Creating, running, and sustaining campus-community service-learning partnerships
Abstract
Because of their importance, theoretical elements of successful campus-community partnerships have long been identified. However, less has been done to ascertain best or even promising practices of these collaborations. This effective practice uses the research from a service-learning practitioner at the University of Vermont who developed a handbook for programs based on the experiences of the Northern New England Campus Compact. Cheryl Whitney Lower submitted this effective practice in October 2007.Issue
Campus-community partnerships are an essential element in community service-learning. Partnerships are the structure for identifying community needs, developing appropriate student projects, fostering experiential education, carrying out required planning and logistics, and sharing feedback on the process and results.Action
Drawing on the experience of dozens of individuals from colleges and universities and from community organizations in northern New England who have been involved in service-learning partnerships for several years or more, best practices in creating, running, and sustaining good partnerships are as follows. Click on the link to the source document, "Creating, Running, and Sustaining Campus-Community Service-Learning Partnerships: Lessons from Practitioners " (Richard Schramm, the University of Vermont) for more information on any of the following summarized points.CREATING THE PARTNERSHIP
Characteristics of Good Partnerships
- Good partners start by looking to existing partnerships
- Personal relationships and experience working together are critical
- Partners' understanding of the larger context is important
- Partnerships can be created from recommendations from others on campus or in the community
An Effective Collaboration
- Partners need to have common interests, and complementary skills and resources ("natural alliances")
- The partnerships needs broad representation that includes all major stakeholders
- Partners need to have a commitment to the work and provide leadership (people who are fully invested)
- Partners need to build the partnership together from the very beginning
A shared, comprehensive philosophy, mission and goals
- Partnerships need a statement of purpose or mission
- Partners need to build a common understanding of their mission and goals — can also create shared logic model to this end
Acknowledged and Promoted Mutuality of the Partnership
Strong Partnership Relationships
- Relationship building should start early and not wait until the partnership is engaged in specific projects
- Partners should operate as equals, with equal participation in key partnership decisions, realizing that the long-term success of the partnership is more important than the individual activities
- Participation should occur with all types of decisions, including evaluation
- Transparency and honesty play a critical role
- Building relationships needs to be intentional and involve structures or processes
- Building relationships takes time and the changing priorities of each institution should be discussed and considered in planning
RUNNING THE PARTNERSHIP
Roles, Responsibilities, Procedures, and Understandings in Place
- Project goals, workplans, roles, and responsibilities need to be clear and agreed upon
- Partners need to have clear, shared, and reasonable expectations, including allowing for student mistakes, and the opportunity for students to learn from these mistakes
- Preparation for project work is essential, recognizing that students do best at learning and service when they are prepared to understand the social context of the service they provide
- Design and implement partnership activities with flexibility, recognizing that projects are organic, and ongoing adjustments may be necessary
- Have appropriate communication systems and information needed for decision-making; have a variety of different, overlapping forms of communication; may include providing students with a webpage of information or a service-learning documentation sheet
- Be sure that someone plays a bridging role or serves as a liaison
- Learn to work with different campus and community time lines, being careful to sustain momentum and continuity of work with partners
- Build in project monitoring, which often involves developing and checking on workplans, timelines, progress reports, draft reports, or other deliverables
Appropriate Projects
- Projects need to fit the interests, needs, and constraints of all partners
- Projects need to be real, important, and relevant — one way to do this is to make sure the students meet the partner
SUSTAINING THE PARTNERSHIP
- Support for the overall partnership
- Organizational structures may be needed to institutionalize service-learning and partnership building
- Cultivate a sustainable relationship that stands the test of time
- Make sure partners understand what service-learning is
- Evaluate the partnership with online surveys or a database that allows partners to communicate their needs
- Stimulate interactions and development of partnerships between groups with annual events
Support for community partners
- Create a community-based service-learning coordinator position if possible, because someone in this position with strong ties to the community assures that service-learning projects address real community needs
- Community organizations need to understand how to connect with colleges, the challenges of a college calendar, the ways in which students, faculty, and staff think, and the basic components of the pedagogy of service-learning specifically
Support for the faculty
- Provide service-learning teaching assistants and other support
- Provide educational support for faculty (this could be in the form of a Service-Learning Faculty Fellows program)
Regular feedback on the partnership
- This can be systematically attained through the use of a partnership performance and condition rubric
- Five areas of concern include philosophy and mission, partners, leadership and support, evaluation and assessment, and communications, as well as three levels of progress— exploring, building quality, and sustained institutionalization
[Jane Andrews, Alice D. Elliott, Tracy Harkins, Debra Nitschke-Shaw, Deborah Scire and Cassandra Thomas played key roles in the development of the rubric, "A Tool for Growing and Sustaining Collaborative Partnerships." See appendix iv of the source document, "Creating, Running, and Sustaining Campus-Community Service-Learning Partnerships: Lessons from Practitioners."]
Context
Service-learning partnerships are a subset of campus partnerships and involve collaborations between faculty/course(s) and community organizations that are developed both to meet specified community needs and provide community situations and problems as service-learning opportunities for students. These partnerships are designed to be of mutual benefits to all partners, with campus partners taking the lead in defining student learning needs and community partners in defining community needs. Students in service-learning courses providing academic credit carry out the work of the partnership."Creating, Running, and Sustaining Campus-Community Service-Learning Partnerships: Lessons from Practitioners" was developed by drawing on multiple sources:
1. A web-based survey of 100 campus and community individuals involved in service-learning partnerships in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont resulted in 31 responses.
2. Two sets of interviews, both at the University of Vermont, added to the information on promising practices. The first was a set of five interviews (three campus and two community partners from three separate partnerships) carried out by David Harker and Carrie Williams Howe in the office of Community-University Partnerships and Service-Learning. The second was ten faculty interviews at the Rubenstein School of Natural Resources and the Environment, conducted by Katherine Westdijk, a graduate student and partnership coordinator in that school.
3. Richard Schramm's own experiences at the University of Vermont, with four different service-learning courses, many individual community partners, and three different university-community partnerships. Richard Schramm has taught economics, finance and community development for over forty years at Columbia, Cornell, Tufts, MIT, Goddard, and the University of Vermont. He is currently (2007) a senior faculty associate in UVM's Office of Community-University Partnerships and Service-Learning and is on the faculty of the Community Development and Applied Economics Department. He is also a northern New England Campus Compact Service-Learning faculty consultant.
Citation
Schramm, Richard. "Creating, Running, and Sustaining Campus-Community Service-Learning Partnerships: Lessons from Practitioners." The University of Vermont, 2007.Outcome
Richard Schramm's handbook attempts to serve the function of sharing best practices among practitioners of service-learning partnerships. However, as more constituents add their voices, rather than issuing a hard copy update, the Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont Campus Compacts are considering the development of an online version to which practitioner lessons can be submitted and shared. The use of a campus-community partnership practices "wiki" for this purpose is being considered.Posted On
November 29, 2007For More Information