Inspiring Graduate Student Success
For the first time in University of Pennsylvania history, eligible need-based students at all 12 University of Pennsylvania graduate schools have access to apply for financial assistance for unpaid or underpaid summer internships.
Internship funding was a recurring need that Keshara Senanayake J’23 kept hearing in conversations with fellow students. It became clear to the former Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GASPA) Vice President of Programming that disparities existed between the schools. While some schools featured robustly funded internship programs thanks to decades of significant alumni support, others had students who required support for career-building summer opportunities.
In response to this recurring need, GAPSA generously gave a $700,000 gift to Career Services to establish Penn’s first university-wide Graduate Summer Internship Program. Over $200,000 of the gift went to immediate disbursement this past summer. The remaining $500,000 will be put into a permanently endowed fund to provide continual financial support for Penn graduate students.
The Graduate Summer Internship Program aims to defray costs associated with the summer experience, encompassing travel expenses, living costs, and other related expenditures. The funding amounts are determined based on the internship’s career development value, duration, and identified needs of students. The available funding levels that can be awarded will be determined on a yearly basis.
“When you hear about a problem it just makes sense to do something about it. We chose to create this fund, in hopes of immediately supporting students this past summer and to create the momentum to structurally address this issue,” said Senanayake, a recent graduate of the Carey Law School. “For a long time, we’ve heard this was a problem, but there was no data to back it up. Now, we can collect data about the need and hopefully encourage alumni to support this initiative with the newfound tangibles.”
As the governing body for the approximately 13,000 Penn graduate students, GAPSA is responsible for funding each of the 12 schools through student groups, events, and initiatives for student success. Due to the pandemic halting several of its programs, GAPSA had accumulated a significant amount of carryover funds.
Director of the Graduate Student Center Meredith Wooten raised the idea that GAPSA could address the lack of internship funding for graduate students. Senanayake found that Career Services offered a Summer Funding program that helps undergraduates take advantage of impactful internship opportunities that are beyond their financial resources. In late February, board members met with Career Services representatives to install a similar initiative for graduate students.
GAPSA quickly passed a resolution to create the Summer Internship Funding Program, representing the largest gift the organization has ever provided. Senanayake credited the GAPSA assembly for recognizing the need to provide resources to better the lives of graduate students.
“I am a firm believer that no student should be denied opportunities because of a lack of financial resources,” Senanayake said. “Internships are a prerequisite for career and professional development, and a number in your bank account should not limit your potential. I was able to attend Penn because of the generous support of alumni and the school’s moral obligation to reduce barriers for others.
“Paying it forward is instilled into the Penn DNA. I see it in our students, our alum, our trustees, our faculty, and our staff.”
Paying it Forward
In its first year, the Graduate Summer Internship Program extended financial support to 71 graduate students representing eight graduate schools. Among them, the School of Engineering had the most recipients with 32 awardees. Following closely behind, the Graduate School of Education had 13 students benefiting from the program. Meanwhile, the School of Arts and Sciences, School of Social Policy & Practice, and the Weitzman School of Design each had seven students selected.
“The summer experience available to students like me, coming from a First-Generation Low-Income background is nothing short of remarkable,” School of Engineering and Applied Science graduate student Ruohu Lin said in her summer blog. “It is an opportunity to gain invaluable industry experience that will undoubtedly shape the trajectory of our careers. As a budding software engineer, the chance to immerse myself in a real-world tech environment was a dream I eagerly seized upon.”
A demonstrative need for internship funding for international students became apparent to Senanayake in his conversations with GAPSA peers. Inflation, currency devaluations, and various geopolitical, natural, and economic crises have exacerbated the financial struggles associated with living expenses during underfunded or unpaid internships.
Forty-six percent of the inaugural Graduate Summer Internship Program awardees were international students.
Director of Graduate Career Initiatives Joseph Barber highlighted that Penn Career Services received at least 10 applications from recent mothers or parents, some of whom were supporting several young children. He said this situation is more unique to the graduate student experience, emphasizing added costs associated with balancing an internship experience with finding and paying for childcare.
Right People at the Right Time
The Graduate Summer Internship Program’s rapid launch was made possible through the collaborative efforts of GAPSA and Penn administration.
Senanayake credited Barber and Executive Director Barbara Hewitt of Penn Career Services for seamlessly materializing the initiative. He said they were both very receptive to graduate students’ needs and made connections across campus to quickly get the program available for the summer.
“Both have spent countless hours meeting with key stakeholders across the University to bring the program to life and have been advocates on the issue for years,” Senanayake added. “This initiative is a testament to having the right people at the right time.”
Career Services and the Graduate Student Center worked collaboratively to encourage GAPSA to provide meaningful support for graduate students. Barber noted that the Graduate Student Center laid a solid foundation for the Summer Internship Program’s success due to its strong relationships with GAPSA and their long-standing commitment to support the professional growth of graduate students. The Graduate Student Center shared valuable insights with Career Services about the funding application challenges experienced by graduate students.
Led by both Wooten and Associate Vice Provost for Graduate Education Anita Mastroieni, the Graduate Student Center spent countless hours and energy advising GAPSA, supporting their initiatives, and building strong relationships between student leaders and staff across campus. In particular, Wooten played a pivotal role in raising awareness about internship funding disparities and guiding GAPSA leaders throughout the entire process.
“Their feedback helped shape the proposal into something that could actually happen,” Senanayake added. “The staff at Penn University Life care deeply about the graduate student experience, and for that, I, and countless others, are incredibly grateful. “
Now, as an alumnus, Senanayake is comforted knowing that this fund will endure indefinitely, yet his ultimate aspiration is to inspire fellow alumni to champion programs and initiatives of this nature. The primary objective of this program is to create momentum in this space. GAPSA contributed generous donations toward establishing a perpetual endowed fund. For the program to persist and flourish, the indispensable backing of alumni and donors is crucial.
Read about graduate student summer internship experiences on the Penn Career Services Summer Funding Blog.
The summer internships were game changers in the students’ career aspirations.
They included:
- behavioral specialist internship, Center for Utilizing Behavioral Insights for Children at Save the Children
- jet propulsion internship, NASA
- international education development internship, UNESCO’s International Institute for Education Planning in Dakar, Senegal
- programming internship, SciFeCap
- wildlife medicine internship, WildCare Oklahoma
- policy analyst, Research for Action
- software engineer, SkyIT
- architecture heritage internship, Indian National Trust for Art and Culture Heritage, New Delhi
- intercultural communication specialist with refugees and asylees, Nationalities Service Center, Philadelphia
- architecture internship, MASS Design Group, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
- backend software developer, Roamer
- AI Development Intern, Mentorz
- Archeological and Heritage Preservation Internship, Al-Hiba Publication Project, Lagash, Iraq
- Transit Strategic Planning and Analysis internship, SEPTA
- Educational Planning and Policy internship, International Institute for Education for Planning, UNESCO, Paris, France
Celebrating Pride Month: A Conversation with Penn’s LEAP
To celebrate Pride Month, University Life hosted a conversation with Penn’s revitalized employee resource group, LEAP (LGBTQ+ Employees at Penn). The newly formed LEAP leadership team shared their vision and goals for LEAP and spoke candidly about their experiences at Penn. The interview below was hosted in University Life and included the following LEAP Members:
- Michael Sievers (he/him/his), LEAP Co-Chair
- Dani Trimmer (he/him/his), LEAP Co-Chair
- Nik Kroushl (she/her/hers), Communications Co-Chair
- Sarah Punderson (she/her/hers), Communications Co-Chair
- Emily Delany (she/her/hers), Programming Chair
- Sam Lim (they/them/theirs), Internal Affairs Chair
LEAP includes a diverse of representation of faculty, staff, and post docs from schools and spaces across the University of Pennsylvania. Members of the Penn community interested in becoming involved with LEAP should contact co-chairs Michael Sievers (sieversm@upenn.edu) and/or Dani Trimmer (dtrimmer@upenn.edu).
University Life: Can you discuss how LEAP has been reenergized over the past year?
Dani Trimmer: My previous employer had a similar employee resource group that was stagnant, and we revived it. When I came to Penn, I started asking if Penn had something similar. I kept getting directed to go to Penn’s LGBT Center. Unfortunately, the pandemic had forced the group to take a pause. Once we returned to normal operations post pandemic, some colleagues were having conversations about reenergizing the group. We came together and voiced that we would like to see this brought back and shared how an LGBTQ+ group for faculty and staff here at Penn can support community building. We started from a blank slate and have been off to a great start.
University Life: How long has it been since the restart?
Michael Sievers: Last fall of this past academic year, there was a call out to Faculty and Staff and an informal event hosted by the LGBT Center to see if anyone was interested in reviving LEAP. I had expressed some interest in joining and was tapped on the shoulder by the LGBT Center’s Malik Muhammad to consider co-leading the effort. There were a couple of other people interested, and he encouraged us to get together and really talk about it. This effort was important to all of us, so we began figuring out how best to revive it. When I was asked if I’d be willing to step up and be a part of this, I said absolutely.
Nik Kroushl: Malik Muhammad and Jake Muscato [in University Life at Penn] have given us guidance and support throughout this process, and they should get a shoutout for being our lighthouse.
University Life: Considering the Penn community, what types of initiatives, policies, and changes would you like to see happen that relate to LEAP’s mission and goals?
Emily Delany: The stuff that we’ve already done has been very rooted in community building. What we’re doing now is presenting different social opportunities. We had a Wellness Walk at the end of June to close-off Pride Month. It’s just a way to create a social opportunity to meet and greet folks from across campus and offer an opportunity to walk together and have discourse about different things happening on campus, different things happening in our city, as it relates to like LGBTQ+ folks. We just had a social event called Pride and Popsicles. A lot of what we’re doing right now is rooted in community building and social interaction. As a queer employee, it’s something that I look for in an employer: to be able to create community and feel seen and heard in the space that I function in every day. A lot of what LEAP is trying to do is create spaces of authenticity where people are able to oscillate in this safe environment. Building community is a primary goal for what we’re trying to accomplish. We’re constantly looking for input from folks about how to build the community we want to see at Penn. That’s a big root of what we have been doing so far.
Sam Lim: It’s important to contextualize that on a national scale. We came out of a pandemic that directly impacted the LGBTQ community in a disproportionate manner. Being in the city of Philadelphia, sometimes we think we’re safe from that, but in reality, we’re not. I appreciate that Penn is willing to support this type of work to support our folks. I want to reinforce that, yes, it’s community building, but it’s also life-saving community building in so many ways and for so many individuals. People don’t realize how important small, day-to-day interactions will make a difference for someone living their true life.
University Life: What does it mean for Penn students that might be LGBTQ+ and see that their university supports the people that work for them?
Emily Delany: As someone that works in a student-serving role, I find that often our engineers are yearning for spaces in which they can create these mutual relationships. For example, having a lab partner and feeling as if they will not be misgendered in their lab space. I’m very much an out employee at Penn. Just having that someone that you see in the halls and know that they’ll advocate for you, organize meeting spaces, or help you facilitate conversations with faculty members if there was an issue ensued in class. It’s important to have that visibility so that folks are able to feel like they can be their best selves while they’re here and live up to their highest potential. But it’s very hard to do that unless you can see some of yourself and the folks that are working in the spaces, you’re actively involved in every day.
Michael Sievers: For me, I’ve found it important to have a queer person that you can point towards and say they are living their life here and living fully whom they are. It’s just important to have that representation.
Nik Kroushl: I work with faculty on building courses, and I’ve had opportunities occasionally to help them adjust language or think about how certain things are presented. I’ll talk about my partner with faculty members, and maybe that gives them an idea to include LGBTQ+ folks when they’re creating a case study. It establishes that sense of visibility. If some of the content in classes is a little bit more inclusive, then hopefully it makes a little bit of a difference.
University Life: What does LEAP need from the larger Penn community to advance your work?
Dani Trimmer: LEAP is one of the more prolific staff resource groups here at Penn. Something that I want to see is if we can be a model for other groups out there that want to come together and create their own network by using LEAP as an example. There are plenty of folks out there that are looking for the different resources that Penn offers in these areas. It’s not recreating the wheel. We do have these resources at the university. It comes down to whether they have the capacity or the balance to be able to offer them to faculty and staff, and that’s something that I see LEAP being able to serve as a model for other resource centers. If there were more Business Resource Groups (BRGs) like ours, we could have partnerships.
Sam Lim: So many professional schools lie outside of the traditional university network. For the law school, we’re trying to start up more resources to support our LGBT employees, and there is an active student group. In the next few months, we will go to school to school and get the word out about LEAP. If we can build relationships with the schools specifically, maybe we can find more affordable and accessible ways for us to do those types of monthly rounds across the university so we’re not just sticking to one side of the campus.
University Life: What types of goals, initiatives or policies would LEAP advocate for change at Penn?
Sam Lim: This isn’t necessarily unique to Penn. Uniformity would be beneficial in terms of how LGBTQ+ policies are implemented. For example, the way that pronouns or gender identity are captured at the Law School is completely different, than other parts of campus, and even between staff and faculty. For best practices sake, any employee who’s onboarded at Penn should have the opportunity to self-identify their gender identity.
Sarah Punderson: There’s a desire from many staff and faculty to have gender-neutral bathrooms in all buildings, not just those that serve students. That’s such a tangible thing. If LEAP can keep bringing that up and make University leadership aware that it’s a huge priority for everyone—not just students—that seems like something that’s doable and would be an easy win for Penn culture.
Emily Delany: The restroom point is the No. 1 conversation that I have with students. We have folks that are working in buildings on campus that must exit the building they’re in, go outside on the street, and access another building that has gender-inclusive restrooms. It’s problematic for many of our folks, not only our students, but our faculty, staff, and everyone at Penn. It is rooted in safety, and it should be such a high priority. From a policy and procedure standpoint, gender-inclusive restrooms are such a low-hanging fruit. It’s something that’s important to our community.
Nik Kroushl: We did a survey to see what people wanted, and one thing that came up was that there is not a centralized or clear process for name changes that cut across all university systems. Of course, there is the perennial problem of a billion different software programs and systems, and they don’t all talk to each other.
Sarah Punderson: This is all social justice. It’s all about pushing Penn to become the most inclusive employer and representative of Philadelphia residents.
Sam Lim: Actually, Penn has great benefits for queer people, specifically for trans folk who are trying to get different types of procedures and access. But we need to be transparent about those benefits to potential job candidates.
University Life: What has LEAP and Penn’s LGBTQ+ community done to allow you to flourish as Penn as an employee?
Michael Sievers: I used to work for a religious-based institution. I had to hide my identity and say that I was not going to be gay. On my first day on campus at Penn, I remember seeing the pride flag on a door, and it made me feel seen. Being able to talk with my coworkers about my life, whether it’s who I’m dating or where I am socializing, — it’s made a tremendous difference in my well-being. Just being able to live fully as myself. I don’t feel I need to censor parts of who I am. That’s something that’s impacted me here.
Dani Trimmer: Due to the nature of my position here. I talk to lots of people at Penn, and I end up essentially being a cheerleader for Penn because I’ve talked about how much I love being here. I love the culture that’s here. Are we perfect? No, absolutely not. I focus on the good that we do here, and LEAP is one of those things. I can tell you that it fills me with a sense of pride. This discussion that we are having here right now — being able to talk about LGBTQ+ rights at Penn and hear people’s reactions from it — particularly hits home for me. It’s pretty promising, and it makes you feel like you’re actually doing something bigger than you.
Nik Kroushl: This is the first time that I’ve had queer coworkers in my own department. I’ve been lucky that I’ve been in education, places where generally people are supportive. I had a coworker who got married last fall, and we had a big cross-department meeting, and they shared their wedding photos, and we had a cake for them. I know it meant a lot to that person to have that celebrated because they’ve been in environments where it wouldn’t have been celebrated. To see them be excited about having a supportive environment makes me really happy.
Sam Lim: In 2017, I was kicked out of my college’s fraternity because I came out and I was in surgery. After graduation, I went to teach in the South, and I was harassed. I was told I wasn’t fit to be a teacher because I was queer. Then I went to become the head of an LGBT Center at a university in the northeast. I thought I was safe, but I was still harassed and discriminated against by my colleagues. This is the first job where I can be out and use the word transgender. My coworkers respect me, and I have the benefits I need. That has changed my quality of life so much. I understand the weight that these situations hold for our students who have experienced coming out in college. This board is helping to show future professionals that they can be supported in a professional environment.
Sarah Punderson: Personally, since I’ve been at Penn, my wife has carried our two children and we’ve grown into a family of four. It’s no small thing to simply be able to share that joy with my coworkers. They threw me a baby shower, which was unexpected. I want to help LEAP lean into improving Penn’s reputation as a great place to work for the queer community for a number of reasons.
Emily Delany: For me, it’s been rooted in visibility. At Penn Engineering, we have a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office. I think having an employer that creates spaces of visibility and supports them, whether that’s monetarily, publicizing events, or giving access to space. And I hope LEAP continues to be a part of building out those spaces.
A sincere “thank you” to LEAP for participating in this interview with University Life. Click below to learn more about LEAP @ Penn.
Spring Fling Hits the Stage for its 50th Anniversary
The Golden Spring Fling lived up to its name. The University of Pennsylvania celebrated the 50th anniversary of Spring Fling on Friday, April 21 and Saturday, April 22 at Penn Park. The two-day, milestone event sold more than 4,700 tickets, making it one of the highest attended events in its history.
The student-led Social Planning and Events Committee (SPEC) works tirelessly to put on a multi-day celebration for Penn students every year. Associate Director of Programs Gabe Marenco-Garcia (they/them) oversees the Spring Fling Concerts and Spring Fling Daytime sub-committees that engineer every aspect of the planning and execution of the event.
Concert planning begins with vetting talent. Executive Liaison Jeffrey Yu and student directors Mia Woodruff, Peyton Singletary, and Tami Owolabi worked around budgets and availability for artists around the show in the early fall. The concert committee’s biggest hurdle is competing with Coachella’s massive lineup every year.
“As much as we would love to have Beyonce, the budget doesn’t lend itself to that,” Marenco-Garcia said. “There are a lot of factors when it comes to selecting talent. It can either go smoothly, or the process can drone on for a while.”
Lauv headlined this year’s concert. New York-based rapper Lil Tjay opened the show.
The planning process involves selecting a theme for Spring Fling and then building the weekend around that concept. Since it was the golden anniversary (50 years) of Spring Fling, liaison Queenie Huang and student leaders Elizabeth Xu, Joyce Davis, and Sheehwa You chose Golden Spring Fling. After that, the organization fit activities, food, and engagements into that theme.
At the Golden Spring Fling, the Daytime committee offered a 90-foot slide, bungee trampoline with a rock wall, miniature golf, water race trailer, and two different obstacle courses. It welcomed artists that specialize in airbrush tattoos, balloons, caricatures, and face-painting. Nine food vendors, including Federal Donuts, Walking Taco, and El Merkury, were on hand. Giveaways were offered to the first 1,000 Penn students.
The Spring Fling originated in 1973 as a way of building a community centered around music. Over time, Spring Fling has blossomed into an event that hosts some of the top musical acts in the country.
Past Spring Flings have comprised of prominent acts such as Tiesto, David Guetta, Chance The Rapper, Gryffin, Louis the Child, Zedd, Kygo, Chloe x Halle, Passion Pit, Janelle Monae, Lupe Fiasco, Rina Sawayama, Wale, Blues Traveler, Flo Rida, Snoop Dogg, Kid Cudi, Akon, Ludacris, Gym Class Heroes, Third Eye Blind, The Roots, The Black-Eyed Peas, Cherub, Hall and Oates, Tinashe, JoJo, and Jerry Seinfeld. Listen to University Life’s Spotify playlist of artists that have played Penn’s Spring Fling.
“It’s a chance for students to take a break,” Marenco-Garcia said. “We know that that is not always a high priority for Penn students. They want to keep going, going, going…but the weekend of Fling is an opportunity for us to say, ‘we are almost there, we are almost to the finish line.’ It is a chance to kick back a little bit, take your mind off school and try to build a community on campus.”
Marenco-Garcia said that stress and deterioration of mental health is prevalent during the spring semester’s waning weeks. As a result, students sometimes feel inclined to engage in negative behaviors as a coping mechanism to get through the finish push. Spring Fling is a space where Penn students can disconnect in a meaningful and memorable way with their friends. “To me, that’s really why we have Spring Fling — to make sure that we are building that community.”
After the months-long effort of putting together the groundwork of a large-scale event, seeing students walk away with the feeling that they had an enjoyable time is the pinnacle of the weekend. Marenco-Garcia measures the program’s success on whether students were able to connect with friends, unwind, and engage with the larger Penn community.
Marenco-Garcia is always encouraging students on the Concerts and Daytime Committees to “step back and soak it in.”
“If I were to be selfish, my hope is to see the students in their element and feel there is a sense of unity,” Marenco-Garcia said. “They should walk away feeling that they can take a breather and enjoy themselves. It is important that student leaders realize that their hard work has paid off.”
Spring Fling has experienced a variety of tinkering and tweaking over the past few years. Previously, Spring Fling had organized daytime performances and food vendors in the Quad with a carnival on College Green. Growing concerns about extracurricular behaviors and wellness forced a move to a one-day event at Penn Park in 2018 and 2019. Low attendance numbers motivated SPEC to shift back to a two-day model with a concert on Friday night and a Saturday daytime event. There was a growing sense that students were exhausted and gearing towards thinking about their exams and assignments by Saturday evening.
Spring Fling was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, and it functioned in a virtual format in 2021, which was very well attended. Beginning with last year’s show that featured Cheat Codes, Flo Milli, and Lil Yachty, there has been a yearning for daytime entertainment and events.
In Marenco-Garcia’s opinion, the first year of hosting both events on the DCC Field of Penn Park was a success.
One element that drives Spring Fling’s planning is the year-after-year reimagination to ensure ‘Fling is an authentic and lively event that speaks to each generation of students. For Gen Z students in attendance, there are always conversations about experience and ambiance. A new addition to Spring Fling was the Concerts and Daytime Planning Committees’ inclusion of elements that enhance the student experience. The concert included seesaws, a glow-in-the-dark park, and other attractions that provided a fun break for students in attendance. By empowering student committees to shape Spring Fling annually, the Penn student body remains the centerpiece of the conversation.
Next year’s Spring Fling will be held on April 19-20, 2024. It will mark SPEC’s 35th anniversary.
Q&A with Elisa Foster, New Director of Penn Women’s Center
Congratulations on your promotion to Director of Penn Women’s Center. What does it mean to be the new Director of Penn Women’s Center (PWC)?
It means so much. I’ve been working at the Women’s Center for almost six years. With the relationships that I’ve developed with students and colleagues, it means a lot that I can lead Penn Women’s Center into the future as we celebrate our 50th anniversary. I want to take the relationships and important memories that I’ve made during the last six years and amplify them to the next level.
Tell me a little bit about your background and how you got to Penn.
I started out working in the nonprofit industry doing grant writing and strategic planning for organizations in Philly. I was a consultant working with a few organizations locally. Then I moved into market research, which was an interesting move, but it all kind of tied together because a lot of the clients I was working with were nonprofits and educational institutions. At the time, I was also working on my master’s degree in communication studying media representation of women and black communities Nonprofit consulting piqued my interest in higher education because I was working with a lot of universities on how to best meet the needs of their constituents, which has always been a focus of my work. I was doing projects for schools like Penn State and Lutheran Theological Seminary, thinking about how best to meet the needs of their students and their faculty. As I was contemplating my next career move, I ended up finding a position at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
What role did you have at Robert Morris?
Robert Morris was starting a Women’s Leadership and Mentoring Program, and I was the program manager. It began with me and the faculty director, starting this program from scratch. It was an important initiative for the University because, unlike most colleges, Robert Morris has fewer women students than male students.
It is because Robert Morris was traditionally a business school, right?
Exactly. They created this great mentoring and leadership program to encourage more women applicants and to create supportive connections among women students, faculty, and alumni. I worked there for three years, and then Philly pulled me back. In 2017, I saw the opening for an Associate Director position at Penn Women’s Center and said, ‘Oh, that’s perfect,’ because it marries my work supporting women and addressing issues around gender equity. The role at PWC positioned me to do the work on a broader scale, reaching areas of campus and the community that I did not have access to at Robert Morris. I love that PWC is a confidential resource; offering that kind of support to people in our community is important.
As one of the oldest women’s centers in the country, what does it mean, for both Penn and PWC, to celebrate the 50th anniversary?
It’s interesting because of this moment in time where women and people who identify as gender minorities have made leaps and bounds of progress. People are intentionally making more inclusive spaces. Women are excelling in areas where they were previously underrepresented. But, at the same time, we’re still dealing with a lot of the issues that were present 50 years ago. For example, the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which we should have been acknowledging the 50th anniversary of this year, is something that I think a lot about. We thought we were further ahead with issues around reproductive justice. It feels like we are taken right back to 1973. It’s been interesting to reflect on how far we’ve come but how much more work we must do.
What is the history of the PWC? Who founded it? Why was it established back in 1973?
The Penn Women’s Center was a result of student, faculty, and staff activism right here at Penn. There were a series of sexual assaults happening on campus. Women didn’t feel safe where they were receiving their education, where they were teaching, where they were working. In the Spring of ‘73, there was a sit-in at the President’s Office, and they had a list of demands. One of those demands was a Women’s Center that can offer resources to students. One of the other demands was a Women’s Studies Program, which is now the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies program. Another demand that has had a lasting impact was the creation of the Department of Special Services, housed in the Division of Public Safety. Penn Women’s Center started out as an administrator in an office, and we’ve grown. In 1996, we moved into the house here on Locust Walk. Since then, we’ve been able to add to expand the resources and provide support to student groups.
Can you reflect on how PWC’s role on campus has changed over the past 50 years?
A big part of what we have done in the last few decades has centered on gender equity, and inclusion of all gender identities. We want to make sure that, regardless of who you are, you know that you come into the Women’s Center and receive care and support. That’s one thing that’s been really important! Especially including and uplifting our trans and nonbinary communities. We also continually work to bring in communities of color, who historically have felt isolated from women’s movements throughout history to make sure that everyone has a place here, and they can receive support. We’re called the Women’s Center, and that has always been central to the empowerment and upliftment of women. But we also want to make sure that Gender Equity is at the foundation of what we do, and that our approach is intersectional.
What are some of the traditional programs and services that you provide at PWC?
One thing that has been consistent is that PWC is a confidential resource for students, staff, and faculty. Most often, that applies to people who experienced sexual violence and/or who experienced gender-based discrimination. But it also expands to a myriad of interpersonal situations: advising around conflicts with friends and classmates; dealing with health issues; trying to figure out where to go, what their next step is, what resources are on campus — we call it Options Counseling. We don’t provide counseling in the traditional therapeutic sense. We’re here to listen, validate an experience, answer questions, and then lay out the options that exist on- and off-campus to address whatever challenge or concern one may have. We’ve always worked with student groups and student organizations. We’ve worked with many groups throughout the years who need advising support, or just need mentorship or a home base on campus. We’ve been involved in a lot of the conversations around representation on Locust Walk and making sure that students of marginalized identities have a space to feel safe in the middle of campus. PWC is very privileged and fortunate to have this house, right in the middle of everything, but I know everyone doesn’t have that. We offer space to communities and student groups to support their needs, advocate for issues they feel are important, and open our doors to anyone who needs a safe space on campus – whether it’s to talk to a staff member in a confidential setting, attend a wellness program, or nap on the living room couch in between classes.
What has been planned for PWC’s 50th anniversary celebration?
We’re still in the early stages of planning. First, we are going into our archives and updating the records because during the 40th anniversary, we did an archive display and we now have another decade of programs and accomplishments to add. We’re working with University Life’s Strategic Planning & Operations team to digitize PWC’s archival records. We’ve been working with our student team to get everything organized. The archive project will be important because it will highlight the timeline of Penn Women’s Center’s origins, beginning with photos and Daily Pennsylvanian articles. It will also highlight everything that’s happened and evolved over the past 50 years. For the 40th anniversary, we also started a video project called the Voices of Change. We’ll be doing some more of that oral history work to make sure the voices of PWC’s community are captured. We will kick off the celebrations with a program during Homecoming this fall. We will also co-sponsor a symposium organized by Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies in Spring ‘24 to celebrate both of our 50th anniversaries.
That sounds so exciting. As you enter the Directorship, what are some of the challenges that PWC faces? What are some of the expectations that you have moving forward?
A lot of universities are contemplating the same questions as they imagine the future of their women’s centers. Some centers have changed their names, transitioned into centers for gender equity, and some have combined with their institution’s LGBTQ+ center. As director, I want to determine what the next best step is for PWC at Penn. I want to listen to and engage with our community and figure out what that means. I look forward to doing a listening tour and focus groups, having conversations with our students, alumni, staff, and faculty. We want to make sure we’re acknowledging the experience of people who have been coming to the center for many decades, but we also must ensure that we’re meeting the current needs of our students and figuring out what that balance looks like for a Women’s Center at this particular point in time. I’m excited to embark on this journey but it’s a very difficult question and challenge to solve. That’s what I am most excited for. On top of that, I am excited to continue building our collaborations with students and many campus partners like Penn Association for Gender Equity, Wellness, Penn Violence Prevention and our fellow Cultural Resource Centers.
A Renewed Vision for Penn Student Agencies
Penn Student Agencies thrived on continuity as one of the oldest student organizations at the University of Pennsylvania. Each graduating class passed the baton to the next generation of entrepreneurs, creatives, and business-minded students.
When the pandemic shuttered most of its student-run organizations into a virtual state, it disrupted the clockwork transfer of skills that kept PSA in business for 89 years. The handed-down experience of running a business and knowing the ins-and-outs from a financial, operational, and community perspective was all but lost. Without the training from students with experience, current PSA students missed the baton and were left putting puzzle pieces together from scratch.
The expertise was retained by PSA alumni. Naturally, the first place they looked to revive the organization was with one of its own.
Michael Paul Warren ‘20/‘21 took over as the Program Manager at Penn Student Agencies in September ‘22. The former PSA Executive Vice President of Operations 2018-2020, now titled PSA Chief Operating Officer, looks to reinvigorate PSA back to its pre-pandemic state and reimagine the organization to better meet the needs of Penn students.
“The pandemic showed us the importance of resilience, both for organizations and individual student leaders. That resilience is what made Penn Student Agencies what they are now. We have a foundation to continue building from the pandemic.”
At its heart, PSA is student-run. It is comprised of four organizational clusters: central corporate, creative services, dining and hospitality, and retail and delivery divisions. Within that, there are currently seven PSA enterprises, consisting of firstServices, Penn Student Design, Penn Lens, Special Deliveries, Penn Closet, Williams Café, and Benny’s Diner. It aims to teach transferable business skills to Penn students through hands-on experience outside of the classroom.
As a student, Michael oversaw many of PSA’s human resource functions, organizational effectiveness, and the compliance policies and procedures of the businesses. He and fellow PSA director Jazzy Ortega ‘20 created a proposal to start a quick-service, all-day breakfast restaurant that became Benny’s Diner in Houston Hall.
PSA changed the course of Warren’s career ambitions. He entered Penn as a pre-med student. When he joined PSA, he gained an appreciation for interpersonal relationships. He wanted to learn the dynamics of people working collectively in groups. The experience led him to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with a concentration in Law in Society from the College of Arts and Sciences.
“I really loved understanding process design and process optimization — how different policies, laws, and structures are set up based on how humans interact with each other. PSA led me down a career path more on the operations and instructional design side of things. In business, I’ve always enjoyed the ambiguity that came with the startup environment and entrepreneurship.”
A PSA Homecoming
Warren graduated from Penn shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic started. He moved to New York City to work in client services serving private equity firms, but quickly shifted back to the entrepreneurial space. Michael helped lead the build out of the global logistics team at a unicorn e-commerce startup based in New York that specialized in consumer goods. Launching in February 2022, he was one of the original team members, and oversaw global inventory movements and relationships on the end-to-end supply chain.
Michael maintained his involvement to PSA as an advisor. He was appointed as co-president of the Student-Run Business Association in 2022 after serving as a Vice President and on the Board of Directors since 2019. He continued to cultivate different relationships at universities throughout the country.
Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, Penn student Chris Raboy ‘25 was looking for advice on how PSA operated outside of a COVID context. Upon researching pre-pandemic PSA documents and websites, Raboy reached out to several alumni hoping to discover historical information that would improve his ability to reignite the program post-pandemic. He messaged Warren via LinkedIn, and the two stayed in touch after Raboy took over as the Chief Marketing Officer. When the full-time Program Manager position became available, Raboy immediately thought of Michael. The ideal candidate was someone familiar with PSA, who could create continuity, guide PSA post-pandemic, and help grow the program in an increasingly digital world.
“From our first meeting, I was awed by what I was seeing: structure and efficiency,” said Raboy, who is PSA’s Chief Executive Officer for 2023-24. “I realized that I had to change the ways I was organizing materials, communicating, and the importance of the first impressions. He gave insight into a ton of the strategies I ended up utilizing throughout the summer.”
Warren’s interests in operations and organizational dynamics enable him to expand upon a network of institutions and nonprofits that run similar programs. For example, the business proposal for Benny’s Diner was inspired by student-run food service ventures presented at the 2019 Student-Run Business Association conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“I’m bringing the knowledge of what it was like operating in a pre-pandemic world, the challenges that we faced when I was a student and the challenges that the students before me had encountered. I can share that knowledge and bridge the connections between young alumni and the current students.”
The biggest hurdle for PSA students is navigating the people element of business and entrepreneurism. A lot of businesses that were “heavy on in-person interaction had to alter those interactions to be able to operate virtually or digitally.” As organizations become more focused on e-commerce, the student-run businesses need to understand how to keep their staff engaged and ensure positions are appropriately filled.
PSA’s focus for the 2022-23 academic year and beyond is setting up that continuity between leadership, turnover, and new students joining the organization. Warren looks to recreate the consistency that allowed PSA to thrive and replicate a consistent experience on a yearly basis, allowing Penn students to build off what individuals accomplished before them.
From our first meeting, I was awed by what I was seeing: structure and efficiency. I realized that I had to change the ways I was organizing materials, communicating, and the importance of the first impressions.
Building A Bridge With Alumni
Warren has noticed a renewed interest in PSA alumni. He said that there is an extensive number of Penn graduates from multiple generations that want PSA to succeed and bounce back from the pandemic. One of Warren’s biggest pushes is to establish an alumni network. There is an “untapped potential” of interested and influential grads that can serve as a significant resource for PSA students.
Because PSA is not tied to any undergraduate or graduate school, one of the advantages that it offers is a wide array of perspectives. Warren said that its leadership and general body consists of a substantial cross-section of different academic disciplines.
“It’s a great opportunity for students to showcase their mindset and how they approach thinking. A nursing student isn’t going to approach the problem the same way a Wharton or an engineering student would. Putting them together on the same team and having them brainstorm and navigate the ambiguity that is the startup environment allows them to come up with these creative and interesting solutions to problems.”
A large part of learning for the students in PSA is supported through the introduction of frameworks that help distill large complex problems into more manageable concepts.
“For many students this is the first time they are taking on considerable responsibility and decision making. Understanding the impact of those decisions can be difficult with limited experience – which brings us to a framework I use with the students – FORTS.
“FORTS stands for financial impact, operational impact, reputational impact, team impact, and strategic impact. This framework helps student leaders understand what the implications of their decisions may or will have on various aspects of their business and help create a figurative mental fort around their decision making.”
Heading into its 90th anniversary, PSA has always been financially self-sufficient, the money that they make goes back into the programs and students. First known as Self-Supporting Students, PSA began in 1933 as part of the New Deal’s National Youth Administration, an early model of what is now the Federal Work-Study Program. It started as three student-run businesses: Dorm Laundry Agency, Parking Squad, and Trunk Moving Squad. Under the name of Associated Student Agencies, it grew to more than 10 businesses in the 1950s, including Coat Checking at the Palestra, Railway Express, and a birthday cake shop. PSA students worked at Pennsylvania’s central control point to call in vote tallies during the 1964 presidential election. Adopting its current name in 1975, the organization has since adopted several ventures to its portfolio including apparel manufacturing, tourism guide publications, newspapers, and a bartending school.
There have been a few success stories, such as Penn Closet, that have prevailed with continued interest in the student body after the organization’s founders graduated. Some alumni have gone out and become entrepreneurs on their own by starting competing businesses. It has created unique experiences for students to compete with one of their former colleagues.
Its alumni have each gone off to their own different paths, whether it is med school, law school, or serial entrepreneurism. Warren said, “the nice thing about PSA is that you have students who join for different reasons and get different values from it.”
As a professional and an alumnus, Warren views his role as a coach and a mentor. Sticking to the organization’s for-students mantra, he offers students the freedom to conduct day-to-day operations, think through business decisions, and determine whether they made the correct choices.
“PSA fosters that environment where you have the support, you have the resources, and it’s up to the students to decide how they use them. Providing them direction, giving them experience, allowing them to manage teams before even going out in the corporate world gives them a lot of different exposure and experience that they wouldn’t have had if they were simply taking a class.”
Historically each graduating class in PSA is between 30-50 students each year. Currently, PSA retains a database of 600-plus alumni ranging from the class of 2022 all the way back to some as early as 1955. PSA is looking to grow this network!
Pathways to Purposeful Careers: The Unique Narratives of Penn’s Career Advisors
As part of an ongoing effort to explore the people that make University Life a diverse community of educators and humans, I sat down with an ordained minister, a chicken expert, a geographer, an actor, and a podcaster.
What do they have in common?
Each of them works as part of the University of Pennsylvania’s Career Services team.
These five individuals joined the University Life strategic communications team to discuss their own unique career paths and all things career planning. Over takeout lunch from their favorite University City restaurant (Greek Lady), they chewed over the notion that each of their stories demonstrates that discovering a purposeful and meaningful career involves exploration, reflection, and ever-evolving pathways.
I was admittedly nervous about an hour-long lunch with five folks that I have never met. What would we talk about besides resumes and cover letters? What if it ironically seems like a job interview? We soon bonded over chicken tenders and how my preferred condiment was lovingly abbreviated as “honey must—” on our receipt.
Career Services is a storytelling genre. What connects resumes, interviews and networking is telling stories about oneself. It is why I was so interested in hearing the stories that brought an ordained minister, a chicken expert, a geographer, an actor, and a podcaster to the University of Pennsylvania.
“What I've appreciated about our office is really, that every person working in it doesn't have to have the same cookie cutter background,” Senior Associate Director Dr. Sharon Fleshman said. “There's this interesting thing about different people and what they bring.”
Dr. Fleshman’s words could not be truer; I was about to learn about each of their authentic selves and their own, unique career trajectories.
Dr. Sharon Fleshman
she/her
Senior Associate Director
Dr. Sharon Fleshman has been a stalwart at Career Services since the turn of the century. In her role, Sharon provides career advice to students in three schools: the School of Nursing, the Graduate School of Education, and the School of Social Policy and Practice.
Sharon empowers students seeking social impact careers to define their own paths by discovering and articulating their skills, strengths, and work values. Reflecting on her own experience, Sharon graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. She continued her education with master’s degrees from New York University’s Stern School of Business and Westminster Theological Seminary, and a Doctor of Ministry degree from Northern Seminary in Illinois. Dr. Fleshman is an ordained minister who emphasizes spirituality, vocation, and social justice in her sermons and ministry.
When she graduated from Penn, Sharon never thought that she would be working at her alma mater. She began her professional career in consulting but, in retrospect, found it isolating. From there, she ended up working in the nonprofit industry, trying to discover what fit well with her interests. With her career taking some “interesting turns,” she thought to herself, ‘Why not Career Services’?
“I always felt like the irony was that I never really used Career Services as a Penn student except for submitting resumes for on-campus recruiting.”
Sharon’s journey at Penn started at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Being an African American, female-identifying student in the male-dominated field of STEM forged Sharon’s philosophical approach to social equity and wellness. She is passionate about the work and leverages her role in Career Services to lean into helping first-generation students of color navigate the stress of an Ivy League education. Sharon’s passion for her work also extends beyond the walls of Career Services and into the Penn community where she serves as the co-chair of the JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) Committee.
Her experience as an ordained minister has honed her listening skills, especially when advising students and teaching them to mine their own stories to discover their passions. She loves helping students understand their sphere of influence and impact, giving them the confidence to share their story with a future employer. Sharon emphasizes the importance of “giving students permission to share stories that highlight their strengths and impact.”
With her work expanding across three different schools, Sharon champions an underlying, collective focus on social impact. Since the death of George Floyd sparked a nationwide discussion on diversity, equity, and inclusion issues, there has been a need to help students navigate its impact in the career field, discovering whether employers are committed to social justice in the workplace.
Twenty-two years after joining Career Services, Sharon is still passionate about helping students make career connections and discovering socially impactful careers. “Social impact can come from any career field. You can still have your values whether you are working in finance or social work. How do you align those with your career?”
Dr. Joseph Barber
he/him
Director, Graduate Career Initiatives
Every path of Dr. Joseph Barber’s career has had a creative bent, whether that is researching chicken behavior or advising Penn graduate students.
Joseph presides over the newly formed position of Director of Graduate Career Initiatives. He oversees two teams that work with graduate and postdoc students. “It’s an emerging and evolving position whereby we’re trying to be more efficient with bigger picture, scalable, exciting initiatives.”
Oddly enough, Joseph’s creative journey began researching animal behavior as a doctorate student at University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Delving into statistics was not exactly his cup of tea, but Joseph did love the process of thinking of new and interesting research questions about chickens. And writing engaging, funny titles. As he was submitting an article to be published in a journal, one of the anonymous reviewers told him that his title — Queues at the Canteen: Why Do Chickens Get Together When They Eat — had to be dialed back. It turned him away from the world of formal scientific publishing forever.
He eventually edited and co-authored a book on chickens. Analyzing the evolution and behavior of modern fowl, The Chicken: A Natural History explores the evolution of the domesticated chicken and provides a comprehensive, illustrated guide to understanding how chickens live, think, and act both alongside people and independently.
Not wanting to be the chicken expert forever, Joseph found a position that valued his research and his English accent in the United States. He worked as a Research Fellow at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando. After a consulting role completed during the Recession, Barber found himself reimagining his career once again.
At Penn, he found a role in Career Services that checked all the boxes: providing him access to literature to assist his research, allowing him to teach animal behavior as an adjunct at Hunter College, and welcomed his sense of humor. Joseph found a career that leveraged his STEM background that understood the graduate population and the challenges they experience.
“Every day requires me to be creative. It requires me to see the world through other people’s eyes, which is exactly what an animal behaviorist does, but within other species. It requires me to find ways to get information across and communicate effectively.
“Anything that I do here connects with what I enjoy doing most — creativity.”
His ability to find new doors and windows in his career enables Barber to instill optimism in his students. By nature, doctoral studies can feel very isolated. From his own personal experience, Joseph said that the challenge with academia is that there is not a lot of positive reinforcement. Whether it is the competitiveness of publishing or demands of funding, critical feedback is in the forefront, and rarely is there someone telling students they are doing a fabulous job or complimenting their skills.
Joseph strings together the evolutionary thread that connects chickens with graduate students.
“In the world of animal behavior, people do more of the things they are positively reinforced to do. If there is no positive reinforcement (or transferrable professional skills), people will lose the ability to see all the skills they have. By providing optimism to teach students that they do have skills and versatility, they are in a much better position no matter what career they pursue. It is 125% of what we do at Career Services.”
Every year is like an Etch-a-Sketch. There is a whole new set of students that come in with the same wonder, awe, uncertainty, and doubt. His job is to reinforce positivity, teach versatility, and support their career explorations.
Lisa Giang
she/them
Administrative Coordinator
Like many young college graduates, Lisa found herself in the throes of a pandemic-stricken job market. Lisa joined Career Services in January 2022, and it was their fourth job in less than 18 months.
“I exemplify what career trends look like during the pandemic. I did not stay a year at a single job. There was a lot of uncertainty. Even if COVID had not happened the year I graduated, I still would not have known where I was going to end or what I was going to do.”
As an Administrative Coordinator, Lisa works in a joint role that supports graduate and postdoc students, as well as the nursing, education, and social policy programs. Lisa does a lot of the work behind the scenes, providing much of the support behind advising appointments and collaborating with the data and resources team to create the First Destination Survey (FDS); providing a snapshot of post-graduation employment and continuing education outcomes.
She found her niche in Career Services after thinking outside of the box and exploring jobs that utilized her skill sets and interests but did not align with the traditional trajectory of her major. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in Geography and Urban Studies from Temple University, Lisa moved to a career as a GIS Analyst. It was technical work using programming that they learned in their undergraduate studies. Lisa soon realized that fully remote and technical work did not give her inspiration.
“I needed something where I could be creative when I want to be. I wanted something where I could collaborate with people more frequently than when I was in my home cubicle office.”
She leveraged her technical background and was drawn to the data aspects of the role.
As a young adult, Lisa can relate to college students’ hesitancies about taking advice from a more established career advisor. Giang’s experience as a young person that has lived through post-pandemic employment shifts offers them a perspective that is valuable in the Career Services office.
“In a way, COVID offered what felt like narrowed opportunities. It felt like it changed the way people conceptualize work and how it interacts with their personal lives.”
At Temple, Lisa had internships in a variety of nonprofits including education programs and refugee resettlement services. She hopes to use these experiences to help support Penn students explore their future professions.
J. Michael DeAngelis
he/him
Senior Digital Resources Manager
Michael DeAngelis famously quit during his first interview at the University of Pennsylvania.
His path to Career Services ironically began out of desperation for employment. Shortly after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Theatre Arts from Muhlenberg College, Michael moved to New York City three days prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center. It was a tough time to pursue a theater administration career on Broadway, and he left for Philadelphia, his hometown, a year later. A job at a theater company did not last, and a job at a video store inside of a mall left him feeling miserable and unfulfilled.
Michael had several Penn connections. His mother worked at the Penn Children’s Center, and his father is an alumnus of the Graduate School of Education. Michael was auditing classes in the theater department and realized that he enjoyed being on campus. In his second interview at Career Services, he was asked a hypothetical question about what would happen if he was ever offered his ideal theater job.
“Without hesitation, I said I would quit. In my head, I am screaming, ‘what are you doing?’ But I could not pass on my dream job. I left thinking that I had talked myself out of a job.”
As soon as Michael left the room, the former Director of Career Services told her staff to hire him because you cannot beat an honest person.
“I very quickly found that it was a place that was going to let me use my other interests and talents, and it could help me grow in other ways.”
In his role as Senior Digital Resources Manager, Michael helps Career Services embrace technology to keep pace with an industry that was progressively evolving from an analog to a digital space. He focuses on technology, communication, and innovation within the department. He learned coding, blogging, and eventually podcasting. Eighteen years and three positions later, he is fortunate that he is allowed to experiment and try unusual ways to connect with students.
“It is an office that embraces creativity. That is not why I came to the job. That is what kept me in the job.”
Michael continues to expand his creative passions as a professional podcaster, actor, director, and playwright, noting that he could not replicate that success without the stability and support he received at Penn Career Services. He serves as the managing director of The Porch Room film and theater company, and he wrote several plays that have received award recognition. He produced two plays Off and Off-Off Broadway.
DeAngelis integrated his theater skills into Career Services as a method of preparing students for mock interviews. While assessing Rhodes Scholarship applicants, he discovered that applicants sometimes lacked the ability to articulate their skills through an engaging narrative. Drawing on his performing arts background, he developed a program for using improv techniques for preparing for an interview.
“It is all about getting out of your head, not overthinking things, just being in the moment. There are no questions to which there is a right or wrong answer. They just want to know you. If you say your favorite movie is Star Wars, so much that you can talk about it for three minutes, it is okay.”
Michael is also the co-creator, writer, and producer of the podcast comedy Mission: Rejected. He co-hosts CS Radio, the official podcast of University of Pennsylvania Career Services.
Natty Leach
he/him
Senior Associate Director
Like so many others in his department, Natty fell into Career Services as a ‘happy accident.’ He was a Resident Assistant as an undergraduate student at New York University. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in Media, Culture, and Communication, he realized that a career in higher education appealed to him. He worked at Temple University as a Pre-Health Advisor during his graduate studies in Educational Leadership. Even though he did not have any interest in the health profession, Leach thought of it as a chance to be creative and welcomed the learning curve.
Natty recently moved to a Senior Associate Director position with Wharton undergraduate students after working with the College of Arts & Sciences since 2017.
Career advising allowed him to find connections. He enjoys looking at different careers, job descriptions, and students’ backgrounds, and seeing how the pieces fit together.
Introspectively, that is how Natty sees himself. He tried to find a throughline to what connects his interests outside of work. He is an avid guitarist and gamer.
“Both interests help me feel adaptable and find connections in disparate ways. I can make a strategy out of something that might be harder to connect with.”
Last year, Natty utilized his creative talents and took over co-hosting duties of CS Radio, the official podcast of University of Pennsylvania Career Services. Leach joins Senior Digital Resources Manager J. Michael DeAngelis to have deep and rich conversations about career planning on a weekly basis.
For their 100th and 101st episodes, Natty and Michael intersected tabletop gaming and case interviews. They conducted a short Dungeons and Dragons session with three Career Services counselors and several gamers. The hosts figured the thought processes were similar enough that the counselors can absorb the information from the players’ characters and work out a solution.
Podcasts are another element of Career Services humanizing its office and allowing students to see opportunities in different lights.
“We have seen so much that students value transparency in everything, especially with DEI initiatives. It is making sure that employers really value what they say they value, but also where they can find a human element. I see our podcast as an extension of that. Those types of things in our office are where we can be humans and just talk and have fun. Even if we are having conversations that are broadly related to career services.”
Whether it is a podcaster, guitarist, or a gamer, Leach loves to talk to students and let them think through their own stories and who they are. An important interview skill is having the confidence to be able to bring any question, however philosophical or vague, back to the root of their authentic self.
“You’re always going to be successful answering a question if you’re able to ground it in an example of who you are, what you’re bringing to the team and work environment.”
Office of Fraternity & Sorority Life Models Leadership and Inclusive Excellence
Jessica Ryan, Director of Fraternity & Sorority Life Leadership Community, was selected to serve as the Panhellenic Officer for the Sigma Delta Tau National Sorority Board of Directors for the 2022-23 academic year. Ryan will help drive the organization’s vision, in addition to serving as the Chief Panhellenic Officer to the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC).
She is one of three University of Pennsylvania Office of Fraternity & Sorority Life (OFSL) staff members to volunteer for their national organizations. Associate Director for Diversity & Co-Curricular Programs Janáe Tucker and Administrative Coordinator Rachael Garrett Canfield also hold positions with their alumni sororities on the national and regional levels.
In her role at Penn, Ryan oversees the OFSL staff to lead chapter and council advising, leadership development, and programming areas in fraternity and sorority life.
With over 15 years of experience at the Panhellenic level, Ryan brings a specific knowledge and passion for working with all 26 member organizations in the NPC. She said her volunteer roles strengthened her professional development at Penn by learning about fraternity and sorority life at other universities and working with students throughout the country.
“Sigma Delta Tau has connected me to so many people across generations and from many different backgrounds,” Ryan said. “Being able to volunteer alongside these individuals has truly enriched my life.”
Beginning as an undergraduate at the University of South Florida, Ryan has over 15 years of experience at the Panhellenic level. As a graduate student, she sought out volunteer opportunities with her sorority by connecting young alumnae to the Sigma Delta Tau Foundation. Her involvement expanded for the national organization, traveling to chapters throughout the country as a Recruitment Specialist. Later, Ryan became a Co-Recruitment Chair and Release Figures Methodology (RFM) specialist for the NPC.
Ryan designed Sigma Delta Tau’s first Alternative Break initiative. She led the program for five years, coordinating and leading student members on service-learning activities in Tampa Bay and Philadelphia. It specialized in child advocacy and supported domestic violence victims.
“As a college student, involvement lays a foundation for leadership development, and the structure of fraternities and sororities provides that starting point to engage with programs offered on a national and local level,” Ryan said. “As values-based organizations, members learn a lot about their personal values, and their brothers, sisters, or siblings help their members stay on the path to align these values.
“When you graduate, that shouldn’t all just go away.”
Ryan has volunteered for the Sigma Delta Tau national convention that occurs annually or bi-annually. She has worked on the planning team, presented workshops, and spoken at several national conventions. Ryan said it has “taught me a lot about conference planning and developed my skills as a facilitator and speaker.”
Experiencing the behind-the-scenes and business side of national conventions has guided Ryan in her advisement of Penn’s fraternities and sororities. Involvement in the national fraternity and sorority community helps serve as a model for Penn students to uphold OFSL’s Pillars of Vanguard, Foundation, Compass, Relationship, and Impact. She encourages chapters to use their voice and speak up for positive changes in their national organizations. Ryan helps student leaders identify campuses to connect with at their respective conventions.
“When our students come back from a convention, they are often excited about a speaker they heard or a goal they have,” Ryan said. “As advisors, we take that momentum and help the student leader see their vision come back to life at Penn.”
For Janáe Tucker, being a member of a fraternity or sorority is more than just letters across a person’s chest
“We wear the letters — the letters don’t wear us.”
“We wear the letters — the letters don’t wear us.”
Tucker has carried out that mantra as a sorority alumna. A proud sister of Lambda Theta Alpha, she served on the national convention committee, national constitution, and standing rules committee for LTA. Tucker was the emcee for the national convention.
She has worked closely with her sorority on the national level. Tucker prepares convention speaking advisors, hosts receptions for alumni, and communicates with faculty members.
“For those that stay involved post-undergraduate, the work we do is because we love our organization and want to shape it with great leaders,” Tucker said. “It is most definitely all volunteer, so the love is real.”
Her experience working with national chapters provides her with real-life diversity, equity, and inclusion scenarios that she applies in her role as the Associate Director for Diversity and Co-Curricular Programs at Penn.
National conventions leave her reengaged and energized to come back to Penn with another level of advice and leadership. Tucker points to recruitment tips, interpersonal skills, policy updates, and creative Brotherhood and Sisterhood event ideas as takeaways from her involvement with Lambda Theta Alpha. She said she has gained “advice on how to push the narrative on fraternity and sorority life and its lack of identifying queerness or toxic masculinity topics that organizations usually don’t shed light on as much as they should.”
Tucker is also involved with her undergraduate chapter at Rider University as an alumni advisor. She has served as an area coordinator for two New Jersey regions that consist of 11 undergraduate chapters.
Her commitment to Lambda Theta Alpha national organization is part of her, and she expects to be involved more to raise funds for the organization’s national philanthropy, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Tucker hopes her passion, pride, and charisma serve as a model for students to push hard for the fraternity and sorority community at Penn.
Canfield was appointed to a Budget District Director position at Kappa Alpha Theta at its national convention this summer. She will support chapters with creating budgets and ensuring compliance in a district spanning Indiana, Eastern Tennessee, and Kentucky.
She served as a volunteer alumnae advisor for Penn’s chapter for 12 years. Canfield volunteered regionally at the Philadelphia Alumnae Chapter as a member of the Foundation Reading and Scoring Committee. Canfield recently began her second stint as president of the University of Pennsylvania Advisory Board.
“Personally, I love giving back to the organization that did so much for me, and it was through my experience as a volunteer local advisor that I realized student affairs and fraternity and sorority advising was my passion,” she said. “I would not be working in this office today if I had not started as a volunteer alumnae advisor. I do this work because being in a sorority literally changed my life.”
Canfield currently serves as the Administrative Coordinator at OFSL. She is the human resources and business manager of the department. Canfield handles all financial matters and manages the OFSL Grant Funding Program.
Canfield believes her work as a young delegate of the Kappa Alpha Theta convention body has a large impact on the future of the organization. One of her sorority’s aims is to create the widest Influence for good, and she strives to live to that standard in her role at Penn. Canfield noted the philanthropic side of fraternity and sorority life has shaped her personal philosophy since she was an undergraduate student at Ole Miss.
By working strategically with partners across campus, OFSL lives up to its Vanguard pillar through high-quality programs and enhanced learning resources for students and staff. Canfield added that the department’s 40-plus national organizations work to help Penn fraternity and sorority members become leaders in their community, create inclusive spaces, and maintain their founders’ principles.
OFSL hosts more than 40 fraternities, sororities, and co-ed organizations that include 3,000-plus members. Its philosophy for an optimate fraternal experience is through an active, four-way partnership with each chapter and its leadership, alumni/ae members through advisory boards, national headquarters, and the University of Pennsylvania. This collaboration is essential to providing maximum support to undergraduate chapter members and leaders, and provides a strong, consistent message for the entire community. Visit the OFSL website on chapter information and how to join an organization.
Reimagining Space, Place, & Belonging
Laurie A. Hall, Assistant Vice Provost for Strategic Planning & Operations in University Life, has always brought a community-building lens to her work. From her early career as a certified social worker, through her time as a university administrator, Hall has consistently leveraged her talent and experience to build partnerships, physical spaces, community, and a sense of belonging.
In her current role, Hall oversees the advancement of University Life’s strategic vision and planning. Among her responsibilities, she cultivates strategies for establishing an ethos of dignity, cultural humility, and inclusion. Her team, which includes strategic initiatives, partnerships, communications and design, and strategic operations was created in Spring ‘21 and is uniquely positioned to work cross functionally managing University Life’s mission-oriented projects.
Prior to her time in higher education, Hall spent a decade in the nonprofit sector, reintegrating formerly incarcerated persons and their families into community living. In that organization, she managed an undergraduate internship program that partnered with Rutgers University and Seton Hall University.
Hall identified “a need to go on the inside” to see how social work students were preparing to work within the communities they served. Her first role, as the Director of the Center for Volunteerism and Service Learning at Saint Elizabeth University, required oversight of the training and placement of students in community engagement roles in New Jersey. She later transitioned to Princeton University to assist with the development of its first campus center. She was charged to create internal campus community and cultivate partnerships between the Frist Campus Center and Princeton’s cultural centers. That transition began a 17-year tenure at Princeton in multiple roles, most notably as Assistant Director for Administrative Planning in the Office of the Executive Vice President.
Coming from a nonprofit world that was serving people from disadvantaged backgrounds and trying to reintegrate them into communities, taught Hall how to identify commonalities in groups and build sustainable communities.
The through-line in her career has been making connections between people and creating a sense of community. As a social worker, Hall had to dispel the stigma that those in halfway houses belonged back in prison and were unwelcome in their surroundings–even in their home communities. She later identified that college campuses could feel just as exclusionary, and institutions must make a deliberate effort to cultivate belonging.
Universities have opportunities to consider the needs of the students by engaging their voice in the planning of space. Spaces impact their users and should reflect the people that inhabit them.
“Unless people overtly tell you that you’re welcome in a public space, you don’t know that it is for you,” Hall said. “Four years on campus is a relatively brief time. Students should not have to spend their first year on campus trying to figure out what spaces they should access.”
Reimagining The ARCH
Upon arriving at Penn in 2017, Hall began examining physical spaces at the University of Pennsylvania. Her efforts to reimagine space and place, through the lens of inclusion and belonging, helped craft University Life’s mission and strategic vision of inclusive space and place.
One of the most prominent projects is currently underway: a collaborative re-envisioning of The Arts, Research, and Culture House (ARCH) on 3601 Locust Walk. Slated to re-open in Fall ‘22, The ARCH will fully accommodate the Cultural Resource Centers (CRCs), providing more communal, academic, and event space for its affiliated student organizations.
Hall’s efforts are ensuring that University Life is creating culturally responsive settings for its diverse student organizations. Students should be able to walk into The ARCH and “not just see themselves in the space.” Instead, she said the space should be responsive to their individualized needs.
The enhancements are part of a greater effort by University Life to advocate for facilities that are accessible and inclusive of various perspectives. The quality and adornment of spaces has a strong influence on the students’ experiences. The ARCH will create gathering spaces that meet students’ needs and evolve over the course of their time.
Reimagining Student Agency
A significant aspect of the ARCH expansion project was the centrality of student voices in the process. University Life and the Office of the Provost worked with representatives of the Asian Pacific Student Coalition, Latinx Coalition, Umoja, Natives at Penn, as well as the Undergraduate Assembly, to the planning table to make recommendations around a variety of structural, operational, aesthetic, and physical improvements.
“The philosophy of space and place that University Life provides is giving students agency over the spaces they occupy,” Hall said.
A recurring theme of the students’ recommendations was ensuring that spaces were student-centered and supported community building among the diverse student populations and CRCs that access the facility. They advocated that each floor should evoke a different tone. The ground floor will be reserved for a student-centered place to meet and celebrate culture and identity. Their recommendations suggested the first floor be designed to “create a collective ambiance of community among BIPOC students.”
Aesthetically, the students encouraged design elements that create a unique and modern space that captures the cultures represented in The ARCH. Vibrant murals and interactive walls will celebrate the cultures that call The ARCH home.
“They came at it very professionally,” Hall said. “They were particularly good at it. We were meeting with the furniture designer, and the color palette that they recommended is right on point.”
Hall said Penn students were focused on integrating their academic experience to The ARCH. They recommended that the second floor of the building be primarily oriented towards creating shared working spaces, known as Group Study Rooms (GSRs), like those in Huntsman Hall and Biotech Commons. The building will help link academics and diversity by featuring a cultural library with literature featuring BIPOC authors, large event space for community building, and classrooms for formal courses. The ARCH’s third floor will house workspaces for CRC staff.
Built in 1927, The ARCH was known as The Christian Association until a 2014 restoration revitalized the historic, late-Gothic Revival structure. The Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF) shared the space with cultural resource centers and will relocate in time for the Fall ‘22 semester.
The ARCH will reopen in Fall ‘22 as it transitions into a multicultural center. Based on the student working groups’ recommendations, physical improvements to the building will be made over the course of the 2022-23 academic year.
The second phase of the revitalization will be an assessment of how students use the space throughout the fall and spring semesters. “Students never had the whole building,” Hall said. “There will be parts of the building that CURF occupied that they never had access to.” By Spring ‘22, the planning committee expects to be able to identify what works and does not work as the CRCs evolve with more space.
“In all of our spaces, we are making sure we consider the needs of our undergraduate and graduate students, both in terms of formal programmatic use and their needs for interaction and building relationships across identities,” Hall said.
Through strategic partnerships, operational excellence, and a cohesive vision, each project brings the team one step closer to the shared vision of creating inclusive spaces and cultivating a sense of belonging. Reimagining the ARCH is a transformational project and a shining example of how the Strategic Planning & Operations team manages the full life cycle of University Life’s strategic initiatives.
Embracing Intersectionality: Sean Massa
Awarded prestigious foreign diplomacy fellowship, Alumnus credits a sense of belonging found in Penn’s LGBT Center, GIC, and Native communities.
Before Sean Massa (C’15) could apprehend the intercultural understanding needed to launch a career in foreign diplomacy, he first had to discover his own individual identity.
There was an immediate impact the day he set foot on the University of Pennsylvania campus. Massa began a journey into understanding his own self as a queer student with Native, Pacific Island, Latino, Asian, and Eastern European heritages — the intersectionality of his various identities.
Through acknowledgement of the different forms of discrimination faced as a diverse and queer student, Massa found a sense of belonging in University Life’s cultural centers that helped him thrive.
It is no coincidence that his personal exploration began on the steps of the Greenfield Intercultural Center. The GIC became a home away from home during his time in Philadelphia. Through inclusive spaces and programming initiatives, as well as relationships formed with Penn students from diverse backgrounds, the GIC made a particular impact on his personal development as a multiracial student.
“It’s easy to feel like you’re not enough of one thing or the other – you’re not Latinx enough, you’re not Asian enough, you’re not whatever enough,” Massa said. “The GIC people came from these vastly diverse backgrounds. No matter what you were, you were accepted, and you belonged. Not only that, but they also took that angle to other forms of identity beyond ethnicity, like religious identity or socioeconomic background.”
Embracing his identities forged his passion for intercultural engagement and global affairs that shepherded his career path as a diplomat.
Massa graduated from Penn in 2015 with a major in Health and Societies with a concentration in global health and a minor in philosophy. He was a baccalaureate speaker, in addition to serving as a representative on the United Minorities Council.
Pivotal Moments
Massa grew up in San Jose, Calif., a multicultural city that in many ways was a melting pot that was much like his own. He identifies as Mexican and Apache on his maternal side, and Japanese, Hawaiian, and Lithuanian on his paternal side.
Almost immediately, he was drawn to Natives at Penn, a student organization that represents indigenous students. On his first day on campus, Vanessa Iyua, former associate director at the GIC, handed him a Natives at Penn brochure and a Daily Pennsylvanian article on its annual powwow. In many ways, Massa and four other students were being handed over the leadership. Together, they rebuilt the organization, formerly known as Six Directions, from the ground up.
As co-chair, Massa advocated for the Native community on campus by promoting the recruitment and retention of Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Native Alaskan students, as well as connecting students, alumni, and allies in cultural awareness events. Natives at Penn reorganized a room on the third floor of the GIC that they could call their own space, complete with a library and meeting room. The organization hosted a campus powwow that celebrated traditional and modern indigenous culture with singing, dancing, music, food, jewelry, and clothes.
“We were a community,” Massa said. “We looked out for each other. We came from different backgrounds – some of us came from reservations, but most came from the big cities.”
His involvement expanded to a vice president position on the Ivy Native Council, a consortium of the campus organizations across the Ivy League. In that role, he learned from different indigenous groups and understood best practices for addressing certain issues facing those communities. Ivy Native Council met with the National Congress of American Indians to discuss the name controversy with sports mascots, specifically for the Washington football team.
Massa was also involved with the Penn LGBT Center. He was a participant in the LGBT mentorship program and co-chaired the Queer Christian Fellowship.
Massa’s interest in global affairs was piqued by a unique semester-long study abroad opportunity through School for International Training’s International Honors Program. He studied global health and community health in Vietnam, South Africa, and Brazil.
“That was a very pivotal moment for me in terms of getting that international exposure that I had not been introduced to before,” Massa said. “It really changed my perspective upon coming back and then beyond Penn.”
“We were a community,” Massa said. “We looked out for each other. We came from different backgrounds – some of us came from reservations, but most came from the big cities."
Mentors & Safe Spaces
Director of the GIC Valerie De Cruz first welcomed Massa through his involvement with Natives at Penn and made him feel welcome in his first year. Like many minority students that arrive on an Ivy League campus, Massa, who also identifies as queer, felt imposter syndrome. Massa used De Cruz as a resource anytime he was processing issues of belonging or personal identity.
“She reminded me that I deserve to be there,” Massa said. “When I felt unsure of my own kind of place in the Native community because I am an urban Native, as opposed to someone that grew up on a reservation, she reminded me of my value. She even encouraged me to come out even before I fully accepted who I was.
“She recognized that and nurtured me to fully and authentically be who I am.”
De Cruz had the kind of warmth, attentiveness and caring that allowed her to listen to students in a way that makes them feel heard. In a lot of ways, Massa added, she saw through to the distinct parts of his identity.
Massa grew up in a conservative household and attended a private Christian school for most of his childhood. He took a course called iBelieve: Interfaith Dialogue in Action, a partnership between the GIC, Chaplain’s Office, and the Graduate School of Education. iBelieve was an experimental seminar that took students from various religious backgrounds and fostered a dialogue about different topics ranging from conversion to interfaith marriage.
“Most students come to college with what they were raised to believe,” De Cruz said. “Sean immersed himself in various interfaith groups. He expanded his worldview, and it allowed him to think how he would see himself in the world.”
Massa credits Steve Kocher, Senior Associate Chaplain and Director of the Spiritual & Religious Life Center (SPARC); and Kathleen Hall, Associate Professor of Education and Anthropology, for providing a safe space to confront challenges to his own beliefs.
“That was eye-opening to me in terms of expanding my own worldview and my own understanding of what faith meant to me and my identity,” Massa said. “In a lot of ways, I had grown up in a background that did not fully encourage me to be who I was.”
He served as an upperclassman teaching assistant for iBelieve. Later, as a Penn alumnus, he continues to make an impact at the GIC by mentoring first-generation and low-income students.
Massa’s experiences with the GIC provided him with connections to parts of his own identity that were disconnected to his Bay Area upbringing. He said he felt more grounded in his own Native identity through meeting other students from indigenous backgrounds. Before his sophomore year, he volunteered for College Horizons, a non-profit organization that helps Native American high school students prepare for college. Meeting Native Hawaiians that saw him as one of their own reaffirmed his own identity to his father’s Hawaiian upbringing.
Pipeline of Diversity
In February, Massa was awarded the Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Fellowship. Funded through the U.S. Department of State and administered by Howard University, the Rangel Fellowship is a prestigious pipeline program for diverse individuals that wish to pursue careers in foreign service.
As a Rangel fellow, Massa will intern with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). He is excited about the congressional internship with his home state’s senator because of her sponsorship of the Violence Against Women Act. Specifically, Massa said VAWA has several provisions that address violence against indigenous and native Hawaiian women.
Massa will intern with the State Department the following summer at a U.S. embassy or consulate abroad to gain boots-on-the-ground experience in Foreign Service. Upon his receiving a master’s degree in May 2024, he will begin orientation to become a U.S. Diplomat, a five-year commitment at an international post in either a political or public diplomacy track. Massa hopes to advance democracy, human rights, and peace around the world.
“I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on what kind of career would best suit me,” Massa said. “I realized I enjoy being abroad and navigating the daily challenges of being abroad through foreign languages, problem solving, and adapting. All those things make me come alive.”
After graduating from Penn, Massa was awarded a Princeton in Asia fellowship to teach at Atma Jaya University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and he interned with the United Nations Information Centre and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Jakarta. He received a Master of Arts in Religion at the Yale Divinity School and Master of Laws in Human Rights at University of Hong Kong. Through his LLM program, he picked up the knowledge and skills to promote LGBTQ rights throughout Asia. His dissertation analyzed the legacy of British colonial anti-sodomy laws’ roles in propagating anti-same sex legislation throughout Asia.
His post-graduate experience has also helped shape his career path. At an internship with the United Nations Information Center in Indonesia in 2016-17, Massa met with a mayor to discuss gender empowerment initiatives in the only Indonesian province to practice Sharia.
He moved to Hong Kong in 2018 through a Yale graduate school partnership with the Red Ribbon Centre to conduct research on HIV and ethnic minority and migrant domestic worker communities. Sean also did pro-bono work supporting low-income Hong Kong students pursuing education opportunities in the United States, and he created health and well-being programming with R.U.N. for Refugees, an NGO that works with vulnerable displaced people.
Experiencing Hong Kong’s political unrest movement related to a now-scrapped extradition bill has also motivated his aspirations to become a diplomat. Massa has seen Hong Kong’s ethos change first-hand: its liberal institutions and values have diminished slowly. Political protests have all but ceased, and citizens are hesitant to speak out or voice their opinions. “It made me more aware of the values that the United States upholds and its platform in the world to promote these values and protect them when they are threatened,” he said. “The more I’ve reflected on it, I wanted to pursue a career that would allow me to make a tangible change in that way.”
Throughout June, University Life will celebrate Pride Month with stories and interviews of influential figures in Penn’s LGBTQ community.
Leadership from the Lens of a Former Lawyer
Forty years ago, Tamara Greenfield King, J.D. would have never imagined herself working in higher education, let alone in a senior leadership role on a college campus.
King was a lawyer by trade. A graduate of New York University School of Law, she served as an attorney for more than a decade before transitioning to higher education. After 20 years in student affairs, King arrived at the University of Pennsylvania as the Associate Vice Provost for Student Affairs in 2019.
In her current role as Senior Associate Vice Provost for University Life at Penn, she supervises Career Services, Naval ROTC, the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, Office of Student Affairs, and Platt Student Performing Arts House. During the 2021-2022 academic year, King interimly oversaw the six cultural resource centers on campus: Penn Women’s Center, LGBT Center, Center for Hispanic Excellence: La Casa Latina, Makuu: The Black Cultural Center, Pan-Asian American Community House, and the Greenfield Intercultural Center.
Her legal background aligns fittingly with the University Life Senior Leadership team’s vision of collective wisdom. Using different lived experiences and representation — in Tamara’s case, as a Black woman with extensive courtroom skills — helps the Leadership Team make informed decisions for students to engage, thrive and succeed.
I try to mentor students — more particularly women — to always have a broad base of skills and experiences within your network. So, when an opportunity presents itself, whether you’ve ever considered it or not, you can give it its proper vetting.
A native of Easton, Pa., King attended Penn State University as a first-generation, low-income student. She received her bachelor’s degree in political science with minors in sociology and Black diaspora studies.
As a student in the 1980s, Tamara protested Penn State’s endowment investments in the diamond industry in apartheid-era South Africa. She fought against racism Black students faced in State College, including racist encounters such as appropriation through Halloween masks and costumes. King extrapolates her experience as a young student activist in the early 1980s to her present involvement in higher education.
“When working with students, I understand their passion around a particular topic,” King said. “When students engage in activism, I want them to have well-thought-out ideas, well-planned events, and well-executed advocacy. Because whether we recognize it or not, students can shape the climate and the way the administration responds to a multitude of issues.”
King received her Juris Doctorate degree at NYU School of Law, practicing for 12 years in Cincinnati and the Lehigh Valley. During that time, King also became the first African American Assistant District Attorney in Northampton County, Pennsylvania.
Marriage took King to St. Louis, setting the stage for a career transition. Rather than resetting herself professionally with a new law firm in Missouri, Tamara found a more family-friendly career field in higher education. Admittedly overqualified, she took a position as the Director of Student Conduct and Community Standards at Washington University in St. Louis.
Over 20 years, King’s role at Washington University in St. Louis expanded to become Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Support and Wellness. She oversaw the university’s student health system, sexual violence and prevention office, and behavioral intervention crisis management team. King directed services geared for first-generation and low-income students by addressing basic needs insecurity.
King said her background allows her to look at situations through different lenses. She looks at them from a lawyer’s perspective with a focus on meeting compliance, managing risk, and following procedure. She can see them from a student affairs viewpoint, as she has now been in an academic setting longer than she has a courtroom. Tamara also views issues as a former Pell recipient that attended college long before additional resources were available for low-income students.
During her time at Washington University in St. Louis, she became one of higher education’s most prominent voices in student conduct and Title IX. King served as the first Black president in the Association for Student Conduct Administration.
In late March, King joined the rest of the University Life Leadership Team at the Women of Color in Higher Education Summit, hosted by Penn’s Graduate School of Education, Center for Professional Learning, and Office of Student Services. During her remarks, she stated it is imperative for women of color to research and write within their own areas of expertise, noting that higher education needs to have diverse perspectives as part of the teaching and learning of graduate and professional students heading into the profession.
King stressed the importance of developing social networks, mentorships, and supports — “sister circles” — for female students of color. “We have to teach the importance of networking and mentoring,” she added. “To the extent that you’re able to help people make things happen, then you should mentor folks. You should also be surrounded by mentors who don’t all look like you, who all aren’t the same gender, and who are different, but still can serve as a positive mentor for you.”
Tamara said she is proud to be a part of the “most likely the most diverse leadership team in the Ivys.” Uniquely comprised of all female-identified women that are Persons of Color, the University Life’s leadership team comes together to have frank and open conversations about what can be seen as Penn’s strengths. Diverse representation also allows them to see systematic flaws within the approach to student affairs and gives everyone at the student table an equitable voice.
“When a new student arrives on campus and sees people of color, specifically women of color in significant leadership roles, it demonstrates an institutional level of appreciation of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging,” King said. “We’re proud to say, we are able to walk the talk, because we come with that perspective.”
The Leadership Series will continue throughout May with feature stories on Sharon Smith, Associate Vice Provost for University Life, and her reconstruction of departments around the concept of community care to support students in crisis; Laurie A. Hall, Assistant Vice Provost for Strategic Planning and Operations, and her reimagination of how Penn uses space through a social justice lens; and the division’s success at NASPA as an embodiment of collective wisdom.