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University and community partnerships are embedded in institutional contexts that create conflicting demands and require collaborative approaches that balance competing needs and interests and focus on accomplishing shared goals for community change. This chapter offers a case study of a partnership between a Nashville-based human service organization and a university-based research team that developed for the purpose of conducting a community needs assessment to fulfil the requirements for a Promise Neighborhoods Planning grant from the U.S. Department of Education. It explores how conflicting demands can potentially limit the authenticity of partnership relationships, and in turn, undermine the success of these types of collaboration. The chapter examines resulting challenges that arise in relation to three key tensions: defining expertise, institutional barriers, and expectations of scientific rigor. Approaches to overcoming these challenges are offered, and lessons learned are explored.

The HOD field school is an experiential learning program designed to promote the development of university students and community partners as they work together toward integrating research and action around social justice issues through community-based participatory methods. In this chapter, we describe the theoretical foundations and history of the HOD field school and the experiences of community partners and student participants, comparing experiences across settings and expanding on themes that have been observed consistently. Throughout our discussion we address the complexities of simultaneously meeting the personal and professional needs of students while working with communities in ways that align with the ideals of empowerment, reciprocity, intercultural respect, learning, participatory research, and sustainability. Finally, based on experience and theory we offer suggestions for educators who are interested in developing similar programs.

In this chapter, we assert that research, scholarship, and teaching in the fields of prevention and youth development can be greatly enhanced by extending the traditional scientific paradigm by integrating ecological systems theory and collaboratively engaging community members and organizations. We frame this chapter by drawing on our department's mission and three recent research projects conducted by faculty and students in the department. We then discuss how the department’s mission and our action-oriented, ecological systems theoretical orientation permeates multiple aspects of the research process, including the conceptualization of projects, articulation of research questions, intervention design, research methods, project oversight and management, and use of findings. Using concrete examples from the projects, we highlight how research and action can be balanced and pursued simultaneously in community settings to generate knowledge and effect social change. As a result, community-engaged research, informed by ecological systems theory, will enable more relevant action and thus promote meaningful youth, organizational, and community development.

Community-university partnerships can lead to the co-production of really useful knowledge, enabling communities to research their own issues and concerns. As a result, communities and social movements can develop more effective strategies, in response. Such partnerships have significant potential, but only if they are based upon mutual understanding and trust. There are pressures on universities in the current policy context, impacting on the scope for developing collaborative rather than more competitive ways of working, respecting communities’ priorities and time constraints. Despite these pressures though, the chapter provides examples of mutually beneficial partnerships, including partnerships developing participatory research via community arts and cultural initiatives.

This chapter explores the challenges of fostering learning across traditional academic and non-academic boundaries when conducting participatory research in community-university partnerships. The authors were all active collaborators in the Imagine – Social programme. They focus on the role of research retreats in including a diversity of partners in this long-term research project. After introducing the key terms of ‘community of practice’ and ‘retreats’, the chapter describes the types of boundaries that were addressed and the challenges that were faced in crossing them. Next the authors present their approach to crossing these boundaries by cultivating a community of practice through these retreats. The stages of development of a community of practice (Wenger et al, 2002) are then set out and are reframed to focus on boundary issues drawing on the successive retreats as illustrations. Finally, the chapter closes by identifying the key enablers that supported the development of such a boundary-crossing community.

Abstract: This chapter describes how the University of Michigan School of Social Work’s Technical Assistance Center (UMSSW/TAC) developed its theory of change as a partner in the Skillman Foundation-funded Detroit Good Neighborhoods initiative. The definition of a theory of change accepted was of “a specification of what must be done to achieve the desired goals, what other important impacts may also be anticipated, and how these goals and impacts would be generated.” The chapter discusses the processes in the creation of iterations of Foundation and UMSSW/TAC theories of change. The chapter concludes with the benefits, limitations, issues, and challenges of aligning logic models with the varied expectations and goals of residents, funding foundations, and university partners.

Abstract: This chapter describes the model of community development used by the University of Michigan School of Social Work’s Technical Assistance Center (UMSSW/TAC). The chapter presents a definition and description of community development as a distinct model of community practice. The chapter discusses the goals of community development, core values and principles of community development. The chapter summarizes the role of place based initiatives in community development. The limits and challenges of discerning the evidence base of the effectiveness of community development are reviewed, and an emerging perspective of possibilities of evidence based community development is outlined. The chapter ends with thoughtful considerations about the tactical use of community development within municipal communities during Detroit’s more recent times of turbulent economic, financial and political change.

Starting in 2015, we made the case for ending homelessness as one of the major and compelling grand challenges that constituted a bold agenda for the social work profession. Since then, schools of social work have taken up the Grand Challenge to End Homelessness through educational innovations, research collaborations, and university–community partnerships. In this chapter, we review a number of major initiatives or advances in workforce development and research that have been implemented by schools of social work across the United States. We also review ongoing and persistent institutional and structural factors, including systemic racism and income/wealth inequality, that perpetuate or exacerbate the problem of homelessness. Much of the work that has been accomplished during the first 5 years of the Grand Challenge to End Homelessness lays the groundwork for progress over the next 5 years, but only if there are major structural changes in how homelessness is addressed.

Microlending provides small amount of loans to those entrepreneurs who are typically considered unbankable. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment, and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet the minimal qualifications to gain traditional credit. While a number of microlending and microenterprise development programs exist that aim to serve low-income populations in the United States, only a few practice “character-based” lending, which focuses on the character of potential clients relative to other traditional components. This chapter on “UAlbany’s Small Enterprise Economic Development (SEED) Program as an Exemplar” discusses a collaborative project among a local university, a credit union, and a state agency which has provided microloans and business opportunities to underserved populations. This chapter discusses the SEED story from the process of creating such an innovative and unique program to the current model and status, including some lessons for those who hope to replicate its model.

“Social Work Students at Camp: Field Placements and Service Learning at Summer Camp” explores two options for students to experience and learn about summer camp as a social work field of practice. The first part of the chapter identifies the myriad of learning opportunities found at summer camps. The benefits and obstacles to using the summer camp as an internship site are explored. In addition, professional social workers have recently integrated academic service-learning into camp programs. Camps that lend themselves well to service-learning components are typically one-week camps intended for vulnerable populations. At least two camps led by social workers have linked service learning and Positive Youth Development in sports-oriented camps. The greater flexibility of service-learning courses compared to field placements offers many opportunities for university–community partnerships. The authors recommend that both routes be considered. A first-person vignette concludes this chapter.