Innovation in Collaboration: the Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring as a University-Community Partnership

The Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring (SIYM) at Portland State University is an intensive week-long seminar designed to offer a highly interactive educational opportunity for experienced professionals and leading researchers in the field of youth mentoring. The current study explores the extent to which SIYM represents an example of a successful university-community partnership and identifies ways in which SIYM innovates on established partnership models. Using grounded theory methods and typological analysis, the researchers analysed questionnaire responses from SIYM participants and research fellows to compare key characteristics of SIYM with the elements of effective partnerships described in the literature. Findings suggest that SIYM reflects many essential partnership qualities, including the presence of a shared vision; strong, mutually beneficial relationships; and a partnering process that includes communication and work for positive change. SIYM also introduces several innovations in format and structure that could inform the improvement or development of effective partnership efforts across disciplines. Implications for service providers, researchers and other stakeholders are discussed. 
 
 Keywords 
 communication, collaboration, mutually beneficial relationships, innovation


Innovation in Collaboration
The Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring as a university-community partnership University-community partnerships are designed to address pressing social problems by combining the goals and resources of colleges and universities with those of community stakeholders.
Ideally, partnerships develop as symbiotic projects that empower community organisations, enrich the community, and provide unique sources of data for research and evaluation. Partnerships take many forms and have a wide range of goals, from promoting health, to developing sustainable neighbourhoods, to improving public education. They may involve university students serving an under-resourced area of the community, or community members entering the university to participate in dialogue, planning and research. Universities and community partners may also work together to make research findings accessible to the wider community, increasing the chances that important advancements in scientific knowledge are applied in practice.
Likewise, partnerships provide a forum for professional knowledge to shape the direction of academic research. With so many variations, locations and goals -and because securing funding for partnership projects is increasingly difficult (US Department of Housing and Urban Development 2010) -it is important for partnership researchers to identify commonalities present in the most effective university-community partnership models.
Researchers have recently begun to define the characteristics of successful university-community partnerships.
Following a review of recent developments in the literature, this article explores the utility and flexibility of one of the more comprehensive partnership frameworks by applying it to a distinctive university-based summer institute designed to foster the exchange of knowledge between researchers and practitioners in the field of youth mentoring. One aim of the study reported here was to evaluate whether factors typically considered important for these partnerships would translate across contexts and provide a relevant conceptualisation for the summer institute model.
Another goal was to learn how partnership criteria might be further expanded and adapted. Based on the findings of the study, suggestions are also made for possible innovation in established university-community partnership models.

PARTNERSHIP TYPES AND TRENDS
In 1994, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) established the Office of University Partnerships (OUP) to promote the establishment and growth of university-community partnerships nationwide. In 1999, HUD published a report that described hundreds of partnerships divided into seven main categories: service-learning, service provision, faculty involvement, student volunteerism, community in the classroom, applied research, and major institutional change. HUD's Community Outreach Partnerships Centers (COPC) program was one of the largest efforts to promote cooperation among universities and local partners, with a focus on spurring economic development and providing safe, affordable housing in urban areas. However, the Bush Administration gradually scaled back federal support for partnerships, and by 2005 the COPC program was receiving no additional funding, effectively ending many large-scale, federally funded partnership projects. Some partnerships found innovative ways to continue without federal funds (Bloomgarden et al. 2006), and another outcome was the development of new university and community college offices dedicated to supporting universitycommunity partnerships.
The current study explores a 'community in the classroom' partnership designed to bridge the often-disconnected worlds of research and practice. Service providers often find it difficult to keep up with the latest developments in research (Gira, Kessler & Poertner 2004). In a review of randomised controlled studies of dissemination efforts in health professions, Gira, Kessler and Poertner (2004) found that distributing research findings to practitioners (without additional implementation strategies) was ineffective in changing practice behaviours. The authors also found that traditional continuing education and professional development opportunities using only didactic techniques were also ineffective, while small group discussion and practice sessions generated moderate to large effect sizes compared to the control group. Addis (2002, p. 375) argued that hierarchical and unidirectional methods of dissemination created resistance to implementation and that 'Practitioners are more likely to adopt research products when they find them useful and can contribute creatively to their development and evaluation'. Sherrod (1999, p. 234) pointed specifically to the potential of university-community partnerships, which 'play many important roles, but an especially critical one is their attention to dissemination of research findings'.
These findings suggest that more collaborative, partnershiporiented dissemination processes may hold promise for improved integration of scientific knowledge into professional practice.

CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL PARTNERSHIPS
An emerging body of literature has begun to define characteristics of successful collaborative efforts (Cardoza & Salinas 2004;Mai, Kramer & Luebbert 2005;Torres & Schaffer 2000;Schumaker, Reed & Woods 2000), as well as common challenges encountered by university-community partnerships (Lane, Turner & Flores 2004). Torres and Schaffer (2000) offer a comprehensive outline of eight essential partnership features, compiled from proceedings of the 1998 Wingspread Conference on university-community partnerships. Based on their experiences with COPC, Schumaker, Reed and Woods (2000) also offer eight ingredients for successful collaboration from the university's perspective. While there are slight differences between the lists, both research teams stress the importance of having a shared vision, clear communication and a clear organisational structure. Mai, Kramer and Luebbert (2005) put forward a similar, more distilled list based on a review of over a dozen partnerships. Cardoza and Salinas (2004) narrowed their list of key components for successful partnerships to five and their findings support the conclusions of the other authors. The current study employed the eight characteristics described by Torres and Schaffer (2000) as the analytic framework because it was the most comprehensive and had significant overlap with the findings of other studies. The four lists are compiled and compared in Table 1  to disagreements over program implementation and evaluation. Cherry and Shefner (2004) identified issues of class, status and organisational differences as common impediments to successful university-community collaboration. In addition, some researchers have suggested that the short-term nature of most funding streams may render many partnership efforts unsustainable (Baum 2000).

THE SUMMER INSTITUTE ON YOUTH MENTORING
Youth mentoring is a prevalent and popular mode of intervention with children and youth across the nation (Walker 2007

STUDY AIMS AND METHOD
The current study was designed to accomplish two main goals: After this stage, the initial evaluation of the Summer Institute was conducted, resulting in the findings summarised above (Jones & Keller 2009).
The third stage of data analysis was a typological analysis (Hatch 2002), in which the coded data were re-examined and recategorised according to characteristics of successful partnerships (Torres & Schaffer 2000). After coding and assignment of data to the typological categories based on the partnership framework, the researchers examined the contents of each category for subgroupings, trends, or differences among the responses. A final step in the typological analysis was to examine all data not fitting one of the predetermined categories, and to decide whether they represented a useful addition to the partnership model. The typological analysis, including the identified innovations, yielded the results reported below.
The subjective nature of qualitative enquiry requires that researchers establish the trustworthiness of the research process and findings to increase confidence that rigorous methods were employed and that participants' voices were heard (Lietz, Langer & Furman 2006). The current study employed several strategies to ensure trustworthiness, including member checking, an electronic audit trail and a reliability check of the typological analysis by a researcher not involved with the study. The coding reliability check showed better than 76 per cent correspondence for assignment to categories, with discrepancies largely due to participant statements that reflected several categories simultaneously.

STUDY FINDINGS
Study participants reflected on a number of topics related to the conception of the Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring as a university-community partnership. The findings are first presented in terms of how well the data supported a correspondence between key characteristics of SIYM's success and Torres and Schaffer's (2000) criteria (see Table 1). Excerpts from questionnaire transcripts illustrating these connections are presented in the relevant sections below. Findings are then presented in terms of innovations to established partnership models apparent in SIYM.

Shared Vision
Data supported the centrality of a shared vision among participants for program improvement through interactive and intensive information sharing. Participants' responses strongly suggested that having time away from work and other 'day-today responsibilities' was critical to the success of the SIYM format.
Participants also listed dozens of specific goals and plans for program improvement they intended to pursue upon returning to work. The interactive nature of the seminar also stood out for participants as a key characteristic. Several participants stated that the intimate setting and the full week of sessions allowed a 'deep dive' into important topics that was 'very rich and valuable'.
Participants also anticipated that relationships developed at the SIYM would continue and that 'Having actually met and dialogued with researchers in the field has made the research "more real"

Multi-dimensional Participation
Mentoring programs may be operated by independent non-profit organisations; initiatives of schools, counties or other public entities; or partnerships between private and public institutions

Integration into the Mission of Partnering Institutions
Many participants explicitly described professional benefits from their experiences at SIYM, which can be divided into two categories. The first category might be called inspirational because of its personal and motivational nature. Several participants reported a renewed commitment to the mentoring field, saying that the Summer Institute was inspiring, invigorating and rejuvenating.
One participant said: 'The enthusiasm and commitment to mentoring was infectious and motivating'. The second category involved the acquisition of skills and knowledge: 'I have been in the mentoring business for 27 years and this was one experience that truly expanded my knowledge base … I learned more from the institute than from the last 15 conferences I have attended.' Other participants described very specific skills (e.g. how to set up a basic program evaluation) and knowledge (e.g. the importance of processes for ending mentoring relationships) that would directly inform and support their future work.
Several participants expressed concern that the momentum

Partnering Processes
The concept of a partnering process as described by Torres and Schaffer (2000) is dynamic and multi-dimensional, incorporating the presence of relationships (which has already been described as a key component of participants' experiences), communication and work for positive change. Some participants spoke about components of the partnering process, but identified them as separate characteristics rather than as directly related parts. university-community research partnerships sponsored by the Pew Partnership, Ferraiolo and Freedman (2002, p. 29) found that specialised campus-based research centres proved 'an effective and visible tool to connect university and community needs'.

Participant responses suggested that the Summer Institute on Youth
Mentoring demonstrated several core characteristics that may be considered innovative in that they represent a departure from common university-community partnership models.

Expanding the Idea of 'Community' in a Partnership
Participants  Introducing an Inexpensive and Self-sustaining Approach Gilderbloom and Mullins (2005) describe two types of universitycommunity partnerships: 1) federally funded, top-down programs with a city-wide or regional focus, and 2) collaborative,  Smith and Gillespie (2007) found were several major obstacles to professional development in education, including time constraints, lack of face-to-face interaction, and mismatch of goals, suggesting that the innovative SIYM model could be applied more broadly to bring practitioners and researchers together to make better use of research and practice knowledge.
Finally, SIYM offers a low-cost, sustainable model of university-community collaboration that can have large-scale and potentially long-term impacts. Many partnership models require substantial financial resources. Bloomgarden and colleagues (2006) describe the challenge of securing matching funds from university and community partners in order to qualify for federal grants. Holland (2003, p. 4) contends that pursuit of external funding from various sources can lead to 'the trap of episodic attention to individual grants and projects, which tends to create superficial and temporary relationships'. The Summer Institute has from the beginning taken an entrepreneurial approach and relied on a balanced combination of funding from 1) tuition payments from participants, 2) university support in the form of faculty time dedicated to directorship of SIYM, and 3) small foundation grants for community events and other expenses. The relatively low cost of the event combined with significant contributions from stakeholders may be a formula that attracts increasing attention as the economy continues to struggle. While this sustainable model may impose certain logistical limitations on SIYM, the event has enjoyed consistent growth and expanded reach since its inaugural year.
There are several limitations to the current study that should be considered. First, the combined return rate for questionnaires was 55 per cent, meaning that data analysis was based on responses from just over half of SIYM attendees. There is no way to tell how the participation of non-responders would have changed the results. It is possible that participants who had a positive experience were more likely to fill out and return questionnaires.
Second, while various measures were taken to ensure the trustworthiness of the study's results, the authors' professional involvement with the Summer Institute may have introduced an element of bias into the data analysis and the interpretation of findings. Finally, the partnership models described in this study are largely untested and their long-term impacts are unknown, so further research is needed before conclusions can be drawn about the value of one partnership model versus another. Despite these limitations, the findings of the current study tell a compelling story of an innovative university-community partnership that may offer other organisations and institutions a framework for establishing their own successful collaborative efforts.