Community-university Partnership Research Articles

Improving Mentoring Program Fidelity through Ecological Consultation: A Community-University Partnership

ABSTRACT This article describes the process of ecological school consultation within a university’s place-based community engagement initiative. Within higher education, place-based initiatives are geographically specific partnerships between community organizations and a university. First, this article explains the collaboration between a middle school and a university-based consultant. Conceptual and practical contexts for the partnership, mentoring program, and consultation process are provided. Next, the article describes steps in the ecological consultation process, highlighting the consultant’s role in facilitating a problem-solving process and in advancing mentoring program implementation fidelity. The fidelity intervention increased mentor adherence to the program’s components (F(2, 531) = 16.861, p < .001), which were identified as being critical to the program’s potential to enact positive changes with students. Implications for school-based mentoring programs and recommendations for consultation are provided. Finally, strengths and limitations of this descriptive study and of the statistical methods (ANOVA) used to evaluate program adherence are discussed.

Attempting Randomized Housing First Research in a Community Context: Reflections on Failure.

The Housing First (HF) model of permanent supportive housing for individuals experiencing chronic homelessness has a strong evidence base that has largely been driven by researchers in the field of community psychology in partnership with community-based organizations. However, important gaps in the HF literature remain. Implementing rigorous research designs to further the evidence for HF requires immense resources to fund both the housing intervention and the research activities. In the absence of such resources, university-community partnerships may be established to integrate research within business-as-usual services and utilize existing housing units. This first person account presents a "post-mortem" exploration of an attempt to conduct a randomized trial of scattered-site and single-site approaches to HF within a community context from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders involved in the endeavor. Despite strengths of the research collaborative, the project did not come to completion due to a series of bothinsurmountable and avoidable barriers. Yet, the experience illuminated several potential challenges researchers and housing providers conducting work in this area may encounter, such as ever-changing homeless service system policies that may impact research and organizational procedures. Lessons learned and recommendations for preventing or overcoming systems-level barriers and potential challenges within the university-community partnership are described.

Transition Opportunities for Post-Secondary Success (TOPS): A Pilot Program for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

As a result of the apparent need for transition services for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Fairfield University and a community partner, The Kennedy Center, have partnered to create a transition preparedness program: Transition Opportunities for Postsecondary Success (TOPS), in order to explore a new transition paradigm for young adults ages 18–21 of the greater Bridgeport, Connecticut area with ASD. The University-Community partnership aims to address a multitude of social challenges and independent living skills for young adults with ASD, provide increased self-sufficiency and self-advocacy, as well as, offer valuable experiences for graduate and undergraduate students who are planning a career in special education. This article provides an overview of the partnership, program, and preliminary research collected during the TOPS program pilot year. Future directions are discussed.

Building Interdisciplinary Partnerships for Community-Engaged Environmental Health Research in Appalachian Virginia.

This article describes a collaboration among a group of university faculty, undergraduate students, local governments, local residents, and U.S. Army staff to address long-standing concerns about the environmental health effects of an Army ammunition plant. The authors describe community-responsive scientific pilot studies that examined potential environmental contamination and a related undergraduate research course that documented residents’ concerns, contextualized those concerns, and developed recommendations. We make a case for the value of resource-intensive university–community partnerships that promote the production of knowledge through collaborations across disciplinary paradigms (natural/physical sciences, social sciences, health sciences, and humanities) in response to questions raised by local residents. Our experience also suggests that enacting this type of research through a university class may help promote researchers’ adoption of “epistemological pluralism”, and thereby facilitate the movement of a study from being “multidisciplinary” to “transdisciplinary”.

Focus on Faculty: A Missing Link in Community–University Partnerships

ABSTRACT Inherent in the call for this special issue is the idea that Community–University Partnerships (CUPs) matter. In the phrase “community–university partnership,” it is just two entities who are forefronted and assumed to be the primary agents and beneficiaries. Conspicuously absent, however, is recognition of the essential contributions and accompanying career implications for professors who engage Community–University Partnerships (CUPs) as a substantive aspect of their scholarly activities. For many scholars in higher education, their role as consultants bridging the academy and the community is wholly undervalued, and not by the community but by the academy. In this paper, we critically review existing literature about the university professor whose work of envisioning, initiating, developing, and maintaining Community-University Partnerships (CUPs) makes them possible. In particular, we focus on faculty members at traditional research institutions whose merit within the university is determined almost exclusively by their traditional scholarly productivity (i.e., journal publications) and can be diminished by their very engagement in the community. We offer insights into how and why community circumstances and institutional expectations are consequential.

Inquiry in Action: Reflections on the Implementation of Best Practices in Child- and Family-Focused University–Community Partnerships

University–community partnerships (UCPs) are increasingly utilized to address issues in education. In this article, we present reflections on best practices for child- and family-focused UCPs. These reflections emerged before, during, and after a convening that brought together representatives from five UCPs in the United States that emphasized early childhood development and received funding from the same philanthropic source. The convening elicited perspectives on best practices for UCPs and identified community- and university-related contextual factors that affected implementation of these best practices. The findings from this study will contribute to the enhancement of future UCPs in education.

Growing North Minneapolis: Connecting Youth and Community through Garden-based Experiential Learning

Growing North Minneapolis (GNM) is an urban agriculture and youth development summer program sited in the North Minneapolis, MN, neighborhood. The program is a university–community partnership between faculty at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and North Minneapolis community partners. We leverage resources from the city of Minneapolis Step-Up program to recruit, train, and employ youth (14–15 years old) who face barriers to employment—particularly youth from low-income families, youth of color, youth from immigrant families, and youth with disabilities. Youth interns are placed in a 10-week-long summer program and are matched with undergraduate student mentors from the UMN and North Minneapolis gardener mentors. The undergraduate students and garden mentors work together to lead teams of youth and work in multiple urban garden sites located in North Minneapolis, a designated low-resource community in the metro area. One of our goals is to develop leadership experience for UMN undergraduate students and improve food and horticultural skills among urban youth through garden-based education. Learning is experiential and contextualized in the various community garden sites through activities focused on food justice and accessibility, food production systems, and horticultural science. Youth learning and development outcomes are reported based on written postprogram qualitative survey questions prompting youth to identify what they learned throughout the program, what they enjoyed the most, and what challenged them after the summer program in 2018. Our results show that youth participants learned across multiple domains of knowledge and valued the social interaction offered by the intergenerational mentorship structure. The GNM program can serve as a model for garden-based experiential learning with early high school youth.

Community geography as a model for improving efforts of environmental stewardship

AbstractEnvironmental stewardship (ES) is an established area of research in numerous fields of study, whereas community geography (CG) is a more recent and growing subfield of geography that aims to build capacity and affect change in communities through university–community partnerships. As such, CG demonstrates a shift in geographic research trends that provide benefits not only to the university but also to the students and community/ies as well. I argue that ES and CG research agendas are characterized by a meaningful overlap and attempts to synthesize them will add value to both bodies of knowledge. This paper overviews both of these research agendas, identifies major challenges and gaps in the extant literature in ES, and suggests how CG can help move the ES research agenda forward. I conclude with the notion that incorporating a CG research approach can (a) better develop the ES literature and (b) provide important benefits for universities, communities, and students who are looking for hands‐on civic engagement experiences.

A Model for Understanding the Processes, Characteristics, and the Community-valued Development Outcomes of Community-University Partnerships

A Model for Understanding the Processes, Characteristics, and the Community-valued Development Outcomes of Community-University Partnerships

Elementary School Fitness Days: A Seventeen Year University—Community Partnership

This article describes the Elementary School Fitness Days event and how it started and continues to be an experiential opportunity for university students and a fun/fitness experience for the elementary students involved.

Things that Seem Still Are Still Changing: The case of the Nonprofit Leadership Collaborative of the Mid-South

This paper describes the longstanding partnership of the Nonprofit Leadership Collaborative of the Mid-South. Now in its 20th year, the university-community partnership has worked to increase the capacity of the local nonprofit sector through building a qualified entry-level workforce. Three key themes emerged when examining the trajectory of the long-standing partnership: strong leadership to champion the cause, the importance of strategy as both guide and buffer, and the realization of benefits beyond the mission of the partnership. The collaborative is now at a critical juncture in its lifecycle, with substantial changes in membership, waning interest, and changes to the external nonprofit environment. It is at this point that the leadership of the collaborative will need to determine whether turnaround or dissolution are the better option moving forward, and what the appropriate leadership composition and strategy will be to accomplish a renewal.

Human Trafficking in Northeastern Ontario: Collaborative Responses

Human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is undoubtedly occurring in Northeastern Ontario. However, there is a lack of information, resources, coordination, and collaboration on the issue in comparison to Southern Ontario. Furthermore, urban-based programming from “down south” does not necessarily fit the unique circumstances of Northeastern Ontario: specifically, the isolation and underservicing of rural and remote communities, the presence of francophone communities, and diverse Indigenous communities. The Northeastern Ontario Research Alliance on Human Trafficking is a community-university research partnership that takes a critical anti-human-trafficking approach. We combine Indigenous and feminist methodologies with participatory action research. In this paper, we first present findings from our eight participatory action research workshops with persons with lived experience and service providers in the region, where participants identified the needs of trafficked women and gaps and barriers to service provision. Second, in response to participants’ calls for collaboration, we have developed a Service Mapping Toolkit that is grounded in Indigenous cultural practices and teachings, where applicable, and in the agency and self-determination of persons experiencing violence, exploitation, or abuse in the sex trade. We conclude by recommending seven principles for building collaborative networks aimed at addressing violence in the sex trade. The Service Mapping Toolkit and collaborative principles may assist other rural or northern communities across the county.

Exploring the potential roles of community-university partnerships in northern suicide prevention implementation research

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the lessons learned from a partnership project on suicide prevention carried out with Inuit organisations in Nunavut and Nunavik. The aim was to identify research needs, processes, and opportunities for knowledge translation to guide suicide prevention activities. Key reflections among partners regarding regional needs and the potential roles of research in suicide prevention in northern Canada are described as well as the three identified priorities: (1) focusing on community mobilisation; (2) supporting access to scientific information; and (3) supporting the adaptation of evaluation criteria and protocols of ongoing community activities. Strategies to address these priorities are presented.

Ensuring durability of community-university engagement in a challenging context: Empirical evidence on Science Shops

Universities’ community engagement is confronted with growing pressure from increased competition and marketisation of knowledge, along with widespread adoption of New Public Management measures. This context is notably challenging for forms of engagement that are based on such principles and practices as cooperation, knowledge democracy and public value. Within this framework, this article identifies competencies and strategies that may ensure durability of community-university partnerships.&#x0D; The article presents the results of two different, yet coherently connected, research endeavours on Science Shops in Europe. Science Shops are a unique way to organise relationships between science and society mainly by responding to research questions arising from citizens and/or Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), usually by means of a participatory methodology and active involvement of students.&#x0D; Empirical evidence for this article was gathered by means of a wide range of different techniques, such as structured questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, direct observation and document analysis. In the first research effort, a questionnaire was delivered to European Science Shops in order to produce mainly descriptive statistics prior to progressing to case studies and focus groups which would generate more in-depth knowledge and understanding. The second study program was connected to formative and summative evaluation of a European Commission funded project aimed at embedding Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in Higher Education curricula through Science Shops (namely EnRRICH – Enhancing Responsible Research and Innovation through Curricula in Higher education). Participatory evaluation was carried out mainly on pilot projects run by project partners.&#x0D; Results are discussed in the light of relevant literature regarding possible strategic assets that may enable Science Shops and Community Engagement units to overcome observed fragility and ensure durability. This can be pursued through systematic mobilisation of specific knowledge, competencies and abilities. Combinatory capacity and boundary spanning are pinpointed as specific components of Science Shops’ action, which – we maintain – are also key strategic assets to consolidate their role and ensure durability. The distinction between the ‘instrumental/operational’ and ‘strategic’ function of boundary spanning is introduced in order to analytically develop this argument.

Problem-Based solutions from the classroom to the Community: Transformative approaches to mitigate the impacts of boom-and-bust in declining urban communities

Strategic partnerships between universities and declining urban neighborhoods with limited resources have resulted in some innovative and forward-thinking approaches to land use and planning. These approaches respond to the impacts of boom-and-bust through the implementation of problem-based solutions and have spurred development to make communities more resilient. The university-community partnerships and engagements have multiple goals, including increasing university responsiveness to local needs, stimulating real-world change, and preparing students to effectively address complex social challenges (Dorado and Giles, 2004). However, such approaches are complicated by a variety of factors, including stakeholder expectations, power imbalances, and the conflicting goals of educators and community members (Mansuri and Rao, 2004). While the benefits of service-learning programs to universities are well documented, the benefits of such higher education partnerships to community participants are not as well known (Netshandama, 2010). Successful engagements seem to require community involvement and decision-making authority at every phase, mutual accountability, and trust (Winkler, 2013). This paper refers to a series of case studies of community engagement and neighborhood empowerment that involved the development of a collective sustainable plan/vision for declining inner-city neighborhoods with limited resources. This participatory form of local community development combines and goes beyond spatial planning and land use tools to demonstrate in some depth how an “inside the neighborhood” approach can make communities less vulnerable to boom-and-bust cycles. These neighborhoods, located in Columbus, Ohio, have seen tremendous declines in population and economy over the past years because of significant losses in manufacturing jobs. The case studies can inspire communities and demonstrate that service learning has the potential to provide communities with place-specific guidelines and recommendations that improve the quality of life for residents; but their implementation requires a collective effort that goes beyond the classroom.

Following the trail of the 5th dimension: learning from contradictions in a university-community partnership

ABSTRACT Over the past 20 years, our research group has developed a set of action research projects inspired by the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition’s Fifth Dimension. In this article, we analyze their historical trajectories by examining their sustainability from the perspective of the experiment by design, as developed by Michael Cole. Taking the motives and contradictions of all partners involved as a starting point, we present a brief analysis of the development of three sites throughout more than 12 years of their existence, revealing the construction of a third space in which the university and the school community pursue their respective goals.

Community Partners’ Perspectives and the Faculty Role in Community-Based Learning

Background: Benefits of community-based learning for students in higher education are well documented. Comparatively less is known about the community partner experience. Purpose: The community partner perspective is explored to (a) confirm and expand recent findings regarding community partners’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges of working with colleges and universities and (b) present community partners’ views on how faculty can help improve community–university collaborations. Methodology/Approach: Dual-rater axial and open coding qualitative analysis methods were used to identify key themes in community partners’ responses in an on-line survey. Participants ( n = 201) represented community partners from a broad range of fields, regions, and partnership types (e.g., volunteer, internship, service-learning). Findings/Conclusions: Although community partners identify a number of benefits to their collaborations with academic institutions, they also encounter critical challenges (e.g., faculty engagement, communication, student preparation). Partner recommendations include additional faculty attention to student knowledge of content, skills, and professionalism, as well as increased faculty engagement in all aspects of the collaboration. Implications: From a community perspective, faculty have an important role to play in facilitating true community–university partnerships that are equitable, reciprocal, and mutually beneficial.

MEMAHAMI TEORI DIFUSI INOVASI: SOSIALISASI INOVASI PEMANFAATAN LIMBAH HASIL LAUT MELALUI KEGIATAN PENGABDIAN MASYARAKAT

Community service activities are one of the pillars of the Tridharma Perguruan Tinggi as well as lecturers' duties. This activity was carried out among others by means of training and counseling to related communities. However, deadlock often occurs in the process. This raises the need to understand strategies in delivering messages so that service activities can achieve the goals set. In the Bakrie University community partnership program (PkM) in making chitin and laboratory scale chitosan from small crab shells, the process and results of these activities are examined and analyzed using theories in the field of Communication science, specifically the Theory of Diffusion of Innovations. The diffusion theory of innovation is a theory that seeks to explain how new ideas develop and are adopted by the community. The results of this study are expected to be a recommendation and reflection for other PkM program implementers to understand more effective and efficient strategies

MINORITY AGING BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Service-learning is the pedagogical approach of integrating classroom learning objectives with community-based experiences. In gerontology education, service-learning is one way educators can collaborate with their respective communities to expose students to topics in minority aging. This paper presentation describes students’ experiences in a service-learning gerontological social work course embedded in a university-community partnership that took students beyond the classroom and into the community to learn about minority aging. In-classroom topics included social injustices in aging, caregiving in African American families, culturally-tailored caregiving interventions, and health disparities. In the community, students conducted in-home visits engaging persons with dementia in a tailored activities, thus freeing caregivers to engage in self-care activities. Classroom and community experiences were connected through ongoing reflection, critical thinking, and problem solving activities. Survey data revealed students experienced increased gerontological self-efficacy and increased knowledge and attitudes about dementia. This study has implications for future course design around minority aging.

Community-Engaged Research for the Promotion of Healthy Urban Environments: A Case Study of Community Garden Initiative in Shanghai, China.

The importance of community gardens in a healthy urban environment has been extensively documented, while the garden building involving communities has not been much explored in fast-developing cities. This study examines community engagement in garden building activities in a rapid urbanization context, aiming to explore the application of community-engaged research methods for the promotion of neighbourhood environments. The Community Garden Initiative consisting of an array of progressive actions is formulated by the research team, featuring a process of increasing involvement of community members and decreasing intensity of external interventions. These activities have been launched based on community-university partnerships in Shanghai since 2014, synchronising with a transformation of urban regeneration paradigm in China where people-oriented approaches are more emphasized. Five actions covering 70 community gardens are analysed through surveys on participants’ attitudes and perceptions towards the activities. The results of the study presented people’s rapid acceptance of participation in public affairs, reflected possible measures to promote public participation, and confirmed the positive impacts of the garden building on the neighbourhood environmental health as well as on the community-building. Taking into account that residents generally lack the consciousness and capacities required to implement actions at the initial stage of community engagement, we proposed in the conclusion to start with external interventions and capacity buildings carried out by professionals as a supplement to the ‘community-driven’ principle of CBPR methods.