Event

It is the 45th anniversary of the first graduating class of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, and you are invited to join us for brunch and a panel discussion. Hear from alumni from three different periods in Urban Studies’ history -- Jay Rosner (1971), Hoa Duong Piyaka (2001), and Gina Dukes (2016) -- as they talk about their experiences as majors, how the historical context shaped their experiences as undergraduates and early careers/plans, and the extent to which their career histories do or might reflect this early set of influences.

Come with your thoughts and stories!

Alumni Panelists:

Jay Rosner (URBS 1971)

  A national admissions test expert based in the San Francisco bay area, Jay Rosner has a career that has combined education and law, with an emphasis on student advocacy. He specializes in providing test preparation resources to low-income and underrepresented minority students for the SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE, MCAT and LSAT. As the Executive Director of nonprofit The Princeton Review Foundation, he has developed programs jointly with universities (including Penn) and with organizations such as NAACP, Hispanic Scholarship Fund, College & Graduate Horizons (serving Native American students) and Asian Pacific Fund. With his background in law and education, Jay has been called on to be an expert witness -- in favor of affirmative action in Grutter, the landmark Michigan Law School case -- and to testify before state legislative committees across the U.S.  He has written op-eds (most recently May 1, 2016 in the LA Times) on test fairness, and is co-author of a law review article cited in several briefs submitted in the last few Supreme Court affirmative action cases. He has served as a national advisor and resource to students having disputes with testing companies, consulted on testing and test preparation to a wide variety of groups, and regularly does presentations and workshops at educational conferences and for universities, high schools and nonprofit groups. He was on the legal team that has the only two lawsuit victories ever by students against ETS, one of which (Dalton) is in contracts casebooks. Jay is quoted regularly in print media (the NY Times, etc.) and has appeared on panel talk shows on national public television and NPR. For his work with minority premedical students, in 2002 Jay was awarded the Howard D. Ingram, MD, Humanitarian Award by the Vines Medical Society of San Bernardino, California. Prior to becoming the executive director of The Princeton Review Foundation in 1995, Jay had been General Counsel at The Princeton Review. Before attending law school, Jay was a public high school math teacher for two years at the Alternative Schools Project in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania. In addition to his Penn degree, Jay holds a JD from Widener University. He is the proud father of two college-educated daughters.

Hoa Duong Piyaka (URBS 2001)

Hoa Duong Piyaka has worked in the field of international human rights and philanthropy. She has extensive experience in program management, grant making, and public policy in a variety of settings. She has held program officer positions focused on Southeast Asia at the Fund for Global Human Rights where in under three years she tripled the program grants portfolio and budget, including the launch of the organization’s Burma program, and at the Global Fund for Children, where she managed a nine-country grant making portfolio to support youth programs. She founded and chaired the Asia Pacific Funders Working Group, a collective of Asia-focused human rights institutional donors to strategically leverage resources to the region. Her thematic knowledge of forced migration, anti-trafficking, and refugee issues is grounded in policy advising and program management at the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Kenya. Hoa earned her BA at Penn with a double major in Philosophy, Politics, Economics (PPE) and Urban Studies. She has a Master’s of Public Policy degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. During her sophomore year at Penn, Hoa was elected Chair of the Asia Pacific Student Coalition, and partnered with students and staff to establish the Pan-Asian American Community House (PAACH) and the Asian Pacific American Women’s Leadership Initiative (APAWLI). She continues to support PAACH as a member of its Advisory Board. She currently lives with her family in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Gina Dukes (URBS 2016)

Gina Dukes’ is graduating this year with a major in Urban Studies and a minor in Urban Education. Gina came to Penn with a passion for social justice and education and a record of activism and achievement in the arts through Philly Young Playwrights and Youth Poetry Movement. Her activities at Penn reflect these same passions. She has worked with the Netter Center for Community Partnerships designing and providing instruction to students and adults and working with a group of afterschool youth at Lea School. She is a member of Onyx Senior Honor Society and a dance instructor for Odunde 365 youth program. Her internships include Art Sanctuary, the Philadelphia Youth Commission, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Agatson Urban Nutrition Initiative. She studied abroad in her junior year through the Cities in the 21st Century program traveling to Brazil, India, and South Africa. At Penn, Gina co-founded SOUL (Students Organizing for Unity and Liberation), a student organization mobilizing against racial injustices and oppressive capitalist state sanctioned inequality. Through SOUL, Gina works to eradicate the marginalization of Black and Brown people through raising social and political consciousness, direct action organizing, political mobilization, and community building initiatives to create and sustain a movement for ending systemic complexes that oppress communities of color.