Community-Engaged Scholarship: A Comprehensive Definition and Exploration

Community-engaged scholarship, also referred to as the scholarship of engagement, represents a multifaceted approach to academic work. It encompasses research, creative activities, teaching, and service, all undertaken by faculty members in close collaboration with community members and often students. These activities embody the principles of both community engagement and traditional scholarship.

Defining Community-Engaged Scholarship

At its core, community-engaged scholarship is defined by several key characteristics:

Reciprocal Partnerships: It emphasizes the importance of mutually beneficial relationships between academic institutions and community partners.
Public Purposes: It is directed towards addressing issues of public concern and contributing to the common good.
Scholarly Rigor: It adheres to rigorous scholarly standards, including demonstrating current knowledge of the field, inviting peer collaboration and review, remaining open to critique, and being presented in a form that allows others to build upon it.
Inquiry-Based: It involves systematic inquiry and investigation.

It is crucial to distinguish between scholarship and research. Scholarship, in the context of community engagement, is a broader concept that encompasses various forms of intellectual contribution, while research is a specific type of scholarly activity focused on systematic investigation. Not all community-engaged activities qualify as scholarship; they must meet the rigorous standards expected of academic contributions.

The Integrated Roles of Faculty

A distinguishing feature of community-engaged scholarship is the integration of faculty roles. Faculty members engaged in this type of work often contribute to multiple institutional goals simultaneously. They may use their research to inform their teaching, draw upon their service and teaching experiences to generate research ideas, and connect student learning with community issues through their teaching. For instance, faculty can bring their research into the classroom, involve students in cutting-edge research projects, integrate their research interests with community issues, and learn from community members in their teaching. This integrated approach benefits all faculty, not just those directly involved in community engagement, by demonstrating how different activities and roles can overlap and mutually reinforce each other.

Key Components of Community-Engaged Scholarship

Community-engaged scholarship manifests in various forms, including research and creative activities, teaching, and service.

Read also: About Grossmont Community College

Community-Engaged Research and Creative Activity

Community-engaged research and creative activity involve the collaborative generation, refinement, conservation, and exchange of knowledge that is reciprocally beneficial and relevant to society. This knowledge is generated in partnership with community members, communicated effectively, and validated by peers in both academic and community settings. This type of activity produces outcomes informed by multidisciplinary knowledge, including publications, exhibitions, and programs that simultaneously meet the goals of the academic institution and address critical societal concerns. It employs systematic inquiry, yields publicly observable results, allows for critique, and is made available for others to use and develop. Methodological rigor is maintained through the use of methods appropriate to the goals, questions, and context of the work. Community partners actively participate in setting research questions, determining methodology, creating research projects, and engaging in other activities that bridge academic and community contexts.

Community-Engaged Teaching

Community-engaged teaching is characterized by activities that honor the principles of community engagement, such as reciprocal partnerships and public purpose. It provides opportunities for students, both enrolled and not enrolled at UNCG, to collaborate with faculty and community members for the integrated purposes of learning and service. Community-engaged teaching can be implemented through practices like service-learning experiences, on-site courses, clinical experiences, professional internships, community-based research or creative activities, collaborative programs, study-abroad courses and experiences, international instruction, and distance education courses when these practices involve reciprocal partnerships with community members, groups, or organizations. It can also be enacted in collaboration with community partners for instruction to non-UNCG students. These teaching activities enhance the education of students and build the capacity of community members to address issues of societal concern. High-quality community-engaged teaching involves community partners who inform students’ public-serving projects, helping students connect their academic learning objectives with issues of societal concern, fostering intellectual inquiry to prepare students for meaningful lives and engaged citizenship, ensuring the service addresses issues of societal concern, and building the capacity of students and community members to affect positive change.

Community-Engaged Service

Community-engaged service encompasses activities that honor the principles of community engagement, such as reciprocal partnerships and public purpose, and enable the university to carry out its mission, contribute to the function and effectiveness of the faculty member’s profession and discipline, and reach out to external communities and constituencies. Faculty members use their academic knowledge, skills, methods, and paradigms to address practical affairs and problem-solving in collaboration with community members, building their own capacity as well as the capacity of the academy and community members to understand and address issues of public concern. Community-engaged service can take various forms, including collaborating with schools, organizations, businesses, advocacy groups, community groups, and civic and public agencies to develop policies, programs, grants, curricula, or understanding; developing and participating in partnerships between academic programs and external agencies for internships and service-learning courses; or providing leadership in or making significant contributions to economic and community development activities. It is essential to distinguish between activities that occur in the community or provide service to communities through a one-way approach and those that follow a collaborative approach with community members to build capacity for positive societal change. While community service describes activities provided to, intended for, or done in communities, community-engaged service describes activities undertaken with community members in a context of reciprocal partnership. The key distinction lies in the processes and purposes emphasized.

Dartmouth Health Community Engaged Scholarship (CES) Hub

The Dartmouth Health Community Engaged Scholarship (CES) Hub is a resource designed to foster effective and consistent community engagement practices within Dartmouth Health and Dartmouth College. It addresses the increasing demand for community engagement and aims to standardize, enhance, and support these efforts across the institution. The goal is to nurture academic-community partnerships that promote health, health equity, and well-being in rural communities. The resources offered include training, examples, and tools to reinforce community engagement activities, supporting consistent high-quality engagement processes, common language, and ethical practices. The CES Hub continuously evolves as knowledge, skills, and practices advance, learning from communities and encouraging the sharing of successful practices.

Community Engagement at Dartmouth

Dartmouth’s commitment to community engagement is reflected in its community-engaged scholarship. Many faculty members engage in community-based participatory research, collaborating with local and global partners to address pressing issues such as public health, environmental sustainability, and social justice. This research not only advances academic knowledge but also directly benefits the communities involved by providing data-driven insights and evidence-based solutions. Community engagement considers the diversity of communities-including culture and race-and aims to create an inclusive and accessible environment. Effective community engagement involves collaborative partnerships where community members actively participate in decision-making and problem-solving. It is characterized by inclusivity and diversity, ensuring representation from various segments of the community. Additionally, community engagement focuses on capacity building, empowering communities through education and resources, and sustainability, developing long-term solutions maintained by the community.

Ethical Considerations

Health-related community-engaged scholarship involves applying academic expertise to address real-world issues in collaboration with community members. It is a meaningful collaboration benefitting communities, healthcare systems, and academic partners. Involving the community in research design and implementation can increase the relevance of the research, improve how the study is designed and implemented, and increase uptake of research findings. Increasingly, funders expect researchers to incorporate community engagement methods as integral parts of health services research.

Addressing Challenges and Promoting Institutional Support

Pursuing community-engaged scholarship can be difficult without institutional support. Because this work is typically time intensive, it can result in fewer academic publications in its early stages, including fewer papers in top-ranked journals that tend to favor research conducted using methods viewed as more traditional. Given the importance of legacy metrics tied to academic publication in the tenure and promotion process, this can disincentivize faculty from participating in community-engaged scholarship. To normalize community-engaged scholarship within academia, those who conduct it should include sufficient methodological detail in their reports and publications to highlight both its intensive nature and its benefits to the research process. This also enables other scholars to learn how to conduct such scholarship without having to reinvent the wheel. Some institutional actors are starting to do more to promote engaged scholarship. Some universities have begun to offer guidance on how to achieve tenure while doing community-engaged research or have changed tenure and promotion policies to be more supportive of such scholarship.

Examples of Community-Engaged Scholarship in Practice

Community engagement can start during the earliest stages of a research project, with scholars seeking community guidance on what research questions should be asked and how to ask them. Researchers may engage community partners to advise on study design and help with the recruitment of participants. Sometimes researchers employ community members to help with data collection, providing a peer perspective and support to other community members.

The Importance of Research Translation

Another critical component of community-engaged scholarship is research translation. Too often, scholars treat publication of their research in an academic journal as an end point and put little effort into ensuring their work has a meaningful impact outside academia. Research translation strategies may include using social media to share and promote findings, hosting events and presenting research to audiences outside academia, writing op-eds or participating in interviews with news media, and pursuing academic service work such as consulting or serving on a board.

Key Terms and Definitions

Understanding the terminology associated with community-engaged scholarship is essential for effective communication and collaboration.

The Geisel Model of Community Service Learning

The Geisel model of community service learning is based on ethical principles and processes to continuously engage community voice throughout the project.

Health Equity

Health equity means everyone has the opportunity to be as healthy as possible. Improving health equity requires an understanding of the root causes of disparities including poverty, discrimination, education, structural racism, political determinants, and more. Without changing the conditions that lead to health inequities, we cannot make sustainable improvements. Tackling these conditions will take collective action, bringing together partners who do not often work together and challenging the way we do work.

Scholarship Reconsidered

In 1990 Ernest Boyer began a national dialogue on scholarship in higher education in the following publication: Scholarship Reconsidered. He proposed 4 types scholarship, including discovery, integration, application, and teaching.

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