Community development can be defined as a public-group approach, dedicated to achieving the goals of the total body politic. The public service function of the land grant colleges and universities is specifically designed to advance their respective states socially, economically and culturally and these institutions must serve as viable resources to the people who support them. There are some perils of a university involvement in community service; these include: (1) the difficulty in identifying the decisionmakers in the public sector and ascertaining who is responsible for change or the lack of it; (2) the frequent hostility among groups concerned with the same problem; (3) the acutal problem of decisionmaking, i.e. the listing of goals, the alternatives, and means of achieving them; and (4) the problem of discouraging what seem to be unwise moves on the part of the community, and encouraging the implementation of the decisions reached as a result of university research. The university should state the facts as it knows them, admitting possible error, and encourage the appropriate people to make a decision. (AF)