Penn senior organizes panel at Republican National Convention via Annenberg class

Isabella Corman, a senior at Rising College, moderated a panel at the Republican National Convention in July 2024. She was the student leader of a delegation from a program at the Annenberg School for Communication.

The course, called “Conventions, Debates, and Campaigns,” is offered every four years at Penn, coinciding with the U.S. presidential election cycle. Each year that the course is offered, Annenberg sends a group of students and staff to the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

Annenberg has been hosting panels for students and the public at both conventions since the 2000s. The initiative, led by professors David Eisenhower, Marjorie Margolies and Craig Snyder, has been running for 16 years in partnership with the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Led by Eisenhower’s input, Corman took the initiative to organize and host a panel at the RNC. She led the preparations, including arranging travel arrangements, guest invitations, and questions from the panel.

“My professor David Eisenhower took the lead in determining what the panel would be about,” Corman told The Daily Pennsylvanian. “And then I decided to go ahead and find the people for (the panel). It was something I didn’t necessarily know I would be doing at the beginning of the course … but I became this student leader of the class.”

Corman will host a panel on the same topic next week at the DNC in Chicago.

The panel, titled Election Keystone: 2024 Pennsylvania Statewide and Down Ballot Races, focused on Pennsylvania’s significant influence on the outcome of past and present presidential elections as a swing state. It featured prominent Republican strategists and political analysts, including U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.), Pennsylvania state Sen. Greg Rothman, and strategists Andy Reilly and Brad Todd.

“Pennsylvania has a great responsibility in electing the president of the United States,” Corman said. “I don’t think in recent history that a Democrat has won a presidential election without winning Pennsylvania. And I think even if there were Republican candidates who won without Pennsylvania, it has such significant power with its electoral votes and things like that. So I thought, well, we’re from Penn — we might as well make that connection with Pennsylvania.”

Margolies emphasized the practical approach of the course by referring to a memorable encounter at a previous conference.

“Years ago, we were at a convention in Boston and we were invited to all these fundraising parties, and there was a senator walking around and I walked up to him and said, ‘Would you mind coming over and talking to the class?’ And it was Barack Obama,” she said.

Corman and the Penn Annenberg team now look ahead to their panel at the DNC.

Margolies, a longtime expert on the Democratic National Convention, is looking forward to taking the students along again this year.

“It’s so interesting because there’s been a lot of change this year; it would be a great learning opportunity for the students,” she said. “There’s just such an exciting energy in the air.”

Corman echoed her sentiments, citing her success at the RNC.

“I was really lucky to have such a great support system around me,” she said. “And that’s what I’m going to do at the DNC. I just want to make it as engaging as possible for the students. Because at the end of the day, this is fun for me, but the students are the most important thing.”