Community Engaged Research Scholars

As a Form of Scholarship

At a most basic level, community-engaged research (CER), involves projects that intentionally connect the campus and community; in the words of Budd L. Hall (1981), community-engaged research unites research, education, and action. These three pillars of CER imply an interaction of communities where community members are not only heard, but where they also shape research aims and serve as co-researchers in every part of the process; consequently, the community is valued for its social capital, wisdom, and practical knowledge, and its members are honored as research leaders rather than research subjects. It is this emphasis on mutual partnership and participation that distinguishes CER as a form of scholarship. Unlike more traditional methods, CER’s flexible, inherently interdisciplinary, and collaborative approach, calls for a balance between academic interests and community needs that produces relevant and community-centered action.

Community-Engaged Research Scholars (CERS)

In early January of 2010, 14 Portland State University (PSU) faculty members who were already actively involved in community-engaged research, were selected to form a community of campus scholars. As part of this community, each faculty member participated in monthly, multi-disciplinary discussions, presented their findings in an open forum, and received a mini-grant of $1,500. The cornerstone of this program was the development of publishable case studies of exemplary community-engaged research projects in order to inform the broader campus and higher education community about excellence in community-engaged research. Documenting and disseminating each project were, therefore, fundamental components of the CERS team in their efforts to support this form of engaged scholarship and enhance the larger PSU community.

Projected Outcomes

The final case studies highlight the strengths and challenges of community-engaged research, as encountered in each faculty member's project. Selections will be published on this website and incorporate faculty reflections that provide insights into the process of conducting research through community partnership. A meta-analysis of these individual studies will also be published to abstract the larger themes unifying this body of work.


	Bill Becker & Jennifer Wells Case Study for Portland State University Center for Science Education
Since its inception in 1993, the Portland State University Center for Science Education (CSE) has been a vibrant part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the regional science education community, through its commitment to innovative education, research, and communty outreach programs. The goal of this case study is to categorically analyze the CSE's historical partnerships, outcomes of these partnerships and the legacy relationships. To do so, it will examine community partnerships in terms of the following: 1) evolution and nature of CSE community partnerships, 2) targeted impacts, goals, methods, 3) expected and unexpected outcomes, 4) short term partnerships. This theory of practice will inform the redesign of the CSE mission statement and program goals. It will inform members in the PSU community of the historical and potential role of the CSE in science education. It may also be useful for other institutions of higher education as they engage in community outreach initiatives, shared academic and professional research and development activities. Over a dozen community partners will participate in this study, including Portland Public Schools, the Oregon Department of Education, and the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation.

	Ann Curry-Stevens Who Counts? Community-Based Participatory Research with the Coalition of Communities of Color
This project is a CBPR initiative with researchers at the School of Social Work and the Coalition of Communities of Color, a network established in 2001 to meet the following mandates: 1) to address the socioeconomic disparities, institutional racism, and inequity of services experienced by our families, children, and communities, and 2) to organize our communities for collective action resulting in social change to obtain self-determination, wellness, justice, and prosperity. The CBPR initiative began in summer 2008 when the Coalition invited this partnership in order to document their experiences, and profile the status of racial disparities threatening the health and wellbeing of communities of color. It strives to address the reality that for far too long, the experiences of peoples of color have been profiled by those outside their communities and they have been uninvolved in interpreting these data. This research partnership offers them control in the decision making process, and is already being shown to bring issues of their community to the attention of numerous funding bodies (foundations and government funders). The research project continues through to 2012.

	Veronica Dujon Contested Water Rights on the Oregon Coast: A Point of Entry for Community-Engaged Research
This project, completed in 2002, was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) via the OSU Sea Grant Program. The research was a sociological analysis of the conflict over water rights in Tenmile Creek, Oregon between two coastal municipalities. The three main community partners engaged in this research were (1) the Oregon Department of Water Resources (ODWR) which had been baffled over the prolonged ill-will that continued to exist between the two municipalities even after what appeared to be a reasonable settlement for both parties had been legally negotiated; (2) the City of Lakeside which was located next to the body of water in question; and (3) the Municipality of Coos Bay/North Bend which sought access to the water for an economic expansion project. The project was designed to refine understanding of the relationship between people and their physical environment in market societies that are motivated both to exploit, and preserve, their natural resources/environments. It mapped out the competing social and ecological issues involved, and tried to anticipate the kinds of institutional arrangements that may be required to manage the water supply in an efficient and sustainable manner and simultaneously respond to the sense of connection people experience to the natural resources in their communities.

	Margaret Everett & Meg Merrick Participatory Research to Reduce Childhood Obesity: The Healthy Eating Active Living Coalition
The Healthy Eating Active Living Coalition (HEAL) is a community-university partnership convened by the Multnomah County Health Department (MCHD) in 2006 to promote physical activity and healthy eating among the children and families in the Portsmouth neighborhood in North Portland; it is founded on the belief that all communities can be safer, more supportive, and more healthful places to live, work and play through applied research and participatory action. Since its inception, the HEAL Coalition has included the active participation of PSU faculty, graduate and undergraduate students. To date, a number of PSLT-led research projects have supported the work of the coalition and helped plan, implement and evaluate HEAL intentions. Meg Merrick has led several PSU capstone classes, in partnership with MCHD, in order to map opportunities and barriers for recreation and healthy eating in the community. Students also trained community members to operate PhotoVoice, a participatory assessment that puts cameras into the hands of community members so that they can document the hopes and concerns they have about their neighborhood and show policymakers what changes they feel are necessary. Currently, the HEAL Coalition is launching a new intervention project, the North Portland Healthy Corner Store Initiative, with the goal of the intervention to work with existing Latino-owned stores to stock and market affordable healthy food options. Margaret Everett is working with school staff and parents at Clarendon-Portsmouth K-8 School and MCHD community health workers to provide research and evaluation to support this initiative.

	Eleanor Gil-Kashiwabara Nak-Nu-Wit System of Care
Nak-Nu-Wit System of Care is working to change the current public mental health system to provide comprehensive, individualized, holistic, and culturally responsive mental health services to American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) children and youth diagnosed with serious emotional and behavioral disorders in the Portland metro area. This project stems from a six-year Cooperative Agreement between the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB) and the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) branch of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Specifically, under a contract with the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB), the Regional Research Institute for Human Services (RRI) at Portland State University (PSU) is providing evaluation services for the Nak-Nu-Wit System of Care Project. The Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board serves as the sponsor for Nak-Nu-Wit, and the Native American Rehabilitation Association (NARA) is the service site for this community-engaged research study.

	Warren Harrison Project 10-9: Public Safety Agencies as Computer Science Laboratories
For the past several years, a research team consisting of Professors of Computer Science Warren Harrison, Bart Massey, and Jim Larson, has been funded by the National Institute of Justice to design and implement software that allows police officers to issue voice commands to, and receive responses from, their in-car computers using radio headsets. Harrison has combined the knowledge he acquired from his service as a Reserve Deputy Sheriff with Massey's work in Software Defined Radios and Larson's expertise in human-computer interfaces. The system the team has devised increases officer safety by allowing officers to keep their hands on the steering wheel and their eyes on the road when simultaneously operating a patrol vehicle and making computer records checks using the Mobile Data Computer (MDC). In addition, the radio headsets achieve ranges of 100 meters or more, allowing the officer to be some distance away from their car, while still maintaining access to the MDC to make inquiries. The system has been tested in the field, and the team has now begun efforts to disseminate the technology on a national scale in partnership with commercial vendors of law enforcement MDC software.

	Tami Lasseter Clare Scientific Analysis of a Chinese Bronze Money Tree
An ongoing project involving the Portland Art Museum (PAM) and the research laboratory of Dr. Tami Lasseter Clare was initiated in February 2009. The specific goals of this project are to address the Museum's concerns about an object in their collection, a Chinese bronze Money Tree, believed to date from the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 - 220 CE). Money Trees are burial objects that have a stylized tree-like form with the purpose of providing the deceased with prosperity in the afterlife. The Portland Art Museum's Money Tree was a donated gift from a private collector and had neither documentation as to the location or date of its excavation, nor any subsequent documentation prior to its acquisition by an art dealer. Students, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels are involved in this interdisciplinary and inter-institutional project. Their work will directly address PAM's interest in understanding the strength of the Tree's corroded bronze and to understand whether the individual branches of the Tree come from the same original set or whether the branches were compiled and assembled to produce a complete Tree.

	Eric Mankowski A Multi-Sector Partnership to Promote Relational and Adaptive Masculinities in the Lives of Boys and Young Men
This community-engaged research project connects academics with staff and participants in the Council for Boys & Young Men (CBYM), a structured peer support group program for males aged 9-18 years that aims to promote healthy masculinity and relationships. The CBYM organization expressed a need for knowledge about the functioning and effectiveness of their program, in order to advocate for adoption of the program by schools, agencies and other settings, and to obtain recommendation and support of the program from potential funding agencies and policy organizations, such as the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. In response, the project strives to test theories of group and environmental influences on transforming masculinity, specifically regarding hierarchical and relational power, and of positive, strengths-based solutions to work with boys. Emerging from this mutually reinforcing set of concerns, the main research questions of the project are 1) whether and how CBYM has a positive impact on boys’ lives, including their social connection and engagement, masculine and ethnic identity, self-efficacy, collective identity, resilience, motivation, and decision making regarding school engagement, substance use, sexual activity, and relational behaviors; 2) whether boys are satisfied with their participation in CBYM; and 3) how CBYM’s curricula and its implementation in local and diverse settings could be improved. Community partners include CBYM, Portland State University, and the Ohio Department of Youth Services, with collaboration from additional K-12 schools and afterschool programs, juvenile justice facilities, and youth service agencies.

	Masami Nishishiba Equal-Status Partners, Co-Production, and Informing Practice: Examination of the Three Community-Engaged Research Principles in Clackamas County Alternate Work Week Evaluation Study
In November 2008, Clackamas County, Oregon began a one-year pilot program: switching employees to an alternate four-day work week, with 10-hour workdays (typically 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday). About 828 of Clackamas County's 1,800 employees were affected by the program, which does not extend to emergency service providers. In partnership with Clackamas County, this project evaluated the first phase of the alternate work week pilot. During this first phase data were collected focusing on assessing the impact of the alternate work week on 1) customer service and citizen reaction, 2) county operations outcomes (e.g. energy use), and 3) employee experience. In September 2009, the evaluation report was submitted to the Clackamas County board of commissioners and the board made a decision to adopt alternate work week on a permanent basis. Currently, in the second phase of the evaluation, this project has partnered with a staff member from the County Administrator’s office to implement a system for tracking the outcome of the alternate work week, and institutionalize the evaluation research.

	Kerth O’Brien Community Members as Collaborators in Focus Group Research
This project examines the involvement of community members as collaborators in focus group research. It partners with Project EQUALED (Exploring the Quality of African-American and Latino Experiences with Doctors), which began in 2003 with the mission to understand similarities and differences in African American, Mexican American, and European American patients’ perspectives on what makes for a good/effective patient-physician relationship, and how race, ethnicity, and culture affect patient-physician interactions. Expanding upon these Project EQUALED aims, this case study’s goals are three-fold: 1) to identify what Project EQUALED did well in its collaboration with community members; 2) to identify areas in which Project EQUALED could do better on future projects; and 3) to notice problems for which that still need solutions.

	Stéphanie Wahab The Interconnections Project: CBPR to Improve Depression Care for African-American Domestic Violence Survivors
Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Interconnections Project utilizes community-based participatory research (CBPR) to develop and test a community-based multi-faced intervention to reduce depression disparities in African American women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV). Community-partners include Bradley-Angle House's Healing Roots Center, Lifeworks Northwest, OHSU and PSU researchers, and African American community leaders, activists, artist, survivors of IPV, and health advocates. The Healing Roots Center (HRC) aims to empower, educate, support and heal African American IPV survivors. The Interconnections partnership has developed a depression care intervention based on the Chronic Care model for chronic illness, empowerment theory, and motivational interviewing. The project's long-term objective is to improve mental health care for women of color who have experienced IPV. The project also aims to build the partnerships, experience, skills, materials, and pilot data necessary to apply for funding for a large-scale controlled trial. The partners work to meet these goals by accomplishing the following specific aims: 1) further the partnership between our academic and community groups, build capacity for CBPR among all members, and monitor how well the process is working; 2) adapt, prioritize and pilot test assessment instruments that will be used to measure the effectiveness of our intervention; 3) assess the feasibility and acceptability of our intervention and collect preliminary effectiveness data that can be used for future power calculations; and 4) engage the community in designing an acceptable large-scale controlled trial to test the effectiveness of our intervention.

	Lisa Weasel Conducting Research from the Ground Up: Facing the Challenge of Community Engagement in the Natural Sciences
Facing the Challenge of Community Engagement in the Natural Sciences Project Summary: This case study falls within a larger, National Science Foundation funded research project that began in 2003 and aimed to investigate global ethical controversies surrounding genetically modified food and biotechnology. The importance of stakeholder inclusion in research relating to sustainable agriculture has been clearly established, yet the practicality of involving community members in research relating to science and technology remains challenging. In this case in particular, doing community-based research that crossed cultural boundaries and tread into globally controversial subject matter required unique and contextually appropriate methodologies. This case study describes the insights that feminist perspectives on methodology and epistemology offers to researchers wishing to develop a more participatory approach to community-engaged research relating to science and technology.