Collaboration between academia and communities is forging new bonds between resident and student populations, giving rise to an evolutionary leap in the research agendas of colleges and universities around the world. Both within and beyond the ivy-covered walls, a growing number of college students, faculty, and community groups are uniting to tackle local challenges, and this teamwork is enhancing the quality of life for all concerned. For their part, community members contribute invaluable local knowledge and skills, while colleges and universities apply knowledge, technology, and rigorous research skills to solving real-world problems.
HUD has a tradition of investing in helping colleges and universities use their resources to meet community needs. Now HUD's Office of University Partnerships (OUP) has a new monograph called Scholarship in Action: Applied Research and Community Change(www.oup.org/files/pubs/scholarship.pdf). It is an edited volume of peer-reviewed articles that describe the experiences of researchers, students, and local residents in blending scientific expertise with local knowledge to achieve results that would otherwise be out of reach. Among the monograph's examples of community-university partnerships are two in Worcester, Massachusetts that illustrate how collaboration benefits all concerned.
Scholarship in Action
Students apply their classroom knowledge to real-world activities in the communities surrounding their schools.
Worcester, Massachusetts, received state funds in 2000 to map neighborhoods according to their suitability for economic development, housing, open space, and transportation. The suitability maps were to serve as planning guides for neighborhood development. A condition of the funding was that the public would help define and determine suitability.
The city invited Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) to collaborate on this project. The university has a record of incorporating project-based service learning into its curriculum. WPI faculty and students from multiple disciplines — management, electrical engineering, computer science, urban planning, and economic development — brought a wealth of experience, expertise, and time to the project. To initiate meaningful public discussion on how best to define suitability, WPI developed a decisionmaking tool using geographic information systems (GIS) technology that enabled citizens to visualize how the alternatives under discussion might work.
A team of students was assigned to each area for which suitability maps would be developed. The housing team prepared for its task by studying urban development literature, key concepts, and relevant policy issues. They learned about GIS tools, reviewed data sources, and interacted with the city's planning staff. Once the project was implemented, students worked out of city offices, gathering and analyzing pertinent data. The students attended city administrative and board meetings and spoke with community activists. Faculty advisors remained actively involved throughout the process.
The housing team was guided by the city's desire to maintain an adequate mix of affordable, market-rate, and special-needs housing. Because the city lacked an inventory of existing housing, the students compiled a housing profile and typology. Despite some difficulties, they were able to calculate housing suitability using three criteria: lot size, accessibility, and proximity to open space. Using GIS technology to map the results, students identified suitable and unsuitable land areas for single-family, multifamily, and special-needs housing. With this draft in hand, the housing team then conducted focus groups composed of individuals randomly selected from economic development, business, community-based nonprofit, and environmental groups. GIS-based technology specifically developed for this purpose was used to project alternative suitability maps based on suggestions by focus group members.
In this joint research project, the university and the city produced suitability maps that met the state's funding requirements. The maps were developed using thorough research, up-to-date data, and multidisciplinary review. The partners also created a rich educational experience for students, who walked away with greater insight into how government works (politically and administratively), how citizens interface with government, and how policymakers must keep varied interests in mind. They also learned how to engage the public in decisionmaking, explain abstract concepts like suitability, draft discussion points for public deliberation, and test technology that assists community decisionmaking in the field.
Clark University, another academic institution located in Worcester, formed a partnership with several community-based organizations (CBOs) to work for better environmental health in poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Scholars and residents worked on this project as equal partners — a novel arrangement for the academic researchers, who wrote about what they learned. They found not only that their academic language interfered with their communications with CBOs and residents, but also that they had to rely on their CBO partners to get accurate information about neighborhood health and environmental conditions.
Town and gown partnerships are sending students from the classroom into the community.
Clark University faculty unexpectedly found themselves in an intense dialogue with CBO partners over a draft household safety survey developed on campus (and outside of the collaborative framework). The instrument was viewed by some members of the community as inappropriate for achieving its stated objective. As the authors of this account observe, "Researchers engaging in Community-Based Research should be prepared for a bumpy ride as their methods are rightfully scrutinized and they are held accountable." Lasting lessons that Clark University researchers learned by working in this community-based project include the following:
Every phase of the project requires the involvement of all partners.
Local knowledge is essential to successful community-based research.
It is crucial to convey respect to residents of targeted areas.
Anecdotal experience has value for scientific research.
The value of people's time and knowledge lent to the project must be acknowledged and, preferably, reimbursed.
Among selections that explore the evolution of research models and methods, the Office of University Partnerships monograph offers a variety of other examples of productive "town and gown" collaborations and their respective achievements. Readers who delve more deeply into the text will learn how Loyola University Chicago's Center for Urban Research and Learning manages to carry out 10 to 15 collaborative research projects annually; how a grassroots think-tank grew from the collaboration between Ontario, California and Claremont Colleges with a grant from OUP; how community-based research in the Salt Lake City, Utah area offers opportunities to new university faculty seeking a path to career advancement; and how the Medical College of Wisconsin is learning to forge community partnerships that help to fill gaps in its educational curriculum.
| 
