Have an idea for a community-campus partnership but don’t know where to start to make it happen? Then this post is for you! In CFICE’s 7-step guide, you will be directed to resources that will equip you with the tools to develop meaningful community-campus engagement (CCE) partnerships, and help you make a positive changes in your community.

Step 1: Ask the hard questions

Conduct a needs and resource assessment��

The March of Dimes Foundation’s step-by-step guide asks the question, “Are we ready for community-based participatory research?” Their extensive manual provides ‘Readiness Assessments,’ great definitions, and case studies.

• The March of Dimes Foundation, “.”

You can also check out this simple worksheet which can help your community-based organization (CBO) brainstorm how resources can result in future partnerships.

• Hands On Network’s ““

Step 2: Consider the Context

Be practical

Beacons for Public Engagement’s, “Guide to Working with Universities on Research Projects,” lays out practical things to consider in a succinct brochure with links to other useful toolkits.

• Beacons for Public Engagement, “.”

Step 3: Make the Connections

Reach out to universities

This short informative guide by the UK Community Partner Network includes practical suggestions and recommendations for how get your organization involved with universities.

• UK Community Partner Network, ““

In addition to the guide above, here are twelve tips for how to make contact with potential university partners.

• UK Community Partner Network, ““

Ready to set the project course together?

Step 4: Set a Direction

Plan your CCE Research Project

This easy-to-use guide by ULCA offers great examples of community-campus engagement (CCE) research, and a glossary of terms to help you effectively plan your CCE research project. It also provides links to additional resources to assist your CBO in defining a specific research problem.

• UCLA, “.”

Shasta College has put together a great manual with practical tips on what to expect when working on a CCE research project. This guide also describes how to design a service-learning experience, includes checklists for orientation between students and CBOs, and great examples of Risk and Liability release forms.

• Shasta College, ““

The Pace Society’s guide on research ethics will help ensure that everyone involved in your CCE research project is treated ethically. It includes a guide to ethics in community-campus partnerships, and provides links to additional resources.

• Pace Society in collaboration with The Research Development Team, “.”

Step 5: Build your Relationships

Cultivate meaningful partnerships ����

In this resource, you will learn how to forge strong community-campus partnerships by strategically planning for both the day-to-day and future management of your community-campus engagement (CCE) research project. This guide also includes information on how to cultivate leadership and introduces practical ways to effectively communicate between research teams.

• America’s Promise, The Alliance for Youth: “.”

This short document defines what it means to have a meaningful research partnership. It explains what an equitable relationships between post-secondary institutions and community-based organizations looks like.

• Portland State University, “.”

Step 6: Evaluate the Project

Make sure your work is making an impact

You’ve done the work, now it is time to evaluate. Here is a comprehensive step-by-step guide for evaluating the effectiveness of your community-campus engagement (CCE) research partnership.

• Community Tool Box, ““

Step 7: Go above and beyond

Maintain Quality Assurance

Now that you have successfully created a community-campus engagement (CCE) partnership what do you do? Check out this link for tips on how to maintain quality performance, so your project stands the test of time.

• Community Tool Box, ““

What other resources do you use for setting up and maintaining your CCE partnerships? Let us know in the comments!

Our Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) policy and action work over the next three years (2016-2019) will focus on strengthening both Canadian communities and the national community-campus engagement (CCE) movement in Canada. We continue to address ��the overall question of CFICE, which has guided its work to date: How can community campus partnerships be designed and implemented to maximize the value created for non-profit, community-based organizations?

CFICE’s work is also designed to weave into and leverage CUExpo 2017, the biannual Canadian conference coming up from May 1-5, 2017��in Vancouver, exploring community-college-university partnerships as catalysts for social innovation. CUExpo 2017’s theme is “For the Common Good” and states that it will celebrate and showcase community-campus partnerships – local, national and global – which advance social, health, environmental, educational and collective strategies supporting transformation for the common good.

There is obvious synergy between CFICE and CUExpo 2017. Hosted by Simon Fraser University, this gathering promises to be a major opportunity to build on national and global momentum and expertise, and to create a long lasting-platform for campus engagement in Canada. Check out the and contact the team if you have any questions.

CUExpo 2017 will strive to include an equal number of both campus and community-based participants. Registration closes on Sunday, November 13, 2016.

© CUExpo 2017

CFICE and CUEXPO 2017 – Background

The alignment between CFICE and CUExpo stems from significant action in Canada over the past 9 years in building the community-campus engagement movement. CFICE is focused on the creation of a ‘Community-First’ approach to community-campus partnership and engagement in Canada to support environmental and societal well being.

The Aligning Institutions for Community Impact Working Group (AICI-WG) of CFICE is committed to connecting CUExpo2017 to our three priority activities-focused on institutional transformation for Phase II of the project.

1. ��Creating a ‘Community-First’ Canadian classification system/planning matrix for community-campus engagement
2. Mapping and connecting Canadian university engagement initiatives and offices in Canada to support a community of practice and policy change
3. Mobilizing new Canadian funding opportunities for ‘Community-First’ research, capacity building and engagement initiatives.

Aligning CFICE and CUExpo2017 is also a natural outcome of the CFICE team’s legacy and leadership. This action research network continues to be a major catalyst and driver in Canada for community- campus partnerships and enabling national-global policies and networks.

Planning for May 2017

Besides CFICE, both entities – CBRCanada and the UNESCO Chair for CBR are on the Coordinating Committee for CUExpo2017 and anticipate this event being a major catalyst for the Canadian and global community-campus engagement movement.

CBRC has also been the lead coordinator for the CUExpo’s since 2008 (held in Waterloo, ON in 2011, Cornerbrook, Newfoundland in 2013, Ottawa, ON in 2015). Global networks such as the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (UK), Campus Engage (Ireland) and the Living Knowledge Network (Europe) are also on the Coordinating Committee and will have a strong presence at CUExpo 2017.

With the support of the Community Foundations of Canada, the CUExpo2017 SFU Team have also been working to ensure that supports will be in place to involve a strong contingent of community-based participants and students in attendance. CUEXPO 2017 is also recognizing the opportunity to create a legacy on Canada’s 150^th colonial anniversary within the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call for Action to address the legacy of cultural genocide resulting from the ongoing aftermath residential schools on the Indigenous peoples of Canada—��who have over 10,000 thousands years of occupation and history on the land.

The four thematic areas for CUExpo 2017 submissions includes:��Community Campus Project LifeCycles,��The Engagement Process,��Comprehensive Community-Campus Engagement, and Community Campus Partnership without Borders. With a number of contribution formats are possible, including: oral presentation, poster, roundtable, performance, team enquiry, skill building, and creative works.

Please contact me if you have any questions about the AICI Working Group and/ or CUExpo 2017. ��You can also directly contact if you have any Conference questions.

Peter Andrée, Principal Investigator of CFICE

Dr. Peter Andrée’s contribution to CFICE has been immense from day one. He was involved, along with Geri Briggs, Ted Jackson and��others, with planning and designing the Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) project. He began his journey with CFICE as an academic co-lead of the . In 2015, Peter then became CFICE’s Principal Senior Investigator.

To Peter Andrée, CFICE is a sincere team effort to figure out how to do community-campus partnerships in for civil society organizations. CFICE is led by a large number of people and that’s what makes it rich, unique and valuable.

Community-campus partnerships are so important to Peter because he believes universities have such a big impact on our communities and generally respond to societal needs. However, he thinks universities can do better and have a bigger impact in our communities.

Peter Andree talks CFICE at the CACSL Conference 2016.

It isn’t always easy to do community campus partnerships. Peter recalls the late Cathleen Kneen and how she said community-campus engagement is like dancing because it takes time, there’s a lot of toe stepping until you learn the dance. According to Peter, our current education model does not emphasize collaboration and he believes that collaborative skills end up being cultivated after going out, working and learning from the community.

“If we could get more work being actively done with community organizations and local governments on issues that really matter, we could have more of an impact and universities and colleges would also be fulfilling their mandates.”

Peter’s interest in community-campus engagement comes from his passion for meaningful collaboration and working with stakeholders to find the best answers on our issues. Efficiency is also important to Peter because he believes that we could use a lot of our resources better to have an impact.

Katherine Topolnski and Peter Andree pose for a selfie with Mayor Nenshi at the CACSL 2016 Conference.

After four years of working with CFICE so far, Peter is very excited to share and learn from the results of our year four evaluation.

To people wanting to become more engaged in their community, Peter says: “Go out and start listening to what the community needs and get involved.”

The Aligning Institutions for Community Impact (AICI) Working Group is pleased to welcome Maeve Lydon as its Community Co-lead. Located in Victoria, BC, Maeve brings a wealth of experience from her recent work with Community-Based Research Canada (CBRC) and her history working in the community and international development sectors.

The Aligning Institutions for Community Impact Working Group welcomes Maeve Lydon as its Community Co-lead.

Earlier this month, AICI Research Assistant, Katalin Koller, had the pleasure of interviewing Maeve about her passion for community-campus engagement (CCE):

What does “Community First” in the context of community-campus engagement mean to you? Why is it important?

I think that it first implies a de-centred approach to the university – that we want to be driven by the needs, assets, and visions of the broader society. Community First means that we take a broad public domain approach to looking at engagement, not artificially, but with an interdisciplinary perspective. Who are the communities we are referring to and what are their diverse priorities? The university community is an important asset for growing and supporting the common good and well-being of greater society.

Looking back on the lessons you have learned from your most impactful experiences, what insights do you hope to contribute to the Aligning Institutions work?

First, I believe that a multi-scalar approach to Community First works best. When we envision impact, we need to consider activities at the everyday micro level, the meso program level, and the macro structural level. At the micro level, we need to co-design projects. At the meso level, we can support capacity building, co-training and the co-creation of knowledge infrastructure. At the institutional change level, we need to work together toward structural changes that enable meaningful co-governance.

Second, we need to spend more time celebrating off-campus champions and incentivizing Community First researchers. We need to affirm the value of community-engaged scholarship by working with funders and businesses to create new pathways for funding and creativity, linking the social innovation lens to the engagement framework.

You have an array of experience across a variety of disciplines, in Canada and overseas. What do you see as Canada’s strengths and areas for improvement relative to other countries’ efforts to promote community-campus engagement?

Canada is uniquely placed in the world to make a difference. Our greatest strengths are that we work collaboratively and that our CCE movement has been quite humble and open to best practices. Our overseas partners are inspired by: our intercultural framing of the public domain, our inclusion of Indigenous knowledges, and our respect for multiple knowledges. We are open to ideas and extremely creative; we are innovators. CFICE in particular is seen as setting the national agenda for community-campus collaboration and culture change.

Broadly speaking, when we think critically about mainstream efforts to enable praxis through community-campus engagement, what do we need to consider?

Thus far, CFICE has provided some of the broader scaffolding: we need to listen, to plan, to ensure representation that reflects broader society. We need to enable a creative space for dialogue while continually asking ourselves how community – corporate, government, students, activists, CBOs, Indigenous Peoples – are actually involved in the conversation. Most of all, we all need to break out of our comfort zones and look at where the energy is at.

On behalf of the CFICE team, welcome aboard Maeve!

Boundary spanners are integral to the success of community-campus engagement (CCE). At CFICE (Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement), we are lucky to have several boundary spanners on our team. We see boundary spanners as people with the ability to bring together academics, community members, and organizations to work towards a common goal. Not to be confused with a broker, a boundary spanner is heavily invested in both sides of the collaboration and is often directly involved in the project as opposed to acting as an intermediary.

In order to understand more about boundary spanning, I interviewed , associate professor in the Department of Geography & Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo, and a member of CFICE’s Community Food Security Hub. Dr. Scott is a boundary spanner, which can be seen from the many roles she’s taken throughout her career. Her work focuses on international and rural development issues including: land access, ecological farming and rural livelihoods, social justice, and equality. She’s also the past president of the Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS), which brings together academics as well as professionals from government and community organizations.

Dr. Scott became convinced of the value of an integrated food system approach, which she later linked to CCE and boundary-spanning, while at the inaugural Food Secure Canada assembly held in Waterloo in 2005. She later became involved with the Waterloo Region Food System Roundtable, a networking and policy-making group working on building a strong voice for a healthy food system in the Waterloo region. Dr. Scott draws on her experience and involvement with the Roundtable, of which she was co-chair from 2007-2011, as an example of her work as a boundary spanner. It’s important to Dr. Scott because of its interdisciplinary and cross-cutting nature. Through her work with the Roundtable, Dr. Scott has been able to collaborate with community and government partners (such as Waterloo Region Public Health) to identify research issues of interest to these food system stakeholders. Dr. Scott says, “I also reached out to Food Secure Canada for their input on relevant research needs as well. As a result, some groups researched issues of food security in Canada’s north, and challenges facing new farmers, which are two of Food Secure Canada’s priority areas.”

In addition to diversifying Dr. Scott’s research and knowledge, her involvement with the Roundtable provides opportunities for students in her 4^th year food systems and sustainability course to work on research issues identified by community groups and Roundtable members. According to Dr. Scott, working collaboratively with community groups is particularly beneficial for students. Through her CFICE work, Dr. Scott has seen first-hand how partnerships between students and community organizations teach students about the challenges that community groups face, and how to utilize campus resources, particularly the time and energy of students and faculty, to help tackle these challenges. By going out into the community, students are exposed to different forms of community knowledge, providing them with an alternate perspective from what they usually learn in class. By gaining an understanding of the community perspective, students can apply this new knowledge in class to critically think about the issues facing these organizations. The students then prepared meaningful research reports that were later posted on the Roundtable’s to be publicly accessed. Some have even been cited in by Waterloo Region Public Health.

In CCE, in general, the community partner benefits by having students assist with addressing the needs of the organization. Community-campus partnerships also provide the community organization with an opportunity to expand their network to include a student audience. Students often encourage each other to volunteer and get involved with organizations with which they’ve had a good experience.

In Dr. Scott’s experience as a boundary spanner, she says that the most important requirements for successful community-campus partnerships are trust, and personal connections. Boundary spanners should work towards building trust between both parties. “Personal interest in the collaboration and commitment go a long way as well,” says Dr. Scott. Taking the time to get to know the people involved rather than working on the project itself straight away may not seem so productive, but Dr. Scott says that in the long run this personal relationship enhances the collaboration, ultimately leading to partnerships that last longer and produce more results.

To young people looking to get involved in CCE, Dr. Scott says, “Have an open mind, find out who the movers and shakers are in the community, and connect with them.” Dr. Scott also advises young people and students to get involved, regardless of their experience-level.

CCE – What is it? What’s the purpose of it? What are the benefits? This infographic about Community-Campus Engagement answers all those questions and more.

Click on the infographic to open it in a new window. You can then use the zoom tool to make the infographic larger.

Read the .

Using an innovative structure of community and University governance and collaboration, the Institute is a research��centre providing space for the study and practice of engaged scholarship and inter-disciplinary innovation. Focused��on engagement, the Institute harvests new knowledge, contributing to solutions of community issues, with a focus on��sustainability, public policy development and improved theory and practice. Funded by both University and community��partners, daily operations of the Institute are delivered by staff in association with research associates, community partners��and student interns.

– See more at:

Invitees include Canadian CBRC Steering Committee and University members, ��lead contacts for the Campus Community Collaboration Initiative which includes the Canadian Association for Community Service Learning, Research Impact, Campus Community Partnerships for Health, the United Way of Canada, Imagine Canada, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. Also invited are representatives from the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada-Task Force on CUE, the International Development Research Centre Canada, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the McConnell Foundation, the National Coordinating Ctte for Public Engagement (UK), the Living Knowledge Network (Europe), Campus Engage (Ireland) and the UNESCO Chair for Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education and members from its global network.

Two afternoon sessions will focus on the��Canadian and Global CUE Networks Strategy:

• �ճ��������ٷɴǰ������workshop will���������������the strategic value and the��desired and practical��impact of establishing national and international networks to advance community-university engagement and the engaged scholarship and research agenda. Particular emphasis��will be on��the role of networks to harness��the complementary strengths of researchers, institutions and their partners as they collectively seek to advance knowledge and inform policy on priority societal issues.
• The first part of the workshop session will highlight the roll-out of CBRC’s strategic plan within the context of the overall Canadian CUE movement. CBRC will also present an emerging proposal to establish a national network of hubs of excellence that build on the established strengths of universities and their partners, encompassing regional thematic areas that go from coast to coast to coast – from rural economic development in Newfoundland to aboriginal issues in BC to climate change adaptation in Canada’s North.
• The second part of the workshop session will build on Canada-UK/EU��and Global Links, including the partnership between CBRC and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) in the UK and the UNESCO Chair for Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education. We will explore and develop new��ways in which shared objectives at the national level can advance international efforts to strengthen engaged practice, research and scholarship approaches and methods and to evaluate the impacts of research projects and programs.��

Confirmed attendants include: Rajesh Tandon and Budd Hall, the UNESCO co-chairs in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, Paul Manners/Sophie Duncan, UK National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement, Emma McKenna from the Living Knowledge Network (Europe), Ann Lyons from Campus Engage��(Ireland), and Joanna Ochocka and Sylvie de Grosbois, (CBRC Vice-Chairs). The session affords us a great opportunity to advance our understanding of how best to achieve the shared goals of our national and international networks.

For more information, please visit:��.

Terry Audla, Inuit leader and President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), shares��a northern ��perspective on food security in this followed by a and answer period.

Cathleen Kneen,��Editor, The Ram’s Horn and Chair, Just Food Ottawa shares her perspective on ��followed by a.

Peter Andrée, Associate Professor of Political Science, �Ӱ�ԭ�� University, shares his perspective on followed by a .

Diana Bronson, Executive Director, Food Secure Canada provides on food security followed by a brief .

Additional Resources

Yordy, Chris. Want amid plenty.��

Community Academic Collaborative: (webinar).

An outcome of the panel discussion was a nation wide set of webinars, one in English, one in French where the UN�� Special Rapporteur on Food Security, , shared his findings regarding Food Security in Canada sponsored by .�� Over 1000 individuals in over 50 communities in Canada heard his report then followed with a conversation on what that meant for local action thereby erasing the global local distance.