Dr. Laurie Grobman serves as distinguished professor of English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State Berks.
Throughout her 25-year career at the college, Grobman was strived to facilitate collaborations between the college and the community. As a social justice and antiracist educator, Grobman studies and teaches about the many ways language and writing work in the world, whether for good or ill. She and her students often focus on the power of dominant narratives, asking and answering such questions as who controls them, who’s left out and why, what are the consequences of these omissions and erasures, and how do we challenge dominant narratives and make way for alternatives.
Toward these ends, Grobman has facilitated student and community collaborations in the classes she teaches for nearly two decades to produce local storytelling, oral history, and history projects that (re)write and intervene in dominant but distorted narratives of Reading, Pennsylvania, and its people. She and her students have partnered with numerous community organizations and individuals on these projects, such as the NAACP Reading branch, the former Central Pennsylvania African American Museum (CPAAM), Centro Hispano, Olivet Boys and Girls Club, Star City Boxing, the We Are Reading dancers, Latino, Latina, and Latinx activists and change-makers, and more. These projects have led to many close relationships with individuals who live in and work in Reading. And these projects have been successful as a result of mutual respect, open communication, acknowledging mistakes, and moving forward together.
Beyond her own classes, Grobman founded and coordinated the Penn State Berks Center for Service Learning and Community-Based Research from 2010-2018, facilitating more than 50 academically grounded university-community partnerships. The center strove to complete work that was creative and impactful; working together, faculty, community partners, and students chipped away at some of the factors that impede quality of life, from environmental justice and park space to litter reduction to stereotypes and racism. This program received “Exemplary Distinction” from the 2018 Northeast Regional W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award sponsored by the Association of Public & Land-Grant Universities.
Grobman’s commitment to the Reading community extends into her personal life. She considers the Olivet Clinton Street Club a second home and family. In 2013, she started a girls hiking club and has continued it ever since, leading weekly walks on the Schuylkill River Trail and participating in numerous other club activities, including monthly pizza parties.
“I aim to make every child feel loved, seen, and heard,” says Grobman. “I want them to know they can count on me to show up. I experience their love, joy, and laughter. And I listen to their stories. For ten straight years, I’ve seen the potential of every child in that building. And every child everywhere deserves to live without fear of violence,” she concluded.