Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships: A Handbook

When done properly, community engagement in academia can have value for all stakeholders. Authentic experiences are more useful for students; faculty can add new knowledge to the field and their own toolbelts; and communities feel their investment has generated a useful deliverable or even a long-term partnership.

Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships provides a wealth of valuable resources and activities to help impart ideas of identity, privilege, oppression, bias, and power dynamics to best support students and community in these relationships. Believing that authenticity only comes about in an atmosphere of mutual respect and self-awareness, the authors argue for cultural and intellectual humility.

Each chapter looks at topics and issues through different lenses, complete with underlying theories, and relates those discussions to concrete classroom activities, facilitation strategies, and scholarly frames. In addition, the authors include contributions from a diverse group of practitioners at community colleges, private colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, and minority-serving institutions.

Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships is a much-needed, comprehensive resource for community-engaged professionals as they prepare students for building relationships when entering a community for learning or research purposes.

Elizabeth A. Tryon, M. Ed. is an Emeritus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, serving as Assistant Director for Community-engaged Scholarship at the Morgridge Center for Public Service. She is the coauthor of The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning (Temple).

Haley Madden, Ph.D., is the Assistant Director of Community-Engaged Scholarship at the Morgridge Center for Public Service at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Outside of her role at UW, she trains horses and teaches riding lessons.

Cory Sprinkel was the first Community Engagement Preparation Specialist for the Morgridge Center for Public Service, creating workshop curriculum for training students in cultural awareness and humility prior to working in the community. He now oversees that work as well as professional development and support for community-engaged scholars including faculty, undergraduate and graduate students.