Good Universities Make Good Neighbors – Transcript
JEN KEBEA
For the institution to thrive, the community that it’s surrounded by needs to thrive as well.
MAURICE BAYNARD
Welcome to Drexel’s 10,000 Hours Podcast. Our goal is to mine the stories behind our region’s innovators, inventors, and thought creators. We’ll be talking to experts in subjects from fashion to neuroscience to find out what lies behind the passion for their work, the inspiration for their ideas, and the motivation for their creativity. I’m your host, Maurice Baynard.
Jen Kebea is the Executive Director of the Lindy Center for Civic Engagement, and an instructor at Drexel University. She has spent her career in education and nonprofit management. Jen stopped by to discuss what it means for universities to be truly engaged with the people and places, problems and potential, they share with those outside of their own institution.
MAURICE
Tell me about yourself, and tell me about where you grew up.
JEN
Yeah, so I grew up in Conshohocken, small, well it’s not a small, well it’s a decent-sized suburb outside of Philadelphia. I lived there my entire young life until I went to college, which I went right down the street to Chestnut Hill College, exactly seven minutes away from my family home.
MAURICE
So how did you make a decision as to like, when you decided to go to college 10 minutes away, seven minutes away.
JEN
Yeah, seven minutes away.
MAURICE
How’d you make that call?
JEN
How did I make that call? That’s a really good question. So my parents, who are both college educated, but they’re a little nontraditionally college educated. My mom is a nurse. And at that point in time it was very much like vocational school.
So you went. That’s what you did. There wasn’t a whole lot to decide. My father went to college as an adult. So my older brother was born, and he was going to college. So that was a different pathway.
So when it was time to coach us, I think they looked at me and said, you know, she’s got this. She can figure it out. Here, I only applied to one college.
MAURICE
Really?
JEN
I did.
MAURICE
You were really confident.
JEN
I guess.
MAURICE
What did you major in?
JEN
So I was a bio major, biology major. Yeah.
MAURICE
And with a goal of what?
JEN
The goal that just about all bio majors have, to go to medical school. That was the goal.
MAURICE
Absolutely, [INAUDIBLE].
JEN
My mother was a nurse. I was going to be a doctor. That was the plan. Yeah, I did fine for a while, but I think it was actually calc two. I, first time around, got a D. No, D+, I got a D+. And I was like, I gotta do better. It was OK. I could have still moved forward with it. But I took it again, and I got a D.
MAURICE
So there you are with your D–
JEM
Yeah, my D.
MAURICE
In hand in this existential crisis.
JEN
Yep. Absolutely.
MAURICE
I could take this class for a third time.
JEN
For a third time. At this point I was a junior. Because yeah. And I had all the other credits. I could absolutely get the degree in biology, but I was not Med school bound. That was not–
MAURICE
Or I could choose to do something else.
JEN
Something else. So, yeah, while all of that was percolating along, probably what kept me from learning how to study was the fact that I was so involved in all of these extracurriculars in college. So I was student government president. I was yearbook editor. Ran all these other student orgs. And I was devoting my time to that.
And I learned a lot from that. I learned a lot of leadership skills. I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about how to interact with other people, both my peers, but also faculty and people outside the institution.
And I soon realized that, wow, there’s a lot of people here working. This is their job. They are here at the university supporting students. This is a career path. It’s almost the classic higher ed career path story. You don’t even know the field exists until you’re immersed in it.
MAURICE
Right. You go to college, and you either fall in love with the thing that you’re studying or the people who deliver what you’re studying.
JEN
Absolutely. And the place that you’re at, and this space of kind of eternal learning. And really just, yeah, and I didn’t want to leave, so I didn’t. I graduated and rolled right into an admissions job at that school.
MAURICE
Were you surprised that they hired you?
JEN
No.
MAURICE
Of course they’re going to hire me.
JEN
Yes. Again, that ridiculous–
MAURICE
I can run everything around here. I am just that good.
JEN
That ridiculous self-confidence, I don’t know where it came from. Yes, I thought I’d be fine.
MAURICE
So it’s really interesting. It makes me think about the fact that many of us start on this career path, especially when you go to college and you think you know what you want to do. But then you find yourself pulled into all these other things, student government, running trips, and standing up new organizations. Do you think that that’s telling you something? Did you think at the time that in some ways it was saying that your skills lie elsewhere?
JEN
Probably. I think that discernment though, being able to piece that together and understand that your skills are not in the laboratory. You can fuddle your way through that, but that’s not who you are. You’re a people person. You’re supposed to be interacting with folks. You’re supposed to be thinking about other types of success.
Yeah, I mean that’s a discernment that I don’t know too many 18 to 20-year-olds are very good at putting together. It took awhile. Took me a little while, for sure.
MAURICE
So there you are on campus with your first campus job. And you’re in the–
JEN
Admissions office.
MAURICE
In admissions. What’s your job?
JEN
Yeah, so I was an admissions counselor. And so I traveled locally. They didn’t really send us too far to recruit other students to come to the school.
I also planned all the on-campus events. So I start planning open houses and recruitment events, and days for accepted students, and things of that sort. So I got that ability to think about event management, really high-level detail, all of that kind of stuff to bring those kinds of things together, which was a lot of fun for a while. Yeah.
MAURICE
For a while.
JEN
For a while, sure.
MAURICE
So something happened.
JEN
Yeah. So I was there for, gosh, I guess I was there for two and a half or three years. And I transitioned. I went into a different department in the university, also planning events.
I went to the other end of the university, alumni relations, thinking about that space. It was really part of institutional advancement, and thinking about fundraising events. So everything from their annual fund raisers, to alumni weekend, to everything in between, donor recognition events. So again, lots of event planning.
MAURICE
So you’re still there in Chestnut Hill?
JEN
Yeah.
MAURICE
I feel like this story has taken a couple of beats. So but then you don’t stay there.
JEN
No, I don’t. So I was there in total– I’m trying to think– I guess it was maybe four years in total, two years in admissions, maybe two years in institutional advancement. And I knew higher ed was my space.
I was just rolling out of my master’s degree program. And I took a job with Campus Philly, which is aN organization still exists in Philadelphia. It was pretty new at that time. Their mission really centers around recruiting, engaging, and retaining college talent in the area, in Philadelphia. This was at the height of the conversation around brain drain in big cities. That students came to big cities– Boston, Philadelphia, DC– for school, and then they left.
MAURICE
Yeah. How do we keep them around after they graduate?
JEN
How do we keep them here in Philadelphia. And so I was working in that space, really on the retention end side of the spectrum. How do we make sure that companies are going to hire our college educated talent? How are we making sure that they’re ready to accept those students into their workforce? And so that was the space that I worked in.
And tucked into my responsibility was also a community engagement portfolio. So thinking about, really, how do we apply that lens as well into the work.
MAURICE
How did you make your way back into a college setting?
JEN
Yeah, so every job I’ve ever gotten has always been through a connection. And I always point that out to students too, that it’s the rare person who sends the resume into the job funnel that gets hired. And so through my work with Campus Philly, I had the opportunity to really connect with 41 different institutions in the greater Philadelphia region. We have about 90, three, five institutions in the greater Philadelphia. Institutions of higher–
MAURICE
You are heads in beds.
JEN
All over the place. Yeah, and so Campus Philly had this great list of member institutions, and Drexel was really a great partner at that point in time. So we were partnering on job fairs. We were partnering on bringing different groups to campus.
And I got to work with, at that point in time, it was the Center for Civic Engagement at Drexel. So I got to work with them on a nonprofit leaders fair we put together at that point in time. Thinking about the nonprofit track as a career pathway.
And so I got to really know the director at that point in time. His name was Dan Docherty of the Center for Civic Engagement. And within months, I was here working.
MAURICE
I mean, so a lot of people have heard of civic engagement, but they probably couldn’t give you a good definition. So yeah.
JEN
That’s a great question, and if you were to look up, if you were to Google right now, civic engagement, you could find 20 different definitions, many of them academic in nature. And civic engagement though, really is about bringing communities together, bringing people together, around problem solving, around identifying issues of shared concern, shared importance, and thinking together about how to move forward. I mean, that’s really what we think about when we talk about civic engagement.
We have lots of people who conflate it with volunteerism. That’s part of it for sure. Some people conflate it with activism. That’s part of it as well. Voting engagement– all of that is part of civic engagement. But really, how you show up as a community actor is really the encompassing piece.
MAURICE
So now, what’s your role today?
JEN
Today.
MAURICE
Here at Drexel.
JEN
Yeah, so now I lead what is now the Lindy Center for Civic Engagement. So we’re a named center after Phil Lindy. And yeah, and I lead a team of six full time staff. We think about four core areas of the work, really. Community-based learning, we think about civic leadership, how do we engage students in leadership tracks to think about their civic development, think about public service, and also community partnerships. Those are the four core areas of the Lindy Center’s work.
MAURICE
So there are two things I’d really like to highlight. One is from your lens in the classes that you’ve taught and the students that you’ve engaged. What’s a great example that you’ve seen of civic engagement? If you were going to point to something that you’ve seen here in Philadelphia, you go, that’s exactly what we’re talking about.
JEN
What we’re looking at. Yeah. Maybe it’s helpful if I back up a little bit and talk about how Drexel thinks about civic engagement.
MAURICE
Yeah. That’d be fantastic.
JEN
Would that be helpful? OK. So I’ve been here personally since 2009, and in 2010 Drexel got a new president. John Fry rolled into town.
And during his first speech to the university, he wasn’t even inaugurated yet, it was convocation in October of 2010. He addressed the university. He was a convocation speaker, and it was the first time the university was hearing from him. He could have used that platform to identify any number of issues that were important to him, and that he hoped to advance during his presidency. But he use that time to talk about his vision for Drexel to become the most civically engaged university in the nation.
And he not only used those words, he also backed it up with a framework and what he thought that meant. And there are three components to really what engaged universities, in his mind, look like. First, the idea of academic integration. How do we leverage one of Drexel’s biggest resources, all of our connections into the academy. So research, clinical practice, teaching, really to solve public problems, how do we really line that all up.
So that’s a space that higher ed had classically been in. Thinking about community-based learning classes, service learning classes, community-based research– all of that had certainly been in place, but how do we do that here at Drexel more fully? The second space, really, the public service and volunteerism space, another classic space for higher ed institutions to mobilize. And how do we mobilize our people, our students, our faculty, and staff to really address public service needs? That’s another area.
In the third space, really at that point in time, now 10 years ago, was somewhat still new in higher ed, the idea of institutional investment. So how does the university align its purchasing power? The way that it hires, builds, develops real estate, the way that it procures goods and services, really to impact our local community, which we are so inextricably linked to.
And at that point in time, there were talk across the nation about anchor institutions, but it was still kind of new. And for Drexel to be coming out with really this comprehensive strategy, that these are not three disparate areas, but we’re going to think about how they all combine and how we all think about these areas together, was pretty new. And it really put us on the map as an institution in terms of our commitment to this space.
MAURICE
What do you think was in the water at the time that institutions of higher learning decided they could no longer live as these white elephants in the middle of big urban areas, but they had to become integrated in a real way, and even leverage their power to improve their neighborhoods.
JEN
Absolutely. Yeah, so you’re exactly right that for the longest time institutions were these ivory towers. Many of them literally had fences around them, and with an aim of keeping their students in and everybody else out. And in some settings that might not be so scrutinized.
If you have an institution that’s off by itself somewhere on a hillside, OK, fine.
But Drexel is in a community. We sit in a community. And it’s a very diverse community for sure. We have Powelton Village. We’ve got Mantua. We’ve got several other neighborhoods in West Philadelphia.
And starting to think about the inequity that exists in a lot of instances, I think that might have been part of it for sure. But I think underneath all of that, it’s also shared mutual self-interest for the institution to thrive. The community that it’s surrounded by needs to thrive as well.
And so thinking about, really, how do we rise all boats, if that’s possible. How do we start to think about making pathways for, really, community success. And these communities have such incredible assets, incredible histories, incredible community plans and visions for themselves. So how do we start to line up with that, and think about really shared futures together.
MAURICE
So what does the Lindy Center hope for every graduate of Drexel? What do you hope they all take away?
JEN
That they all take away, yeah. That no matter, again, what their lens is in life, what their professional lens is, what their political view is, that they are ready to be informed, active citizens engaged in issues that are important to them. That they have that self awareness and also self-efficacy to be engaged in their communities, wherever they choose to live, and however they choose to engage. That’s my hope.
MAURICE
I often think that people in human-centered careers are technically trying to work themselves out of a job, right?
JEN
Yes, absolutely.
MAURICE
If you work in homelessness, you hope that at the end of the day, you don’t have a job.
JEN
Absolutely.
MAURICE
You see your job, like is that philosophically your goal, that one day you don’t need a center to encourage engagement, diversity, and inclusion because it’s baked into what we do and who we are?
JEN
Yeah, that is such a good point. I think in some instances, Drexel’s commitment to civic engagement, broadly, we absolutely want to see it reverberated across the institution so that we’re not the center pushing it out all the space, so each college and school has it within their own ethos and their own commitments. That’s absolutely a goal.
While I don’t any soon see us out of work because, I mean, there’s so much of, again, that human-centered peace that we do bring into the mix. What I have seen over the last 10 years is such a shift in our students, and really what they already are coming prepared to talk about, and what they’ve already been active in. And, I mean, these gens, these students are so close to community issues. And they know where they stand, and they know their political viewpoints, and they know who they are as a person.
10 years ago, I don’t know that students, at least here Drexel, I’m only talking in the context of what I’ve seen here, were of that ilk. So it’s really interesting to see that shift. That gives me so much hope, so much hope.
MAURICE
Do you think it’s about the state of the world, and the ether that they’ve grown up in?
Absolutely. Absolutely. I totally agree with you that students are growing up with a lot of these contexts, literally, in their very existence as they’re growing up, whether they’re getting this context from the media, or from their families, or from their K to 12 education. Absolutely, I mean they’re coming here with such a critical lens, especially with sustainability space, but many other spaces as well.
MAURICE
So what is your hope for our institution 10 years from now?
JEN
Yeah. I really hope that we continue to aim to authentically engage with the community, that we realize our privilege in the space, and we use it for good. Yeah. I think that we as an institution need to get more ingrained in the conversation around race and equity and inclusion and diversity, and what that means here at Drexel and Philadelphia and in the broader nation. I think that’s a really important conversation to be had. I think we also need as an institution more broadly to make sure we’re rightsizing a lot of these approaches to ensure our sustainability. I mean, there’s also that piece as well. Yeah.
MAURICE
What’s the toughest question you’ve ever been asked in your role?
JEN
Oh, gosh. Toughest question. Mm-hmm.
MAURICE
I’m assuming that there are a lot of rooms that you’re in with really diverse people and ideas.
JEN
Of course.
MAURICE
People coming from different positions, and that somebody zings you with something that you’re just not ready to answer.
JEN
Yeah, for sure. Some of those conversations happen in community spaces where people ask, what is Drexel really doing? What’s really your motivation behind this work?
MAURICE
We totally want to get this one. So allow me. What is Drexel really doing?
JEN
Yeah. So that’s great question, and one I’ve been asked. And I think to be really transparently honest, the work that we’re doing in communities is not altruistic. It is not meant to just do– we’re not doing it out of the depths of our heart. Some people are. I am.
But Drexel is interested in really shared mutual self-interest. Our community here at Drexel will thrive if our surrounding community is thriving. So how do we really bring our shared futures together, and really line up all of those goals. Where are the synergies? Where are the wins that will cross both of our spaces? And that is Drexel’s positioning.
MAURICE
How do we know though? What are we trying to measure? I’m assuming that what that wind that fills our sails might not be, necessarily, the same sail-filling wind.
JEN
Absolutely.
MAURICE
People in our community–
JEN
For sure. So this is broader than the Lindy Center’s work. We think about university-community partnerships at Drexel. And that unit, which I’m part of, has other components. Are Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships, which is a great community engagement center on 35th and Spring Garden here in our community. We’ve got a whole education strategy, and a whole economic development strategy, people working in all of those spaces.
So in that work, Drexel has articulated what we’re really calling our cradle-to-career pipeline. So there are inputs that Drexel and other partners are contributing to. Everything from early child care support, all the way through to, really, workforce opportunities for people in our communities. And on paper it looks beautiful. This beautiful stacked experience with lots of different inputs.
But the question comes, are we really changing people’s lives? Are we getting people jobs? Or jobs that are not just jobs, but jobs that are family-sustaining and have a future, and thinking about what that looks like. The vision that we hold and we can see, a child born into Mantua, are they going to have access to a quality K to eight education?
Well, even before that, quality child care, quality K to eight education? Are they going to be able to go to a high school of choice? And then access a job in this Schuylkill Yards innovation economy that is being built adjacent to Drexel. Will that pipeline hold?
And in the meantime over the next 20 years, while that student’s progressing through that space, how will we support their parents? How have we supported their nuclear family? Their community? How have we looked at all of the health indicators of healthy communities, and tried to contribute in those spaces.
But the critical question is, are all of those goals lined up with what our communities want to do? And that’s something we consistently need to revisit and reimagine, and then double-check.
MAURICE
If you had to grade us on what we’re doing right now, just by effort–
JEN
Yeah. By effort. Yeah.
MAURICE
What would you give us?
JEN
So effort, I mean, we’re putting a lot of resources into this. I’d give a B+. I’m a hard grader.
MAURICE
You are.
JEN
[INAUDIBLE] Yeah, effort. In terms of outcome, yeah, I think we’re still middle of the road. I think we still have a lot of work to do.
MAURICE
What are the barriers to success right now?
JEN
You know, I think I come back to this idea of harm, and then how institutions of higher education have classically, historically, left a lot of harm in the communities that they’re working in. And that doesn’t heal overnight. It does not heal overnight at all.
MAURICE
Do you have a sense of what those actual, what that actual harm looked like on the ground?
JEN
Oh, sure. I mean, sure. From land grabs through eminent domain, through–
MAURICE
Displacement–
JEN
Displacement. I mean, absolutely. Thinking about, I mean, the way that property values just flux, the way communities are turned over. Even here in West Philadelphia, you drive through some of our adjacent neighborhoods, and so many of these big beautiful homes have been subdivided and turned into student housing, and will never be appropriate for a family to live in.
What does that do to neighborhoods? What does that, be it students, or– I joke with students when I, like you’re the worst neighbors ever. And it’s not intrinsically their fault. Their schedules are just so different. They’re up late. They’re socially active.
MAURICE
I didn’t even think of that. Right. So.
JEN
Like, what does that look like?
MAURICE
Your average college student is up and just playing music–
JEN
Bad.
MAURICE
Dragging the streets and getting pizza at 2:00 AM.
JEN
Absolutely.
MAURICE
But his neighbors might–
JEN
Might have a baby. And they might want to go to bed.
MAURICE
Because they got to be up at 6:00 AM.
JEN
Yeah, absolutely.
MAURICE
Go to work.
JEN
Absolutely. You know college students forget to take their trash out, or it stacks up, or for some reason the mattress ends up on the lawn. There’s [INAUDIBLE]
MAURICE
Happens all the time.
JEN
Happens all the time. Yeah, and in communities that are tight, they’re literally tight, what does that do to communities? And so we’ve had some of those conversations with students. Critical conversations about being a good neighbor, and what that looks like. And engaging with folks in your neighborhood. It’s a conversation you have to have every year.
MAURICE
Dr. Jennifer Johnson Kebea, thank you for being on the 10,000 Hours.
JEN
Thank you so much.
MAURICE
Drexel’s 10,000 Hours Podcast is hosted by me, Maurice Baynard. Our producers are Sean Fitzpatrick and Nathan Barrick.
JEN
Drexel’s 10,000 Hours Podcast is powered by Drexel University Online.