Community-university Partnership Research Articles

University-Community Partnerships to Support Responsive Caregiving: The Hearts and Minds on Babies Implementation Story.

Consistent, sensitive caregiving across home and childcare contexts supports optimal development. In this paper, we share the story of the development of Hearts and Minds on Babies (HMB) for Early Head Start (EHS) administrators, teachers, and parents. HMB was designed to support caregiver reflective functioning and sensitivity and reduce caregiver stress. This paper describes a series of Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles used to adapt an existing parenting intervention into the HMB programming for EHS. Throughout the paper, we present HMB concepts and learning objectives and share teachers' and parents' feedback and adaptations to content and delivery options that support implementation by EHS programs. Feedback from the final cycle suggests that HMB supports EHS administrators, teachers, and parents in their roles and improves relationships. The paper highlights the importance of research-practice partnerships in developing programming that meets the needs of EHS.

Implementation and Outcomes of the Trauma Ambassadors Program: A Case Study of Trauma-Informed Youth Leadership Development.

Community-based programs serve a critical need for vulnerable youth and families. In recent years, researchers and practitioners have urged programs to adopt a trauma-informed care (TIC) approach to address adversity in young people's lives. The purpose of this article is to describe the implementation and outcomes of the Trauma Ambassador (TA) Program, a pilot youth leadership program guided by a community-university partnership that utilized a TIC approach in an underserved East North Philadelphia neighborhood. Fourteen youth engaged in interactive trainings to build their understanding of trauma and develop practical tools to support encounters with individuals with trauma histories. Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted to better understand program implementation and outcomes. Rich data emerged that identifies a myriad of ways that youth and their community might benefit from a program like the one described. The program successfully impacted participants, as TAs recognized their own trauma and were motivated to help others who may have trauma histories. This program provided quality youth development experiences, particularly with respect to trauma-informed care, and results support taking a holistic, healing-centered approach to foster well-being for youth and adult mentors.

Defining in the doing: listening and reflecting in a community–university collaboration

Defining in the doing is an approach developed by the Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP) at the University of Brighton, UK. It prioritises action and recognises the importance of practice in developing partnerships, drawing from both academic and practitioner principles in community development, community-based research and theories of social learning. This article will draw on this approach to reflect on a community–university collaboration, sustained during the Covid-19 global pandemic, between a community music organisation, a sound archive project and a doctoral researcher. Between 2019 and 2022, these practitioners brought together their expertise in sound heritage, music making, listening and sound methods, and community engagement to deliver three interlinked projects: Sounds to Keep, Sound Mosaics and Remix the Archive (RiTA). This partnership created mutual benefits by bringing together practitioner and academic knowledge and experiences. Through shared reflections, we draw out in this article the ways that the pandemic generated difficult working conditions, while also opening up space for creativity, flexibility and curiosity. But we also highlight how a defining in the doing approach is not commonly supported by the funding and administrative conditions within which we work.

DEMYSTIFYING THE MAGIC: INVESTIGATING THE SUCCESS OF UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS FOR BROADENING PARTICIPATION IN STEM

DEMYSTIFYING THE MAGIC: INVESTIGATING THE SUCCESS OF UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS FOR BROADENING PARTICIPATION IN STEM

Effects of Design-Thinking Intergenerational Service-Learning Model on College Students: A Pilot Study in Taiwan

Purpose: The design-thinking intergenerational service-learning model (DTISLM) has structured ageing-related trainings on strategies to improve empathy among college students for intergenerational program development and promote positive relationships and wellbeing between younger and older generations in community-based settings. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of DTISLM on college students’ ageism, intergenerational relationships, and health. Method: Mixed-methods data were collected via pre–post surveys and after-class reflection notes from 142 students from three universities in Taiwan. Results: DTISLM significantly improved college students’ level of empathy toward older adults, age stereotypes, intergenerational relationships, wellbeing (i.e., life satisfaction), and health behaviors (i.e., exercise). This intervention promoted health awareness among college students. Discussion: Via hands-on trainings for empathy improvement, DTISLM empowered college students to develop intergenerational programs that promoted positive intergenerational relationships and healthy habits. This sheds new light on university–community partnerships involving intergenerational service needs to create age-friendly societies globally.

Leveraging Community-University Partnerships to Develop a Strength-Based and Individualized Approach to Humanizing Housing Service Delivery for Individuals with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)

This field report summarizes and advances key learnings for leveraging community–university partnerships addressing housing service gaps for high-risk, marginalized populations with complex needs. We describe our navigation of existing and forged intersections to develop a strength-based and individualized approach to humanizing housing service delivery for individuals with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Our account is framed by four questions: why community and university partners came together to develop a responsive approach through the CanFASD network; who became key stakeholders in the partnership; how our humanizing housing approach is guiding the navigation of complexities inherent in service delivery for individuals with FASD; and what insights about creating intersections are we applying to our community-university partnerships.

IMPROVING MEDICATION MANAGEMENT FOR HOME-DWELLING OLDER ADULTS WITH COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT: END-USER INPUT

Abstract HOPES™ Program is a joint community-university partnership, intended to build capacity for improving medication adherence and reducing medication mistakes, misuse, and abuse for community-dwelling older adults with reduced cognitive functioning (CWCs) in New York State (NYS). The goal of this program is to contribute to the health and safety of older adults, empower them and their caregivers to reduce medication non-adherence consequences and risks, and enable older adults to continue living at home while managing their health conditions. This program applied a collective user-centered approach to connect resources, identify and address barriers, and reach the most vulnerable groups. One aspect of our user-centered approach included a medication management and safety training module video that was adapted from the Medication Use Safety Training for Seniors™ (MUST for Seniors™) and underwent alpha and beta testing. A qualitative analysis was also conducted on input from home-care providers, CWCs, and their designated caregivers about the current practices, challenges, and solutions related to medication management. Our preliminary findings demonstrated a need for research on reducing the steep estimated national costs of medication non-adherence. Thus, a sub-team has developed a methodology to build an economic perspective on the scope and magnitude of interventions to enhance medication management practices for CWCs. A NYS-specific survey was also developed in close collaboration with providers, university partners, and state-level advocacy organizations according to our preliminary findings to document the state and magnitude of medication non-adherence, discern risk factors and determinants of non-adherence, and explore solutions and barriers.

EVALUATING AGE-FRIENDLY COMMUNITY INITIATIVES FROM A SOCIAL NETWORK PERSPECTIVE

Abstract Age-friendly community initiatives (AFCIs) as community interventions systematically cultivate inter-organizational partnerships toward making policies, systems, and environments more supportive of healthy aging, aging in community, and aging equity. Building from a multi-year, university-community partnership to spur the development of AFCIs in New Jersey, we drew on social network theory and research methods to examine the networks of AFCI core teams and their key partners across diverse community settings. Data collection involved administering questionnaires to both AFC core teams and their key organizational partners. We report on the presence and strengths of dyadic relationships that comprise the networks, analyzed by sector, organizational function, and geographic service area of each network node. We discuss implications of the findings concerning policies and practices around sustainability planning for AFCIs as well as future directions for using network theory to understand AFC progress at various levels of geographic scope.

Advancing Preservice Consultation Training Through University-Community Partnership

ABSTRACT This paper describes consultation training experiences offered through a decades-long partnership between a university school psychology graduate program and a local Head Start center. The collaboration provides a field placement setting where beginning students engage in activities tied to first-year coursework, and an advanced practicum site for doctoral students who oversee first-year students’ classroom-based activities and in turn are jointly supervised by program faculty and the center’s Special Services Manager. Through these experiences, graduate students develop competencies in client-centered, consultee-centered, and systems-level consultation, with opportunities to engage in an array of activities aligned with key updates to the 2020 NASP Professional Standards particularly in Domains Six (Services to Support Safe and Supportive Schools), Seven (Family, School, and Community Collaboration), and Eight (Equitable Practices for Diverse Student Populations). By focusing on the school environment, community collaboration, social justice, and equitable practices, these updated domains highlight the role of ecological and systemic factors in school psychology practice and training. Trainees support the center’s efforts to function as a trauma-informed organization whose members recognize and respond to trauma in a manner that promotes safety, collaboration, empowerment, and other trauma-informed practice principles. They do this by consulting with parents and teachers, contributing to staff professional development on such topics as adverse childhood experiences and caregiver stress management, and facilitating meetings with parents and teachers around issues such as trauma-informed discipline. We discuss how these activities align with the 2020 NASP domains, with particular attention to ecological and systemic perspectives.

Self-Description of a University-Community Partnership to Advocate for Restroom Access Policy Change in Chicago.

Transgender, nonbinary, and gender-non-conforming individuals face significant obstacles accessing public restrooms, resulting in negative mental and physical health consequences. We describe the Chicago Restroom Access Project, a university and community partnership aimed at reforming restroom laws in Chicago and the state of Illinois. A range of community-engagement approaches were used, including recruiting, mobilizing, and partnering with diverse stakeholders, amplifying the voices of under-represented members of the impacted community, collecting data for evidence-based decision-making, fluid membership, and diffuse leadership. Outcomes included developing resources for public education, changing the City of Chicago Human Rights Ordinance, changing Illinois state law on single-occupancy restrooms, and implementing restroom reform at an educational institution. Lessons learned are also described. The methods and principles of this partnership provide approaches that can be used to advocate for reform and policy change for restroom access throughout the country.

Values and Practices to Strengthen Genetic Research Partnerships with Indigenous Communities.

Genetic datasets lack diversity and include very few data from Indigenous populations. Research models based on equitable partnership have the potential to increase Indigenous participation and have led to successful collaborations. We report here on a meeting of participants in four Indigenous community-university partnerships pursuing research on precision medicine. The goal of the meeting was to define values and practices that strengthen opportunities for genetic research. The group accorded the highest priority to developing trusting relationships, ensuring respect for Indigenous community authority, and pursuing research that has the potential to lead to community benefit. Supporting priorities included incorporation of Indigenous expertise in research planning, transparent communication, and development of community capacity, including capacity to participate in formulating research questions, informing research methodology, and leading research projects. Participants also noted the importance of attention to social determinants of health so that genetic contributors to health are evaluated in the appropriate context.

Avoiding Risk, Protecting the “Vulnerable”: A Story of Performative Ethics and Community Research Relationships

In February 2019, OUTSaskatoon, a 2SLGBTQ+ resource centre in Saskatoon, SK, received 1.1 M in federal funds to support a five-year project set to intervene in the instances and societal perpetuation of gender-based violence toward the 2SLGBTQ+ community. The project involved partnerships between OUTSaskatoon and the University of Saskatchewan, including a comprehensive research and evaluation stream to accompany the delivery of front-line services and educational activities. During the project’s application to the University’s Research Ethics Board (REB), members of the ethics review committee expressed heightened levels of fear and discomfort not only with the subject-matter, but with the role (and centrality) of the community organization within the research process. The documented experience explores pressing barriers to effective and ethical community-university research partnerships. To this end, the authors explore their communications with the REB alongside the themes of “vulnerability,” “risk-aversion,” and more broadly regarding the timelines of community work versus university processes. Together these themes maintain a culture of academic exceptionalism that causes significant barriers to the development of reciprocal partnerships between community partners and universities. In this case, the outcome was hopeful, as a formal complaint to the REB received a documented apology. In documenting this specific, though not unique, experience, we aim to highlight the possibilities for leaning in and building ethical space between and through community and academic environments to foreground both needed critique and collaborative pathways forward.

Beyond the Deliverable

Those who participate in service-learning/civic engagement (SLCE) in engineering have a common practice of reflecting on partnerships to determine if they were successful and how they might be improved. But what makes a partnership successful? We wanted to learn more about how and why to quantify partnership success to think “beyond the deliverable,” which is often the singular focus of engineering SLCE projects. To this end, we created a rubric for three dimensions of partnership that we selected after consulting engagement partnership literature: transactional, cooperative, and transformational. Using this rubric, we assessed the 55 completed partnerships of the LSU Community Playground Project (LSUCPP) by plotting scores in a 3-axis coordinate system (transactional as the x-axis, cooperative as the y-axis, and transformational as the z-axis) where a placement closer to (3.0, 3.0, 3.0) means a more universally successful partnership. Within each dimension of partnership, we assessed design, people, and process in equal measure to ensure that we paid adequate attention to each of these key aspects of engineering SLCE efforts. Further, part of this assessment involved surveying constituents (community partners, students, and faculty) about the transformational dimension of completed partnerships. Results showed that our partnerships had high transactional (2.4) and cooperative (2.5) mean scores overall, with a lower transformational mean (1.8). We also identified a transactional/cooperative threshold (2.0/2.0) at which the chance of having a transformational partnership went up; overall, our percentage of highly (2.0 or higher) transformational partnerships was 58%, but 70% of our partnerships that reached the threshold were highly transformational. The aspects of transformation most often identified by our survey respondents included building your capacity personally (81%), building lasting connections with colleagues (73%), and building your capacity professionally (70%). We believe that the method of holistic assessment for community-university partnerships presented here can lead to better engaged partnerships and can be adapted by others who wish to improve their SLCE engineering partnerships.

From Failure to Inquiry: Three Problem-Solving Strategies for Community Literacy Researchers

Failure is a significant issue for researchers conducting community-engaged work. This article responds to calls to share research failures more transparently and to create reflective spaces for students to examine moments of failure. We offer our experience adapting three problem-solving strategies from a community literacy course (adaptive problem-solving, rivaling, and critical incident interviewing) to help each other revisit our own “failed” attempts at community-engaged work. By applying these problem-solving strategies to reflect on our experiences—advocating for graduate student parents, working with a summer literacy program, and collaborating with parents of disabled children—we show how these strategies can transform an initial sense of stigmatized failure into a longer process of inquiry and growth. Our approach, we believe, represents an important literate practice for community-based scholars, not only for those seeking to create more collaborative reflective space within university-community partnership, but also for novice scholars navigating the challenges of community-engaged work for the first time.

Social Work and Community Engagement: A Case Study of a University/Community Collaborative Project in Trinidad and Tobago

Over the past decade, there has been a call for social work education to promote student engagement more meaningfully in communities. Despite this, there is limited literature which provides insights into the experiences of establishing university–community partnerships and the possibilities of social work education to engage in such partnerships. This article reports on a case study in Trinidad and Tobago and outlines the processes involved in establishing the University of the West Indies (UWI)/Farm Road Collaborative Project, a university partnership with a community in the immediate vicinity of the university. This article contributes to the emerging literature on the roles of universities and schools of social work in addressing community development needs and has special implications for university–community engagements in the Global South.

Critical Empowerment Frameworks Paramount to Social Justice Work

As we continue to navigate the complex challenges of a pandemic and the urgent need for racial justice, social work faculty are well positioned to train the next generation of social workers in human rights work and structural change movements. Authors discuss how engaging key critical empowerment frameworks that include critical race theory, structural competency, together with a decolonizing and transdisciplinary lens within community-engaged research and practice can provide social work students models for collective impact. Leveraging university-community partnerships to directly provide faculty mentorship around human rights work will also be discussed. One author has been working with the institution’s law school and their Neighborhood Legal Assistance Project to provide support, legal resources, and advocacy. She has also co-founded and is developing a Chicago-based coalition to address intimate partner violence-induced brain injury. The second author has helped start and develop two coalitions to advance a coordinated structural response involving the provision of mental health resource support and psychosocial forensic asylum assessments within immigrant communities. Authors also discuss how students have been engaged in health equity work through a racial and healing justice initiative that values and provides training around healing circles within indigenous communities and communities of color. Through these rich learning experiences, students internalize the value of critical empowerment frameworks that inform participatory approaches in collaboration and coalition building that are essential to social justice work and the process of social and structural change.

University-Community Partnership Model to Support Rural STEM Teaching and Student Engagement

Rural economically disadvantaged communities face unique challenges in engaging students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). School district administrators, teachers, and students do not have access to high-quality STEM opportunities compared to urban schools. This article describes a partnership between a small, private STEM university and a network of school districts scattered across the geographically isolated region of upstate New York. The partnership’s primary goal is to support the teaching and learning of STEM. This is achieved through actively engaging a range of university and community stakeholders in STEM enrichment and professional development. Programming includes summer camps and after-school activities, challenges and competitions that focus on inspiring students to pursue STEM careers, undergraduate and graduate student mentors, and a university curriculum designed to prepare teachers to work in high-need school districts. Activities are supported by the university’s Institute for STEM Education, which fosters collaborations for like-minded faculty and campus members to pursue grant opportunities and connect with community members. The paper describes various program components and how they work to support each other, discusses impacts of the program, and describes ways in which elements can be implemented elsewhere.

The Michigan Farmworker Project: Development and Implementation of a Collaborative Community-Based Research Project Assessing Precarious Employment and Labor Exploitation

Farmworkers are among the most underserved and marginalized populations of workers despite their essential role in the U.S. food supply chain. The Michigan Farmworker Project (MFP) evolved as a collaborative, community-based participatory project among state and regional service entities, legal service organizations, and the university. The overarching goal of the project was to study the relationship of precarious working conditions and labor exploitation with occupational and environmental health inequities and social justice for farmworkers in Michigan. We employed critical race theory and community-based participatory research approaches to guide the development and implementation of the MFP. We describe the development of the participatory process with community partners and discuss implementation challenges and lessons learned from the field. Throughout the research, we reflect on how farmworkers’ social and working environment goes beyond precarity, revealing labor exploitation as an important deterrent of farmworker health and well-being. Despite entrenched systems of structural oppression, farmworkers contribute to and improve our society with their rich cultural backgrounds, their work, and their resilience. The diverse composition of this community-university partnership amplified collaboration, enriched our understanding of the role of precarity and labor exploitation among farmworkers, and contributed to the study’s success. The MFP will continue strengthening the community-university partnership with the goal of continuing to address health inequities in the farmworker population.

CiviAct: Negotiating ‘fields of paradox’ in anti-racist university community partnerships

This article introduces and critically reflects upon the development of CiviAct – a multi-agency project that partners six anti-racist activist organisations and two universities in the North of England. CiviAct seeks to support and realise the benefits of youth and community-led civic action. It does this by: (i) financially resourcing the work of six anti-racist activist organisations; (ii) connecting those organisations with each other to create new opportunities for co-learning; and (iii) exploring new models of community-led university partnership. Based on insights derived from a 12-month development period (conducted throughout the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic) we examine points of tension, manifested at the intersections between community partners, universities and project funders. Extending Strier’s discussion of university-community partnerships (UCP) as ‘fields of paradox’, we outline the complexities of collaborative working within a UCP that seeks to adhere to the priorities of anti-racism and an ethic of love. In doing so this article surfaces the burden of boundary work undertaken by both academic partners seeking to prioritise knowledge and anti-racist practices beyond the academy, and community activists, who are expected to conform with institutional standards that may have little relevance to their practice. The article contributes a series of reflections that may be of use to other activist researchers engaged in UCP.

Developing Equitable and Mutually Beneficial Virtual Community-Engaged Learning Opportunities

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated an abrupt shift to virtual community-university partnerships for many community partners, instructors teaching community-engaged learning courses, and students. This shift exacerbated challenges to fostering mutually beneficial, equitable community-university partnerships, potentially affecting access to and participation in programs benefiting K-12 and college students alike. This paper discusses the Writing Partners letter exchange program, highlighting how challenges were considered and addressed, as well as ways we could improve in future semesters of community-engaged learning. Assessment data using surveys suggested challenges related to exchanging letters virtually and use of videos in lieu of an in-person university campus tour. Solutions included partnership meetings and early planning for future virtual events. We then discuss lessons learned and future directions for mutually beneficial and equitable community-university partnerships that could involve virtual work for various reasons. This paper adds to emerging literature which shares experiences related to virtual community-engaged learning. Sharing our experiences and lessons learned through the Writing Partners program will inform educators and administrators interested in implementing similar letter exchange programs, as well as those interested in learning more about community-university partnerships in the virtual space.