This month, we hear from John Marris, Executive Director of the (TCRC). John brings a wealth of community research and teaching experience to the Centre, where he applies it to building relationships between the Peterborough community and Trent University faculty and students. John explores the ways the TCRC is helping to shape community engagement in Peterborough, and the challenges that the TCRC faces in ensuring community remains the heart of all the research projects brokered through the TCRC.

In your present role, what does being community-first mean to you?

It means that all of our projects start with a community partner initiating the project. Community-first means being responsive to the research needs of the community and keeping these needs as our focus. The primary assessment of the success of a project is ‘has it met the community’s needs?’ Therefore, we do not take on any research project that starts with academic intellectual curiosity. However, this is not always a perfect model. Sometimes our own staff, faculty or students have great ideas for project that would benefit the community and we’re not always responding to those ideas in the most open ways. Although our community-first model insures us against the problem that the academy knows what’s good for the community, there can be something limiting about a pure community-first model.

Is there any way the TCRC can help to change the way that academic institutions serve communities?

There is no formal structure for us to approach the message of “this is what we mean by community-first”. However, my ideal for Trent University would be, and I think this would apply elsewhere as well, that students who are coming into a research-based project have completed a short course in what community-based research is, the methods that might be involved and what it means to be sensitive to a community’s needs. Although in terms of student learning and student personal development, there is typically a very strong alignment between community interest and student interest. Often times, the student personal development and learning come from the delivery of something that’s genuinely useful to the community. I would also like to see faculty complete some kind of certification in community-engaged scholarship before they supervise students on projects.

How can you maintain communication channels when working on a project?

We set a very straightforward rule for students: “you will copy us on every email.” So that I’m hopefully aware when a community partner or faculty or somebody in the process is heading in a direction that might need some support. If I cannot in my head summarize where a project is at, then I send out an email. It’s not rocket science, its emails and meetings.

Collaboration is a constant at the Trent Community Research Centre! ŠElizabeth Thipphawong

What are the most exciting challenges that you are faced with in working with community and academic partners?

The exciting thing is the possibilities of the research question. When you have a community partner come to you with a research project and say “I really need to know this” and you see that there is a fascinating, exciting project for students that is very achievable—and you can think of great faculty who can take this on and be excited by it. That is the absolute joy of the work.

Students come to you and say “I just got a job because I put this on my resume,” or community groups come to you and say “we just got funding to buy a generator, so our turtles won’t die if the power goes out.” That’s when you know it’s worthwhile and a good number of our projects have those success stories.

Are there additional best practices you would like to mention?

Listening is obviously the key thing for good campus-community relations. There is something about learning to be present in a community situation and respecting the idea that a community or local organisation is a likely expert on their issues. I think that is vitally important.

A student explains her project at TCRC’s Community Engagement Forum, 2016. ŠPeterborough Examiner

Not everything can be solved with academic research. There’s lots of stuff that comes to us that just isn’t appropriate for the academy, because not everything can be solved in the academy. It is very easy to pick up an idea from the community and become excited about how it could work in the university, but are you really listening to what’s being asked? There are projects that people propose to us and I think “wow, that would be really exciting for students, but you know what it’s not going to get you to where you need to go” and we need to kind of walk away from the idea.

Making sure that you are supporting the students in doing the best work they possibly can rather than setting them a hurdle to jump over. Genuinely support students. Don’t play hardball with them in the way that academia has a tradition of doing. You know, saying “keep going until you’ve failed and I will tell you how you’ve failed.” That’s not going to help the community.

You have to in some sense be an activist in the community to do this work in order to know what the issues are. My colleagues and I all sit at various community tables. We get out into the community and are a part of what’s developing here in Peterborough.

Is there anything else that should be mentioned about the role of community engagement professionals and how they can be more community-first?

The university should put more money into this work. The university is an incredibly secure, empowered and strong body. So there is an obligation, from my perspective, that the university uses some of that resource, be it financial, be it time, for the benefit of the community. You know, Trent is the second largest employer in Peterborough I believe, and its salaries are off the scale compared to anyone in the non-profit sector. So it’s a case of that power being put to use for the community.

Event attendees develop important connections during small group networking sessions at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´’s Community Engagement event.

On Wednesday February 24, ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ held its 4^th Annual Community Engagement Event at the MacOdrum Library.  The event ran from nine to noon and was packed with presentations and speakers from a variety of disciplines and groups such as Hub Ottawa, Hidden Harvest, and the Faculty of Engineering.  Students, professors, and members from community organizations were invited to partake in discussions and networking sessions in order to connect with faculty and organizations regarding current research and project initiatives.

Peter Andrée, CFICE’s Principal Investigator, and Jason Garlough, Executive Director of the Ottawa Eco-Talent Network, presented on CFICE and building stronger community-campus partnerships.

With CFICE, Jason Garlough is on the community side of community-campus engagement (CCE) as a co-lead for the CCE Brokering Working group, which works to foster relationships between academics and the community at the national and local levels. In particular, Jason is involved with the development of an Ottawa brokerage platform that will build connections between Ottawa’s various post-secondary institutions and community organizations.

Jason Garlough presents on Ottawa’s brokerage mechanism at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´’s Community Engagement Event.

Jason described the importance of CCE as making the best use of existing and available resources. Often this implies finding the right people for the job and getting results that can be put to use and implemented in the community.

The is one of CFICE’s brokerage partners.  Peter Andrée describes the model they use as being unique from other models. “What’s so innovative about them is the whole mentoring piece. They often bring in retired skilled professionals to work with student groups to create stronger projects. That’s a model that I haven’t seen other people doing and if we can make that a core part of what the Ottawa brokering platform can help to facilitate, to not only connect students and faculty with community organizations but also with mentors, I think that’s really cool.”

Jason also discussed a number of other brokerage models and what they offer for the community and academics.

Peter Andree, CFICE PI, gives closing comments at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´’s Community Engagement Event.

By forming a number of brokerage partnerships in Ottawa CFICE hopes to establish a framework in order to implement research and connect post-secondary institutions to the community. defines collective impact as organizations from different sectors working together to solve specific issues towards a common goal.

Although CFICE’s Ottawa brokerage platform is still in its early stages, the Annual Community Engagement Event plays a role in reaching that aim. After attending CFICE’s presentation, attendees can then gauge whether becoming a broker or a community partner is something that is of interest to them.

“If we bring the right stake holders around the table together and say how can we do this together, how we can envision it together, and build it together over time, and each of us can contribute what we can in terms of resources and capacity…in the end it’s not just a CIFCE project, but a collective one,” said Peter.

The event is also important in recognizing the community-engaged research that is going on at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´Â University, celebrating it, and sharing in the lessons, Peter says.

ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ Community Engagement Event organizers give closing comments.

Community brokering is one of the models Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) uses to get the community more engaged with local institutions and resources. , executive director of (OETN), helps to facilitate those connections to make Ottawa a better, more sustainable city.

“CFICE is really an opportunity to bring together so many different groups that would not normally be sitting around the same table,” Jason says.

At the OETN, Jason facilitates connections between researchers and academics (the talent), and local community groups and non-profit organizations. Once the connection has been made, the talent works with the organization to provide expert pro-bono advice and research for projects already on the go.

“We really want to make best use of human resources and empower organizations with mentors,” Jason says.

The OETN’s work has been made possible, in part, by CFICE’s (Ottawa) hub, who helped OETN secure a 3-year, $160,000 grant from the Trillium Foundation.

“Because there was so much success in the first phase of CFICE for the community brokerage model, I really felt that there was a huge opportunity to continue being involved in the . CFICE helped produce research and the business case for the need of community brokerage,” he says.

For Jason, his ideal Ottawa is one where people are making the best use of existing resources.

“I want to be living in an Ottawa where we don’t only use buildings for seven hours out of the 24 hour (day); where we have communities that are engaged and people have a sense of community,” Jason says.

This is one of the reasons why he became involved in CFICE’s Community-Campus Engagement Brokering Working Group. The Working Group seeks to understand how existing brokerage models work and identify best practices for establishing and maintaining productive community-first CCE partnerships.

“Community first is really about reaching out to the grassroots and listening to their needs. We have our ear to the ground listening to the needs of the organizations,” he says.

In making our communities better, Jason says community-campus partnerships play an integral role.

“We can leverage our strengths to build a more sustainable and resilient community. This makes better use of the multiple resources we have, the capacity we have for research and answering some big questions here in the Ottawa area.”

One of the ways Jason is currently doing this at the OETN is by developing a multi-sector Ottawa brokerage platform. Together with CFICE’s Community-Campus Engagement Brokering Working Group, they aim to streamline the community-campus engagement work of the various community and academic institutions in Ottawa.

Jason is hoping the project will have a big impact on the community.

“Wouldn’t it be great if the community and non-profits had access to the wealth of knowledge and know how to interact with the colleges and universities, building a better Ottawa and a better Canada?”

For more information about the Ottawa Eco-Talent Network, visit .