John A. Fry: In October, I spoke to the university community about my hopes for what we can do to work with our neighbors in Powelton Village and Mantua to really improve everyone's collective experience and quality of life.
What I've done with my team since then has been pretty relentless in following those plans. We've had a housing-incentive program to encourage faculty and professional staff to buy homes in the neighborhood. We have greatly expanded our public-safety presence. We're doing a huge amount of work with the Powel School, [at 301 N. 36th St.], which is our K-through-4 school.
Q: What kind of work are you doing with Powel?
Fry: We are helping them with a variety of things, from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education through the physical condition of their facility through making resources available for them to do the sort of added extras that they'd like to do but aren't funded to do.
Q: How do you make the case that helping the neighborhoods around Drexel is consistent with the university's mission of higher education?
Fry: You can look at this in two ways. The first argument is that it's in our self-interest as a university to make sure that not only our campus but our surrounding neighborhoods are strong and vibrant places, because that helps us attract and retain the best students and faculty.
The other argument, which frankly I find more compelling, is that we as an institution are supposed to stand for something beyond teaching and research, and that's for service to our community and living out our ideals.
Q: What about Drexel's campus itself?
Fry: We're doing a campus master plan right now. . . .
I think you can look forward to, in the next four to five years, a significant series of academic and residential and what I would call quality-of-life projects on the Drexel campus.
