Building and Maintaining Partnerships for Community Engagement

1
Building and Maintaining Partnerships for
Community Engagement

• Victor Rubin
• Vice President for Research, PolicyLink
• Engaged Institutions Cluster Meeting
• Austin, Texas
• January 22-24, 2007

2
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

3
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, HBCUs
• Growth of government funded research and
  dominance of standard research paradigm

4
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

5
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

6
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

7
Given this history, what is next?

• Or not!
• The next several years will reveal a lot about
  the long term sustainability of the progress
  toward community engagement.

8
Partnerships Examined

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

9
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

10
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

11
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

12
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

15
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

16
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)

17

• Contact Information
• Victor Rubin
• Vice President for Research
• [phone]
• vrubin_at_policylink.org
• PolicyLink Headquarters
• 1438 Webster Street, Suite 303
• Oakland, CA 94612
• Telephone [phone] Fax [phone]
• info_at_policylink.org