Embrace the N.E.R.D. Academic Challenge!

Embrace the N.E.R.D. is a co-curricular program that encourages students to use the PRCC Library to cultivate better study habits and achieve academic success through Notes. Engagement. Reading and Discussion.

Social Justice Series

Each year Penn State students interactively explore historic and contemporary issues affecting the world at large. This social justice programming initiative educates audiences on social structures that work in opposition to the achievement of justice.

• Social Justice Peer Educators & Symposium
• Tunnel of Oppression  - The Tunnel of Oppression is intended to be eye-opening and consciousness raising and is built as a brief introductory experience for those students who have rarely experienced difference. The rationale is that students are often unable to fully understand oppression and discrimination until they have experienced it first-hand.

Community Leadership Programs

Community Leadership Programs educate students on the intersections of servant leadership, community engagement, and cultural identity. Programs have taken the shape of leadership courses, community leadership exchanges, and education abroad trips.  

• Rutgers Exchange  

The Diaspora Institute is a semester long leadership experience that is centered on under-represented cultures.  Through weekly sessions, students are exposed to cultural discovery, leadership models, practices of past leaders of color, contemporary social and pollitical issues, and provided opportunities to explore current needs of various cultural communities.

Arts & Social Action Series

This series focuses on the use of poetry/spoken word and music as tools to educate communities on critical contemporary social issues. This series has taken on many formats in the past including a popular culture symposium featuring Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, and the Roots; a cultural practitioner in residence initiative which invited an emerging artists to campus; the creation of an integrated arts student performance troupe; and the sponsorship of an arts in social action spring break to Trinidad & Tobago.  

• Collective Energy

As part of an interactive educational experience, undergraduate and graduate students integrate poetry/spoken word and music into joint complex performances that focus on critical contemporary social issues.