Join Collegium Institute for the first Food for Thought module of the Fall 2021 semester! The Food for Thought program is an informal dinner seminar where students engage fundamental questions in community without the stress of grades or papers. Students meet weekly for dinner and conversation at Harrison College House. For more information about past Food for Thought modules, click here.

For the past 18 months, higher education has been salvaged through digital platforms.  Screens were our exclusive classrooms as we all learned together how to learn virtually.  It was a sudden and (conceivably) temporary solution to a crisis, but it was also an acceleration of longer-term developments to shift numerous elements of traditional education onto digital platforms.

Proponents of these shifts celebrate the greater access, convenience, and geospatial connection that they enable.  Critics gesture toward losses in learning, formation, and community, some of which might be measurable and others less tangible.  As we return to campus this fall, this Food For Thought module explores the significance of in-person learning both in principle and in relation to pressing social issues that command our attention today.  By chewing together on provocative texts of the past and present, we ultimately will consider the values and practices of becoming non-virtual human students again.

Participants will receive physical copies of the reader. Readings will be short (approximately 10 pages per week).

Dates: Wednesdays, September 15, September 22, September 29, and October 6.

Time: 5:45pm – 7:00pm

Location: Harrison College House, Seminar Room M20

RSVP: Food for Thought is open to all Penn undergraduate students. To sign up, please complete this google form.