Interim Provost Beth Winkelstein and Netter Center Director Ira Harkavy have named Loretta Flanagan-Cato, associate professor of psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences, and the science program at Paul Robeson High School, led by Louis Lozzi, Brian Horn, and David Rowe, as the recipients of the 2022 Provost/Netter Center Faculty-Community Partnership Award.

The Provost/Netter Center Faculty-Community Partnership Award is an annual award that recognizes sustained and productive faculty-community partnership projects. This recognition awards $10,000 ($5,000 to the faculty member and $5,000 to the community partner) in order to further develop the partnership project.

Dr. Flanagan-Cato is an associate professor of psychology and co-director of the Undergraduate Neuroscience Program at Penn. She and the science program teachers at Paul Robeson High School have partnered together since 2018 for the Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course “Everyday Neuroscience.” This award recognizes the quality and far-reaching impacts of “Everyday Neuroscience,” the additional Penn-Robeson partnerships cultivated by this faculty-community team, and Dr. Flanagan-Cato’s leadership in advancing research on community-engaged scholarship at Penn.

In “Everyday Neuroscience,” Penn students develop science communication and teaching skills by implementing hands-on labs with 10th graders at Paul Robeson High School that develop foundational STEM skills and scientific curiosity. Dr. Flanagan-Cato and the science teachers at Robeson work together each year to align the labs with the high school students’ classroom instruction. Louis Lozzi, the Paul Robeson High School school-based teacher lead for science/mathematics, noted that the Penn-Robeson STEM partnerships his team cultivated with Dr. Flanagan-Cato has significantly contributed to the growth in Robeson students’ scores on the Pennsylvania Keystone exam in recent years.

Dr. Flanagan-Cato has also published research on the course’s impacts on Penn students, which found preliminary indicators of growth in Penn student well-being, confidence in expressing their own ideas, and social awareness/informed citizenship. This partnership exemplifies a meaningful and mutually transformative integration of research, teaching, learning, and service.

An award ceremony was held on December 12 in Houston Hall, during which Vice Provost for Faculty Laura Perna and Netter Center founding director Ira Harkavy presented the Provost/Netter Center Faculty-Community Partnership Award.