Building and Maintaining Partnerships for Community Engagement

Victor RubinVice President for Research, PolicyLink

Engaged Institutions Cluster MeetingAustin, Texas

January 22-24, 2007

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Overview

• Brief history of community-university partnerships and the scholarship of engagement

• The diversity of experiences and perspectives

• Essential qualities of effective partnerships and elements of university change

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History of community-university partnerships and scholarship of engagement

• Early religious motivations for service

• Original land-grant mission

• Development of extension and outreach functions, especially state universities, HBCU’s

• Growth of government funded research and dominance of standard research paradigm

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History of partnerships and engagement

• Application of science, and technical assistance, directed to urban and social problems

• Rethinking these models and roles begins

• Anchor institutions start changing their home neighborhoods, sometimes themselves as well

• Land Grant institutions start rethinking extension; start of Sea Grant program

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History, continued

• Many forms of research require more community cooperation and engagement for success

• Activist scholars and teachers extend support for community organizations and neighborhoods

• Funders start requiring community engagement in research

• Service learning grows significantly in response to students’ and communities’ needs

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Given this history, what is next?

• Federal and philanthropic funders start supporting partnerships in their own right

• Engagement becomes a more common central theme in university reform, growth, and revitalization

• Peer review of scholarship of engagement grows, albeit slowly

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Or not!

The next several years will reveal a lot about the long term sustainability of the progress toward community engagement.

Given this history, what is next?

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Partnerships Examined

• What are the characteristics of effective partnerships for engagement, and the elements that can enable them to grow and be sustained?

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Remarkable diversity of experiences and perspectives

• Partnerships will be with many communities:

– Adjacent neighborhoods

– Other local neighborhoods, or entire cities

– Places located far away from campus

– Communities of common interests or needs

– Organizations or individuals

– Governments, nonprofits, or business sector

– One key partner or many, serial or collaborative

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Remarkable diversity of experiences and perspectives, continued

• Collaboration across disciplines, professions, and units of the university can be as challenging as any community relationship

• Collaborations among institutions of higher education are also necessary.

– Respect the organizational needs of each partner

– Draw on the assets of each partner

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Remarkable diversity of experiences and perspectives, continued

• Some partnerships are directly in synch with university administration agendas

• Other provide advocacy or research support for community interests that may be of little direct concern, or even in opposition to, administration priorities

• Both stances are legitimate and important roles of the university in civil society

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Remarkable diversity of experiences and perspectives, continued

• Engagement involves research, teaching and/or service, and sometimes lead to fundamental rethinking of how those are conducted, but sometimes not

• Partnerships vary in how money and power are distributed, how decisions are made

• Some partnerships put building the capacity of community partners at the center of the picture

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What serious partnership requires

• Partners jointly explore common and separate goals and interests

• Each partner understands capacities, resources and expected contributions of every other partner

• Identify opportunities for early success

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What serious partnership requires

• Focus on the relationship, not only on tasks

• Shared control of partnership directions

• Commitment to continuous assessment of the partnership relationship itself

– B. Holland, “The Power of Partnerships,” HUD, 2005

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What effective engagement requires

• Address power dynamics; forge ways for voices of residents to help guide partnership

• Support for the long term: consistency and longevity are essential to good outcomes and positive relationships

• Effective communication and trust

• Greater capacity in community-based organizations to work with the university

• Greater skill and experience in higher education on managing partnerships

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What effective engagement requires, continued

• Clear and institutionalized incentives and rewards for faculty members and other staff

• Buy-in from multiplicity of departments

• Top-level campus leadership making tangible commitments with follow-through

• More external funding that supports partnership activities

– Adapted from D. Maurrasse, Beyond the Campus (2001)

Contact Information:

Victor RubinVice President for Research

(510) 663-4333vrubin@policylink.org

PolicyLink Headquarters1438 Webster Street, Suite 303

Oakland, CA 94612Telephone: (510) 663-2333 Fax: (510) 663-9684

info@policylink.org