Community-university partnerships are a critical vehicle for promoting sustainability, and the partnerships themselves can be sustained by ensuring that participants achieve mutual benefits in terms of their respective goals and missions. Although the literature emphasizes mutuality and reciprocity, fewer studies investigate community partners'…

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…

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…

Indigenous people are often hesitant to participate in research projects because they lack trust in researcher intentions. In this article, we explore the critical role that Indigenous boundary spanners play in research conducted with Indigenous communities through our research on oceans and human health. Our analysis centers around five…

The quality of the relationship between a university and its host community both reflects and helps determine the effectiveness of the work they jointly pursue. Through the single issue of partnering to reduce college student alcohol misuse, we examined the quality of town-gown relations using a well-established typology grounded in the marriage…

Rural communities face incredible challenges and emerging opportunities. Land-grant universities are well-positioned to assist by developing new approaches to inspire university students to become civically engaged, rural community members. With this aim, the Rural Scholars program at Oklahoma State University was developed as an opportunity for…

In this qualitative study, we focused on a two-way model of engagement, utilizing observational and individual interview data to examine community members' perceptions of their participation in a statewide initiative to increase leadership capacity at the community level. We review barriers to engagement recognized in the literature. Our study…

This study examines the ethics and politics of knowledge across 15 distinctive community-engaged research projects. We focus our analysis on interviews with community partners and consider their perceptions of research, academic research partners, motivations for partnering, and the benefits and challenges of community-engaged research. We…

While exploring the current challenges facing academic institutions and the needs of their scholars to make their work relevant in the lives of university constituents, the author advocates for a reactive and radical approach to engaged scholarship by outlining an 8-step process that considers the importance of transformation, immediacy, and…

This article presents the unique approach to university-community partnerships developed and practiced at Michigan State University (MSU). We have established a model of campus-community partnerships that builds a wide-reaching system of networks connecting the university to communities. Our approach is "developmental",…

Community visioning is based upon principles that maximize group participation in a creative problem-solving process. The process itself is structured to solicit and use the full range of interests and expertise within a given community to develop an implementation plan that specifically addresses the needs of the community and that fosters change…