45 Minute Sessions

Confirmed Sessions

Advancing Campus-Community Partnerships: Course Design and Institutional Integration
Presenters: Amy Newcomb Rowe (Co-author: Amani Elshimi)

In its efforts to promote service learning as a complement to its undergraduate curriculum, the Community-Based Learning (CBL) program at The American University in Cairo (AUC) is unique among universities in the Arab World. While the program has been
successful in implementing service learning, CBL still faces challenges in institutional support through curriculum integration and evaluation of community partnerships. Student participation and faculty interest remain strong allowing partnerships to flourish. In light
of this, the assimilation of CBL into the core curriculum remains to be seen. This study attempts to understand the impact of institutional integration on campus-community partnerships by asking faculty and community partners to assess the impact of course design
and institutional support on them. The 45-minute presentation will include research findings, strategic planning and capacity for replication at universities in Egypt and other Arab countries.

Community Engagement in Overseas Studies: A Partnership Model
Presenter: Ann Banchoff

Stanford University's Community Health in Oaxaca Program, begun in 2007, incorporates sustained community-campus partnerships that offer students the opportunity to make meaningful contributions towards meeting local health needs. Once trust is established, projects are developed and implemented to meet partners' self-identified needs. Collaborations are built and sustained over time based on partnership principles developed by Centers for Disease Control, Community-Campus Partnerships for Health and others. The ongoing investment and engagement of Stanford faculty and staff has played a particularly critical role. This presentation will illustrate a replicable model for substantive community engagement and service within international study programs, and will highlight a multi-year research collaboration between Stanford medical students and a not-for-profit supporting nutrition and agriculture initiatives in rural Oaxacan communities.

Deepening Levels of Partnership: Models of Community-based Research
Presenter: Judith Owens-Manley

Campuses respond to communities with the capacity to provide community-based research as a valued resource and partnership. The opportunity and challenge facing campus-community partnerships is that there is no one recipe for how to make them work or how to design projects in a way that works for everyone. Four projects at a small liberal arts college are presented as models of CBR with degrees of partnership and success and compared with a university setting. Projects demonstrate different depths of community engagement, student learning, and faculty and administrative involvement. Implications for best practice and meaningful partnerships impact each project's value to the community and to students, and include ethical considerations or tensions in current research. Discussion focuses on the unique structure and resources presented by each campus and the opportunity set of community resources and partners to develop deep learning, long-term commitment, and common agenda.

The DEEP Service Model: Sustainable, Development, Reciprocal Community Partnerships
Presenter: Jennifer Simek

In 2007, Siena College embarked on the development of a new model of partnership with Community Based Organizations (CBOs). This new model sought to take into account all of the best practices known in the field at that point, as well as emerging trends in higher education partnerships.

Diversity in Faculty and Community Partner Perspectives about Achieving Reciprocity in Partnerships
Presenter: Melinda Forthofer

Challenges inherent in building and sustaining productive academic-community partnerships may deter researchers from engaging communities in their research. In a study of one institution's research partnerships, we interviewed faculty members and their community partners to assess experiences with and attitudes toward community engagement. Our results reveal dramatic differences in faculty and community partner perspectives and underscore areas where academic researchers may fall short of "walking the talk" of community-based research. We will discuss the implications of these findings in terms of strategies for preparing graduate students and faculty members to engage effectively in community-based intervention research and infrastructure supports that may improve academic institutions' capacity to respond to community needs.

Friend or Foe: A Five Year Journey to Build Trust and Share Power in a Campus-Community Partnership
Presenters: David Taylor, Charletta Tyson, Jill Shuey, Willie Dunn, Adrienne Leibowitz

Niagara University's Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) was established in 2005 in order to build capacity and improve the quality of life for Niagara Falls (New York) residents. This interactive workshop will describe a five-year journey to build trust and share power in one university-community partnership. From the unique perspectives of both community members and university representatives, the presentation will highlight several tipping points along the way in a transformation that began amidst initial tensions and resistance and ended with mutual respect, collaboration and reciprocity. Through a series of short role-play exercises and small group discussions, participants will confront some of the challenges in building relationships based on trust and shared power. The presentation will also discuss the intentional steps that Niagara University has taken internally to insure partners that it is friend and not foe to the community.

How Can We Enhance Collaboration between Researchers and Practitioners in the Psychosocial Field
Presenter: Marie-Joelle Gervais  (Co-authors: Francois Chagnon, Nico Trocme, Lise Milne, Claude Laurendeau)

Research shows that collaboration between researchers and practitioners improve receptivity toward research-based evidences, and thus increase the quality of psychosocial services. However, there is a need to better understand what determinants and strategies have to be adopted in order to enhance collaboration between research and practice. A critical review of articles that examine strategies and determinants associated with research-practice collaboration was conducted within key databases. A conceptual framework was then developed in order to represent the principal determinants and strategies retrieved from the literature review. To illustrate how those determinants and strategies can be applied, a case study will be discussed. This case study illustrates an intervention that was implemented in a Youth Center in order to increase collaboration between researchers and practitioners and to assist the organization in shifting to an evidence-based approach to monitor its programs.

Introducing a Culture of Community Engagement within Chicago Public Schools
Presenters: Howard Rosing, John Ziegler, Nadya Engler

Our presentation will focus upon lessons learned from DePaul University's initiative to promote sustainable local community-school partnerships in Chicago. In collaboration with the municipal public school system, the initiative seeks to improve the quality of education and increase resources available to residents in underserved communities. Drawing on theories from the political economy of education, social movement theory, and asset-based community development, DePaul has employed asset mapping, a community engagement certification program, school-based community liaisons, and university service learning courses to develop long-term university-school partnerships based on skills training, knowledge sharing, and capacity building. Working within an expanding network of public schools in Chicago, our long-range objective is to produce a replicable model of community-school partnerships that can impact educational policy and practice locally, at the municipal level and beyond.

Learning Together: Penn State, K-State, and the CYEC/Kenya PArtnership for Youth Empowerment

Presenters: Mary Hale Tolar, Trisha Gott

Our session focuses on bringing together the experiences of colleagues to inform a developing partnership. Our partnership involves multiple US and Kenya institutions, including universities, local government, private business, and nonprofit organizations. Within universities, the partnership involves faculty, students, and curricula that cross disciplines. Three years into the partnership, we have enough experience to appreciate the complexity of partnerships, and also their powerful potential. This session invites practitioners, teacher-scholars, students, and community partners to identify challenges and opportunities to developing and maintaining effective international inter-institutional partnerships. Participants will explore these challenges and opportunities to construct critical questions that will guide assessment strategies, and set a research agenda that serves the needs of community partners, advances student learning, and contributes to the body of scholarship.

A Student-Centered, Anti-Hunger/Nutrition Project in an Urban City Involving Five Community Partners
Presenters: Reva Curry, Joseph Rubenstein

The Campus Kitchen at Atlantic City is sponsored by The Campus Kitchens Project, a food recycling and hunger relief program involving over 30 colleges and universities nationwide. College students reclaim un-served, usable food from school cafeterias, prepare nutritious meals for needy families, and deliver the meals to them. The program also offers nutrition workshops to community members. The program is student led: student leaders oversee the process and recruit student volunteers to assist in the work. Our model is the only one that uses 5 community partners to operate a kitchen. This project is an example of how education and community partners can work together to address a practical community need. Research on university-assisted community schools indicate community transformation occurs when colleges work with urban communities in addressing "real world" issues. This presentation will give an overview of project operations, lessons learned, and ideas for duplication.

Sustainability and Reciprocity in a Partnership Community in Mexico City University: ITESM_Santa Fe
Presenters: Dolores Chavez

Undergraduate students include communitarian Learning-Service strategies to improve citizenship, social participation and responsibility, Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Santa Fe, has been developed enterprises around the Campus. Students develop ethics and
citizenships competences that allow them to transcend their student life and it constitutes experiences of their professional life through curricula and co curricula practices. So they may live and learn strategies in these areas.Service Learning and citizenship social
actions are implemented in this college in order to live the experience and diagnose, plan, execute and valuate a social projects. In this way, Kecskes and Kerrigan confirm that that undergraduate terminal courses are most pertinent to include an involvement and
citizen commitment and that the tendency is the integration of these experiences within curricula. So this is an example of a social methodology implemented in a Latin American country (Mexico).

Sustaining Community-Campus Partnerships through the Development of a Student Civic Fellows Program
Presenters: Karen Ericson, Kara Casey Adams, Gretchen Johnson, Karama Blackhorn

Sustaining community-campus partnerships can be a complicated endeavor. Many such partnerships fall victim to the constraints of the academic calendar, as well as frequent organizational changes in community organizations. Our presentation will discuss how the development of a Student Civic Fellows Program has enabled the University of Washington Bothell to continue a vital partnership with 21 Acres Farm. The farm most notably demonstrates the ability to organically cultivate crops in an environmentally sound way in a suburban setting. UW Bothell was faced with the loss of this valuable partnership due to a reorganization of the farm. By appointing a Student Civic Fellow as a liaison to the Farm, we were able to maintain this relationship. As a result, faculty can continue using this unique site for community-based learning, partners receive much needed assistance and students are able to develop their leadership skills, while gaining valuable insights into complex social issues.

Using a Partnership to Develop Community Standards for Engagement with Colleges and Universities
Presenters: Lina D. Dostilio, Terri L. Baltimore

The session will review the roles, processes and values embedded in a partnership between Hill District Stakeholders and Duquesne University. Together we are creating a model for how a community can devise a set of standards and principles for collaborating with campuses. The session is rooted in theories of democratic engagement (Saltmarsh, Hartley, & Clayton, 2009) and mutually transformative partnerships (Jameson, Clayton, & Jaeger, 2010). It advances partnerships by providing an example of one that is democratically oriented and illustrates how communities can organize, and include campuses in that organizing process, to claim their agency in community-campus engagement. Participants will learn about the ways that communities can draw campuses into their problem-solving and organizing processes rather than campuses drawing communities into their engagement activities.