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The inadequacy of traditional research methods, underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighted the urgent need for innovative approaches, particularly to research involving older adults. This article reflects on the complexities of establishing and sustaining research partnerships with older adults for digital research tool testing and development. The article offers an explicit report of the outreach process for holding researchers accountable and demystifying the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students from underrepresented populations--females, working class, and youth from marginalized racial/ethnic groups--are less likely than their middle-class Asian and White male peers to study computer science (CS) in college. The dearth of CS undergraduates from these groups contributes to projected labor force shortages. Sources of the dilemma include weak or absent inspiration and CS preparation in middle schools and negative stereotypes suggesting certain groups do not belong in CS. This case study describes three years of a community collaboration between a local university and a nearby middle school attended by primarily low-income students of color. The University of North Carolina Charlotte/Wilson STEM Academy Partnership focused on undergraduates majoring in CS teaching monthly workshops designed to inspire and academically prepare the middle schoolers for college and CS majors by teaching them coding and computational thinking while also challenging stereotypes about who belongs in CS. Post-workshop assessments, reflective essays, interviews, and administrative data were thematically coded. Findings suggest the workshops sparked interest in college and CS, undermined toxic stereotypes, and nurtured the academic self-confidence of middle schoolers. The Partnership provided the undergraduates with opportunities to meet their own academic goals while "paying it forward." Results suggest that the Partnership can serve as a model starting point for disrupting the disproportionalities in female and underrepresented minority students in CS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This duoethnography weaves the experiences and perspectives of disabled activists, poverty scholars, community scholars of color, and university-based scholars partnering on a teacher preparation professional development project that (re)centers disability and its intersections by (a) reconsidering who creates knowledge, (b) positioning disabled activists, poverty scholars, and community scholars of color as experts with pedagogical authority, and (c) providing opportunities for teacher candidates (current and future teachers) to learn from activists and scholars in accessible, online spaces. The experiences and perspectives of multiply marginalized disabled youth and adults are often ignored and/or discounted in teacher preparation programs. However, one way to re-zone and re-people disability studies in teacher education is by teaching and learning at the intersections of critical race studies and disability studies through cross-coalitional community-university partnerships.

Recent decades have seen considerable increases in funding and support for community-engaged research (CER) in the health sciences, including the introduction of community engagement requirements into federally funded research infrastructure programs. This paper asks why, despite these supports and incentives, even the best-intentioned researchers and research organizations may struggle to design, implement, and sustain successful community engagement strategies. This question is examined using an exploratory case study of an environmental health sciences research center whose strategies were influenced in part by a requirement by the funder to incorporate community engagement into its research activities. This study utilizes multiple sources of qualitative data collected between the research center's second and fifth years of operation, including participant observation, interviews, and focus groups. The analysis employs an organizational perspective, yielding insights into the factors hindering and facilitating the development of practices that integrate community perspectives and control into academic structures. The findings point to an ongoing dialectic between support for innovative community engagement practices and persistence of conventional academic structures. We highlight the interconnected effects of environmental influences, organizational structures, and individual agency on the development of innovative community engagement practices. The implications for future research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers contested conceptions of community and trajectories toward full participation in research-practice partnerships (RPPs) as key analytical aspects for studying a productive politics of participation. RPPs, as methodology and infrastructure for community participation, frequently surface the character of participation in intersecting communities of practice—making them visible and actionable. I examine two youth-serving RPPs. This analysis considers youth digital media projects as strategies for increasing participation and renegotiating power relations. Findings signal RPPs can help discern the degree to which young people are held on the periphery in communities of practice where marginalizing relations can be reinforced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic writing about community-engaged research has long emphasized the importance of relationships and examined practices of relationship-building. Critical scholars have further argued that the neoliberalization of higher education distorts and narrows the quality of relationships in community-engaged research, a change that makes attending to relationships simultaneously more challenging and more important. Taking these observations as our starting point, in this reflective conceptual essay we draw from our experience as community-engaged researchers to reflect on the meaning, significance, and practices of relationship-building, particularly in the context of academic neoliberalism. We call for a reframing of relationships as an outcome (rather than simply a means) of community-engaged research, and as a network (rather than a binary) that builds collective power. Furthermore, we call on community-engaged scholars to reclaim and center relational practices. We argue that rethinking relationships in this light can be a form of resistance to academic neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service-learning (SL) activities provide multifarious benefits for students, faculty members, and community members. Although the literature includes considerable research on students' and faculty members' outcomes, it also reports a lack of attention to benefits for community members. This study sought to address this gap, giving voice to community partners of a SL module in Community Psychology. We collected 12 interviews, complemented by a brief questionnaire exploring community partners' understanding of SL, their perception of the mutual gain and reciprocity aspects, their motivations, and their challenges. Results show that open attitudes toward collaboration from faculty members strengthen the partnership; community partners consider the opportunity to be coeducators of students as a motivation for their SL involvement; from the perspective of reciprocity, they also particularly appreciate its generative dimension. Giving voice to community partners offers new and useful insights that can contribute to improving SL community-university partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-university partnerships are increasingly being used to address complex, systemic problems, such as food insecurity. However, this form of research is highly labour intensive and requires substantial time and energy. Several community-university partnerships have begun to appoint individuals who act to ‘bridge’ such partnerships to navigate complex social and political environments, and stimulate action. However, few examples exist that highlight the specific nature of these positions. To address this gap, the current paper describes the multiple and complicated roles played by a bridge person in supporting a project developed in response to food insecurity among migrant families. We outline three major roles that required varying forms of labour: 1) Solving Problems (Adaptive Labour), 2) Navigating Scarcity (Political Labour), and 3) Responding to Urgency (Emotional Labour). We intend to highlight the ambivalent spaces bridge people operate within and the implications for these individuals and the community-university partnerships they intend to support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to rethink the positionality of community in community-based research collaboration and advocate the need for community members to facilitate CBR processes to counter power imbalances in community-university engagement. I reflect on my lived experience as a community-based facilitator through a feminist post-structural lens focused on the interplay between concepts such as subjectivity, margin-centre and performativity. I argue that, despite the community-engaged scholarship egalitarian ideal, university-community engagement still echoes the old researcher-researched binary in which academics remain the hegemonic pole. In addition, as a medium of power/knowledge, the university fabricates the community and its marginality. Thus, a margin-centre relationship is established, in which community groups must claim their marginality to receive a share of the centre (the university), such as research skills and information. In these margin-centre dynamics, university and community can be understood as identities and subject positions to be taken up by individuals. In essence, these positions are expressions of regulatory power that normalises subjectivities, a condition in which individuals exist as subjects in the social space. Insights from the work of Judith Butler lead to the understanding that, in order to conceive community members as CBR facilitators, normalised and stabilised binary identities (university-community) should be unsettled. This entails individuals who are subjected as ‘the community’ to escape subjection by moving towards recognition of a subjectivity that is not prescribed or is still marginalised within the discourse. In escaping subjection, community groups may exercise power in order to establish new power relations in which CBR becomes more community-led, yet still collaborative.

There is robust evidence supporting the positive impacts of the arts on health and wellbeing; however, researchers suggest that the poorest in society are significantly less likely to engage with the arts than the wealthy. In this article, we describe a creative, community-university partnership between the Hangleton & Knoll Project and the University of Brighton, where we aimed to investigate and tackle this "participation gap." Using the participatory arts-based method of collaborative poetics, we found that, contrary to claims in the literature, local residents valued and engaged with a wide range of art forms; however, their access to the arts was limited by issues including money, travel and illness. By communicating these findings creatively to a broad range of stakeholders, we were able to stimulate greater investment in the arts locally, with steps taken towards the establishment of a dedicated community arts venue. In this article we reproduce some of the arts-based outputs we created, using these to criticize the reductionist understanding of the arts that lies beneath "participation gap" claims and to demonstrate the enormous potential that can be unlocked when universities and local communities collaborate creatively as equal partners.

Co-produced research is said to create new knowledge through including the perspectives of those traditionally excluded from knowledge production, which in turn is expected to enhance research quality and impact. This article critically examines academic and UK voluntary sector literature concerning participatory and co-produced approaches to explore how quality is currently understood in co-produced research. Drawing on early career researchers' experiences of a programme of co-produced research, the authors illustrate how theory and practice of co-production can differ, and the implications for conceptualising 'research quality' within co-produced research. Drawing on debates within qualitative research, community work and policy studies, the article outlines a potential framework for raising questions of 'quality', co-produced by research partners as part of the research process. Key dimensions of this framework are process, outcomes and autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-engaged scholars grapple with power asymmetries in community-university partnerships, generally working from the assumption that deliberate practices are required to moderate the researchers' power vis-a-vis that of the community. In this article, we suggest that this dyadic framing masks the complexity of power dynamics within communities, of which the university is just one part, and examine how power is negotiated in the boundary zones of a partnership. We use Third Generation Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a conceptual framework to analyse the structural and cultural dimensions of the boundary zone in which research, learning and action in our partnership occurred (Engeström 1996). A brief story sheds light on our boundary work which uses research and data to span, broker and shake institutional boundaries for the purpose of youth violence prevention and intervention. Our analysis illuminates the potential and limitations of our power to foster transformational change. It also allows us to show that underestimating power differentials and the diversity of values and cultures within an organisation and between a university and a community partner, and certainly across multiple institutions in the case of a cross-sector partnership, can slow down and even thwart work to address societal problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a relational understanding of power to analyse power dynamics at the institutional and interpersonal levels in our multi-year Co-Education/Co-Research (CORE) partnership between Tufts University Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) and Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI). Power in community-university partnerships is often examined only at the institutional level, conceiving of power as a resource to be balanced and shared. Indeed, CORE has advanced institutional shifts through co-governance, equitable funding, co-production of curriculum and cross-flow of people. While institutional policies and practices are critical, they alone do not transform deep- seated hierarchies that value university knowledge, practices and people over community. To understand how intertwined interpersonal and institutional practices can reproduce or transform these cultural and ideological dynamics, we use a relational approach, understanding that power flows in and through all relations. As community members, students and faculty, we reflect on the contradictions we have encountered in CORE. We examine how we reinforce the dominance of academic over community knowledge, even as we leverage institutional power to further community goals. These tensions can be opportunities for shifting, disrupting and transforming towards more equitable relations, but they can also reproduce and reinforce the status quo. Through reflective practice and a relational ethic of care, we can try to recognise when we might be shifting power relations and when we might be reproducing them. This is messy work that requires a lot of communication, trust, reflection and time. A relational approach to power provides hope that we can be part of the change we seek in all of our relations, every day. And it reminds us that no matter what we have institutionalised or encoded, our individual beings, organisations and communities are always in a process of becoming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tests the project-based research model by analyzing the processes and outcomes of a partnership between a grassroots environmental organization promoting community-based sustainability practices and a series of university-based capstone courses. We begin by contrasting scientist-driven and community-based approaches to sustainability. We then describe a series of three knowledge mobilization projects codesigned by The Natural Step Monona (TNSM) and universitybased capstone courses led by a graduate student and professor. The first project performed a community diagnosis, from which we codesigned a prescription that the second capstone course helped TNSM implement. The third course worked with TNSM to evaluate the process. That evaluation, along with follow-up interviews, showed that the process had substantial and concrete positive community impacts that furthered TNSM's mission, but it also led to partner fatigue as the organization was pushed past its realistic capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community–university partnerships that purport to promote the public good are often fraught with institutional and cultural challenges that can contribute to the injustices they seek to address. This paper describes how one partnership has been navigating these tensions through a critical approach to power. The Co-Education/Co-Research (CORE) partnership has been built over the last decade between Tufts University and Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, a community organizing and planning group in Boston. We have been co-producing knowledge and action to further community control over development, and we have found that institutional shifts, such as co-governance and the equitable sharing of funding, are leading to longer term impacts for the community partner and breaking down the boundaries between university and community. However, using a relational view of power, we have also found that some of our everyday practices can subtly maintain and reinforce inequities, such as valuing academic knowledge over that of community residents and practitioners. Addressing these cultural and ideological challenges requires critical and reflexive practice. It is messy relational work that requires a lot of communication and trust and, most of all, time and long-term commitment.

This study examines a community–university partnership formed as part of a funded research project. Using case study methodologies, the authors explored the characteristics and facilitators of a community–university partnership from the perspective of community partners. Partners participated in semi-structured interviews about their perceptions of the nature of the partnership, and historical documents and partnership archives were analyzed. Results indicate that the success of the partnership has been most facilitated by the creation of shared space, and by the strategic alignment of goals and roles within that space. These findings provide guidance to scholars and community research teams in developing community–university partnerships. Future research should test the utility of the constructs presented here for improving partnerships across other types of organizations and communities and utilize cross-case comparisons to account for the central role of context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation is essential to achieving program outcomes, especially when stakeholders engage with evaluation and make use of the findings. Both of these activities require evaluation capacity that might not be present in community-based organizations. In this paper, we describe how community-university partnership models can support evaluation capacity building (ECB). The basic framework for our ECB initiative was a semester-long, master's-level university course in which 5–6 community partners worked with small groups of 3–4 students to design an evaluation plan. We used mixed-methods to assess (1) if organizations implemented the evaluation plans developed in the course; (2) how organizations used the findings; and (3) what evaluation skills participants continued to use after the course ended. We found that organizations that implemented their evaluation plans gained intended outcomes of ECB, such as improving practice and communicating with stakeholders. These results suggest that community-university partnerships for developing ECB can be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on an internal evaluation undertaken to estimate the potentials of a community-university pilot project to be developed into a bonafide innovation that can be applied at scale. The focus of the community-university partnership has been to reduce the unintended consequences of medical pluralism on the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Waterberg district, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Despite promising outputs from the partnership – including an increase in adherence to antiretroviral therapy and a reduction in stigma among traditionalists living with HIV – the partnership wished to establish whether further funding should be applied for to take the pilot from its current prototype status to a more established innovation. In order to evaluate the innovative potentials of the pilot, the opportunity vacuum model of innovation was adapted and applied. The findings indicate that (1) the application of the opportunity vacuum model of innovation to evaluate the potentials of the pilot to be developed into a bonafide innovation was fit for purpose and (2) the pilot contains the key ingredients that are associated with innovations in the making. The discussion reflects on the social potentials of the pilot to contribute to 90-90-90 from a global, national and local perspective. The reflection concludes by suggesting that the opportunity vacuum model of innovation is a versatile heuristic that could be applied in other contexts and the community-university pilot represents a nascent innovation which has sufficient potential to justify further development.

The purpose and motivation for civic engagement in an Irish Technological University is clear, as it achieves strategic objectives at a national level for both Higher Education and community sectors. The Technological Universities Act 2018 (http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2018/act/3/enacted/en/print) defines a Technological University (TU) as having a specific focus on community and business engagement, in addition to traditional university functions of teaching, learning, and research. Even the latter were required to be relevant at regional, national, and international levels. We argue that in line with this mission, technological universities should embed deep collaboration with community partners to work towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2015 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300). This vision paper considers what excellent civic engagement in a TU could look like, if designed into structures and processes, to progress the SDGs. We draw on relevant research and our experiential knowledge as university and community organisation staff. We focus on four SDGs relevant to both the processes and content of civic engagement: quality education; reduced inequalities; sustainable cities and communities; and partnership for the goals. We draw learning from a case study of community engaged research within the curriculum to present a vision for how a TU can embed this work. We also provide recommendations to overcome critical challenges. While Ireland is our focus, our vision has international relevance too.

Maintaining funding for local and regional food system initiatives requires reliable data to demon­strate their impacts. Data that are specific to farm­ers markets in a localized context are not readily available. The Farmers Market Metrics Project is a three-way partnership between farmers markets, local government, and a university to elevate the capacity of the markets in the Minneapolis–St. Paul Metro region through regionally collected metrics to quantify their presence in the regional food system. In this research brief, we introduce the FM360 data collection method being developed by the project, which is scalable across geographic areas. Scalability is critical to making the data collection process adaptable and effective in cases involving multiple data sources and when flexibility is needed in defining the food system parameters to satisfy partners and prospective funders.

Objective: This pilot trial examined the feasibility and effectiveness of "Ageing Well," a community‐based program for improving cognitive skills and mobility of rural older people. Design and setting: The non‐randomised, wait‐list–controlled pilot trial was conducted at a regional NSW university clinic. Participants: Twenty‐three community‐dwelling adults aged 60+ who had begun to experience a decline in their physical or cognitive abilities or both. Interventions: Dual‐tasking activities simultaneously challenged participants' motor and cognitive abilities. Student facilitators encouraged participants to progress through increasing complex functional tasks in a range of contexts, including a café, supermarket and a simulated "home." Main outcome measures: The Patient Reported Evaluation of Cognitive State measured the impact of an individual's cognitive state in terms of how much they were "bothered" by problems with their cognition. Functional mobility was measured by the Timed Up‐and‐Go, a test of static and dynamic balance, and the Six Minute Walk Test. Results: Intervention participants' Patient Reported Evaluation of Cognitive State ratings in relation to impacts on their performance of everyday skills improved substantially, whereas the control group did not change. Intervention participants walked 12% further in the Six Minute Walk Test post‐intervention, while the control group distance did not change. Timed Up‐and‐Go time was reduced by 1 second in the intervention group. Conclusions: There is a strong interest in this dual‐tasking program among older community‐dwelling residents in this rural setting. The results of this pilot study support the feasibility and effectiveness of the Ageing Well program. But further trials are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Grounding Roots” is a community-based collaborative educational program that aims to build food, environmental, and cognitive justice through sustainable urban agriculture and horticulture via intergenerational communities of practice. Drawing upon Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s framework of decolonizing methodologies, this qualitative case study examined the ways in which a Community-University partnership engaged in decolonizing work through research and practice, as well as the ways in which the partnership served to preserve colonizing practices. Data analyses was guided by deductive coding strategies grounded in theory on decolonizing practices. Identified decolonizing practices included implementing a program of worth to the community and youth; building from community-led agendas; and prioritizing community healing and transformation over academic research agendas. Identified colonizing practices included inequitable power hierarchies in the leadership team and in garden groups, deficit-oriented talk about minoritized youth, and the devalorization of youth voice. Implications from this work call for researchers to do their own research about the white supremacist roots embedded in their practices, and to embrace decolonizing and humanizing practices to guide their work. This ongoing work highlights the need for researchers doing community-based work to engage in community-driven agendas that prioritize processes over products; to facilitate distributed leadership in collaboration with community members; and to produce worthwhile work and products with the community.

Maintaining funding for local and regional food system initiatives requires reliable data to demonstrate their impacts. Data that are specific to farmers markets in a localized context are not readily available. The Farmers Market Metrics Project is a three-way partnership between farmers markets, local government, and a university to elevate the capacity of the markets in the Minneapolis–St. Paul Metro region through regionally collected metrics to quantify their presence in the regional food system. In this research brief, we introduce the FM360 data collection method being developed by the project, which is scalable across geographic areas. Scalability is critical to making the data collection process adaptable and effective in cases involving multiple data sources and when flexibility is needed in defining the food system parameters to satisfy partners and prospective funders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on an internal evaluation undertaken to estimate the potentials of a community-university pilot project to be developed into a bonafide innovation that can be applied at scale. The focus of the community-university partnership has been to reduce the unintended consequences of medical pluralism on the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Waterberg district, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Despite promising outputs from the partnership - including an increase in adherence to antiretroviral therapy and a reduction in stigma among traditionalists living with HIV - the partnership wished to establish whether further funding should be applied for to take the pilot from its current prototype status to a more established innovation. In order to evaluate the innovative potentials of the pilot, the opportunity vacuum model of innovation was adapted and applied. The findings indicate that (1) the application of the opportunity vacuum model of innovation to evaluate the potentials of the pilot to be developed into a bonafide innovation was fit for purpose and (2) the pilot contains the key ingredients that are associated with innovations in the making. The discussion reflects on the social potentials of the pilot to contribute to 90-90-90 from a global, national and local perspective. The reflection concludes by suggesting that the opportunity vacuum model of innovation is a versatile heuristic that could be applied in other contexts and the community-university pilot represents a nascent innovation which has sufficient potential to justify further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Experiential education techniques are increasingly being used as a method of training graduate students to research nonprofit organizations. However, little research focuses on lessons learned from experiential education programs that fail. This paper presents the case of a doctoral-level community development research practicum that aimed to evaluate a local microenterprise program in a distressed city. Although the project was discontinued, lessons pertaining to community-level and institutional challenges were learned. These lessons speak to literature on the challenges that may arise in the use of experiential education in nonprofit education initiatives. This research concludes that faculty members implementing experiential education courses work with offices that focus on experiential education to assess their feasibility before designing or implementing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there have been positive changes to the health research landscape, with increasing interest amongst community organisations and university investigators in establishing research partnerships and with more funding opportunities for community-engaged work. However, creating a community-university partnership requires new skills, new types of knowledge, and new ways of creating and maintaining relationships. On both sides of the research equation, people are looking for guidance. The discussion here uses our experience to offer concrete tips in plain language for strategies that can be used to build capacity for community-university partnerships for organisations and researchers in pre-partnership and early partnership stages. We comment on debates about epistemology and knowledge production in research and how anthropologists are well positioned to contribute to this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Office for the Study of Aging (OSA) at the University of South Carolina was established in 1988 in conjunction with the founding of the South Carolina Alzheimer’s Disease Registry. Over the last 25 years, the Office for the Study of Aging has furthered its purpose through the development of research and programs for all of South Carolina’s aging population. Examples include the Placemat Strength Training Program, the Dementia Dialogues education program, and the South Carolina Vulnerable Adult Guardian ad Litem program. The work of the office is sustained through a unique government–university–community partnership that supports innovative work and provides direct lines for dissemination, translation, and implementation of programs. The office’s efforts have resulted in two state laws involving aging and older adults as well as recognition through awards and publications. The Office provides a partnership model that offers a dissemination and translation pipeline for programs to be developed, piloted, revised, and enacted into policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This duoethnography weaves the experiences and perspectives of disabled activists, poverty scholars, community scholars of color, and university-based scholars partnering on a teacher preparation professional development project that (re)centers disability and its intersections by (a) reconsidering who creates knowledge, (b) positioning disabled activists, poverty scholars, and community scholars of color as experts with pedagogical authority, and (c) providing opportunities for teacher candidates (current and future teachers) to learn from activists and scholars in accessible, online spaces. The experiences and perspectives of multiply marginalized disabled youth and adults are often ignored and/or discounted in teacher preparation programs. However, one way to re-zone and re-people disability studies in teacher education is by teaching and learning at the intersections of critical race studies and disability studies through cross-coalitional community-university partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been rapid growth in community–university partnerships. As part of this trend, emerging scholars, including graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, have demonstrated significant interest in being part of community-engaged research projects. However, while there is a growing body of literature on the general subject of CU partnerships, the perspective of emerging scholars is not adequately addressed. In this paper, we aim to address that gap by presenting the case of a specific partnership – one that focused on the issue of community food security – and highlighting the role played by emerging scholars. We suggest that some of the challenges and opportunities characteristic of CU work affect emerging scholars, and the partnerships in which they are involved, in unique ways. Because we view emerging scholar participation in engaged research as valuable for both researchers and community partners, we argue in favour of developing institutional spaces that can support their involvement in CU partnerships by providing opportunities to do the work, facilitating skill building and creating communities of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children served by the child welfare system count among society's most vulnerable members given their history of abuse, neglect, and other potentially traumatic experiences. Once they enter the system, however, these children seldom receive empirically validated interventions to mitigate the effects of trauma. This article highlights the promise of parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT), an evidence-based treatment (EBT) for trauma-exposed children in the child welfare system. Barriers to implementing PCIT and other EBTs in child welfare are discussed along with ways that community-university partnerships can help to navigate these barriers. Preliminary supporting evidence from a community-university partnership in Wisconsin is presented, followed by a set of recommendations for future work aimed at translating science into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, a community-university pilot project was launched in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to train and involve senior immigrants in Small Plot Intensive (SPIN)-Farming, a commercial approach to urban agriculture. Immigrants represent a significant proportion of the senior population in urban Canada, but their adaptation and integration into Canadian society can be extremely challenging. We hypothesized that involvement in commer­cial urban agriculture could help to address some of the economic as well as social issues they face. Evaluation of the project’s impacts in year one was based primarily on qualitative interviews with parti­ci­pants and community organizers following the train­ing and implementation phases. Although limited income was generated as a result of modifications to the SPIN-Farming approach, this research suggests that involvement in commercial urban agriculture can contribute to the integration of senior immigrants into Canadian society, while also contributing to the evolution of local food systems and more inclusive communities.

Universities have a civic responsibility to engage with communities to capacitate and develop for the purpose of health and wellbeing. Although service learning serves part of this purpose, there is an additional requirement which is beyond just service learning. The requirement is a partnership between universities and communities which promotes culture, values, human rights and ethics. This paper provides a brief overview of the partnership and highlights the role of both universities and communities in the partnership as well as the potential factors that could hinder or enhance the sustainability of the partnership regardless of the context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study critically explores collaboration opportunities between architects and planners. Architects typically emphasize site design, whereas planners stress prospects for community engagement. The collaboration opportunity prompts these professions to learn from each other synergistically. This case study outlines the efforts of two groups of architecture and planning students who, despite divergent pedagogical emphases, hone their integrative skills. Devising a set of evaluative criteria (permeability, stability and connectivity), enabled the planning students to rank and predict the university–community partnership impacts of eight projects proposed by the architecture students. The three expected partnership models (fortress, developer, and catalytic) enlightened the architecture students to also think about the social impact of their designs. There is a long history of debate about pedagogical and practice divides between planning and architecture. The paper contributes to those debates by examining how disciplinary divides might be overcome through collaborative teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social economy is an alternative business model, which focuses strictly on maximizing profit, but also has a social component, the labor market integration of persons belonging to vulnerable groups. The theme of this study is to identify the identity profile of social economy organizations in Timisoara, the field size, target groups benefiting from the services, processes and organizational structure, economic performance indicators (economic purpose) social performance indicators (social purpose), partnerships with business, government, community and educational environment. The research is exploratory, empirical and descriptive, the research instrument used was a standardized questionnaire (adapted from -Survey of Social Enterprises in Alberta and British Columbia CANADA, 2010) BC-Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance (Romanian BALTA). Among the main results we include poor self-identification in the self-perception of credit mutual aid unions with social economy, these ones tending to maximize the economic and financial dimension of their work to the detriment of social organizations like bank financial loan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest continues to increase in respect to developing viable public and highly collaborative scholarship. Yet often community and university partners face significant barriers relating to diverse motivations of individual partners and different desired outcomes. The aim of this manuscript is to contribute to the scholarship on communityuniversity engagement by including the concept of a 'boundary object' as a vehicle to drive practice. The boundary object is a shared space, or resource, which may be tangible or abstract, and is co-created by the community and university. The object allows various partners to develop a consensus on the object itself while maintaining individual motivations, outputs, audiences and eventual outcomes. Using this concept to address common pitfalls of community-university engagement, we document the case of the Food Mapping Team, a partnership of faculty, research staff, students and community groups in Central Ohio. Through our analysis, we offer tenets to successful use of boundary objects and general recommendations for public scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Ostrom pioneered work on community-based forms of management of common-pool resource systems, the amount of research on the topic has increased. Action-oriented researchers have contributed to the debate identifying how, in specific problematic situations, communities can be helped to fill the gap between a disappointing reality and best planning practices and theories. The paper shows how, in a highly contested milieu challenged by the presence of organised-crime (Eastern Sicily, Italy), a collaborative and action-oriented approach to research helped the Simeto Valley community to evolve from a successful social mobilisation against the project of building a controversial waste-to-energy facility to an innovative and stable form of community-based natural resource management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The South Carolina Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network (SC-CPCRN) implemented the Community Health Intervention Program (CHIP) mini-grants initiative to address cancer-related health disparities and reduce the cancer burden among high-risk populations across the state. The mini-grants project implemented evidence-based health interventions tailored to the specific needs of each community. This study aims to support the SC-CPCRN's goals of moving toward greater dissemination and implementation of evidence-based programs in the community to improve public health, prevent disease, and reduce the cancer burden. Three community-based organizations were awarded $10,000 each to implement one of the National Cancer Institute's evidence-based interventions. Each group had 12 months to complete their project. SC-CPCRN investigators and staff provided guidance, oversight, and technical assistance for each project. Grantees provided regular updates and reports to their SC-CPCRN liaisons to capture vital evaluation information. The intended CHIP mini-grant target population reach was projected to be up to 880 participants combined. Actual combined reach of the three projects reported upon completion totaled 1,072 individuals. The majority of CHIP participants were African-American females. Participants ranged in age from 19 to 81 years. Evaluation results showed an increase in physical activity, dietary improvements, and screening participation. The success of the initiative was the result of a strong community-university partnership built on trust. Active two-way communication and an honest open dialogue created an atmosphere for collaboration. Communities were highly motivated. All team members shared a common goal of reducing cancer-related health disparities and building greater public health capacity across the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study to assess the acceptability and feasibility of an early school readiness intervention focused on the intersection of social determinant of health and education. Results suggest a relationship between school readiness, social conditions and obesity-related risk factors.

Long wait lists and service attrition suggest the mental health needs of children and adolescents need responsive, effective interventions. Through a community–university partnership, a pilot project called the Change Clinic was developed as a brief counseling alternative to traditional interventions for children, adolescents, and families. A social constructionist perspective influenced all aspects of service delivery and the content of the mixed method client outcome measures. Quantitative and qualitative findings provided sufficient promising evidence to support the continuation and expansion of the Change Clinic. The Change Clinic has transferable potential for child and adolescent mental health services nationally and internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

University service-learning students worked with middle school youth in a social change project addressing positive youth development and civic engagement. Based on their knowledge of positive youth development theory and British Social Action, they facilitated a weekly group in which the youth identified combatting oppression by teachers (adultism) for their project. They discussed the problem, designed surveys, analyzed the data, and presented their findings. The youth demonstrated individual competencies and connected with adults while they learned to work collectively in a community change project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To tackle the complexity of issues associated with homelessness, an interdisciplinary lens with direct input from service providers and community members is necessary. Within a community–university partnership between a larger inner-city multiservice shelter serving the homeless population, and faculties of social work and nursing in a Canadian university, the authors developed the Social Justice Transformation Model. In this model, social justice is the why, co-learning is the what, and action research is the how. The model guides university students and faculty and agency staff and clients through teaching and learning processes of self- transformation, service transformation, and societal transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]