In this section

How We Do Our Work

Boundary Spanning

Our work extends across multiple boundaries:

Figure 1: university-community engagement boundary spanning roles at public research universities (weerts and sandmann, 2007). community based problem solver: focus on site based problem support, resource acquisition, partnership development. field agents, outreach staff, clinical faculty. engagement champion: focus on building external, political, intra-organizational support, roles may be symbolic. presidents, vice presidents for engagement, center directors, deans. internal engagement advocate: build campus capacity for engagement (rewards promotion tenure budget hiring) provosts, academic deans. technical expert: emphasis on knowledge creation for applied purposes (disciplinary or multidisciplinary) faculty, disciplinary based.
(Weerts & Sandmann, 2007)
  • University - Community
  • Faculty - Staff
  • Content Expertise - Engagement Expertise
  • Research - Practice
  • Individual - Collective
  • Positional Power - Functional Power
  • Quantitative - Qualitative
  • Positivism - Constructivism

This goes into more depth about boundary spanning - what it is and why it is critical to university-community engagement.

A Healing Centered & Restorative Lens

Dr. Tracy Hall and Dr. Jessica Camp's scholarship, , provides a lens through which we approach community engagement. Some examples include:

  • Scholarship that is created with and by members of the community rather than scholarship that is separate from those that are studied
  • Encouraging faculty to conduct creative and interdisciplinary research rather than reinforcing discipline-specific promotion and tenure rules
  • Relying on knowledge of the community to define priorities and allocate resources rather than relying on university "specialists" separate from community

  • Delegating decision-making to those closest to the situation rather than a hierarchical decision-making approach

    Traditional community engagement: community is viewed as a passive presence or source of limited information, the concept of community exists as a source of information and data is practiced upon, focus on short-term fixes/reactive, faculty follow the rules and regulations closely and are judged by how well they do so - interaction with community is based solely on information and data collection, faculty only serve a community while conducting their research, they are not encouraged to build long term, close relationships with the community, experimentation outside the rules and regulations of traditional research methods and practices are not encouraged or valued. Progressive community engagement: community is viewed as a key partner in addressing concerns with faculty, community is a small, well-defined geographical area, focus on long-term goals/proactive, faculty are members of the community and participate as active members of it, university faculty and staff live and work within the community and often work after hours on community problems and solutions, everyone is an integral part of the community in which they live and work, encourage innovation and creativity in an honest effort to solve problems, understand that mistakes will be made on the road to improvements
    (Hall & Camp, 2013)

 

 

Office of Community-Engaged Learning

Suite 1100, First Floor - Ford Collaboratory - Mardigian Library
4901 Evergreen Rd
Dearborn, MI 48128