This study explores faculty perceptions of the actions taken by organizational leaders to support the faculty's community engagement. We draw upon Lawrence's (2008) theory of power and agency in organizations to name these strategic actions as episodic power and consider how and why each act taken by organizational leaders mattered to…

This article presents a holistic approach to understanding the activities that constitute faculty engagement. After setting an historical context for the public service roles of faculty, the authors define specific activities involving service-learning, community-based research, and certain forms of professional service as the most relevant to…

This article analyzes the challenges encountered in a first-year service-learning course in which students had high expectations for community involvement and a commitment to social responsibility, yet significant difficulty connecting their service orientation to the intellectual inquiry expected of them at the college level. This conflict…

In community-based research (CBR), faculty, students, and community partners collaborate on research projects. This emerging pedagogy presents numerous challenges to instructors teaching CBR courses, including: finding a disciplinary connection, building CBR into the curriculum, ensuring student readiness, and structuring the CBR experience…

Little research has examined the effects of service participation and the level of integration of service into courses on alumni service-related attitudes and behaviors. In the present study, 481 alumni of a religious-affiliated liberal arts college participated in a phone survey that examined their present and past behaviors related to service…

This article furthers research and theory on the initiation and development of service-learning partnerships. It identifies three paths of engagement between university and community agencies: tentative engagement, aligned engagement, and committed engagement. This conceptualization helps to understand how service-learning partnerships evolve over…

Explores the theoretical strands being combined in community-based research--charity service learning, social justice service learning, action research, and participatory research. Shows how different models of community-based research, based in different theories of society and different approaches to community work, may combine or conflict. (EV)

Proposes a community-based research (CBR) model that is genuinely collaborative and driven by community rather than campus interests; that democratizes the creation and dissemination of knowledge; and that seeks to achieve positive social change. Demonstrates how this model translates into principles that underlie the practice of CBR in four…

Based on a recent community-based research project with injured workers, identifies challenges faced when academics engage in community-based research based at a university, including dealing with the constraints and requirements of academic research funding, bridging the goals of academics and community members, and functioning within the…

The case of Colgate University is used to argue that community-based research can be a vibrant and effective form of service learning, especially in rural communities. However, community-based research is difficult to execute well. There is little flexibility and high consequences for failed projects. As such, community-based research requires…

This article, written by four undergraduates with extensive experience in community-based research (CBR), summarizes each author's project and offers their views on conditions necessary for CBR success and benefits of CBR for students. (Author)

Compares seven multi-institutional community-based research networks in Appalachia; Colorado; District of Columbia; Minneapolis-St. Paul; Philadelphia; Richmond, Virginia; and Trenton, New Jersey. After reviewing the histories of the networks, conducts a comparative SWOT analysis, showing their common and unique strengths, weaknesses,…

Examines benefits and challenges of undertaking assessments in community-based research (CBR). Such assessments are compared and contrasted to more traditional research processes. Further, the challenges of integrating CBR assessments into an ongoing social change initiative are analyzed. Five principles to guide CBR assessments are articulated. A…

Discusses the development and implementation of an academic service learning course designed to explore partnership possibilities between a university, religious organizations, and neighborhood coalitions in West Philadelphia. Course goals were twofold: for students to activate partnerships with community members and congregation participants to…

Discusses community-based research (CBR) as a pedagogical strategy for courses in social science research to show how service learning enriches discipline-based learning. Explores how CBR engages students with epistemological debates by modeling alternatives to conventional assumptions about why research is conducted, how best to study people, and…