Preparing educators for the challenges of an empowered school community demands collaboration among teacher educators, practitioners, and the community. This paper proposes a theoretical model of empowerment which supports university-school-community ventures. The model, which embraces intra-university collaboration and university-school-community initiatives, is designed to build empowering school communities and respond to the challenges of diversity through site-based management. Collaboration among teacher educators, leadership trainers, practitioners, and community agents is emphasized. Building empowerment could begin by finding ways to integrate the principles of empowerment into current programs, such as a principal mentor program, student teaching, cooperating teacher workshops, faculty exchange programs, field service and student teaching centers, and a course on empowerment. The potential benefits of collaboration include: improved teacher morale, staff renewal, an expanded knowledge base, and improved performance for the university and school community. (Contains 35 references.) (ND)