Search

The purpose of this study was to illuminate the experiences of undergraduate students who participated in academic community-engaged learning, specifically as those experiences related to student mental health and wellness. The data for this qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was collected through semistructured interviews with seven undergraduate students. Analysis resulted in the identification of essential components of the student community-engaged learning experience as it relates to students' mental health and wellness and included three main themes: Identity (Head), Belonging (Heart), and Agency (Hands). The implications of these findings are many, including pedagogical considerations for community-engaged classrooms and campuswide considerations for the inclusion of high-impact practices, as well as community partner implications. Ultimately, the findings of this study will lead to a better informed, nuanced, macrolevel strategy that higher education institutions can use to impact the state of student mental health and wellness broadly.

Community and campus partners can benefit from place-based community engagement to enact a commitment to racial equity and community-driven decision-making. Racial equity is paramount in place-based community engagement. However, very little attention has been given to how whiteness in the ideological foundations of higher education shapes the work lives of professionals, faculty, and the collaborations they form to address community issues. Thus, the purpose of this case study is to foreground some paradoxes of whiteness-at-work (Yoon, 2012) in an informal place-based community engagement collaboration between the Center for Public Life at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa and members of the historic Greenwood community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We take a reflexive stance (Ozias & Pasque, 2019), examining our own experience to explore how Yoon's (2012) concept of whiteness-at-work serves as a tool for advancing the racial equity agenda of place-based community engagement. We conclude that whiteness-at-work provides a useful lens through which to begin explicitly surfacing ways in which place-based community engagement can reify and perpetuate white hegemony. This approach also provides a starting point for racial "justice-in-the-doing," the internal, interpersonal, and institutional work to disrupt hegemonic whiteness" (Yoon, 2022), in place-based community engagement that may move us further toward garnering the racial equity to which we aspire.

Universities have historically fostered spaces where students, faculty, staff, and administration can fruitfully engage in discussion around contentious issues. Current political divisions have had a chilling effect on these discussions inside and outside the classroom. To nurture a campus culture of dialogic engagement, the communication studies department in collaboration with the DEI office began a campus dialogue project that invited faculty, staff, students, and administration to participate in monthly dialogues focused on cultural impasse topics. This 5-year project has demonstrated that university communication studies departments can be instrumental in helping community members cross organizational boundaries to engage in challenging dialogues when they are focused on engagement, facilitated by students, intentionally welcoming, and predictably organized.

Training the next generation of public health practitioners to promote health equity requires public health graduate programs to cultivate students' skills in community partnership. The Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) requires Master of Public Health (MPH) students to produce a high-quality written product as part of their culminating Integrative Learning Experience (ILE). Because CEPH recommends that ILE written products be useful to community partners, ILEs can draw lessons from the field of experiential education, especially the social justice aligned principles of critical service-learning (CSL). However, the current literature lacks descriptions of how to operationalize CSL's principles within graduate-level culminating experiences. To help fill this gap, we discuss a CSL ILE for MPH students, called Capstone. We describe CSL's key components and explain and assess how each is operationalized. We hope Capstone's model will help educators engage more deeply with CSL practices to advance health equity.

Worldwide trends suggest we are witnessing a global "campus mental health crisis" (Andersen, Holm, & Côté, 2021). According to the most recent US National College Health Assessment, over the course of a typical month, 29% of students chronically experience high levels of stress, 42% experience stress that negatively impacts their performance or progress towards their degree, and 66% feel hopeless (National College Health Assessment, 2022a). Study reviews in various countries indicate that the prevalence of students meeting criteria for a mental health disorder is alarmingly high (e.g., 25% depressive disorder, Sheldon et al., 2021). Accordingly, students' demand for mental health services has reached new heights (Xiao et al., 2017). While this rise in psychological distress and help-seeking behavior is likely in part due to decreased mental health stigma (Lipson, Lattie, & Eisenberg, 2019), postsecondary students are also believed to be facing unprecedented challenges. Ensuring that colleges and universities procure learning environments that prioritize emerging adults' wellbeing has thus become necessary.

Institutions of higher education are increasingly highlighting community engagement activities to make the benefits of higher education more visible. The most transformational community engagement is linked to curriculum, so it is faculty who must incorporate community-engaged pedagogy. This content analysis of faculty narratives about community engagement reveals motivations for faculty to engage in this work. These findings connect to social capital theory and suggest a new direction for faculty development efforts to promote community engagement.

This reflective essay addresses the nexus of two recent events in the United States: (1) the public scrutiny of the relationship between land grant universities and the expropriation of Indigenous lands and (2) the often uncritical and rapid uptake of settler land acknowledgments at public college and university events. We argue that written land acknowledgment statements need to accompany actions that align with declarations of respect and honor. Specifically, we offer readers three concrete ideas through which institutions may further land acknowledgments: challenging their historical legacies, fostering meaningful partnerships with Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples, and materializing resources for this highly underserved, long-neglected, often ignored community.

This study seeks to extend research in the field by exploring literature examining preservice teachers' perceptions of community engagement efforts. We then report findings from a thematic analysis of a survey conducted with teacher candidates at a university in the southeastern U.S. who took part in school- and community-based STEM events, and provide implications and suggestions for utilizing community engagement opportunities as a means of enriching preservice teachers' understandings of local school and community contexts.

This mixed-methods study delves into rural community service-learning (CSL) partnerships, shedding light on the complexities and dynamics of collaboration between colleges and rural communities. Through quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews, the research amplifies the voices of rural community partners, emphasizing the crucial role of trust, communication, and reciprocity. Challenges such as staff demands and organizational mismatches underscore the need for rural institutions to better prepare students and allocate resources to support their community partners effectively. The study advocates for transformative CSL approaches that prioritize community needs and nurture long-lasting collaborations. By providing insights into the impact of CSL on rural partners and organizations, this research offers valuable recommendations for improving future practices and fostering meaningful engagement in both rural and urban settings.

This Projects With Promise case study offers insights for addressing tensions between universities and communities in building partnerships and collectively rethinking "the field" of community engagement. We explore moving beyond a solely place-based understanding of "the field" into an ethos based on human interactions and mutual trust. Through an analysis of the Baltimore Field School (BFS) project, we argue that partnerships must be designed to create the time and space for self-reflexive qualitative methods that emerge from a personality-proof and sustainable infrastructure that can respond to crises and needs in both communities and universities. Rethinking and even "undoing" notions of institutional time and space within universities allows community-centered reflection that begins to cross the boundaries imposed by neoliberal institutions focused on profits above people. Exploring the distinct scholarly communities of higher education can inspire academics to rethink how universities can work with and not just for local communities.

Productive tensions with traditional academic practices develop within a graduate certificate program in community engagement at Tulane University. The program offers an alternative approach to traditional graduate education practices by fostering community, epistemic justice, and care for the whole person through sustained interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary conversations and collaborations. A 2021-22 survey of current and prior program participants in the graduate certificate program documents a variety of tensions that arise when the graduate certificate program is compared to students' main experiences with graduate school at Tulane. The analysis relies on theories and concepts of epistemic injustice, decolonizing methodologies, and community engagement, which enable the interpretation of results. We find that results point to the Tulane Mellon Graduate Program in Community-Engaged Scholarship's differences in approaches compared to traditional graduate educational experiences at Tulane, offering insights into more ethical and humane possibilities for graduate education generally, as well as insights into community-engaged graduate education. These insights would be useful to graduate program directors, graduate students, community engagement advocates inside and outside academia, and administrators interested in connecting their universities to local communities through ethically informed, graduate student-led scholarly collaborations.

Extractive knowledge is prevalent in higher education community engagement. It is a type of epistemic injustice that is harmful to the historically and systemically minoritized communities and community nonprofits that many universities, particularly predominately white institutions, seek to engage. Extractive knowledge results from what we can think of as transactional relationships with community members or community nonprofits. These are largely superficial but impactful relationships perpetuating injustice in higher education spaces that imagine themselves working to create greater justice. In this article, we make two primary arguments: a.) Extractive knowledge is an epistemic injustice prevalent in community-engaged higher education, and b.) The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's model for transformative community engagement and the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community's Practice Principles provide strategies and models for more epistemically just approaches to community engagement that shape knowledge in epistemically responsible ways, in partnership with communities and alignment with communities' goals and outcomes, this paper finishes with the Fitz Center's Health Equity Program and a community-led partnership as examples of these Practice Principles that lead toward reciprocal, responsible, community-driven, and transformational community engagement.

This study aims to develop comprehensive education and learning guidelines aimed at preserving and protecting Qinghai Mongolian folk songs in China within the broader context of intangible cultural heritage. With a strong theoretical foundation emphasizing the role of education, interdisciplinary approaches, and community engagement, this study employs a multidisciplinary methodology. This includes an extensive literature review, expert consultations, fieldwork, and case studies to develop comprehensive education and learning guidelines for the safeguarding of Qinghai Mongolian folk songs. The historical evolution of Mongolian folk songs, legal frameworks, collaborative efforts, government-led initiatives, the role of social forces, published resources, and higher education institutions all feature prominently in the research results. These findings align with the theoretical principles outlined in the literature review, emphasizing the importance of education, interdisciplinary approaches, and community engagement in ICH preservation. The education and learning guidelines generated by this research serve as a valuable framework for the sustainable protection of Qinghai Mongolian folk songs and offer insights applicable to the preservation of intangible cultural heritage globally.

This report presents an evaluation of students' experiences in a student-run clinic project in Aotearoa New Zealand, aiming to provide interprofessional learning opportunities and accessible health services to the community. Qualitative focus group interviews were conducted with students' post-clinical placement. A six-step thematic data analytic approach guided identification of three key themes: placement preparation and understanding expectations, interprofessional relationships and collaboration, and learning experience and value. Students reported positive experiences in this student-run clinic placement, including in respect to collaborative experiences, the development of interprofessional relationships, and value of the learning experience. This report highlights the need for enhanced pre-placement preparation and clarification of expectations regarding a community-based interprofessional placement experience, particularly for first year students. The student-run clinic model has potential to address healthcare disparities and enhance learning through community-engaged experiences. Results provide insights for educational institutions and healthcare providers looking to implement similar initiatives, emphasising collaborative partnerships and student-centred interprofessional education.

This current study measured the impact of a one-time semester-long course-based civic engagement activity on student learning and participant impact, particularly participants' willingness to engage in community dialogue and promote awareness of social justice issues within their communities. The service-learning project involved on-campus and online students from three criminal justice courses and a hybrid format event titled "Finding Common Ground: Social Justice Issues Surrounding Mental Health & Mental Illness & Disorders" at a Midwestern teaching institution. The two-hour event included roundtable discussions to promote open dialogue about mental health and mental health illness and disorders. Learning and self-impact were measured via self-constructed questions and the Civic Engagement Short Scale Plus (CES[superscript 2+]). Results indicated increased endorsement for community engagement and positive qualitative feedback on self-empowerment. The findings provide insights into the potential benefits of service-learning activities, such as mental health community roundtables, for fostering community dialogue, personal growth, and social justice activism. The insights gained from the current study can inform future planning and enhancement of civic engagement initiatives while also contributing to developing community-based education and outreach strategies.

This study explores the potential of a new perspective on research into the impact of higher education on students' civic engagement. We propose shifting from viewing engagement as the key dependent variable to two "fundamental constituents": political interest and agency. Both constituents have been presented as either static or determined entirely by factors external to education, such as maturation, but also as dynamic and affected by various aspects of the educational experience in higher education. Furthermore, as analyses of these effects based on sample means do not account sufficiently for the intersectionality of background variables that define the student experience, we propose that data are explored through cluster analysis. Employing this type of analysis, a case study conducted at a small international liberal arts college in the Netherlands showed four distinctly different patterns in the development of both constituents of civic engagement. Based on further data obtained from the same sample, we offer suggestions for specific foci in further research about the impact of higher education on the development of civic engagement.

Postsecondary education enrollment is declining across the United States. The U.S. Department of Education's Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) initiative focuses on increasing the college-going rate of students living in low-income neighborhoods through targeted university-community partnerships (UCPs). Here, we reflect on our program's use of a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to explore family postsecondary perspectives during the pandemic with the goal of developing community-level interventions. We outline the implementation of this approach in defining community, sharing planning power with partners, and responsive sampling. Reflection on the relevance, inclusion, and value of CBPR in education research is included.

This article examines faculty motivation to integrate community engagement (CE) into teaching and research, in relation to faculty identity, rank and status, experience, and faith. Building upon previous research that focused on intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, our study also examined the role of an institutional definition of CE with clear criteria, as outlined by the Community Engagement Institutional Assessment (CEIA) rubric, in the motivational cycles of faculty reflection on current and aspirational aspects of CE. Surprisingly, our results illustrate that even when colleges and universities support CE across the institution, faculty may not be significantly motivated by this expressed valuing of CE. Importantly, our findings indicate that faculty would like to achieve the aspirational status on all criteria, pointing to the potential for the rubric to bridge the gap between institutional mission and individual faculty motivations. Enhancing this alignment may increase sustained and meaningful impact on the community.

Although a large body of literature discusses the advancement of community engagement in higher education, a less substantial body of scholarship explores how engagement is promoted and institutionalized within universities. In this exploratory study, using a discourse analysis of official reports posted on the websites of three university cases, the qualitative results unfolded how community engagement was institutionalized. The study identified some of the basic mechanisms social language uses to create institutions within institutions, like university engagement. The study provided data to support the theoretical assumption that language, through a host of possible configurations of texts, generates discourses that engender social actions such as institutionalization. Those processes disclosed how engagement was produced, and it is still evolving. Further research strategies are discussed.

In response to continued calls for research centering community perspectives in service-learning and community engagement, this mixed-methods article examines the experiences of community fellows who were a part of a university service-learning development program. The purpose of the program was to train faculty and community partners in service-learning pedagogy and implementation practices. We analyzed self-reported data from 25 community partners over eight cohorts of the program. In the article, we find that community fellows grew their knowledge of service-learning terms and practices. At the same time, they identified logistic and equity challenges in service-learning implementation and partnerships. Amid these experiences, community fellows highlighted the formation of a shared community among all fellows as the strongest outcome of the program. The shared community afforded them space to build meaningful relationships, collectively plan, and problem-solve together as they practiced servicelearning.

Why are many urban universities' relationships with their surrounding communities fraught despite university efforts at community engagement? Relationships between the factors underlying university-driven neighborhood change remain largely unexplored. In this article, I take the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) as a case study and examine the relationship between campus security on the one hand and university-related redevelopment projects in Penn's West Philadelphia neighborhood on the other. I ask what this relationship can reveal about how university-driven neighborhood change operates and why Penn's relationship with its community is persistently tense. I organize my data into two case studies and argue that campus safety and redevelopment have long worked hand-in-hand to securitize campus by creating and reinforcing private zones of exclusivity. Not only have crime and resulting security measures played a key role in driving redevelopment projects, but recently, redevelopment itself has further begun to serve as a form of securitization.

Most introductory biology laboratories are taught using direct instruction. An alternative to the direct instruction laboratory course is the Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE). CURE courses have been reported to positively impact undergraduate students, increasing self-efficacy, enhancing science identity, improving preparation and persistence for STEM careers, and increasing inclusion of underrepresented minorities in undergraduate research. While there are several affective benefits of CUREs, our literature review reveals an absence of studies assessing pre-health students' science identity, self-efficacy, and perceptions after participating in a community-engaged CURE laboratory. We found that students agreed that their community-engaged laboratory course had CURE design features, Discovery and Relevance had the highest rating. Overall, our results indicate that self-efficacy improved from the beginning to the end of the semester. Students in the community-engaged CURE showed gains in science identity. Understanding student affective domain is critical for improving student learning in gateway biology laboratory courses since they play very important roles in determining whether students can complete their degrees in the STEM fields. Future research should examine the relationships between self-efficacy, science identity, student perceptions of the community-engaged CURE laboratories, and gender, major, and race/ethnicity.

Consumer and community involvement (also referred to as patient and public involvement) in health-related curricula involves actively partnering with people with lived experience of health and social care systems. While health professions education has a long history of interaction with patients or consumers, a shift in the way consumer and community engage in health-related education has created novel opportunities for mutual relationships valuing lived experience expertise and shifting traditional education power relations. Drawing on a mixed methods design, we explored consumer and community involvement practices in the design and delivery of health-related education using the capability, opportunity, motivation and behaviour framework (COM-B). In our results, we describe educator capabilities, opportunities and motivations, including identifying barriers and enablers to consumer and community involvement in health-related education. Educators have varying philosophical reasons and approaches for involving consumers and community. There is a focus on augmenting student learning through inclusion of lived and living experience, and on mutual transformative learning through embedding lived experience and co-creating learning. How these philosophical positionings and motivations shape the degree by which educators involve consumers and community members in health-related curricula is important for further understanding these educational partnerships within universities.

A sustainable transdisciplinary research network was established through a research practice partnership (RPP) between an urban farm, faculty and staff from a Historically Black College (HBC), and researchers at a medium-sized private university. We investigate student-worker resilience at this urban farm situated on the HBC campus, drawing on literature that explores tensions between informal learning environments and formal spaces, equitable food systems and farming systems, as well as the resilience of farm work, and which is grounded critical food systems education theory. Utilizing a participatory design approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews and deductively analyzed the data. The research questions guiding this paper are: (1) What topics of discussion are most important to the student-workers and staff working on an urban farm, (2) How do student-workers and college staff members perceive and experience resilience on an urban farm? We found that what participants on an urban farm discuss, relating to their experiences, include (1) how participants were eager to "engage" with the local community, (2) how participants demonstrated "resilience" while working on the urban farm, (3) how "power dynamics" played a pivotal role informing the direction of the urban farm, (4) how participants consider community "access" to healthy foods an important mission for the farm, (5) how the college acted as a power wielding entity, perpetuating its "privilege" over the farmers and the farm operations. These findings have the potential to enable community organizing spaces to promote resilience for their volunteers and workers, and for urban farms top partner with their community to promote the mission of increasing access to healthy and affordable food options.

Background: The short-term impacts of outdoor orientation programs (OOPs) have been documented in the literature for close to 40 years. While there is a fair amount of research examining the immediate effects of OOPs, there are relatively few studies exploring long-term impacts. Purpose: This study examined the important longitudinal "lessons learned" from participating in an OOP. Methodology/Approach: This study utilized a retrospective qualitative approach and employed the Most Significant Change technique to understand meaningful lessons learned. Alumni from an OOP participated in semi-structured interviews. Thematic analyses included open coding, focused coding, and axial coding. Findings/Conclusions: Primary themes that emerged from the coding process included community and social connections, mental health and well-being and environmental appreciation and value of nature. Participants reported learning valuable lessons related to community building, coping, stress relief, resiliency and thriving, and connection with nature. Implications: Results provide evidence supporting positive long-term effects of OOPs. A particular highlight is how participants noted the OOP helped shape their "favourite self" years after their university experience. Researchers and practitioners can use these results to inform OOP curricula and to include in program marketing and lobbying efforts.

This qualitative content analysis of course descriptions and syllabi examines how family and community engagement are addressed in principal preparation programs. Relying on a conceptual framework that centers four areas of practice, the analysis determined only half of programs had a substantial focus on families and communities. Many programs that did address FCE relied on outdated literature and standards or lacked authentic skill-development experiences to prepare school leaders for collaboration with family and community members. The results suggest many aspiring principals are leaving educational leadership programs ill-equipped to lead more democratic approaches to schooling and unaware that such models exist.

Community engagement in higher education has been promoted as critical to fulfilling higher education's responsibility to the public good through teaching, learning, and knowledge generation. Reciprocity and mutual benefit are key principles of community engagement that connote a two-way exchange of knowledge and outcomes. However, it is not clear from existing literature whether community engagement positively impacts communities. This paper presents findings from a dissertation study focused on how campus-community partnership stakeholders define impact and discusses implications for place-based pedagogy. Using grounded theory, the ways community and campus partners defined community impact in a diverse set of campus-community partnerships at two U.S. urban, Jesuit universities that employ a place-based approach to community engagement were explored. Relationships as facilitators of impact and as impacts in and of themselves emerged as central themes that led to the development of the Justice-Centering Relationships Framework. The framework includes two paradigms for understanding community impact in higher education community engagement -- Plug-and-Play and Justice-Centering Relationships -- that are bridged by a reframing process. The framework contributes to and informs the "how" of taking a place-based community engagement approach that leads to positive benefits for community impact, student learning, and institutional change.

This research study aims to validate the typology of process variables salient in service-learning projects proposed by Snell and Lau (2022) with empirical evidence. The study employed a qualitative approach by interviewing partner organization representatives (PORs) from 11 local and two international community partner organizations (CPOs), which had a history of collaboration in various service-learning projects with four universities based in Hong Kong. Our analysis identified five key factors that were perceived to be conducive to the success of service-learning projects. These positive factors were: student ownership and initiative, positive roles for PORs and their staff; an established collaborative relationship between the CPO and university; university unit-provided support and preparation for students; and instructor commitment. These factors confirmed several variables in the Snell and Lau (2022) typology, and relationships among these factors were identified. Interviewees also identified factors impeding effective service, including the absence of some success factors, failure to align community/CPO needs and instructor requirements, and insufficient time parameters for the service. In our discussion of the findings, we infer some possible causal relationships among the positive factors. Limitations of the present study are discussed, and directions for further research are suggested. [The page range cited on the PDF (pp. 28-54) is incorrect. The correct page range is pp. 28-53.]

In the summer of 2020, our team created virtual community-engaged learning (VCEL) modules in response to the need to move classes to online and hybrid delivery styles during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. These modules addressed engaged learning concepts and were designed with faculty, students, and community partner organizations in mind. This paper explores the challenges of creating and beta testing these VCEL modules, as well as the creative methods taken to produce high-quality content that would continue to serve students in the wake of the pandemic. What emerged from this project is a unique set of self-contained learning modules in Canvas Commons that include built-in assessments, allowing students to demonstrate learning, and allowing faculty members to review engaged-learning theory and strategies and integrate the virtual content into their online classes seamlessly. Our beta test findings indicate that students generally had a positive experience with the content and spent approximately two hours, on average, engaging with the material. In this reflective analysis of our process, we offer an explanation of the replicable process of creating VCEL modules and a description of the outcomes associated with producing and testing the content therein.

Community-based learning and teaching in higher education, and other versions of it, such as service learning, are now part of many curricula worldwide. In the UK, there is a growing community of practitioners interested in student learning in partnership with local communities. With this expansion, however, there is little institution-based research which 'looks within', in terms of shared understanding and supporting this type of experiential learning 'at scale'. Within the context of increasing interdisciplinary interest by those developing curricula beyond the traditional home of engaged research and teaching (for example, in urban studies and sociology), we undertook an institution-wide study to discover the shared understandings of community-based learning and teaching, including the potential barriers to, and opportunities for, community-based learning and teaching approaches. In this article, we share insights from a series of 20 university stakeholder interviews, which involved academic teachers, engagement professionals and those supporting learning and teaching. We used a 'students-as-partners' approach, where students interested in community-based learning took the leading role in the qualitative study. Our findings reveal the values and expectations, formal learning benefits and infrastructural considerations to implement this type of learning as part of future-facing curricula. We also provide recommendations for universities seeking to develop their own approaches towards facilitating community-based learning and teaching.

While numerous studies have examined how scientists perceive doing public communication and engagement, there is limited research on undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) student attitudes toward these meaningful activities. Undergraduate students are more diverse than STEM faculty and may serve as boundary spanners in communities, so exploring their motivations and behaviors in STEM engagement is valuable. For scientists, confidence in communication skills is one driver of public engagement behavior. In this study, we utilized a survey to examine how undergraduate STEM students' science communication skills as well as their science identity and science self-efficacy may drive motivation and behaviors in STEM community engagement. Our findings revealed that STEM students are motivated to do community engagement but lack opportunities to actually do these behaviors. Regression analyses revealed that year in academic progression did not increase STEM students' attitudes and behaviors in community engagement. However, science communication skills, science identity, and science self-efficacy were all predictors of student motivation and behaviors in STEM community engagement. These findings suggest that universities should intentionally provide training in science communication, continue providing support for students developing science identity and self-efficacy, and develop opportunities for undergraduate STEM students to do science outreach and engagement activities.

Columbus, the largest city in Ohio, is an epicenter for several overlapping health disparities, including poverty, food insecurity, and infant mortality. A group of volunteer undergraduate students at The Ohio State University sought to reduce some of these disparities through the creation of ENCompass: Empowering Neighborhoods of Columbus. This student organization was developed around a dual mission to (1) address social determinants of health by screening and connecting clients with social resources and (2) cultivate interdisciplinary student leadership through immersive volunteer experiences. In its 9 years of implementation, ENCompass has developed ongoing partnerships with eight clinics and food pantries where, on a weekly basis, ENCompass volunteers conduct social needs screenings with interested clients. This article provides an in-depth description of the ENCompass program, the outcomes ENCompass has provided for the community and its student volunteers, and several lessons learned to offer guidance to those interested in developing similar programs.

For instructors engaged in teaching evaluation, bridging the gap between the content of formal educational experiences and what we want future evaluators to be able to do in practice remains a challenge. Studying the format and quality of university courses focused on program evaluation is one mechanism through which we might begin to narrow this gap. This article describes a community-engaged, project-based evaluation course that was taught during five semesters, and uses qualitative data to explore student experiences within the course along three dimensions: experiential education, interdisciplinary collaboration, and community partnerships. In particular, we highlight the productive yet uncomfortable role that challenge and ambiguity play in animating evaluation learning. We suggest implications for teaching evaluation based on our findings.

Community-engaged learning opportunities are increasingly prevalent in higher education. In addition to positive personal growth and learning outcomes, these opportunities allow students to learn about the community surrounding their campus and formulate their own understandings of social responsibility and citizenship. These connections can be especially powerful for students at colleges and universities located in or near urban areas. This study assesses the impact of REAL Dayton, a community engagement immersion program at a midsized Catholic and Marianist university, on students' attitudes toward and perceptions of their city through pre/post surveys and interviews. The program encourages students to build their knowledge of the city and create sustained relationships with the broader community. This research enhances understandings of the effects and outcomes of community engagement programs for students. Findings demonstrate the impact of community engagement on student knowledge about their city and student perceptions of their own roles as community members.

This article discusses the characteristics of a donor-funded internship program for undergraduate students interested in reproductive rights, health, and justice at Tulane University's Newcomb Institute. It describes the results of a preliminary study of this program's outcomes and makes recommendations for program improvements. This article will also argue that this program, despite its unique challenges, provides a model for other colleges and universities that are interested in developing equitable community partnerships and cultivating a social justice mindset in students. This study indicates that the program has been successful at developing young leaders in a social justice movement, serving underrepresented student groups, building trust with community partners, and creating opportunities for multiple collaborations with those partners.

In the United States, the dearth of quality expanded learning opportunities (ELO), such as afterschool and summer programs, has long been recognized as a national concern (DeKanter et al., 2000). The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this problem, as expanded learning opportunities of all kinds became increasingly limited in spring 2020 (Carver & Doohen, 2021). This research evaluated a new service-learning project, Honors Afterschool Clubs, which allows college students to fill ELO needs by creating and leading afterschool clubs for high-needs, low-income youth. By analyzing college student pre- and postexperience surveys, semistructured interviews, and focus groups, the authors evaluated the perceived impacts of this project on college students and their learning. Our preliminary results suggest that in addition to providing an essential service to the community, families, and youth, college participants who lead afterschool clubs perceive an improvement in their self-efficacy, interpersonal skills, and career confidence.

As institutions of higher education evolve and adapt to meet the increasing needs of their communities, faculty are faced with the choice of where and how to employ their time and expertise. To advance and encourage partnerships between institutions and their communities, academic reward structures must be designed in ways that support those who choose to leverage their expertise, resources, and time to engage with community in meaningful and mutually beneficial ways. This dissertation (Wendling, 2022) contributes to the growing body of higher education community engagement literature by investigating how school- and department-level promotion and tenure committees not only define and understand faculty's engaged research, but how they evaluate it. Specifically, this dissertation explored what goes into making evaluative decisions, if and how committees utilize tools for evaluation, and how evaluative decisions are made.

Service-learning models serve as noteworthy curriculum paradigms that can help students engage with their communities while continuously learning. This article recounts the implementation of a service-learning model within a student initiative aimed to help combat vaccine hesitancy and promote the uptake of vaccinations within the Rhode Island community. Through a collaborative effort between students, faculty, and the university, the student initiative was able to construct a credit-bearing course to help assess and alleviate vaccine hesitancy within Rhode Island. This article highlights the journey the organization took to develop a service-learning model within the course, the project details, and the impact of their project on the community. A detailed analysis of the service-learning model's impact on students as well as key takeaways of the project are also highlighted below.

Higher education institutions are becoming increasingly embedded in their surrounding communities in order to learn from and respond to their often complex problems. Potential mutually beneficial--or reciprocal-- collaborations between students, faculty members, and communities are being set up, but few researchers have explored how community actors are involved in collaborative decision-making processes. To fill this gap, this narrative review explores the current literature on community involvement processes in course-based higher education activities. Our research yielded a framework of definitions, guiding principles, and strategies to achieve more successful community involvement in this context. Seven guiding principles and related strategies are presented: alignment, shared ownership, balancing power relations, joint learning and knowledge creation, representation, immersion, and relationship building. The narrative review gave insights into the way community involvement is currently approached in course-based higher education activities and established a basis for understanding and shaping higher education--community collaboration.

This study aimed to investigate the process of a top-down motivational approach in university--community engagement (UCE). We conducted a qualitative single case study in Indonesia using direct observations and semistructured interviews with 16 informants in three categories of actors: university, local community, and intermediary. Our main finding is that all actors are motivated by a top-down motivational approach. The university provides service to the community to fulfill its obligation to the government, and the local community is obligated to follow the village chief's directive to participate in community service. As an intermediary between the university and the community, the village chief supports community service because participation will make the chief (and community) eligible to receive grant funds from the central government. These empirical findings provide a new understanding of how UCE works in a country that employs top-down government to implement its regulation at the grassroots level.

Community-engagement in virtual classrooms comes with unique benefits and challenges. Between 2018-2021, technical writing e-service-learning students from Indiana University East (Richmond, Indiana) raised a total of $149,239 through grant writing projects. This e-service-learning project gave students real-world experiences and opportunity to connect with local organizations, prompting one student to choose grant writing as a career. Many students were able to successfully obtain funding for their chosen nonprofits, giving students a sense of social responsibility.

The paper investigates the effect of active civic education using project-based learning (PBL) on attitudes towards civic engagement in a heterogeneous society. The study used a qualitative research approach involving a content analysis of responses to open-ended questionnaires, students' reports and weekly discussions with the students. The study examines whether the PBL teaching approach, which was developed in medical schools, can be an effective tool for use in civic studies to promote civic engagement of college students in a multi-ethnic society. Active civic education matters; it prompted non-Jewish minority students in Israeli society to consider future civic engagement, and improved their understanding of the concepts of accountability, transparency, civil and human rights, and the ability of individuals in a democracy to obtain answers from their government. It also underscored their ability and obligation to contribute to their communities.

What began in a library science course as a collection development project serendipitously transformed into varied learning experiences for students across disciplines and program levels. This article shares the journey of how a singular lesson idea blossomed into an unintentional, multidisciplinary project that led to unexpected learning outcomes for all involved. [The page range cited on the .pdf (p97-107) is incorrect. The correct page range is p95-107.]

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an effective approach for addressing health disparities by integrating diverse knowledge and expertise from both academic and community partners throughout the research process. However, universities and funding agencies have not done enough to invest in the foundational infrastructure and resources that are necessary for building and maintaining lasting trusting research partnerships and supporting them to generate impactful research projects and solutions. Small CBPR Grants Program is a CBPR-seed-funding program that may be particularly helpful to minority-serving institutions' and universities' goal to invest in genuine community-engaged research. The Morgan State University Prevention Sciences Research Center, in collaboration with other community and academic organizations, provided 14 small CBPR awards to new partnerships, and evaluated the success and challenges of the program over a period of three years. To achieve our goal, technical support and training were provided to these partnerships to help with their growth and success. The expected outcomes included trusting relationships and equitable partnerships, as well as publications, presentations, and new proposals and awards to work on mutually identified issues. The program's results included: continued partnerships beyond the program (in most cases), a founded CBPR Center, and a few secured additional funding. One key to the program's success was supporting the formation of research partnerships through networking opportunities and information sessions, as well as providing small grants to incentivize the development of innovative concepts and projects. A learning network and local support group were also created to enhance productivity and the overall impact of each project.

Merrimack College is a midsized Catholic Augustinian College pursuing its historical service-based commitments while shifting priorities toward research. With limited time and resources, these two aims can create tension at institutional and faculty levels. This single institutional case study shares the work of faculty and College leadership to affirm and institutionalize community engagement (CE) through community-engaged research and the development of a Food Justice Research & Action Cluster (FJRAC), connecting community priorities for food justice with faculty expertise. Based on the literature on institutional change and assessment (Eckel, Hill, and Green's Typology of Institutional Change, 2001; Holland's Levels of Commitment to Community Engagement, 2005), this paper frames the stages and timeline that led to the formation of the FJRAC. We advance a Transdisciplinary Ecosystem Model for community-engaged research to analyze the depth and pervasiveness of the institutionalization of CE and explore how colleges can reinvigorate and deepen institutional change. Results of the FJRAC include student experiences (e.g., curriculum development, food security research); community opportunities (e.g., food sources, data analysis); and research projects (e.g., external funding applications). Lessons learned highlight the importance of supporting efforts that align with values, supporting faculty teams, navigating conflict around institution/faculty tension, communicating commitment, keeping timelines flexible, demonstrating value propositions to stakeholders, and balancing conflicting goals.

Community-Based Research (CBR) presents a wide range of benefits in higher education to students, community partners, and universities. Yet on our campus (and many others), CBR remains less common than other high-impact practices (HIPs) such as service learning and undergraduate research due to lack of effective institutionalization. Moreover, when CBR projects are undertaken, they result in a level of engagement with CBR that produces fewer of the expected benefits than is ideal. Here we detail our efforts to institutionalize CBR on our campus to appropriately expand the practice and its resulting benefits. These efforts focus on three initiatives: raising the visibility of CBR, diffusing expertise to implement CBR, and providing critical support for designing and implementing CBR. We also include our assessment plan which had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This plan utilizes a mixed-methods approach and will explore how our initiatives have made an impact on faculty and community partners involved with CBR, as well as assess interest and knowledge about CBR among faculty and community partners who are currently involved in service learning but not yet involved in CBR. We present our efforts as a model for other universities seeking to increase implementation of CBR.

Community-engaged research (CEnR) occurs when university and community resources are partnered to enrich knowledge, address social issues, and contribute to the public good. The benefits of CEnR include the translation of scientific findings into public initiatives that can improve practice and provide invaluable learning experiences for students. Despite the importance of CEnR, there are barriers to this work and limited information on how to develop an academic infrastructure to support such time-intensive research at teaching-focused universities. In this article, we outline the development, implementation, and evaluation results of a pilot faculty learning community (FLC) at a midsized university, the Community-Engaged Faculty Research Fellows Program. This high-visibility program provided consultation and ongoing support for new and established faculty research projects and resulted in high program satisfaction and multiple scholarly and other published works. We provide recommendations from our lessons learned for similar programs at other institutions.

Providing students with opportunities to wrestle with and engage with messy, real-world problems can be challenging in traditional, higher education courses. However, for students in helping and applied professions, engaging with challenging problems in a supportive environment is critical to developing their skills and confidence. This paper presents an innovative pedagogical pilot project that utilizes design thinking in the context of a community-engaged applied learning experience to guide students as they worked on a real problem for real organizations. Undergraduate sociology and master's level social work students engaged in the experience during their regular course work. Their instructors coached them through the process. At the conclusion of the project, they reflected on the process and what they learned. These student reflection papers were analyzed using both a deductive and inductive approach. We found three themes present in these reflection papers: skill development, deeper understanding, and meaningful experience. We conclude our paper by describing how instructors can incorporate aspects of this project into their own classrooms.

This national study included a quantitative inquiry regarding the impact of COVID-19 on service-learning from 207 participants representing community partner organizations (n = 145) and higher education institutions (n = 62). Community partners reported a decreased number of students engaged in service-learning after the outbreak of COVID-19. Response patterns emerged between community partners and higher education participant groups. The perceived helpfulness of service-learning for student success and fostering relationships differed statistically among the partner types--higher education participants rated these higher than community partners. Reasons for participating varied among partner types, and community partners identified volunteer procurement among the most helpful support higher education offers beyond service-learning. Changing policies, wearing masks, and virtual communication were cited as main adaptations to COVID-19 but prioritized differently among partners. This study uncovered the emerging and varied perspectives of higher education and community partners regarding service-learning at this significant time in history.