Community-University Partnerships: Achieving continuity in the face of change

Main Article Content

Linda Silka
Robert Forrant
Brenda Bond
Patricia Coffey
Robin Toof
Dan Toomey
David Turcotte
Cheryl West

Abstract

A challenge that community-university partnerships everywhere will face is how to maintain continuity in the face of change. The problems besetting communities continually shift and the goals of the university partners often fluctuate. This article describes a decade-long strategy one university has successfully used to address this problem. Over the past ten years, a community-university partnership at the University of Massachusetts Lowell has used summer content funding to respond creativity to shifting priorities. Each summer a research-action project is developed that targets a different content issue that has emerged with unexpected urgency. Teams of graduate students and high school students are charged with investigating this issue under the auspices of the partnership. These highly varied topics have included immigrant businesses, youth asset mapping, women owned businesses, the housing crisis, social program cutbacks, sustainability, and economic development and the arts. Despite their obvious differences, these topics share underlying features that further partnership commitment and continuity. Each has an urgency: the information is needed quickly, often because some immediate policy change is under consideration. Each topic has the advantage of drawing on multiple domains: the topics are inherently interdisciplinary and because they do not “belong” to any single field, they lend themselves to disciplines pooling their efforts to achieve greater understanding. Each also has high visibility: their salience has meant that people were often willing to devote scarce resources to the issues and also that media attention could easily be gained to highlight the advantages of students, partners, and the university working together. And the topics themselves are generative: they have the potential to contribute in many different ways to teaching, research, and outreach. This paper ends with a broader consideration of how partnerships can implement this model for establishing continuity in the face of rapidly shifting priorities and needs.

Article Details

Section
Research articles (Refereed)
Author Biographies

Linda Silka, University of Massachusetts

Linda Silka is Professor of Regional Economic and Social Development and directs the University of Massachusetts Lowell Center for Family, Work, and Community.

Robert Forrant, University of Massachusetts

Robert Forrant is Professor of Regional Economic and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Lowell

Brenda Bond, Suffolk University

Brenda Bond is Assistant Professor at Suffolk University. Brenda Bond previously staffed the Community-University Research-Action Team.

Patricia Coffey, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Patricia Coffey staffs the University of Massachusetts Lowell Community-University Partnership Summer Research-Action Team.

Robin Toof, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Robin Toof is the Assistant Director of the University of Massachusetts Lowell Center for Family, Work, and Community.

Dan Toomey, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Dan Toomey previously staffed the University of Massachusetts Lowell Community-University Partnership Summer Research-Action Team.

David Turcotte, University of Massachusetts Lowell

David Turcotte is senior program manager at the University of Massachusetts Lowell Center for Family, Work, and Community.

Cheryl West, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Cheryl West previously staffed the University of Massachusetts Lowell Community-University Partnership Summer Research-Action Team.