Open Social Scholarship Annotated Bibliography/Community Engagement

Category Overview
Certain university representatives are invested in creating and maintaining partnerships with community members, often in the form of goal-oriented projects that benefit society in some way. This category primarily focuses on university-community partnerships and how they evolve over time. Earlier sources focus on why such collaboration is important and reasons why it should become a common practice in the university (Hart and Wolff 2006; O’Meara, Sandmann, and Giles 2006). More recent resources focus on the aftermath of such integration; they discuss the benefits of these partnerships for the university and the community, as well as the obstacles and challenges that arise when representatives of these two groups collaborate and how to overcome them (Barnes et al. 2009; Butin 2010; McNall, Reed, Brown, and Allen 2009). A central issue addressed is the need for university administrations to adapt to community engagement by appropriately rewarding students and scholars who engage in such work, and to ensure that working with communities is career-enhancing (Pasque et al. 2005; Sturm et al. 2011). There are also a number of resources that discuss the role of technology in community engagement and collaboration. Many authors argue that the use of technology can bring about social and political change, and support civic action (Lance 2006; Bowdon and Carpenter 2011; Caplan, Perse, and Gennaria 2007; Dumova 2012; Jenkins and Deuze 2008; Lin and Atkin 2007; Milakovich 2011). Together, the resources assert community engagement as an essential role of the university.

Annotations
Barnes, Jessica V., Emily L. Altimare, Patricia A. Farrell, Robert E. Brown, C. Richard Burnett III, LaDonna Gamble, and James Davis. 2009. “Creating and Sustaining Authentic Partnerships with Community in a Systemic Model.” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement 13 (4): 15–29.
 * Barnes et al. present an approach to community partnerships developed by and practiced at Michigan State University. These approaches focus on community voices and are developmental, dynamic, and systematic in nature. The authors provide a brief history of university outreach and engagement since the 1980s, as well as a visual diagram of key terms in the University's approach to university outreach. This strategy aims to become embedded in stress-asset based solutions, and to build community capacity for collaborative networks. The authors provide a list of challenges in current university partnerships and assess engagement efforts. Future research will examine how scholars, communities and conveners define partnership success.

Bennett, W. Lance, ed. 2006. Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
 * Bennett, in his introduction to the collection, suggests that younger generations are increasingly disconnected from conventional politics and government. However, the percentage of youth involved in civic engagement in non-governmental areas has increased. He explains that communication channels take many forms, including official communication tools and online social community networks. The collection’s authors discuss how online networks can inspire conventional political participation, and how digital technologies can be used to expand the boundaries of politics and public issues. In general, the authors suggest that there is a need for a transparent global debate about how digital media reshapes the expectations and prospects of youth in democratic societies.

Bowdon, Melody A., and Russel G. Carpenter, eds. 2011. Higher Education, Emerging Technologies, and Community Partnerships Concepts, Models and Practices. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
 * Bowdon and Carpenter collect essays from 88 teachers, professors, and community leaders in a book that argues that technologies are being used in increasingly compelling ways to forge partnerships between college students, staff, faculty members, and the communities around them. The authors note that college and high school students are taking a lead in the process of creating valuable partnerships in local and global communities. The chapters include observations on successful partnerships between universities and other groups, as well as on the practical and theoretical meanings that technological tools have for different populations. Other issues addressed include the fact that capacity-building for technology use remains a critical objective in many regions of the world and that the challenges of online education heighten as it increasingly becomes a staple of academic training.

Butin, Dan. 2010. Service-Learning in Theory and Practice: The Future of Community Engagement in Higher Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
 * Butin’s book on the theoretical and practical applications of service learning in community engagement covers a variety of topics that range from the conceptualization of service learning to the establishment of institutional programs that create spaces for service learning in higher education. He provides examples of majors, minors, and certificate programs at a range of institutions that encourage service learning. The book concludes with a range of suggestions about how higher education institutions can embrace a scholarship of engagement and a discussion of current trends in service learning, as well as the implications that these hold for the future. Butin argues that democratic community engagement is a vital aspect of linking colleges and communities, and that service learning is an established institutional method of encouraging such partnerships.

Butin, Dan. 2012a. “Rethinking the ‘Apprenticeship of Liberty’: The Case for Academic Programs in Community Engagement in Higher Education.” Journal of College and Character 13 (1): 1–8.
 * Butin articulates a model for an “engaged” campus that he envisions can be practiced through academic programs focused on community engagement. Certificate programs, minors, and majors provide a complimentary vision for the deep institutionalization of civic and community engagement that can help revitalize what he terms an apprenticeship of liberty for students, faculty, and staff. Butin identifies a major problem in the institutional “engagement ceiling,” which is the low institutionalization of sustained investment for civic engagement in education (1). He concludes his study by suggesting that the egalitarian, horizontal, and equally legitimate model of knowledge construction is missing in higher education because academic knowledge and its development, critique, and expansion are understood as the purview of highly specialized researchers. Community engagement, according to Butin, needs to be done in academic spaces that foster and strengthen the very qualities that academics are looking for in community partnerships.

Butin, Dan. 2012b. “When Engagement is Not Enough: Building the Next Generation of the Engaged Campus.” In The Engaged Campus: Certificates, Minors, and Majors as the New Community Engagement, edited by Butin and S. Seider, 1–11. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
 * Butin discusses the practical applications of majors, minors, and certificate programs within institutions and their potential to reform the relationship between community and institution. It is clear, Butin argues, that the theoretical arguments of the last quarter century have questioned every assumption, enactment, and orientation of community and engagement. He argues that the community engagement movement in its present state still lacks the rigorous scholarship necessary for its incorporation into higher education. The next direction of community engagement in higher education, according to Butin, must engage in efforts at border crossings and must embrace critical academic spaces. This includes moving away from what he sees as an ineffectual model of “hallway activists” where theory and practice are disjointed.

Butin, Dan, and Scott Seider, eds. 2012. The Engaged Campus: Certificates, Minors, and Majors as the New Community Engagement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
 * Butin and Seider edit this collection of essays that argue for the vital role of higher education in both citizenship and the creation of rich civic and community life. A central concept to this collection is conceiving the goal of education as an aspirational idea for democracy, as well as personal, social, and political responsibility for a more just and equitable world. Reflection is a major concept and practice in the type of service learning discussed in the essays. The book focuses on service learning programs, experiential learning, and the role of interdisciplinary, active, and engaged research. The editors and authors seek to dismantle the boundaries between action and knowledge and create a model for publically engaged campuses through certificates, majors, and minors in community partnerships.

Cantor, Nancy, and Steve D. Lavine. 2006. “Taking Public Scholarship Seriously.” The Chronicle Review 52 (40): B20.
 * Cantor and Lavine claim that today’s system of tenure and promotion extracts a high price that is costly to communities and deprives them of relationships with educational partners. The authors note a gap between the appraisal of creative scholars who are committed to the public good and those who are promoted. Portland State University is used as an example of an institution that has accepted the blurred boundaries between research, teaching, and engagement, which are all hallmarks of excellence in public scholarship. What is important for the future development of public scholarship is that faculty and evaluators do not advise junior colleagues to postpone public scholarship if that is where their interests lie. The institution, the authors argue, needs more flexible definitions of scholarship, research, and creative work.

Caplan, Scott E., Elizabeth M. Perse, and Janice E. Gennaria. 2007. “Computer-Mediated Technology and Social Interaction.” In Communication Technology and Social Change: Theory and Implications, edited by Carolyn A. Lin and David J. Atkin, 39–57. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
 * Caplan, Perse, and Gennaria explore how and why people use instant messaging, email, and chat rooms in a social context. The authors provide a brief historical background on these technologies, as well as the social implications that result from a change between computer-mediated communication (CMC) and face-to-face communication. The authors find that teens and young adults provide most of the traffic in computer-mediated social forums. The reduced amount of non-verbal cues contributes to selectively controlling the quantity, quality, and validity of personal information available to other participants. As computer-mediated social interaction increases in popularity, physical location will become a less salient predictor of whom people interact with. Communication scholars need to adapt communication theories to evolving technologies and changing contexts to understand the uses and effects of computer-mediated social interaction technologies.

Deuze, Mark, Axel Bruns, and Christopher Neuberger. 2007. “Preparing for an Age of Participatory News.” Journalism Practice 1 (3): 322–38.
 * Deuze, Bruns, and Neuberger argue that journalism must rethink and reinvent itself in the wake of declining public trust in news. The authors believe that news journalism will be gathered, selected, edited, and communicated by professionals, amateurs, producers and consumers. The authors include findings from emerging practices in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia and the United States. The four case studies used are the American Bluffton Today, the Dutch Skoeps, the German Opinio, and the Australian On Line Opinion. These digital resources, the authors argue, provide clear and workable alternatives to the traditional separation of journalists, their sources, and the public. Due to the highly accessible flow of information available digitally to the public, journalism can no longer leave large sections of the citizenry disenfranchised from participation, nor omit valuable insights into political and social processes.

** Dumova, Tatyana. 2012. “Social Interaction Technologies and the Future of Blogging.” In Blogging in the Global Society: Cultural, Political and Geographical Aspects, edited by Dumova and Richard Fiordo, 249–74. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.
 * Dumova addresses the social potential of blogging centres on the ways in which blogs permit people to engage in social interactions, build connections, and collaborate with others. She argues that blogging should not be studied in isolation from the social media clusters that function together to sustain each other. She also notes that blogging is an international phenomenon, since over 60% of all blogs created after the 1990s are written in languages other than English. Next, Dumova broadly traces the development of blog publishing platforms. She concludes that network-based peer production and social media convergence are the driving forces behind the current transformation of blogs to increasingly user-centric, user-driven practices of producing, searching, sharing, publishing, and distributing information.

** Gahran, Amy. 2012. “SeeClickFix: Crowdsourced Local Problem Reporting as Community News.” Knight Digital Media Center. September 19, 2012. http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/blogs/agahran/2012/09/seeclickfix-crowdsourced-local-problem-reporting-community-news.html.
 * Gahran details the benefits of using SeeClickFix, a web-based open access web widget used for illuminating local issues, spurring community discourse, and sparking story ideas. Users can also use it to file public reports on local issues and vote for individual reports when they would like to see a specific issue resolved. The widget allows users to plot locations on a Google Map interface so that users within a geographic area can view a list of individual reports in that area. Having this widget on a site makes it easier to stay aware of community-reported issues and maintain greater engagement with the broader geographic area that the individual or group in question is part of.

Hall, Peter V., ed. 2011. Community-University Research Partnerships: Reflections on the Canadian Social Economy Experience. Victoria: University of Victoria.
 * Hall edits this collection of essays on various community and university relationships within Canada. The book includes topics on Canadian social economy research partnerships from 2005-2011, new proposals for evaluating the research partnership process, respect and learning from communities, and the British Columbia-Alberta research alliance's effects on social economy. The appendices of the collection include region-specific information, such as the BC and Alberta Node and the Atlantic Node. This book focuses on the outcomes of previous grant offers and university-community partnerships, and the role of funding in university related partnerships.

Hart, A., and Simon Northmore. 2008. “Auditing and Evaluating University-Community Engagement. Lessons from a UK Case Study.” Higher Education Quarterly 65 (1): 34–58.
 * Hart and Northmore argue that the development of effective audit and evaluation tools is still at a formative stage in university communities and public engagement activities. The literature search, which was based on articles written in or after the year 2000, confirmed the authors’ suspicion that the development of the appropriate tools for auditing and evaluating public engagement is still at its outset. The University of Brighton’s Corporate Plan is used as a case study for further elaboration, which includes engagement with the cultural, social and economic life of the localities, region and nation as its primary precept. The authors suggest that this case study demonstrates that back and forth dialogue between practitioners, researchers and community members is essential to the audit and evaluation process.

Hart, A., and D. Wolff. 2006. “Developing Communities of Practice Through Community-University Partnerships.” Planning Practice and Research 21 (1): 121–38.
 * Hart and Wolff draw on the experiences of local community-university partnership activities at the University of Brighton to offer what they perceive as a pragmatic framework for future community-university partnerships. The authors argue that unless the discussion is framed in a way that shows that academics are trying to understand community members, academics will have considerable difficulty in demonstrating the practical application of scholarly knowledge. The Community University Partnership program at the University of Brighton was established in 2003 to enhance the capacity of the community and university for engagement with mutual benefit, and to ensure that the university’s resources are fully available to and used by local and sub-regional communities. The authors conclude by addressing both the cultural and spatial dimensions of the terrain and their impact on community-university partnerships within a community of practice framework.

Hiebert, Matthew, William R. Bowen, and Raymond Siemens. 2015. “Implementing a Social Knowledge Creation Environment.” Scholarly and Research Communication 6 (3): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/223/436.
 * Hiebert, Bowen, and Siemens introduce Iter Community, a public-facing web-based platform prototyped by the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab and Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with a specific focus on how this platform is geared towards facilitating social knowledge creation. The authors argue that the emerging area of research known as social knowledge creation promotes critical interventions into the more conventional processes of academic knowledge production; this type of research is increasingly made more convenient by emerging technologies that allow research groups to more actively participate in and contribute to the dissemination of their work and communication with other partners. The Iter Community page is meant as a critical intervention into modes of scholarly production and publication, and models how the implementation of functionalities that support social knowledge creation can facilitate novel research opportunities and invite scholars and members of the community to participate in the creation of knowledge. The platform facilitates online knowledge production and dissemination in ways that ultimately enhance research practices and community outreach.

Holland, B., and J. Ramaley. 2008. “Creating a Supportive Environment for Community University Engagement: Conceptual Frameworks” In HERDSA 2008 Conference Proceedings. http://www.herdsa.org.au/system/files/Holland & Ramaley%20%26%20Ramaley.pdf
 * Holland and Ramaley argue that the changing nature of knowledge production, global issues, and the role of education affect intellectual strategies, relationships, societal roles, and expectations of how universities prepare students for the workplace. Educational institutions must increasingly embrace multidisciplinary and collaborative frameworks in order to address the evolving community landscape. The study concludes with the authors' recommendation that universities stop using communities as laboratories for research and learning, and rather collaborate with and acknowledge the essential expertise and wisdom that resides in communities. This shift will transform understandings and prompt academics to understand themselves as learners, and to respect community leaders as experts in their own right.

Hoy, A., and M. Johnson, eds. 2013. Deepening Community Engagement in Higher Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
 * Hoy and Johnson collect diverse essays on approaches to community engagement in higher education that stress the role of students as civic-minded professionals in student development, as well as community-centred approaches for the institution to engage in more productive partnerships with community leaders as partners. The Bonner High Impact Initiative embraces this and has the goal of transforming curricula, including approaches to engagement and institutional structures and practices. The authors hope to share their methods of engaging with communities as a means of allowing institutions to craft roles for themselves as stewards of place, civic learning, and agents of change. The essays included cover student leadership, pedagogy, institutional architecture, and community partnerships.

Jenkins, Henry, and Mark Deuze. 2008. “Convergent Culture.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14 (1): 5–12. http://con.sagepub.com/content/14/1/5.full.pdf+html.
 * Jenkins and Deuze elaborate that shifts in communication infrastructure are bringing about contradictory pulls and tugs between democratization and the concentration of power. The current global digital culture, the authors suggest, should be understood as Lev Manovich’s culture of remix and remixability, where user generated content exists both within and outside commercial contexts, supporting and subverting corporate control. Media branding choices are made as frequently in boardrooms as they are in teenagers’ bedrooms due to the use of mobile web technologies. Contemporary media operates through a complex web of temporary connections and relationships between media companies and public stakeholders. Liquid differentiation is increasingly the model of corporate production: a formerly linear product is infused with unconventional new media formulas, hybrid genres, and transmedia strategies in its next installment to keep the brand marketable. The authors point to how these diverse forms of media further the capitalist agenda of constructing citizens as individualized and perpetually connected consumers.

Jensen, Klaus Bruhn, and Rasmus Helles. 2011. “The Internet as a Cultural Forum: Implications for Research.” New Media & Society 13 (4): 517–33.
 * Jensen and Helles take up Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch’s model for studying television as a cultural forum and use that as the frame of reference for studying the internet. A cultural forum is the most common reference point for public issues and concerns in a particular society. The internet is a distinctive kind of medium that comprises different communicative genres. The authors find that blogs, social network sites, and other recent genres attract much public and scholarly attention; however, ordinary media users are still inclined to engage in typical broadcasting methods. While the internet is displacing television, the authors argue that it will not replace it completely, and that future studies should focus on the plurality of cultural forums in a given society.

** Lampe, Cliff, Robert LaRose, Charles Steinfield, and Kurt DeMaagd. 2011. “Inherent Barriers to the Use of Social Media for Public Policy Informatics.” The Innovation Journal 16 (1): 1–17.
 * Lampe, LaRose, Steinfield and DeMaagd address the barriers to social media use for public policy informatics. For the authors, social media has the potential to foster interactions between policy makers, government officials, and their constituencies. The authors refer to this framework as Governance 2.0 and use AdvanceMichigan as a case study. AdvanceMichigan is a social media implementation designed to crowdsource feedback from stakeholders of Michigan State University Cooperative Extension. This organization approaches the education process in a way that students can apply their knowledge to a range of critical issues, needs, and opportunities. The organization is planning to return to traditional methods for collecting data from stakeholders due to the challenges of crowdsourcing data. The authors conclude with a discussion on how to create compelling technologies tailored to correctly scaled tasks for an audience who are likely to use social media sites.

Lin, Carolyn A., and David J. Atkin. 2007. Communication Technology and Social Change: Theory and Implications. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
 * Lin and Atkin edit this anthology that discusses significant outcomes of technology adoption and uses. Throughout the volume, authors explain how communication and information technologies facilitate social change. The editors organized the collection of essays to enhance the understanding of these social change outcomes by readers, scholars, students, and practitioners from a theoretical standpoint that examines the effects of communication technology on different social environments. The technologies examined by the authors include video and home entertainment, online technology education and entertainment, and cultural attitudes toward paper and electronic documents. The editors argue from the standpoint of social change, namely that advancements in communication technology have shaped political perspectives around the globe toward, for example, the Iraq War.

McNall, Miles, Celeste Sturdevant Reed, Robert Brown, and Angela Allen. 2009. “Brokering Community-University Engagement.” Innovative Higher Education 33 (5): 317–31.
 * McNall, Reed, Brown, and Allen identify a lack of substantial agreement on the characteristics of effective community-university partnerships for research. This, they argue, is due to a lack of empirical research on the relationship between the characteristics of these partnerships and their outcomes. Qualities of effective partnership include shared leadership, two way open communication and constructive conflict resolution, participatory decision-making, shared resources, and well organized meetings with collaboratively developed agendas. The authors use a survey to understand the purposes of these partnerships, as well as their group dynamics. The authors demonstrate that effective partnership management is associated with increased research on a community issue, that the co-creation of knowledge is associated with improved service outcomes for clients, and that shared power and resources are negatively associated with increased funding for community partners’ organizations.

Milakovich, Michael E. 2011. Digital Governance: New Technologies for Improving Public Service and Participation. New York: Routledge.
 * Milakovich studies the application of digital information and communication technologies, and their role in reforming governmental structures, politics, and public administration. He notes that governments are transitioning between electronic government to digital governance, which emphasizes citizen participation and the accessibility of information technology. Organizational bodies have shifted from bureaucracy-centred to customer-centric service operation in order to restore public trust in both governing and corporate bodies. Milakovich contributes several chapters to the social implications of virtual learning, methods of applying digital technologies to governance, and a discussion of global attitudes and patterns towards digital governance in the international community.

Mortensen, Mette. 2015. “Connective Witnessing: Re-Configuring the Relationship Between the Individual and the Collective.” Information, Communication & Society 18 (11): 1393–1406.
 * Mortensen proposes the term “connective witnessing” to refer to what she believes is the prevalent form of witnessing today. This witnessing combines personalized political participation with connective action in the recording and sharing of visual documentation. Civic action is chosen as the empirical example for research data, and is connected to the deployment of digital communication technologies by protest movements. The boundaries between these positions are evidently blurred, since the individual witness can speak for the collective on occasion, especially with the use of digital technologies. These technologies also allow for increasing personalization of the political acts of witnessing, and for depersonalizing witnesses into a collective voice. The operation of collective and individual witnessing must be re-evaluated in light of recent mobile and other digital technological development.

O’Meara, K., L.R. Sandmann, J. Saltmarsh, and D. Giles. 2011. “Studying the Professional Lives and Work of Faculty Involved in Community Engagement.” Innovative Higher Education 36 (2): 83–96.
 * O’Meara, Sandmann, Saltmarsh, and Giles discuss the professional lives of faculty members and their intimate ties to the academic mission. The authors discuss how the conceptualization of faculty-community engagement influences the questions asked of the institution and the kinds of recruitment, support, and professional growth that it provides in turn. They provide a brief history of institutional community engagement and faculty work since the 1980s. The lack of clear boundaries between the work and lives of publically engaged scholars necessitates studies, frameworks, and methods that weave faculty work with theories from different social sciences and research methods. Demographics, identity, life experiences, epistemologies, personal goals, institutions, disciplines, and department contexts all influence attitudes towards community involvement in institutional settings. The authors also provide a critique of perspectives used to study faculty community engagement and argue that an approach with multiple lenses is needed, including social, psychological, and cultural dimensions.

Pasque, Penny A., Ryan E. Smerek, Brighid Dwyer, Nick Bowman, and Bruce L. Mallory, eds. 2005. Higher Education Collaboratives for Community Engagement and Improvement. National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good. Ann Arbor, MI. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED515231.pdf.
 * Pasque, Smerek, Dwyer, Bowman, and Mallory compile the proceedings from the Wingspread Conference on Higher Education Collaboratives for Community Engagement and Improvement held on October 27–29, 2004 in Racine, Wisconsin. The conference was convened to examine the current and evolving role of higher education institutions, especially those operating within coalitions, consortia, and state systems in order to catalyze change on issues that affect communities and society. This event was also designed as a forum for groups with common interests and consists of a series of working groups with developed partnerships. The issues covered in the proceedings include how faculty can overcome the few incentives and little preparation given for them to engage in community improvement and how the universities can recognize working with communities as career enhancing. These discussions focus on university-community relations and their sustainability in the long term.

Silka, Linda, G. Dean Cleghorn, Milago Grullon, and Trinidad Tellez. 2008. “Creating Community-Based Participatory Research in a Diverse Community: A Case Study.” Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics 3 (2): 5–16.
 * Silka, Cleghorn, Grullon, and Tellez use their community-based participatory research group, the Lawrence Research Initiative Working Group (RIWG), as a case study for creating guidelines for ethical community-based research. The authors seek to move beyond the problems identified by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and begin to include tribal nations and research centres. The primary focus is to develop an ethical and non-exploitative relationship on the part of the institution. They introduce a set of guiding documents—the RIWG documents—that outline strategies for dealing with the challenges of multiple layers of partners, coping with changing committee memberships, and providing tips for technical research language to help strengthen communication. The research team recommends that other communities adapt the RIWG documents for their own use. They hope to shift understanding toward community decision making as a necessity rather than a luxury.

Silka, Linda, and Paulette Renault-Caragianes. 2006. “Community-University Research Partnerships: Devising a Model for Ethical Engagement.” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement 11 (2): 171–83.
 * Silka and Renault-Caragianes discuss the problems that have previously faced community-university partnerships. These partnerships often involve powerful university scholars with relatively disempowered community members. Funding agencies are now calling for researchers to set up partnerships in order to investigate health disparities in poor urban communities. The challenge currently facing this type of partnership is to move beyond existing guidelines that were not designed to provide ethical guidance, and to work with the community in establishing mutual respect. The research agenda, usefulness and purpose of said research, and research methods all need to be determined by discussions with the community.

Silka, Linda, and Robin Toof. 2011. “International Perspectives on Community-University Partnerships.” Metropolitan Universities Journal: An International Forum 22 (2): 3–162.
 * Silka and Toof claim that communities struggle to create research guidelines for ethical collaborative research within their localities. The authors use the Mayor’s Health Task Force Research Initiative Working Group from Lawrence, Massachusetts, as a case study. The task force addresses research ethics in a community where families struggle with limited resources and face many health disparities. An earlier study on high levels of pollution in the area did not take the Lawrence area’s residents’ concerns seriously, and was unable to answer the community’s questions as to how their approaches to research were selected, who would receive the results, who would own the data, and what would be done with the saliva samples collected. Research committees must involve community members in discussions of how problems should be investigated and what kind of purposes the research aims to achieve.

Sturm, Susan, Timothy Eatman, John Saltmarsh, and Adam Bush. 2011. “Full Participation: Building the Architecture for Diversity and Public Engagement in Higher Education” (white paper). Columbia University Law School: Center for Institutional and Social Change.
 * Sturm, Eatman, Saltmarsh, and Bush’s work grew out of the realization that the long-term success of diversity, public engagement, and student success initiatives requires that these efforts be more fully integrated into institutional settings. They explain their concept of full participation, which is an affirmative value focused on creating institutions that enable people to thrive and realize their capabilities. They note that a lack of integration of diversity, public engagement, and student success efforts in university architecture limits the efficacy and sustainability of the institution’s work. The authors argue that public engagement will encourage and enable full participation of diverse groups and communities, which is a critical attribute of legitimate and successful public engagement. The institutions that take account of public engagement enhance the legitimacy, levels of engagement, and robustness of higher education.

Whitmer, Ali, Laura Ogden, John Lawton, Pam Sturner, Peter Groffman, Laura Schneider, and David Hart. 2010. “The Engaged University: Providing a Platform for Research that Transforms Society.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 8 (6): 314–21.
 * Whitmer, Ogden, Lawton, Sturner, Groffman, Schneider, and Hart discuss how solutions to current environmental problems can be developed through collaborations between scientists and stakeholders. Societal partners are active throughout both the research and transfer of knowledge processes. They are able to identify problems for conducting research and developing strategies for applying the outcomes of said work. The article provides some examples of science-related programs, including Georgetown University’s program on Science in the Public Interest, which promotes direct dialogue with the government industry and the community on critical scientific issues. The authors also address topics related to developing a peer community and sustainability issues in linking knowledge with action. According to the authors, institutions should evaluate faculty by recognizing research and activities that advance scientific knowledge and improve outcomes for human and natural systems.