The Penn in Berlin and Rotterdam program in 2018 introduced Penn students to Dutch and German, traditional and progressive pursuits of sustainability. The first half of the class took the students on a trip across the Netherlands, where they had the pleasure of staying in a boathouse that took them from Amsterdam, to Rotterdam, Nijmegen and Den Haag. The students conversed with frontliners in the field of sustainability: environmental academics, green policymakers and think tanks, and even engineers of the great Maeslantkeringstorm surge barrier that has protected the Dutch from devastating floods. In Germany, the students biked throughout Berlin to visit airport-turned-park Tempelhofer Feld, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, and of course, Libeskind's Jewish Museum.
Gabrielle Lynn Utomo, an Architecture and Political Science major and Art History minor, recounts her experience: "Personally, I realized my passion for sustainable design after this trip. Some highlights from the program that I still draw inspiration from today are a solar-powered and sustainably insulated house designed and built by a Dutch architect for his personal residence, a floating cow farm in Rotterdam as a novel response to land scarcity, and the wonderfully bike-friendly streets of both countries that allowed for convenient and zero carbon travel."