Developing Effective Social Work University--Community Research Collaborations (Report‪)‬

From the earliest medieval "town versus gown" disputes (Bender, 1988) to the recent "covenant for university engagement with communities (Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities [hereafter, Kellog Commission], 2000), the nature of relationships between academic scholars and members of their institutions' communities has been characterized along a broad continuum of ambiguity: from hostility to apathy to championing each others' causes, and it has been viewed as anything from parasitic to symbiotic in nature. Currently, many campuses actively pursue the role of "the engaged university," which, among other things, entails developing strong, mutually rewarding, mutually valued, enduring university--community research partnerships (Kellogg Commission, 2000; North CentralAssociation of Colleges and Schools [NCA], 2003). These concepts of mutuality and two-way relationships are central to the development of effective university-community research collaborative partnerships (Austin, Briar-Lawson, King-Ingham, Spicer, & Davis, 2005; Pardasani, 2005) and are ideally suited to the development of social work research collaborations. Social work literature concerning the practices of community organization, advocacy, and program evaluation provide important insights into the nature of collaborative partnerships. However, emerging trends related to social work research and pressures on community-based organizations suggest that revisiting strategies for developing university-community research partnerships is warranted. Pressures on community-based organizations, in a context of diminished resources, include the following: public and private funders who require engagement with university research partners for service grants, ideological and policy expectations for engaging in research-based practices, and a national movement to promote community-based participatory research (Straub et al., 2007). Community-based participatory research (CBPR.) is an emerging methodology for bridging gaps between research knowledge production and community-based practices; however, there are few guidelines for such partnerships or established strategies for their effective development (Ahmed, Beck, Maurana, & Newton, 2004; Currie et al., 2005; Jason, Pokorny, Ji, & Kunz, 2005; O'Fallon & Dearry, 2002; Viswanathan et al., 2004).