Community Partner Guide to Campus Collaborations: Enhance Your Community By Becoming a Co-Educator With Colleges and Universities

“Interacting with colleges can be confusing and frustrating. We learned the hard way through trial and error over the years. This Guide has great strategies for developing effective collaborations from the outset so that resources are leveraged for education and improvement.”―Sheila, Boys and Girls Club

“VERY strong and well-written chapters with lots of gold that I think community organizations will find very helpful.”―Melia, Hands on Greater Portland

“The format and visual cues make the Guide easy to scan for quick tips and ideas. Also, the information is comprehensive regarding research-based practices, but the writing is friendly and engaging for all non-profit sectors and community agencies. Lots of practical examples.”―Juan, Immigrant Empowerment

* Discover Campus Resources for Identifying Volunteers and Service-Learners
* Decode Confusing Language, Terminology, and Acronyms of Academe
* Decipher Your Academic Partner’s Goals for Community-Based Learning and Research
* Devise Empowering Learning and Serving Experiences for Students and Clients
* Design Sustainable and Enriching Relationships for Enhancing Communities

Based upon years of field experience, this Guide is addressed to you, whether your non-profit has experience of working with university interns or volunteers but wants to deepen and increase the effectiveness of the relationship; whether your agency is starting to explore how to improve client services through a campus collaboration; or whether you work for an NGO interested in partnering with universities across borders to effect positive change and draw attention to the challenges, resources, and needs of your community.

This Guide offers insights and strategies to leverage student learning and community empowerment for the benefit of both parties. Recognizing both the possibilities and the pitfalls of community-campus collaborations, it demystifies the often confusing terminology of education, explains how to locate the right individuals on campus, and addresses issues of mission, expectations for roles, tasks, training, supervision, and evaluation that can be fraught with miscommunication and misunderstanding.

Most importantly it provides a model for achieving full reciprocity in what can be an unbalanced relationship between community and campus partners so that all stakeholders can derive the maximum benefit from their collaboration.

This Guide is also available in sets of six or twelve, at reduced prices, to facilitate its use for planning, and for training of leaders engaged in partnerships.

The Community Partner Guide to Campus Collaborations
Six Copy Set
978-1-62036-271-6, $87.00

The Community Partner Guide to Campus Collaborations
Twelve Copy Set
978-1-62036-272-3, $150.00

Christine M. Cress is Professor of Educational Leadership, Higher Education Policy, and Community Engagement at Portland State University. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. She has conducted professional trainings on curricular integration and the scholarship of service-learning at scores of colleges in North America, Europe, Japan, India, and Nepal. Earlier in her career, she was an academic and career adviser at Western Washington University, Whatcom Community College, and Northwest Indian College. For the last twenty years at PSU, she has directed Master and Doctoral degrees and a fully on-line Graduate Certificate in Service-Learning including facilitation of short-term international service-learning and COIL/Virtual Exchange classes in India, Japan, Morocco, and Turkey. Her cultural privilege is primarily northern European American with Cherokee (non-tribal affiliation) and Sene-Gambian heritage. She is a first-generation college student, adoptee and adoptive parent, and member of a multi-racial lesbian family. These myriad social positions influence her scholarship which addresses intersectionality, systemic oppression, and equity-centered education and community engagement.

Stephanie T. Stokamer is Associate Professor of Civic Engagement and Director of Applied & Experiential Learning at Pacific University, where she leads the McCall Center for Civic Engagement. With a doctorate in educational leadership from Portland State University, she has facilitated and administered undergraduate and graduate community-based learning programs since 2005. Her scholarship focuses on service-learning and civic engagement, particularly with respect to pedagogical practices and faculty development. She is an AmeriCorps*VISTA alum and former National Service Fellow for the Corporation for National and Community Service. Stephanie comes to this work as a committed ally and accomplice for social justice, with identities rooted in her experience as a cis-gender, heterosexual woman of Anglo heritage.

Joyce P. Kaufman Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Engagement with Communities at Whittier College. She is the author of A Concise History of U.S. Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2010) and NATO and the Former Yugoslavia: Crisis, Conflict and the Atlantic Alliance (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002), and co-editor of The Future of Transatlantic Relations: Perceptions, Policy and Practice (with Andrew M. Dorman) (Stanford Security Studies, 2011). She is also the author of numerous articles and papers on U.S. foreign and security policy. With Kristen Williams, she is co-author of Women and War: Gender Identity and Activism in Times of Conflict (Kumarian Press, 2010) and Women, the State, and War: A Comparative Perspective on Citizenship and Nationalism (Lexington Books, 2007).