Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships: A Handbook

When done properly, community engagement in academia can have value for all stakeholders. Authentic experiences are more useful for students; faculty can add new knowledge to the field and their own toolbelts; and communities feel their investment has generated a useful deliverable or even a long-term partnership. Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships provides a wealth of valuable resources and activities to help impart ideas of identity, privilege, oppression, bias, and power dynamics to best support students and community in these relationships. Believing that authenticity only comes about in an atmosphere of mutual respect and self-awareness, the authors argue for cultural and intellectual humility. Each chapter looks at topics and issues through different lenses, complete with underlying theories, and relates those discussions to concrete classroom activities, facilitation strategies, and scholarly frames. In addition, the authors include contributions from a diverse group of practitioners at community colleges, private colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, and minority-serving institutions. Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships is a much-needed, comprehensive resource for community-engaged professionals as they prepare students for building relationships when entering a community for learning or research purposes.

About the Author :
Elizabeth A. Tryon, M. Ed. is an Emeritus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, serving as Assistant Director for Community-engaged Scholarship at the Morgridge Center for Public Service. She is the coauthor of The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning (Temple). Haley Madden, Ph.D., is the Assistant Director of Community-Engaged Scholarship at the Morgridge Center for Public Service at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Outside of her role at UW, she trains horses and teaches riding lessons. Cory Sprinkel was the first Community Engagement Preparation Specialist for the Morgridge Center for Public Service, creating workshop curriculum for training students in cultural awareness and humility prior to working in the community. He now oversees that work as well as professional development and support for community-engaged scholars including faculty, undergraduate and graduate students.

Review :
“Replete with diverse real-world examples, useful samples of classroom activities, and noholds-barred reflections from experienced rofessionals, this comprehensive handbook is the perfect resource for navigating the realities, messiness, and complexities of preparing students to conduct equitable, respectful, and sustainable community partnership activities.”-Andrew Furco, Professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota, and coeditor of Re-Envisioning the Public Research University: Navigating Competing Demands in an Era of Rapid Change “Student involvement in community-partnered work is so pervasive in higher education that it is natural there would be a comprehensive resource for student preparation. Yet none as thorough as this handbook existed. Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships provides facilitators a strong theoretical and practical orientation to student preparation, key activities and prompts, and thoughtful commentary on the processes and conditions around student preparation, including institutional infrastructure. Importantly, the handbook treats topics of cultural humility, equity, and dissonance with nuance and a pragmatic approach. This handbook is an essential resource for community engagement professionals working with students in higher education.”-Lina Dee Dostilio, Vice Chancellor for Engagement and Community Affairs and Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh, and editor of The Community Professional in Higher Education: A Competency Model for an Emerging Field