This symposium explores and examines the challenges and opportunities of building community-university collaborations in marginalized urban areas. The selection of short essays highlights different experiences of building and sustaining community-university partnerships in a variety of cities as vehicles for enhancing experiential learning in geography, urban studies, and cognate disciplines. The aim is to foster a debate among geographers about the role of community-university partnerships in marginalized urban areas and their potential for advancing reciprocal activities that address community needs while offering new circumstances for university out- reach and teaching. (Contains 2 notes.)