Animated by the calls from Boyer (Reference Boyer1990) and Lynton and Elman (Reference Lynton and Elman1987) to embrace its public mission, higher education continues a path to enhance its relevance to its students and broader community. Initially, much of this movement focused on curricular innovations, such as service learning, community-based learning, and other high-impact practices that blend classroom and community elements into coursework (Curly & Stanton, Reference Curly and Stanton2012; Welch & Saltmarsh, Reference Welch and Saltmarsh2013). Today, engagement with the community in knowledge generation is increasingly seen as critical to addressing real-world questions and problems while also providing high-impact learning opportunities for students (Ramaley, Reference Ramaley2014). In support of this, academics are calling for and supporting the development of the science of community-engaged research (CEnR), as well as the supports necessary to conduct it. For instance, the Research University Civic Engagement Network was developed by scholars from research universities to explore the opportunities and challenges of civic engagement through research universities (Curly & Stanton, Reference Curly and Stanton2012). Similarly, medical academics wrote the Folsom Report that asserts engagement through research is an essential approach to improving community health (Folsom Group, 2012).
Funders are also calling for and providing financial support for the involvement of community members in the research process. For instance, the national Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute was established to fund research that has the potential to improve health. They assert that engaging people who live with a chronic condition and their service providers has the potential to increase recruitment and participation in clinical trials, increase community capacity, and improve health outcomes (Patient-Centered Outcome Research Institute, 2017). Similarly, many of the institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) encourage community engagement in research (Ahmed & Palermo, Reference Ahmed and Palermo2010). A large infrastructure grant mechanism funded by NIH, the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), was launched in 2006 and has since funded approximately 60 academic medical institutions across the country. It requires that the academic medical centers collaborate with community members on medical issues and research questions of highest priority to the community and to generate measurable community benefit (CTSA Community Engagement Key Function Committee, 2011; National Institutes of Health, 2010).
CEnR is an umbrella term that refers to the broad range of approaches and methodologies that involves a process of knowledge creation through collaborative partnership between academic-based researchers, students, and community members that address a knowledge gap in the literature as well as a community-identified need (Holland, Reference Holland2001). “Community” refers to any group of people who share a common characteristic, whether they live in a common geographic region, experience a similar health condition, belong to a racial, cultural, or ethnic group, commit themselves to a common cause, work in the same profession, or self-identify as part of a community. Benefits of CEnR include the development of research questions relevant to scholarly and public issues, increased recruitment of subjects and response rates, increased capacity building for the community, and long-term sustainability of research efforts (Ahmed & Palermo, Reference Ahmed and Palermo2010; Jagosh et al., Reference Jagosh, Macaulay and Pluye2012; Spector, Reference Spector2012).
This chapter uses Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) to illustrate how a large, decentralized institution can develop a strong climate for CEnR. VCU was part of the first cohort recognized by the Carnegie Foundation as “community-engaged” in 2008, and has since established policies and practices intended to create a supportive climate for community-engaged faculty and students. Founded in the professional degree schools of nursing and social work, VCU advances a public mission of teaching and research based in mutually beneficial partnerships and conducted in a manner that positively impacts its students, employees, and community. The powerful combination of a strong research university that is also community engaged led to an effort to create a strong organizational climate for CEnR.
Based on the literatures of organizational climate, innovation adoption, and infrastructure for community engagement within institutions of higher education (IHEs), we offer an initial presentation of the CEnR Climate Framework. The framework includes the components necessary for building a strong climate for CEnR through an infrastructure that (a) ensures faculty have the requisite competencies to conduct CEnR, (b) provides incentives for the conduct of CEnR, and (c) addresses barriers to CEnR through policy and procedures (Kramer, Reference Kramer2000; see Figure 21.1). We describe each component of the CEnR Climate Framework and offer practical examples of how each component can be designed. The chapter then concludes with guidance on evaluating the effectiveness of the efforts to enhance the climate for CEnR, as well as the overall climate of CEnR.
Figure 21.1 CEnR Climate Framework
Building a Strong Organizational Climate for CEnR
As IHEs seek to support and encourage engagement of community members in knowledge creation, they must develop and alter their organizational structures, policies, and practices for the purpose of supporting and rewarding CEnR. The concept of organizational climate comes from the field of organization theory. In general, organization scholars define climate as the collective perception of the kinds of events, practices, procedures, and behaviors that are rewarded, supported, and expected within the organization (Klein & Sorra, Reference Klein and Sorra1996; Schneider, Ehrhart, & Macey, Reference Schneider, Ehrhart and Macey2013). Organizational climate can reflect the general environment of an organization or, as we use the term in this chapter, be more focus-specific (Schneider et al., Reference Schneider, Ehrhart and Macey2013; Zohar & Luria, Reference Zohar and Luria2005), such as a climate for diversity and inclusion, or, more relevant to CEnR, a climate for innovation.
In this chapter, we consider CEnR an innovation in higher education. Organizational innovations refer to new products, processes, or systems introduced into the organization (Suranyi-Unger, Reference Suranyi-Unger and Greenwald1994). Although the concept of CEnR is not new, its institutional use as a university-wide, supported approach to research is new to many universities. Moreover, academic researchers are oftentimes not trained in CEnR as an approach to research. Thus, it is an innovative approach to research at both the institution and individual researcher levels. The more comprehensively and consistently an organization’s policies and practices are perceived to encourage, cultivate, and reward the use of an innovation such as CEnR, the stronger the climate for implementation of that innovation (Klein & Sorra, Reference Klein and Sorra1996). A climate for CEnR, therefore, refers to the extent to which CEnR is rewarded, supported, and expected. The framework we present here describes the necessary components for building a strong climate for CEnR.
Organization Structure
The first component of the CEnR Climate Framework is organization structure. The organization literature suggests that a primary predictor of an organization’s climate for implementation of an innovation such as CEnR is organizational support (Klein & Sorra, Reference Klein and Sorra1996; Nutt, Reference Nutt1986). Support for specific innovations can be communicated from leadership across the institution, in large, decentralized organizations such as universities, individual departments and units often retain unique goals and values (Orton & Weick, Reference Orton and Weick1990). Therefore, in order to build a climate across these distinct units, universities must develop and coordinate a structure to align constituents’ values, goals, and implementation efforts (Klein & Sorra, Reference Klein and Sorra1996; Nutt, Reference Nutt1986; Orton & Weick, Reference Orton and Weick1990). Thus, for complex organizations such as IHEs, the presence of positions and/or units within the organization’s hierarchy can be a strong signal of organizational support and capacity to implement the activities and efforts reflected in the remainder of the framework.
There has been limited examination of variation community engagement-related organizational structures, and even less regarding the organizational structures related to CEnR. Evidence suggests that organizational structures supporting community engagement differ across institution types. In a comparative case study of three land-grant and three urban research universities, Weerts and Sandmann (Reference Weerts and Sandmann2008) found differences in the organizational structures of the two types of institutions. While the land-grant universities had a separate office dedicated to engagement functions (referred to here as offices of engagement), the urban research universities integrated engagement into their teaching and research such that the responsibility for engagement was more diffuse and not led by one unit.
Welch and Saltmarsh (Reference Welch and Saltmarsh2013) conducted a review of the infrastructure of over 100 community engagement offices across institutions that received the Carnegie community engagement designation in 2010. They found the majority of offices are housed in academic affairs, led by a full-time administrator (often holding a terminal degree) and supported by budgeted institutional funds. The offices were found to be staffed by people who provide both administrative support and programming. Services tended to center on those that align with the CEnR Climate Framework presented here, albeit with a focus on community engagement broadly rather than CEnR specifically, which is consistent with the organizational location of these offices in academic affairs. For instance, they build competence through providing professional development opportunities, defining and designating courses that involve engagement, and serving as a clearinghouse for information and cross-campus collaboration. They create incentives through engaging in public relations, offering course development grants, and participating in fundraising for engagement-related efforts. They remove barriers by developing relevant policy and guidance, and they evaluate the effectiveness of these efforts through tracking and assessing engagement efforts.
The Division of Community Engagement is VCU’s office of engagement, and in 2011 it established the Office of CEnR with the hiring of VCU’s inaugural director of community-engaged research. This office was created by the provost with the explicit direction that the Division partner with VCU’s Office of Research and the Center for Clinical and Translational Research, a unit at VCU funded by the NIH’s Clinical and Translational Science. The major goals of collaboration across these units were to build competency in, remove barriers to, and broadly promote the science of CEnR, while also stimulating collaboration across the university and community. Much of the early efforts to build the climate for CEnR was done in partnership between these two units.
Campus-wide committees are another form of organizational structure that advances the climate of CEnR (Lazarus, Erasmus, Hendricks, Nduna, & Slamat, Reference Lazarus, Erasmus, Hendricks, Nduna and Slamat2008; Zuiches, Reference Zuiches2008). For instance, the University of Colorado Denver has the Partnership of Academicians and Communities for Translation. This governing council incentivizes CEnR through pilot grants and the dissemination of findings from CEnR, builds competencies through training programs, and identifies and removes barriers (Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, 2017). In 2012, VCU established such a campus-wide committee: the CEnR Federation. Cochaired by VCU’s director of community-engaged research and the codirector of the Center for Clinical Translational Research Community Engagement Core, the Federation was composed of senior researchers and administrators from units with high levels of CEnR, including the schools of Medicine, Nursing, Education, Social Work, and Arts as well as the Office of the Provost (Holton, Early, Resler, Trussell, & Howard, Reference Holton, Early, Resler, Trussell and Howard2016). This group aimed to design and advocate for infrastructure to advance high-quality, high-impact CEnR. However, VCU discovered that campus-wide bodies focused on CEnR can be complicated – while community-engaged researchers were dealing with similar issues across the university, it was difficult to create synergies across diverse research fields. Furthermore, Federation members generally did not have the authority to make decisions related to unit- or university-wide CEnR infrastructure design, such as budgeting and hiring. Therefore, the Federation members did not find the committee instrumental in advancing the agenda of designing and advancing CEnR infrastructure. Harkavey and Hartley (Reference Harkavey and Hartley2012) describe similar challenges with an advisory board for the Netter Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
In response to these challenges, VCU’s Federation transitioned to operating as a committee of an existing campus-wide council dedicated to advancing community engagement across the university: the Council for Community Engagement. The Council is composed of appointed representatives from all VCU units. Through its committees, the Council “(1) builds and maintains a network of liaisons across units, (2) receives and disseminates information and resources that promotes and supports community engagement, (3) gathers information from the community on critical needs and opportunities, (4) recognizes accomplishments of university–community partnerships, and (5) assists in the coordination of events designed to engage with community partners to address community-identified needs” (Holton et al., Reference Holton, Early, Resler, Trussell and Howard2016). Shifting the Federation to a committee of the Council leveraged the Council’s existing network and infrastructure. Its focus no longer centers on designing infrastructure, but rather on embedding CEnR values and resources throughout the council members’ home units. Responsibility for infrastructure development was left distributed across multiple university entities and offices.
Additional units within a university structure may be called upon to support CEnR. For example, the Institutional Review Board (IRB) is critical to the advancement of CEnR. To ensure the protection of research participants and the integrity of the research process, there may need to be additional or specialized ethics education and review. The staff must have the knowledge and flexibility to be responsive to the ethical challenges related to partnering with community members (Anderson, Reference Anderson2013; Anderson et al., Reference Anderson, Solomon and Heitman2012). For instance, community partners may play multiple roles in a research project, but may have little to no prior research experience. The existing tools for ethics training such as the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) are too complex for use in some contexts, can be difficult and burdensome to translate, and are not written at an appropriate educational level for some community-based researchers (Anderson et al., Reference Anderson, Solomon and Heitman2012; Merritt et al., Reference Merritt, Labrique and Katz2010; Shore et al., Reference Shore, Brazauskas and Drew2011). Similarly, academic investigators may also need ethics training to appreciate the complexities associated with CEnR (Anderson, Reference Anderson2013; Anderson et al., Reference Anderson, Solomon and Heitman2012). The IRB has proved to be a critical organizational partner at VCU.
Building Competency
A strong CEnR climate fosters the institutional integration of CEnR by ensuring that the university’s researchers and future scholars are skilled in its use (Kramer, Reference Kramer2000). Thus, the next component of the CEnR model is building competency. At the outset, CEnR’s collaborative approach to research is typically new to academics and community members alike, which demands careful preparation and training for faculty on how to build trust with community members, and to develop and sustain partnerships. Yet, traditional doctoral or master’s-level curricula, by which university faculty are educated, do not typically include training and instruction on community engagement in research (Ahmed & Palermo, Reference Ahmed and Palermo2010). In response universities are investing in programs to build the competencies of traditionally trained researchers who want to pursue CEnR.
The core competencies for CEnR are the critical skills and knowledge for doing community-engaged scholarship. At its most basic level, CEnR is about the partnerships between researchers and the community members who impact, or are impacted by, the problems under study. Partnerships can be developed and sustained by both the actions aimed at building the partnership (what we do) and the approach to the partnership’s work (how we do it) (Mayan & Daum, Reference Mayan and Daum2016). Community-engaged partnerships must be built and sustained around principles of mutual respect, shared power, agreed-upon roles, and clear processes for communication and decision-making (Horowitz et al., Reference Horowitz, Robinson and Seifer2009). In adopting this approach, the partnership operates with the researcher in the role of an “outside expert” and the community member occupying the role of the “inside expert” who understands the needs and experiences related to the problem under investigation.
With partnership as its foundation, VCU identified four core competencies for CEnR: building knowledge and understanding of CEnR principles and approaches (the ability to understand the principles of CEnR such as theoretical frameworks, methods of planning, implementation, and evaluation, and clearly communicating this research approach to others); honing strong interpersonal communication skills (the ability to work effectively with diverse communities, negotiate across community–academic groups and contexts, and demonstrate skills in conflict resolution and the ability to cope with conflict); expanding research expertise to include community-engaged approaches (the ability to write successful grant proposals expressing principles and approaches to community-engaged scholarship, learning to democratize knowledge by validating multiple sources of knowledge, and promoting the use of multiple methods of discovery); and learning to disseminate research in multiple forms (the ability to publish peer-reviewed journal articles grounded in the processes and outcomes of community-engaged scholarship and collaborating with community members to generate significant, useful products of community-engaged scholarship that influence practice in the community). These CEnR competencies can be developed through opportunities for individuals to participate in learning networks and mentorship programs, to build knowledge and skills, and to have access to readily available guidance offered directly from the organization (Blanchard et al., Reference Blanchard, Hanssmann and Strauss2009; Furco, Reference Furco2016; Jameson, Clayton, Jaeger, & Brindle, Reference Jameson, Clayton, Jaeger and Bringle2012). Below, we showcase skill-building opportunities initiated at VCU to advance CEnR competency for faculty and students. Among these examples are in-person trainings, faculty cohort experiences, readily available guidance documents, and a graduate-level, open-access course on designing and implementing CEnR.
A Common Language.
A key starting point for building competency is creating collective knowledge and understanding of what constitutes CEnR through the development of a common language. A common language carries and conveys meaning in ways that allow people to communicate and share ideas, an essential basis for shaping institutional understanding and commitment (Daft & Wiginton, Reference Daft and Wiginton1979). In order to develop a common language for community engagement broadly and CEnR specifically, various institutions and organizations have established institutional terms and definitions (e.g., Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 2001; Lynton, Reference Lynton1995).
To develop its common community engagement language, VCU engaged in a yearlong process to define CEnR, among other terms related to community engagement, which resulted in a set of terms and definitions that were introduced into the university’s culture. The terms and their definitions were identified through a literature review process and then refined by working groups. VCU defines CEnR as “a collaborative process between the researcher and the community partner that creates and disseminates knowledge and creative expression with the goal of contributing to [an academic or scientific] discipline and strengthening the well-being of the community” (Pelco & Howard, Reference Pelco and Howard2016).
Mentorship and Learning Networks.
Establishment of strong mentorship structures for faculty is important. However, given the more recent emergence of this research approach, there are limited numbers of tenured faculty to provide CEnR mentorship to junior faculty (Marrero et al., Reference Marrero, Hardwick and Staten2013). One approach universities employ is the creation of mentorship programs that draw from the knowledge and skills of experienced community-engaged researchers as well as experienced community partners. For example, bidirectional mentoring programs are structured so that faculty and community partners provide mentorship to each other (Carrasquillo et al., Reference Carrasquillo, Fleming and Ford2007). While academics may provide community members with technical or grant-writing assistance, for example, community partners provide important feedback to academics on local needs, as well as the dynamics of particular communities that are important to formulating research agendas and interventions.
In 2013, VCU launched a CEnR Interest Group and listserv to build multiple CEnR core competencies for faculty who needed more flexibility (timing, schedules) than a formal training session. In addition to developing broader knowledge and understanding of CEnR, the Interest Group and listserv helped hone research expertise and create pathways to stronger interpersonal communication strategies through sharing best practices and eliciting suggestions to manage partnership challenges or further develop high-quality CEnR. The listserv functioned as a communication tool for the CEnR Interest Group and attracted over 200 members from across the community and university. In its first two years, the Interest Group met around key issues of interest before deciding to communicate and share information mainly through the listserv. The Office of CEnR was responsible for managing the listserv, and while everyone was welcome to post to it, the information shared was posted mainly by the Office.
Build Knowledge and Skills.
In order to build a CEnR foundation, faculty and potential community partners need to understand the core principles of community partnership, as well as demonstrate the skills required. In the context of building knowledge between faculty and community partners, it is important to recognize the role of adult learning theory, known as andragogy. The premise of this theory is that adult learners differ from children because they bring their lived experiences to the process of learning (Knowles, Reference Knowles1984). Research in community engagement suggests that andragogy must inform initiatives to build knowledge and skills in CEnR because adults are motivated to learn when they can find relevance and value in the information to their lives or jobs (Pelco & Early, Reference Pelco and Early2016). Consistent with the assumptions underlying this theory of adult learning, professional development intended to promote core competencies in CEnR must therefore tap the experiences of participants, provide opportunities to learn from each other, and develop new ideas through their own filters of concern and need.
Recognition and demonstration of CEnR methodologies can illuminate approaches for engaging community partners and producing published research findings. One representative example, community-based participatory research (CBPR), assumes a trusting relationship between academic and community partners, who seek shared ownership and decision-making in the research, design the process to encourage co-learning, ensure mutual benefit, and agree to long-term commitment to the research partnership (Israel et al., Reference Israel, Schulz, Parker, Becker, Allen, Guzman, Minkler and Wallerstein2003). Similar to other community-engaged approaches to research, CBPR also recognizes the importance of disseminating research in multiple forms – peer-reviewed outlets that meet academic expectations, as well as accessible formats that support translation into practice (Hicks et al., Reference Hicks, Duran and Wallerstein2012).
VCU’s annual Community Engagement Institute is organized to provide faculty members, community partners, and graduate students with the opportunity to deepen their understanding of community–university engagement. In 2016, the Institute restructured to focus on the previously-described core competencies. This new format combined what were previously offered as separate service-learning and CEnR mini-institutes, affording participants the opportunity to dive deep into the crucial skills needed for successful community–university partnerships. Through highly participatory hands-on workshops, participants were exposed to foundations, ethics, and tools for collaborative work together.
In an effort to learn from experiences of faculty cohorts, the Office of CEnR led the development and facilitation of two faculty learning communities. The Faculty Learning Community on Excellence in CEnR (2012–2013) involved eight faculty members who were active, community-engaged researchers. The members of this community participated in an innovative inquiry process to study the process and practice of doing CEnR. The cornerstone of this program was the development of case studies of exemplary CEnR projects at VCU (George, Reference Gehlert, Fayanju and Jackson2014) that could be used to inform future faculty research. The next faculty learning community was also grounded in CEnR, but focused on the dissemination of research findings using web-based platforms (2015–2016). This community involved 11 members who explored various web-based dissemination methods, then created and implemented their dissemination plans. A guide was developed to reflect on the lessons learned and resources that were accessed to inform their learning and plans. The final product can be found online (http://guides.library.vcu.edu/dissemination).
Additionally, Collaborative Curiosity was an eight-week, open-access, fully online doctoral course. It afforded interested community members and registered, academic credit-seeking university participants an introduction to the purpose, design, and practice of CEnR. Participants engaged with readings and videos about CEnR; participated in synchronous, Twitter-based discussions; prepared and sought feedback on a CEnR grant proposal presented in a series of blog posts; reflected on differences between CEnR and other approaches to research; and created digital “makes” around important questions in CEnR (for more information on the course, see Holton, Gogia, & McKenzie, Reference Holton, Gogia and McKenzie2018). As a result of this course, 59 YouTube video shorts were created, organizing the course’s hour-long video hangouts into quickly digestible and shareable clips that answer questions about CEnR.
Finally, as noted earlier, IRB is a key partner in this work at VCU. The VCU’s directors of the IRB and the Office of CEnR developed training for all IRB reviewers regarding the effective review of all CEnR research protocols. Other resources were codeveloped with the IRB, including a module on ethics in CEnR for a doctoral-level course offered by the university and a series of faculty workshops. Finally, the IRB added two CEnR elective modules to the standard university-wide, online training requirements for research involving human participants.
Readily Available Guidance.
A series of guidance documents were prepared and made publically available by VCU Libraries. Among these guidance documents are frequently asked questions related to CEnR and the IRB, compensation of community partners in research, and core competencies for undergraduate community-engaged researchers. Additionally, videos were created that address topics such as the definition of CEnR, benefits to community and academic partnerships, recommendations for successful partnerships, and the roles of trust, respect, conflict, and honesty in CEnR.
Creating Incentives
The third component of the CEnR Climate Framework is creating incentives. Incentives beyond standard compensation may encourage or induce organizational members to engage in activities like CEnR (Orton & Weick, Reference Orton and Weick1990). These incentives may include recognition and awards, funding specifically to support CEnR, and modified institutional policies (Chung et al., Reference Chung, Norris and Mangione2015; Nyden, Reference Nyden2003).
Recognition.
Because CEnR often leads to new discoveries regarding critical public issues, increasing the visibility of CEnR outcomes can gain the attention and support of others (Nyden, Reference Nyden2003). This can include stories that are published across university and community websites, social media, newsletters, and other forms of communication. Recognition can also be in the form of awards for CEnR. VCU’s annual “Currents of Change Award” is given annually for outstanding partnerships in CEnR, among others. This award is both a recognition of these efforts, as well as a signal that engaged work is considered important. These internal awards can also be a form of identifying good faculty candidates for national awards.
Funding.
Financial support signals the institution’s commitment and provides critical resources that encourage and enable the conduct of CEnR (Chadwick & Pawlowski, Reference Chadwick and Pawlowski2007; Chung et al., Reference Chung, Norris and Mangione2015). Here, we discuss the role of intramural funding and financial support from donors and foundations. One form of intramural funding – pilot and seed grant programs – is associated with enhanced service delivery, high-quality learning experiences, and published community-engaged scholarship (Leisey, Holton, & Davey, Reference Leisey, Holton and Davey2012; Zuiches, Reference Zuiches2013). Zuiches (Reference Zuiches2013) found that such grants were effective incentives for faculty to partner with community members and increased the likelihood of faculty being successful in obtaining additional grant funding. To maximize their potential for encouraging and enabling the conduct of high-quality CEnR, funding should be aimed at creating parity in the partnership (Lindau et al., Reference Lindau, Makelarski and Chin2011). This can be further supported through academic grant writing training that is offered to both academic and community members that builds the capacity of the partnership (Lewis et al., Reference Lewis, Yerby and Tucker2016).
In order to support the conduct of CEnR at VCU, the Council for Community Engagement and the Center for Clinical and Translational Research jointly funded two intramural grant mechanisms. The VCU CEnR Pipeline to Proposal Program supports high-quality, high-impact CEnR from community partnership development to pilot project implementation. Funded projects serve as catalysts for ongoing CEnR sustained by external funding. CEnR Partnership Development Grants, awarding up to $10,000, are intended to support new or potential academic–community research partnerships. Funds from this grant are to be used for building and supporting research partnerships through relationship-building activities, exploring shared research interests, and developing infrastructure and governance for the research partnership.
Successful efforts can then seek funding from the CCE Community Engagement Grants and the Center for Clinical and Translational Research’s (CCTR) Endowment Fund. CCE Community Engagement Grants, awarding up to $20,000, aim to advance community-engaged scholarship in any academic or academic support unit and can support a broad array of community-engaged scholarship. Proposals are encouraged from across VCU in partnership with community-based organizations to address community-identified needs. Community-engaged pilot project proposals are welcomed by the CCTR’s Endowment Fund, which provides individual research awards of up to $50,000 and multi-school research awards of up to $130,000 for health sciences research. CEnR proposals that meet the CCTR’s Endowment Fund criteria must demonstrate established community–academic partnerships. The funds support a scientifically rigorous research implementation/pilot project to be jointly conducted by academic–community partners.
Although early in its implementation, evidence suggests that the pipeline has the potential to achieve its goal of supporting CEnR from the early stages of partnership development to implementation of a pilot project. For instance, the Partnership for Autism and Aging Research Collaborative was funded during the inaugural year of the CEnR Partnership Development Grants and was funded the following year by the CCE Community Engagement Grants for a CEnR pilot project. At the time of writing this chapter, they are seeking ongoing extramural funding from a variety of sources. A recent evaluation of the CCE Community Engagement Grants demonstrates the impact this kind of funding can have. Over the past ten years (2007–2017), $1,100,600 have been awarded to fund 69 community-engaged projects, which have involved over 219 faculty and 1,350 students and generated 199 community-engaged scholarship products. Grantees have demonstrated success in leveraging $2,706,134 in external funds, which means that for every dollar of seed funding invested, the community engagement grants generated $3.00 from external funding sources to sustain their projects and to support their partnerships.
Another form of intramural funding at VCU explicitly supports undergraduate students interested in CEnR. As part of the larger effort by the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) to support VCU undergraduates to conduct research, the award is offered to undergraduate students and their faculty mentors whose research proposals show the greatest potential for learning and discovery. The fellowship is open to all VCU undergraduates from every academic discipline, and the funded projects represent a wide array of scholarly interests that exemplify the diversity of the academic community. To date, six CEnR awards have been awarded to students who engaged with community partners to explore questions related to community health, education, and the environment.
Addressing Barriers
The fourth component of the CEnR Climate Framework is addressing barriers through university policy and practice. Although the evidence of CEnR as an effective research methodology has raised interest among academicians, barriers at institutional and disciplinary levels have prevented CEnR from becoming a widely-promoted, accepted research model in some IHEs. Furthermore, the inclusion of community members in the research process can challenge existing policies and practices. Here, we discuss the three areas of change triggered by VCU’s experiences with involving community partners in knowledge development: memorandums of understanding (MOUs), compensation of community partners, and promotion and tenure.
Memorandums of Understanding
MOUs, sometimes used interchangeably with the term “memorandums of agreement,” help to clarify and document roles, expectations, and responsibilities within a partnership. They typically include the principles and procedures of the partnership, the project description, financial and resource responsibilities, obligations to the IRB, data-sharing agreements, authorship agreements, and issues related to risk (Chau et al., Reference Chau, Islam and Tandon2007; Clinical and Translational Science Awards Consortium, 2011; Gehlert et al., Reference Gehlert, Fayanju and Jackson2014). The process of developing an MOU may reveal issues that the university has not addressed before or may not be adequately covered by existing policy and practice. For instance, universities are only beginning to be equipped with platforms and procedures for data sharing in a way that benefits the community and enables CEnR (Lindau et al., Reference Lindau, Makelarski and Chin2011). Furthermore, these MOUs often challenge issues of language and authority. The language of “partnership” is common in collaborative research; however, it has a legal meaning that may have unintended implications. Additionally, as a legally binding document, the signature authority may be those who are not directly involved with the effort. In the university setting, this is likely to mean that the MOU must be reviewed by legal counsel and signed by the dean or another senior-level administrator (Gehlert et al., Reference Gehlert, Fayanju and Jackson2014; Jacobson, Butterill, & Goering, Reference Jacobson, Butterill and Goering2004).
Compensation of Community Partners
Because community members can serve as paid consultants, research collaborators, data collectors, students, and study participants, compensation and expense reimbursement may vary by their role and the research protocol (Lindau et al., Reference Lindau, Makelarski and Chin2011). There also may be issues that arise when trying to compensate community members. For example, in research on prisoner re-entry, the involvement of ex-felons may be crucial to the project team; however, funder, governmental or university policies may prohibit payment to these individuals. Consequently, the compensation of community members should be explicitly discussed and agreed upon in the beginning of the research endeavor and be reflected in formal documents such as MOUs (Chau et al., Reference Chau, Islam and Tandon2007; Clinical and Translational Science Awards Consortium, 2011; Lindau et al., Reference Lindau, Makelarski and Chin2011), data sharing and authorship agreements (Castleden, Morgan, & Neimanis, Reference Castleden, Morgan and Neimanis2010; Cochran, et al., Reference Cochran, Marshall and Garcia-Downing2008), position descriptions, and other formalized agreements (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2004). Furthermore, the university needs to have clear and transparent processes to make compensation possible without undue burden on community or academic research team members. However, the ability of researchers to consistently ensure reimbursement for community members engaging in research in roles other than traditional research participants has proven challenging. VCU has addressed this through the development of a guidance document on the compensation of community partners.
Promotion and Tenure
Perhaps the most significant barrier to CEnR is the degree to which this research approach is supported in promotion and tenure policies and by the faculty and academic leadership that controls campus-wide narratives about what should be valued – and therefore rewarded – at a particular institution. In Boyer’s (Reference Boyer1990) landmark report, Scholarship Reconsidered, higher education institutions were encouraged to reform policies to emphasize, acknowledge, and support involvement in scholarship that is most appropriate to their institutional missions. Following this advice, academic leaders and scholars have since found increased faculty involvement in diverse forms of scholarship, increased institutional effectiveness and greater faculty retention (Furco, Reference Furco2016; Weerts & Sandmann, Reference Weerts and Sandmann2008). However, university reward systems such as promotion and tenure policies do not always evolve at the same pace as the evolution of different forms of scholarship (O’Meara, Reference O’Meara, Rice and Edgerton2005; Saltmarsh et al., Reference Saltmarsh, Giles Jr., O’Meara, Moely, Billig and Holland2009). This section examines the challenges and opportunities to reform policies, procedures, and campus norms that better support promotion and tenure outcomes for faculty engaged in CEnR.
One of the ways this value is communicated is through faculty evaluation policies and processes. In many instances, community-engaged scholarship continues to be confused with service, and therefore not “counted” as scholarship in faculty evaluations. For example, community-engaged scholarship often requires a significant amount of time spent immersed within the community of interest, developing relationships, gathering knowledge, and gauging community-identified need. While critical to the development of quality CEnR and scholarship, these activities are often “counted” or understood as service activities. Sobrero and Jayaratne (Reference Sobrero and Jayaratne2014) make the case that this confusion may come from failure to adequately educate administrative leaders and department heads about all realms of scholarship. Given the limited understanding of the metrics and standards for community-engaged scholarship, department heads may be “highly critical of scholarship that does not look like their own” (Sobrero & Jayaratne, Reference Sobrero and Jayaratne2014, p. 143). While some call for reform by reserving the term “service” only for committee and disciplinary work, the larger reform must involve training, education, and an acceptance of academic culture inclusive of newer methods of research and teaching (Ramaley, Reference Ramaley2014).
Addressing this challenge may warrant revision of promotion and tenure policy, but the more effective strategy is to create a shift in the culture of promotion and tenure committees to broaden their assumptions about what constitutes high-quality research. Traditional values influence the senior faculty who make up promotion and tenure committees and are often unfamiliar with newer research methods (Ahmed et al., Reference Ahmed and Palermo2010; Marrero et al., Reference Marrero, Hardwick and Staten2013). The approach and research methods used in CEnR necessarily differ from what may be considered more traditional, conventional research. For example, many CEnR projects are unlikely to be anchored by randomized control treatments, and because they integrate community partners in the research, CEnR can take much longer to complete and publish (Marrero et al., Reference Marrero, Hardwick and Staten2013). There is evidence that institutions with policy reforms that include regard for CEnR methods have something in common: they are more likely to employ a broader set of criteria to assess scholarship (O’Meara, Reference O’Meara, Rice and Edgerton2005). For example, some suggest including explicit engagement principles as well as input by community stakeholders into promotion and tenure processes and decisions (Gelmon et al., Reference Gelmon, Seifer, Kauper-Brown and Mikkelsen2005; Marrero et al., Reference Marrero, Hardwick and Staten2013).
In higher education, the promotion and tenure policies effectively clarify the institution’s values, which are subsequently reinforced by strategic plans, reward systems, and resulting power structures. As described by O’Meara, Eatman, and Peterson (Reference O’Meara, Eatman and Petersen2015), nearly every change initiated within an institution – be it curriculum reform, recruitment, or retention – has implications for promotion and tenure. However, they find that many faculty struggle with promotion and tenure policies that do not support innovations in scholarship and institutional priorities (O’Meara et al., Reference O’Meara, Eatman and Petersen2015). As a result, while faculty may be informally recognized for their scholarship innovations affecting new institutional concerns related to community engagement, they are frequently not being validated or rewarded in meaningful ways.
In 2010, VCU initiated a revision of its university promotion and tenure policy to explicitly include CEnR as an acceptable approach to scholarship. As described in detail by Pelco and Howard (Reference Pelco and Howard2016), the process of policy reform was multifaceted, beginning with building university-wide consensus on community engagement definitions that were informed by peer institutions and national organizations. A revised policy was submitted in 2012, followed by online discussion forums and public comment periods. In 2013, VCU approved the revised promotion and tenure policy, which included the addition of community engagement language into each of the general criteria categories of scholarship, teaching, and service. In conjunction with the policy revision, VCU hired an external consultant to facilitate discussions among campus stakeholders and with deans to build competence around community-engaged scholarship and its relevance to specific disciplines and VCU’s mission.
Evaluating Effectiveness
Once an innovation has been implemented, the organization must evaluate its effectiveness in order to determine the benefits that may accrue as a result of its successful implementation (Klein & Sorra, Reference Klein and Sorra1996). Thus, the final component of the CEnR Climate Framework is evaluating effectiveness – in other words, examining the extent to which a strong climate for CEnR has been created. Organizational climate can be assessed as both a function of the organization’s structure as well as a function of organizational members’ perceptions (Ashforth, Reference Ashforth1985). The organization structure is seen as the bedrock that shapes the organization environment in such a way that shared perceptions of the climate will form within groups and across the organization (Ashforth, Reference Ashforth1985).
Evaluating Organization Structure for CEnR Support
An objective evaluation of organization structure to support CEnR quantitatively and qualitatively accounts for the mere existence of the structural units dedicated to support CEnR and reflects the degree to which the organization structure centralizes and formalizes practices related to building competence, creating incentives, and removing barriers to the conduct of CEnR (Ashforth, Reference Ashforth1985). We have outlined in this chapter how VCU has dedicated significant time and resources to its existing structural units, competence-building opportunities, incentive creation, and removal of barriers to the conduct of CEnR. As a rough quantitative measurement of the degree to which organizational structures supporting CEnR exists, VCU has implemented a series of questions within the IRB application process to identify CEnR and gauge the level of involvement of community partners (see Holton, Jettner, Early, & Shaw, Reference Holton, Jettner, Early and Shaw2015, for more information). These data are used in publicly available community engagement dashboards hosted on the university’s website. The assumption is that this will support the university’s growing focus on CEnR by allowing faculty and administrators to see the scope and trends in their work.
Qualitative evidence for adequate organizational structure to support CEnR can be found in VCU’s awards and recognitions. Carnegie has consistently recognized VCU as both a “high-research” and a “community-engaged” institution. The university and its faculty have received other national awards and recognitions for engagement, such as the C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award in 2016 and the Presidential Honor Roll for student service. While neither require CEnR in order to be awarded, applications reflected the role of CEnR at VCU.
Evaluating Perceptions of CEnR Climate
In the organization literature, perceptions of climate have been measured as employees’ collective (Schneider, Bowen, Ehrhart, & Holcombe, Reference Schneider, Bowen, Ehrhart, Holcombe, Ashkanasy, Wilderom and Peterson2000) and individual (James & Jones, Reference James and Jones1974) perceptions of their work environment. Quantitatively, organization researchers have utilized various climate scales and instruments to measure collective perceptions of an organization’s climate for innovation at the team and organization levels. For example, the Support for Innovation scale from the Team Climate Inventory (TCI) developed by Anderson and West (Reference Anderson and West1998) assesses concrete behaviors supportive of innovation within a team. Similarly, Ekvall (Reference Ekvall1996) developed an instrument for measuring perspectives of organizational structure and climate for creativity and innovation. These scales and instruments can be adapted to assess CEnR climate as a specific type of innovation. Qualitatively, collective perceptions of CEnR climate can be assessed through focus groups, interviews, and other means of understanding the extent to which university employees perceive CEnR as being rewarded, supported, and expected within the organization.
Although VCU has not yet embarked on a formal evaluation of collective perceptions of its CEnR climate, an initial examination of the individual perception of CEnR climate was initiated with two faculty members who have engaged in CEnR and have earned promotion and tenure with an engaged portfolio. Here, they share their reflections and their vision for the future. Faculty reflection regarding the implementation of a CEnR Climate Framework demonstrates how organizational structures and support to build competencies as community-engaged researchers were crucial to faculty success. The infrastructure needed to ensure that faculty have the requisite competency to conduct CEnR was described as an essential component of building the necessary knowledge to become a skilled community-engaged researcher.
Fortunately, within months of joining the faculty at VCU, I was invited to participate in a service-learning institute. This first point of engagement with community-engaged teaching opened the door to a greater understanding of community-engaged research in general. In fact, my first journal publication described a research project developed around my first service-learning course.
Efforts to build a climate that valued community-engaged research at VCU informed my progress and my professional identity as a community-engaged scholar, and helped to prepare me for tenure review. Organizational structure and support provided opportunities for me to immerse myself in methods of teaching, research and service that worked in concert to establish myself as a community-engaged faculty member.
Reflections also captured the process by which CEnR was used within the promotion and tenure process at VCU.
Because of the institutional support, I felt equipped to use community-engaged research as a framework for my promotion and tenure dossier. I had the support needed to effectively present my research and scholarship as critically linked to the overall mission of the university.
I was successful in receiving tenure at VCU and my experience has set me on a path to ensure that community-engaged researchers proceed with confidence toward their tenure review. As I reflect, while I was offered a series of opportunities to nurture my identity as a community-engaged researcher, my tenure review committees and upper administration did not receive all the resources they needed: none had an operationalization of community-engaged research, nor did they have a metric to determine “excellence” in this method of scholarship.
Faculty members also reflected on the challenges and obstacles to using CEnR as a pathway to recognition and reward in the promotion and tenure process.
The biggest obstacle to promotion and tenure was due to the limited experience and exposure to CEnR by tenure review committee members. To most members on my committees, the term “community-engaged research” – the foundation of my identity – was absolutely foreign. Thankfully I had the opportunity to formally meet with my review committee to provide a deeper explanation of this term, present its broader recognition by scholars, and remind them that community engagement was recently integrated into the university’s promotion and tenure guidelines as a method to count for research, teaching, and service.
Conclusion
As problems facing our communities are increasingly complex, IHEs have the opportunity – and, the authors of this chapter would argue, the obligation – to harness their resources to address real-world issues. In essence, to fulfill its mission of educating the citizenry and generating new knowledge through the principles of engagement. This chapter reviews the components needed to build a climate that supports and advances CEnR in hopes that it enables institutions to achieve this end.
Several lessons learned by those involved in the VCU effort are worth noting here. Because building a climate requires efforts across the campus, collaboration, communication, and transparency are essential. Moreover, institutions have the opportunity to model effective practices and principles of CEnR in the way they approach how they build the climate for CEnR. Furthermore, leveraging existing resources is critical in resource-tight environments. Carnegie’s Community Engagement Classification has further motivated colleges and universities to become more focused on building the infrastructure to advance this public mission (Holland, Reference Holland2001). Applying for recognitions such as these can help to create a sense of urgency that provides additional motivation and can garner additional resources. While this chapter focuses on the climate within an IHE, any effort that involves community–academic partnerships must also address the capacity for public participation within and across communities (Lindau et al., Reference Lindau, Makelarski and Chin2011).
