This qualitative descriptive study delves into the strengths and challenges community-engaged faculty face in sustaining university-community partnerships through community engagement. Framed by Bender's community engagement model, the primary research question examines how university faculty articulate their strengths and challenges within these…

This study examines how community partners understand reciprocity and co-education in service-learning. Twenty community partners participated in 30-minute telephone interviews. When asked to define reciprocity, participants identified the importance of communication and maintaining a two-way relationship. With regard to co-education, community…

The Adult Tutoring Program within the Literacy Center of West Michigan has been running monthly professional developments (PDs) (known as tutor in-services) for volunteer tutors since early 2021. All in-services fit into at least one of the categories of strategies, life skills, civics, next steps, or digital literacy. The team has been able to…

Community engagement and service-learning programs have become staples in the curricula of colleges across the United States. While the intentions behind many of these programs are altruistic, they can often unwittingly replicate oppressive power dynamics with the communities they seek to serve. This dissertation explored how feminist community…

Children today are confronted by a wide variety of stressful and traumatic events that may be overwhelming or may hinder their ability to cope and heal in a timely manner before reaching adulthood and becoming effective members of society. Child life specialists are academically trained professionals with expertise in helping children and their…

This paper presents the process of conducting a community-wide needs assessment that initially focused on soliciting information about childcare needs of families with school-aged children. The researchers were interested in understanding whether the method designed to conduct the needs assessment helped to foster collaboration, trust, and…

Purpose: The paper identifies and explores the perspectives of middle school educators regarding the benefits and challenges of an ongoing, emerging school-university partnership. Over five years, professors at one comprehensive, Midwestern university, formed a partnership with a local middle school. While progress has been made to develop the…

State wildlife agency professionals are realizing they need new mindsets and practices for collaboration with diverse stakeholders and community partners to achieve policy, management, science, and education goals. This realization led to a partnership between a state agency, a land-grant university's outreach and engagement office, and University…

The COVID-19 pandemic set higher education institutions on an unprecedented path requiring of them to identify alternative strategies and implement various initiatives to sustain their academic projects. With the widespread devastation of the pandemic, the purpose of universities within their communities were again in the spotlight. A sensibility…

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…

School Feeding Programs (SFPs) represent essential interventions which enhance health along with nutritional status and educational attainment of children who live within regions experiencing food insecurity in low and middle-income countries. This paper examines the role of school feeding programs toward achieving the United Nations (UN) 2030…

Finding ways to move knowledge-to-impact is a key priority for research funding agencies, universities, and academics. However, academic engagement with the broader community is not without tensions and challenges, including arriving at mutual benefit and relevance, and addressing power dynamics and often incompatible communication practices. This…

For children experiencing chronic stress, succeeding academically in the face of other obstacles can be daunting. Many efforts focused on supporting students fail to address nonacademic aspects of well-being that can impact their ability to succeed. Working to bridge the gap between research and practice, here we describe the results of an…

The purpose of the study is to understand the challenges and opportunities of urban outdoor education centers in partnership and programming. The context for this study involves efforts by all-season outdoor education centers, Outdoor Campus (OC), in two urban areas in South Dakota (SD). Outdoor education scope and social-ecological framework were…

The purpose of this article is to share tensions experienced by the Center for Community-Based Learning and Engagement (CU Engage) at the University of Colorado Boulder during its attempts to facilitate social justice-oriented community change. These tensions speak to larger questions about the goals of community-campus engagement (CCE) programs,…