Engagement is the partnership of university knowledge and resources with those of the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research, and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching, and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good. (Committee on Institutional Cooperation Committee on Engagement 2005, p. 2)

Community engagement continues to be an important item on the agenda of institutions of higher education. From its roots in Boyer’s call (1990) to re-envision the professoriate through the Kellogg Commission’s challenge (1999) to deepen the involvement of the academy with the societies it serves, dialogues centered on community–university engagement have been sustained through such forums as the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant College’s (NASULGC’s) Council on Extension, Continuing Education, and Public Service; the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) Committee on Engagement; the International Association for Research on Service Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE); and the Higher Education Network for Community Engagement (HENCE). HENCE represents a “response to the growing need to deepen, consolidate, and advance the literature, research, practice, policy, and advocacy for community engagement” (Fitzgerald 2006, slide 12). The growing significance of community engagement can also be seen in the decision of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to establish a new elective classification for Community Engagement. According to the Carnegie Foundation the classification “represents a significant affirmation of the importance of community engagement in the agenda of higher education” (Carnegie Foundation 2008a, para. 2). Community engagement, as defined by the Foundation, “describes the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity” (Carnegie Foundation 2008b, para. 2). As faculty members, staff, and students have engaged with communities, a new form of scholarship—engaged scholarship—has emerged. It is a “form of scholarship that cuts across teaching, research, and service. It involves generating, transmitting, applying, and preserving knowledge for the direct benefit of external audiences in ways that are consistent with university and unit missions” (Provost’s Committee on University Outreach 1993, p. 2).

The Scholarship of Engagement

With the emergence of engaged scholarship, a related form of scholarship has surfaced: the scholarship of engagement. Whereas engaged scholarship is scholarly outreach and engagement activities that “reflect a knowledge-based approach to teaching, research, and service for the direct benefit of external audiences,” the scholarship of engagement occurs when faculty “reflect on, study, write about, and disseminate scholarship about their [engagement] activities” (National Center for the Study of University Engagement 2008, para. 2). In other words, engaged scholarship is about the doing of engagement, while the scholarship of engagement is about reflecting on and writing about it. Note that our use of the term scholarship of engagement differs from Boyer’s (1996) use, which referred to the act of employing university resources to address society’s most urgent social problems.

Our review of the literature on the scholarship of engagement identified five major strands: (1) universities defining or redefining their engagement missions (Aronson and Webster 2007; Brabeck et al. 1998; Lerner and Simon 1998; Percy et al. 2006); (2) community-campus partnerships as a means of enriching the educational experiences of university students (e.g., service learning and internships; Allen-Gil et al. 2005; Benson et al. 2000; Dorado and Giles 2004); (3) universities engaged in community development efforts in partnership with their surrounding neighborhoods (Boyle and Silver 2005; Wiewel and Guerrero 1998); (4) university scholars and community members coming together to address issues of mutual interest (i.e., community-based research and service projects; Lamb-Parker et al. 2002; Lantz et al. 2001; Walsh 2006); and (5) measurement of the characteristics and consequences of community–university partnership (e.g., group dynamics, degree of collaboration, etc.; El-Ansari 1999; El-Ansari et al. 2001; El-Ansari and Weiss 2006; Granner and Sharpe 2004; Schulz et al. 2003). It is important to note that these strands do not represent mutually exclusive categories; instances of engaged scholarship frequently weave two or more of these strands together. In this article, we focus on the fifth strand: identifying and measuring the characteristics and consequences of community-campus partnerships.

Partnerships

Characteristics of Effective Partnerships

Within the fifth strand of the scholarship of engagement, there is substantial agreement on four general characteristics of effective partnerships. These characteristics include: (1) cooperative goal setting and planning (Holland 2005; Sandy and Holland 2006; Schulz et al. 2003); (2) shared power, resources, and decision making (Holland 2005; Liederman et al. 2003; Sandy and Holland 2006; Schulz et al. 2003); (3) group cohesion (Sandy and Holland 2006; Schulz et al. 2003); and (4) partnership management (Holland 2005; Liederman et al. 2003; Sandy and Holland 2006; Schulz et al. 2003). Liederman et al. (2003) suggested a fifth: knowledge of community needs and different ways to work in communities.

It is time for the scholarship on community–university partnerships, a sub-category of the scholarship of engagement, to move beyond listing the ingredients of successful partnerships to developing models that articulate the relationships between partnership characteristics and partnership outcomes. As Granner and Sharpe (2004) noted in their review of measures of partnership functioning, partnership outcome measures are rare; studies of the relationships between partnership characteristics and outcomes are even scarcer.

The characteristics and outcomes of partnerships depend on a number of factors, including prior relationships and motivations (Maurrasse 2001; Wiewel and Lieber 1998), the leadership abilities of partners (Peters et al. 2006; Weiss et al. 2002), competing institutional demands (Bringle et al. 1999; El-Ansari and Phillips 2004; Groark and McCall 1996; Israel et al. 1998; Maurrasse 2001; Ward 2003), and trust and the balance of power (Israel et al. 1998; Peters et al. 2006).

The theoretical framework presented by Schulz et al. (2003) serves as a useful starting point for the development of a model that articulates the relationships between partnership context, partnership characteristics—referred to as partnership dynamics by Schulz, Israel, and Lantz, and partnership outcomes (Fig. 1). In this framework, environmental conditions, such as previous collaboration efforts or organizational readiness, have a direct impact on structural characteristics, group dynamics, and partnership programs and interventions. Structural characteristics also directly influence group dynamics. Group dynamics shape partnership programs and interventions, which influence intermediate measures of group effectiveness such as perceptions of group effectiveness and perceived benefits of participation. Finally, intermediate measures of group effectiveness influence the achievement of program objectives and the institutionalization of programs and/or partnerships.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Theoretical framework for university–community partnerships (adapted from Schulz et al. 2003).

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The utility of the framework offered by Schulz et al. (2003) lies in its ability to guide us toward the identification and deliberate cultivation of those elements of partnership context and dynamics that are associated with benefits for partners. In this study, we analyzed the relationships between partnership dynamics and the perceived benefits of participation in partnerships facilitated by University–Community Partnerships, a department of University Outreach and Engagement (UOE) at Michigan State University.

University–Community Partnerships

University–community partnerships (UCP) fosters partnerships between state and local organizations and university faculty members and/or UCP staff to: (1) address policy-, agency-, and community-defined issues; (2) promote the development and use of evidence-based models and interventions, thereby improving the effectiveness of those working to achieve healthy, fundamental, and sustainable change for individuals, families, groups, neighborhoods, and communities; and (3) facilitate and support the dissemination and use of actionable knowledge and evidence-based interventions.

In fulfilling its mission to increase the capacity of faculty members and local communities to address a wide variety of important societal issues, UCP seeks to create partnerships that produce beneficial results for all partners and the community at large. As such, we are continually striving to better understand the dynamics of the partnerships we broker and how those dynamics are related to the attainment of mutually beneficial partnership outcomes. By exploring the relationships between the internal dynamics and benefits of partnerships brokered by UCP, we hope to offer lessons about the features of partnership that are worthy of replication beyond our own particular range of experience and practice.

The Study

This study was conducted as part of an internal evaluation of community–university partnerships brokered by UCP. The major evaluation questions were:

  1. 1.

    Do the partnerships possess the internal dynamics typically associated with effective community–university partnerships?

  2. 2.

    What are the perceived benefits of these partnerships from the perspective of community partners?

  3. 3.

    What are the relationships between partnership dynamics and perceived partnership benefits?

We gathered data on community partners’ experiences with partnerships that were facilitated by UCP by conducting an online survey of community partners involved in partnerships that were active after December 31, 1999. At the time of data collection (October 2005), some of these partnerships were still ongoing. Approval for this research was granted by the Michigan State University Institutional Review Board.

Sample

Of the 58 community partners contacted to take part in the study, 44 (76%) completed the survey. A majority (68%) of these community partners was affiliated with local non-profit organizations or community-based organizations, followed by educational institutions (27%) and state agencies (5%).

The partnerships brokered by UCP were formed for many purposes; nearly all of them were aimed at promoting the development of individuals, organizations, systems, or communities. Partnerships with a focus on individual development were in large part community-based research and evaluation projects, with an emphasis on programs serving children and youth. A larger set of partnerships was focused on facilitating organizational, system, or community development. Organizational development partnerships included efforts to assist human service organizations in building outcome monitoring capabilities. Partnerships with a system-development focus typically involved helping sets of local human service agencies collaborate around the creation of systems of care. Community development initiatives included such projects as guiding community members through a community visioning process.

Measures

As discussed earlier, there is broad agreement within the literature on community–university partnerships on four general characteristics of effective partnerships: (1) cooperative goal setting and planning; (2) shared power, resources, and decision making; (3) group cohesion; and (4) partnership management. We constructed a survey with items that measured three of these characteristics: (1) shared power, resources, and decision making; (2) group cohesion; and (3) partnership management. We included another set of items measuring the extent to which partners were involved in the co-creation and dissemination of knowledge generated within their partnerships. Although the four characteristics of partnerships we selected for measurement are not perfectly aligned with the four characteristics of effective partnerships identified in the literature, they represented the domains of partnership dynamics that evaluation stakeholders (primarily, the faculty and staff of UCP) were most interested in learning about. The fourth domain, the co-creation and dissemination of knowledge, was added because it represents an important component of the philosophy of practice of UCP and because evaluation stakeholders were interested in learning the extent to which community partners perceived this as a benefit of their participation.

To simplify the analyses of the relationships between the characteristics (or internal dynamics) of partnerships and their effectiveness, we combined the measures in each of the four areas into scales. The internal consistency of the scales was high, ranging from a low of α = 0.86 to a high of α = 0.92. (The scales, their reliability coefficients, and their items are displayed in the Appendix.)

Within the area of partnership effectiveness, our primary focus was on the perceived benefits of participation. To gain a better sense of what benefits partners expected from partnerships versus what they obtained, we drew a distinction between anticipated, achieved, and sustained benefits. For partnerships that had already ended, we asked partners whether they had initially expected a benefit, whether they had received the benefit, and whether that benefit had been sustained following the partnership. For ongoing partnerships, we asked partners whether they initially expected a benefit and whether they were confident they would actually receive that benefit. To compute a single outcome measure for each of the ten potential partnership benefits, we coded each of the ten benefit outcomes measures “yes” when (1) a partner in an ongoing partnership indicated that they were confident that they would receive the benefit or (2) a partner in a partnership that had ended indicated that the benefit had been attained; otherwise, benefit outcome measures were coded “no.”

Data Analysis

To analyze the relationships between the group dynamics of partnerships and partners’ perceived benefits we regressed the ten dichotomous measures of partnership benefits on each of the four continuous measures of partnership dynamics using logistic regression.

Results

Purposes of Partnerships

To gain a better sense of why they had become involved in their partnerships in the first place, we asked partners what the primary purposes of their partnerships were. Community partners saw the primary purposes of their partnerships as program evaluation (61%), system development/system change (57%), and capacity building (48%; Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
figure 2

Perceived purpose of partnership.

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Group Dynamics

One of our primary research questions was the extent to which partnerships facilitated by UCP possessed the group dynamics associated with effective partnerships. The vast majority of community partners reported that their partnerships did indeed exhibit the characteristics of such group dynamics, including open and honest communication (93%), shared power (91%), mutual trust (91%), a shared vision (91%), and shared resources (85%; Fig. 3).

Fig. 3
figure 3

Partnership dynamics.

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Perceived Effectiveness of Group

According to Schulz’ et al. (2003) theoretical framework, the perceived effectiveness of one’s partnership mediates the impact of group dynamics on output measures of partnership effectiveness. In the case of partnerships facilitated by UCP, a majority (93%) of community partners either agreed or strongly agreed that working as a group allowed them to accomplish more than they would have on their own.

Perceived Benefits of Participation

Another construct that mediates the relationship between group dynamics and group outcomes is the perceived benefits of participation. As noted before, we drew a distinction between anticipated, achieved, and sustained partnership benefits.

Ongoing Partnerships

The benefits that community partners involved in ongoing partnerships (N = 26) most often expected to receive were (1) increased collaboration among community organizations around a community issue, problem, or need (77%); (2) increased research on a community issue, problem, or need (77%); (3) increased visibility of a community issue, problem, or need (77%); (4) improvements to the service delivery system (76%); (5) improved knowledge and skills among staff (73%); and (6) improved service outcomes for clients (73%; Fig. 4). In comparing the benefits community partners initially expected to receive with the ones they were still confident they would receive, we found that community partners were significantly less confident that their partnerships would garner additional resources for their service delivery systems than they had been originally, χ 2(1, N = 26) = 3.97, p < 0.05.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Benefits that partners expected and were confident they would receive in ongoing partnerships (N = 26).

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Partnerships that had Ended

The benefits most frequently anticipated by members of partnerships that had ended (N = 18) were (1) increased collaboration among community organizations around a community issue, problem, or need (67%); (2) increased knowledge of a community issue, problem, or need (67%); (3) increased research on a community issue, problem, or need (61%); (4) improved service outcomes for clients (56%); (5) improvements to the service delivery system (56%); and (6) increased resources for the service delivery system (56%; Fig. 5).

Fig. 5
figure 5

Expected, received, and sustained benefits of partnerships that had ended (N = 18).

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When comparing expected benefits with benefits actually received, we found that partners reported reaping more of two benefits than they had initially expected: increased visibility of a community issue, problem, or need, χ 2(1, N = 18) = 6.92, p < 0.01, and alleviation of a social problem or need, χ 2(1, N = 18) = 12.60, p < 0.001. For a third benefit—increased collaboration among community organizations—partners reported garnering less of this benefit than anticipated, χ 2(1, N = 18) = 5.51, p < 0.05. No other differences between expected and received benefits were statistically significant.

When received and sustained benefits are compared, we find two cases where benefits were sustained less often than they were received: collaboration among community organizations, χ 2(1, N = 18) = 5.95, p < 0.05, and increased resources for the service delivery system, χ 2(1, N = 18) = 10.88, p < 0.01.

Group Dynamics and Perceived Benefits

We explored the impact of group dynamics on perceived benefits of participation by analyzing the relationships between four scales of group dynamics and ten dichotomous measures of individual benefits. To conduct these analyses, we regressed each of the ten measures of partnership benefits on the four measures of partnership dynamics using logistic regression.

The analyses showed that measures of group dynamics were associated with three perceived benefits: (1) increased research on a community issue, problem, or need; (2) improved service outcomes for clients; and (3) increased funding. Table I shows the regression coefficients, Wald statistics, odds ratios, and 95% confidence intervals for the four measures of group dynamics.

Table I Logistic Regression Models of Group Dynamics and Partnership Outcomes
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Increased Research

Partnership management, χ 2(1, N = 44) = 4.72, p < 0.05, was associated with increased research on a community issue, problem, or need. In other words, the more effectively managed partners perceived their partnership to be, the more they believed it had led to an increase in research on the community issue, problem, or need that was the focus of their partnership.

Improved Service Outcomes

The co-creation of knowledge was associated with improved service outcomes for clients, χ 2(1, N = 44) = 4.62, p < 0.05. In other words, the more members of a partnership shared access to data and findings and shared in the interpretation, presentation, and publication of results, the better they perceived the service outcomes of clients to be.

Increased funding

Shared power and resources were associated with less increased funding for community partners’ organizations, χ 2(1, N = 44) = 5.52, p < 0.05. Although at first glance this finding appears counterintuitive, it makes sense that if power and resources are shared equitably, there are fewer resources available to any one side of the partnership.

Discussion

The quality of community–university engagement is only as good as the quality of the individual partnerships through which that engagement is enacted. In assessing the merits of the community–university partnerships brokered by UCP, we found that the Schulz et al. (2003) framework provided a useful structure for (1) assessing the extent to which the partnerships we brokered reflected the characteristics or dynamics typically cited in the literature as predictive of successful community–university partnerships; (2) measuring the immediate perceived benefits of those partnerships; and, most importantly, (3) exploring the relationships between partnership dynamics and perceived partnership benefits. While there is certainly value in eliciting lists of the characteristics of partnerships that partners believe led to or might have led to the success of their partnerships, there is at least equal value in empirically testing the relationships between partnership characteristics and the benefits that partners report. By doing so, we can begin to identify those partnership characteristics that are critical to ensuring that engagement experiences yield tangible benefits for all parties involved. Having identified such characteristics, we can set about nurturing them in a deliberate manner.

Taken together, our findings indicate that, in general, community partners in partnerships brokered by UCP viewed their partnerships positively in terms of group dynamics, group effectiveness, and expected and received benefits. However, there were certain areas where benefits fell short of partners’ initial expectations. Members of ongoing partnerships reported that they had become less confident that their partnerships would lead to additional resources for their service delivery systems; members of partnerships that had ended reported that this benefit was sustained less often that it was achieved. Members of partnerships that had ended also reported that their partnerships had failed to produce the degree of collaboration among community organizations that they had expected. Furthermore, the collaboration that their partnerships had generated was frequently not sustained beyond the partnerships. In other areas, benefits exceeded partners’ initial expectations. Some members of partnerships that had ended reported that their partnerships had achieved more than they had originally expected in terms of increasing the visibility of and ameliorating the severity of the particular community issue, problem or need upon which their partnership was focused.

Analyses of the relationships between group dynamics and individual benefits showed that (1) effective partnership management was associated with increased research on a community issue, problem, or need; (2) co-creation of knowledge was associated with improved service outcomes for clients; and (3) shared power and resources were associated with less increased funding for community partners’ organizations. Thus, our findings suggest that effective partnership management and opportunities for the co-creation of knowledge are practices that are worthy of deliberate cultivation within community–university partnerships. We believe that it is through the conscious nurturing of such features of partnerships that the promise of successful community–university engagement can best be realized.

Additional research is needed on the features of partnerships that ought to be cultivated to yield particular benefits. It is our hope that this study becomes one of many similar studies that begin to build a base of empirical evidence regarding the benefits of community–university partnerships and the features of partnerships that contribute to these benefits. The literature on university–community partnerships and, more broadly, the scholarship of engagement, is at present short on empirical evidence regarding the benefits communities and universities enjoy as a result of engagement. It is also short on evidence concerning the partnership processes that reliably yield benefits for partners. Although measures of partnership characteristics are plentiful, measures of partnership outcomes are not and there are few studies of the relationship between the two.

We believe that the building of the evidence base for the scholarship of engagement can be best accomplished if engaged scholars intentionally set about incorporating the evaluation of engagement processes and outcomes into their engaged work. This evidence base can be constructed through qualitative case studies, quantitative surveys, or any number of mixed methods approaches. Methodological choices aside, building this evidence base will require some degree of up-front planning in community–university partnerships, including early conversations between partners about the partnership processes and outcomes they desire as well as appropriate criteria and methods for assessing the extent to which they are realized. Clarifying from the start what community and university partners expect from their partnerships and periodically assessing the extent to which those expectations are met will have the added benefits of contributing to clarity and openness around the degree to which the interests of the various partners converge or diverge, strengthening collective accountability and serving to refocus the attention of partners from time to time on the extent to which partners are relating to each other in the desired ways and achieving the expected results.

In the absence of a supportive environment, incorporating the evaluation of engagement processes and outcomes into the work of engaged scholars simply means more effort for already overburdened academics. Some elements of an environment that would support a robust scholarship of engagement involve transforming the perspectives of scholars and their host institutions. Aspects of this changed outlook would include (1) viewing the scholarship of engagement as a legitimate and valued scholarly pursuit, (2) seeing engagement with communities as an opportunity for research not just on the substantive focus of the particular partnership (e.g., improving the developmental outcomes of children 0–5 years of age) but on engagement itself, and (3) developing an intentional orientation toward partnerships that involves planning for the ongoing assessment of partnership processes and outcomes from the outset.

Other elements of an environment that would advance the scholarship of engagement would include more concrete forms of support to faculty members for engaged work including (1) internal funding for community-based participatory research (CBPR), (2) fellowships for engaged scholars, and (3) technical assistance in the evaluation of community–university partnerships. Internal funding for CBPR is critical for the advancement of the scholarship of engagement insofar as it promotes the development of the partnerships that themselves become the focus of research. It also provides funding for projects that, while valuable, are not likely to be supported by federal research dollars. An example of such an internal funding mechanism can be found in the Families and Communities Together (FACT) Coalition, located in Michigan State University’s Office of University Outreach and Engagement. The FACT Coalition provides multidisciplinary teams of faculty members and community partners with small research seed grants to conduct research that promotes the health and well-being children, families, and communities in Michigan. Fellowships for engaged scholars provide faculty members with release time to develop, carry out, and write about their engaged work. An example of the latter can be found in the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois, which provides Faculty Scholar awards that release faculty members from their teaching and administrative responsibilities for a full year to pursue engaged research and scholarship. Finally, technical assistance in the evaluation of community–university partnerships can be helpful insofar as faculty members are typically proficient in the research methods of their own disciplines, but unfamiliar with the methods employed in the field of evaluation. Also, many faculty members and their community partners may not possess the time or resources or have access to the infrastructure needed to conduct evaluations of their partnerships on their own; they may instead choose to contract this work out or conduct it in partnership with external evaluation firms or internal evaluation units.

Absent the kinds of support for the development of an evidence base for the scholarship of engagement in general, and the relationship between community–university partnership processes and outcomes in particular, the scholarship of engagement is likely to remain a marginal academic enterprise—the clowns in the three-ring academic circus—in the memorable words of Toews and Yazedjian (2007). We see signs however, that the value of this work is gaining recognition, as evidenced by the proliferation of national associations devoted to community–university engagement, which were noted in the introduction to this article. We hope that this trend continues and that the systematic study of community–university partnerships leads to engaged work that increases the capacities of communities and universities to work together to resolve our most pressing concerns.