhaps he was trying too hard to return to a lost past; the administrator conceded that the student might be right.

The jazz project culminated in the creation of publicly accessible archives of oral histories on jazz. While creating such an archive is often difficult with music because of copyright issues, it was possible for the jazz project. The Web site will be available to musicians all over the world and will thus constitute an important form of reciprocity in this ABCS course. A second example of such reciprocity may be seen in the project’s encouraging students to learn from older people in the community.

Other examples of the reciprocal nature of University/community partnerships are bringing Gospel, blues, and jazz musicians to Penn’s Annenberg Center for Performing Arts and inviting West Philadelphia residents, especially school students, to attend their performances. One year, when session leader Muller was the program director for a UPenn Humanities Forum on ‘Belief’ (religious and otherwise), she worked collaboratively with the Annenberg Center to establish a new concert series in Gospel and roots music. Her work involved organizing workshops for local Gospel choirs in which a guest director rehearsed and conducted a performance by a mass choir over a weekend. The performance was augmented by a guest lecture on the history of hymn singing. Thus a simple class with an enthusiastic director was able to blossom into much more.

A twelve-minute video presentation of the graduate student Gospel project film on Gospel choir and artist-in-residency program at a local church and school was presented.

Islamic Project

One of the great challenges in community-based projects is ensuring that the project builds on work already done and deepens the partnerships between the university and community. Too often course-driven projects are single events in which the students “extract and exit.” Session leader Muller’s aims in all her projects are sustainability and dealing democratically with the people involved In her most recent class project – a collaboration with the Quba Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, a Muslim school in West Philadelphia – she committed at the outset to a three-year relationship with the school and community. She found that in working with the Muslim community she faced a greater sense that “you’re not going to use us” than she had experienced with the other communities. While this wariness raised the stakes, as it were, her willingness to make a three-year commitment minimized the community leaders’ concern about the students simply “taking and then exiting” and it led in some respects to a healthier relationship than she and her students had with their partners in other projects.

The Islam project, like Professor Muller’s earlier projects, was once again situated in an ABCS field methods in ethnomusicology course and open to graduate and undergraduate students. Although all the students who enrolled in the course were music graduate students, one senior undergraduate student was involved as a teaching assistant and liaison between the class and the CCP. The student, Sheri Halpern, had an enormous role in organizing and shaping the course. Over a semester, UPenn graduate students worked with high school students at Quba to create documentary films on oral and written traditions within this predominantly African American Muslim community. Quba students came to UPenn’s campus to help film, edit, and create the videos. Thus in addition to documenting a community’s traditions for posterity, reciprocity also took the form of mentoring Quba students in ethnographic methods and media.

Sustaining the University-Quba Institute partnership is an ongoing challenge. The students and faculty of the two schools have remained in contact and their reciprocal relationship continues. In the semester since the field methods course was offered, a graduate student invited a Quba student to speak in an undergraduate music course she teaches. Her students benefited from the “insider” perspective the Quba student offered, and the graduate student had an opportunity to demonstrate her respect for the Quba student’s knowledge. Session recorder Ian MacMillen, a graduate student who also took the field methods course, has been working with six Quba students on various forms of community building in which Quba is engaged. The project, which was undertaken through an ABCS course in the Anthropology department, will culminate in a Web page authored by all the students.

A brief video presentation with an excerpt of a graduate student Islamic project film on recitation pedagogy at the Quba Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies was presented.

Importance of the Archive

The documentaries created in the class projects will all be posted on a website that is currently nearing completion, giving community members easy access to them. UPenn is a private institution, but the public has access to its library, and all other materials generated in the projects have been or will be deposited there and thus become widely available. The creation of an accessible archive is the ultimate goal of these efforts and constitutes one very tangible form of reciprocating to the communities involved. Since the completion of the last Gospel project, the choir director of one of the churches passed away, and one of the Gospel project films is the only remaining video record of his work. At the end of the course, a student put together the class projects to create a composite film on her own time. Her doing so demonstrates the potential that Professor Muller’s courses, and all ABCS courses, have both to give back to communities in meaningful ways and to motivate students to value reciprocity as something more than the means to a good grade.

Discussion:

Four main issues emerged in the. The first pertained to the difference between the experiences of undergraduate and graduate students in ABCS music courses. Professor Muller noted that the expectation of the two groups of students are fundamentally different: while the graduate students tend to recognize that their work in the course will help prepare them for future careers, the undergraduates, most of whom are not music majors, often enrol solely for the credit; thus they are inclined to be done with the course as soon as they receive their final grade. With 55 students working on 11 projects in one of the courses, it was impractical to expect everyone to produce meaningful work. Not every group made a film, but several did and their results were impressive. The large class sizes in undergraduate courses makes it difficult to get to know students personally, but one does get to witness students participating in extraordinary community projects in Philadelphia; if given opportunities students can and will grow.

A member of the group offered his experience teaching in the Business School at Carnegie Mellon, where service is required of students. He and his colleagues stress that service is valuable for a successful career in business: service allows students to hone skills, enhance networks, and become leaders. Thus his students’ experience is similar to the experience of Professor Muller’s graduate students, who view the course as providing training that will help them in the ethnographic work for their dissertations and beyond. In both instances, the emphasis is on connecting service with professional development. For Sheri Halpern, the undergraduate TA for the field methods class who worked with Quba and was the main liaison between the music class and CCP, as well as for a few other undergraduate students involved in ABCS music courses, there is also a direct link between service and training for future careers.

The second issue was the challenges faced in working with communities of faith. A question was asked about the difficulties of placing students into religious contexts. Professor Muller answered that she stresses a comparative learning approach for undergraduate students in which they discuss differences and similarities and reflect on related readings. The expectations of the communities one works with can also be challenging. In the Islamic project, one graduate student was working on the responses of young female students at Quba to hip-hop. She found that she was not allowed to show footage of the students performing because members of the Quba leadership expressed concern. It was necessary to change the project to accommodate the desires of the Quba leadership.

A third issue involved the extent to which the making of films constitutes reciprocity. Professor Muller observed that UPenn is becoming known in Philadelphia as a place for churches to contact when they want someone to record an oral/video history of their community. This suggests at least some success in reciprocating through the creation of film and archive. The Islamic school has made more demands than any of the other organizations, and although it was necessary to work out some tension along the way, the school now advertises its partnership with UPenn in its marketing. Furthermore, Quba students were taken on a tour of UPenn’s campus and given packets from the admissions office; the UPenn class has attempted to make Quba students feel as if they have some ownership of and right to the UPenn campus. UPenn has found ways of further reciprocating with the other communities as well, including hosting Gospel choirs (which had not regularly toured at Penn before).

To one of the participants in the session, the Islamic project video excerpt seemed more an example of studying a subject than collaborating with an interlocutor. Professor Muller explained that the students were involved in the filming and editing processes, and that they were at least partially responsible for the content and forms of the final films. The Quba leadership expected the graduate students to mentor the Quba students, however, and this often necessitated taking a more authoritative (and authorial) role.

A final concern related to this issue was that Penn was attempting to “missionize” West Philadelphia residents. Session leader Muller agreed that UPenn is indeed trying to attract students from the neighborhood to apply to the University, but doing so is also an interest of the Quba leadership, which wants its students to become acquainted with the campus as part of the collaboration. A student at Quba had once applied to UPenn, but had felt so overwhelmed during a campus visit that he felt unable to seriously consider attending.

The final issue discussed was the resources available to the music courses for the various projects. Professor Muller noted that UPenn’s Music Department is fortunate in that it has access to decent video recording equipment and a computer lab in which to edit films. A member of the group suggested that one way of making the project run more smoothly would be to collaborate with film students at UPenn. One of the future plans for ABCS courses is a project in which UPenn students will work with school kids and train them to create and archive oral histories. Bringing in the expertise of film students could add to the quality of the projects and relieve some of the pressure on music graduate students, many of whom are themselves often just learning to use the equipment.

Recommendations:

For Individual Campuses

• ABCS and similar courses should stress the connection service learning has to students’ future professional development, as well as to moral democratic citizenship. Emphasis should be placed on skills such as networking and leadership that students strengthen during community service. This might entice more students to enrol in ABCS courses and to take the work seriously.
• Instructors teaching large undergraduate ABCS courses should find ways to create a service experience similar to that in smaller undergraduate and graduate courses. It might be possible to involve undergraduate or graduate TA’s (compensated with credit or salary) to facilitate communication between class, professor, and community and/or to help supervise and evaluate undergraduate projects.
• Instructors of ABCS courses should seek out students in other departments or classes who could bring valuable expertise to community service projects. Film students, for example, could add quite a lot to the documentaries produced in ABCS field methods in ethnomusicology classes, promoting interdisciplinarity in teaching and learning.

References/Resources:

Websites

1. ABCS Courses: http://www.upenn.edu/ccp/getinvolved/student_portal/abcs.shtml
2. Center for Community Partnerships: http://www.upenn.edu/ccp/about/
3. Music Lessons By Susan Frith: http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/1106/feature1.html
4. Quba Institute: http://www.qubainstitute.com/
5. Westphillymusic project: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/music/westphillymusic