He joined with Anna Balfanz (far left), Erica DePalma (second from left) and Cooper Yerby (not pictured) to put together a successful proposal to support Cobbs Creek.
Ocek Eke (hands raised) was already familiar with the Center when he learned about the Projects for Progress opportunity. “I spoke with some colleagues and thought it was a long shot, but they said if you don’t apply, you can’t win.” When the call for P4P proposals went out early in 2021, “a lightbulb went off in my head,” Eke says. Visiting the Center several years ago while looking for service-learning opportunities for Penn Engineering students, Eke was struck by the beauty of its setting-and the untapped potential for Penn student, staff, and faculty engagement. Located at 63rd and Catharine streets, the Center’s sloping driveway ushers visitors into a green “oasis,” where “the city falls away behind you,” says Ocek Eke, director for graduate student academic programming at the School of Engineering and Applied Science. A partnership with the city led to the site coming under Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation stewardship in 2017. The Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Center arose from a nonprofit organization launched in the early 1990s by neighborhood resident and long-time educator Carole Williams-Green. The tools they’ve provided and the relationships they’ve built will help foster a love of science and nature in the Center’s visitors for many years to come.” A community touchstone “The team that came together under the Projects for Progress initiative has worked with creativity and a collaborative mindset for the last year and a half. “Now more than ever, our society understands the value of green spaces and of STEM education, and the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center provides both for West Philadelphia families and students,” says President Liz Magill. Their goal is to promote equitable access to STEM education for residents of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood. The Robeson students, part of a summer enrichment program supported by Penn’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships, were in an ideal place to be immersed in environmental education: The 850 acres of woods, creeks, meadows, and trails of Cobbs Creek Park and the CCCEC, which has served as a cornerstone of environmental education and outreach for three decades.įor the last year, with support from a Projects for Progress (P4P) award, a team from Penn has collaborated with Center staff and the Cobbs Creek community to enhance resources to support similar learning opportunities at the CCCEC.
Unfurling a giant tape measure across a grassy field just beyond the Center’s parking lot, the students plotted out the expanse of open space represented by a single pixel of remote sensing data. Penn’s Jane Dmochowski, a senior lecturer in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science, along with undergraduate assistant Henry Feldman, graduate student Melanie Chu and Water Center at Penn staff member Jazmin Ricks, led a discussion on the technique of remote sensing to evaluate the landscape over vast scales.Īfter a quick lesson, the group ventured outside to see just how vast. Half a dozen students from West Philadelphia’s Paul Robeson High School gathered around a seminar table, examining photos they had taken of vegetation on the Center’s property earlier in the week.
That was the main item on the agenda on a warm Friday morning in late July. It’s a space wholly designed for piquing students’ curiosity about nature and science. In the Carole Williams-Green Environmental Education and Exhibits Room in the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Center (CCCEC), fishing poles line one wall, paintings of birds decorate another, and tables around the light-filled room display duck decoys, an aquarium with a swimming turtle, and found specimens like wasp and bird nests.
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