Temple attempts to forcibly divide and relocate the 33 year old PASCEP program.
Philadelphia, PA June 2008
Temple University is forcing its vanguard community education program, the
Pan-African Studies Community Education Program (PASCEP) to vacate its current space at 1114 W. Berks St. in Anderson Hall room 840 and relocate to the “Entertainment & Community Education Center" located at 1509 Cecil B. Moore, a space ¼ the size needed for the program to continue to offer its classes.
The current program Director, Mr. Yumy Odom is quoted as saying “Essentially, this relocation would force PASCEP to reduce the current 85 classes to 28 or so, eliminate almost all of the PASCEP community outreach initiatives, and take PASCEP back to 1980 levels.”
PASCEP is the fifth largest “school” at Temple University and currently averages 1100 students per semester with 28 classes per night, four nights a week for four semesters a year and it is all run by two paid faculty members and over 80 volunteer instructors and staff.
Temple has yet to clearly and directly state its reason for wanting to move PASCEP.
The program, which originally moved onto Temple’s campus in 1979 under the then Pan-African studies department, has been in existence since 1975. Founded by Annie D. Hyman, a graduate of Temple, PASCEP is a low cost, non-credit continuing education program and was designed to inspire residents of the surrounding North Philadelphia community to seek higher education by first introducing them to low cost courses within the settings of a college campus. The program has run successfully for over 33 years but as of the Fall semester of 2008, all that may come to an end without direct and immediate action.
Thank you
Friends of PASCEP
