After a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic, Penn’s annual Take Our Children to Work Day event will return to campus on April 27. This event is geared towards children ages 9-15, with age-appropriate academic learning activities, although children of any age are welcome to attend. Take Our Children to Work Day provides youth with an opportunity to explore different career paths while having fun. All faculty and staff are invited to sponsor a young guest to participate.

Take Our Children to Work Day is more than just a chance for children to tag along with you on the job. It gives youth enriching hands-on experiences in Penn’s innovative, diverse work environments.

Penn celebrates this event by providing an array of activities and programs that inspire youth, while introducing them to the workplace and higher education.

Participants can sample a variety of fields from athletics to robotics. Plus, each child can get a souvenir PennCard with their photo!

Schools, departments, and groups across Penn are collaborating to offer dozens of developmental activities this year, including:

• Passport to the World: Join International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) for a morning of learning, exploring, and creating art with the ISSS staff. Students will have the opportunity to visit several activity stations and “explore the world” and work of ISSS.  Activities such as coloring; introduction to information, inquiries, and data; and interactive stations covering a variety of cultures and languages are just some of the offerings.
• Robots, Mazes & Innovative Work: Come down to the Pennovation Works campus to learn about the innovative work done by the GRASP Lab at Penn and build your own robot.  Learn to build a minimalist robot and try to race them through a maze.
• A Day in the Bio-Lab Life: Come and see all the cool toys, uh, important equipment, that our bioengineering students get to use in our Bio-Maker Space. Watch a robotic arm controlled by muscle contractions, see cool projects using our laser cutter, and watch our 3D printer bring cartoon characters to life.
• Hands-On Fun with Simulated Patients: This interactive session explores the use of mannequins as a teaching method in preparing nursing students to care for real patients. Participants will listen to heart and lung sounds, feel for pulses, and team up to “treat” the mannequin for various illnesses.
• Penn Vet Working Dog Center Demo: See first-hand what it takes to train the nation’s leading detection dogs to serve in explosive detection, search and rescue, medical and environmental detection, and more. Enjoy a demo of the dogs in action.  
• Try Your First Case: Order in the court!  Have you watched movies and TV shows that feature attorneys arguing on behalf of their clients? Have you ever thought, “I could do that?” Now you can.  Come to Penn Law and be a lawyer for the day. Your client is involved in a high-stakes trial and your job is to argue the case. Working with your fellow attorneys, you will represent your client in a real courtroom in front of a judge and jury.

During this entertaining day, participants can also enjoy the Penn Relays, explore the Penn Museum, go backstage at Penn Live Arts, play mini-golf at the library, skate at Penn’s Ice Rink, enjoy expanded offerings from Penn Engineering such as learning about chemical and biomolecular engineering through Boba Tea Making, and much more.

You can see all of this year’s activities on the division of Human Resources Take Our Children to Work Day website.

Registration opens on Monday, April 3 at 9 a.m. Sessions include activities in three different categories. Get to Know Penn’s Campus and Wellness Activities are both primarily open registration, unless otherwise indicated, and you and the children may attend as many as you like. Youth and their sponsors may only attend one special topic activity. Mark your calendar to register on April 3 because space is limited for certain events.

Supervisor approval is required for staff to participate. Participating staff must accompany children to all activities, so be sure to work with your supervisor to ensure coverage for operational needs.

—Division of Human Resources