This webinar explored student, campus and community capacities and readiness for mutually beneficial placements and partnerships within the context of community-campus engagement.

The guiding question for this webinar was: How can the CCE movement increase student experiential learning and community research opportunities from the undergraduate to doctorate levels while also supporting non-profit readiness and capacity to include students and to be involved in co-designing or leading research and engagement work?

Webinar participants learned how community-campus practitioners—Faculty, Students, and Community leaders—are supporting efforts that help address this question. Presenters also identified concrete suggestions for how we can increase student- community placements for mutual and societal benefit in Canada.

Video Link

If you missed out on the day-of presentation, not to worry. We’ve made it accessible below.

You can access some student and non-profit readiness tools below. Note: The training modules mentioned in the video are not yet available to the public but will be hosted on the Trent Community Research Centre’s website.

•  — Journal Article
• Research Toolkit for Community-Based Organizations

Presenters

Moderator, Isabelle Kim, Director, University of Toronto Centre for Community Partnerships (CCP): Isabelle and her team at the CCP work in partnership with students, staff, faculty, communities, and non-profit and public organizations to catalyze and sustain socially-responsive CEL and CER. Isabelle will moderate the discussion, and focus the questions for presenters on student and non-profit organizations’ perspectives on: critical issues of access and preparedness to participate in CEL/R opportunities; and the kinds of structures and systems needed to sustainably and equitably increase these opportunities in a way that will result in positive impacts for both student learning and community.

Stephen Hill, Associate Professor, Trent University – Stephen has been the academic lead for CFICE’s Student Pathways working group. With financial support from Trent University and eCampus Ontario his team created new open-access community-based research and experiential training modules for students as a means of teaching students the necessary skills for working in a community-campus engagement project.

Lisa Mort-Putland, Executive Director of Volunteer Victoria and National Board member, Volunteer Canada – Lisa will share Volunteer Victoria and Volunteer Canada’s experiences with the increasing national demand for student-community placements and ideas on how to increase and support non-profit readiness to include students while increasing the sector’s role in influencing higher education research and engagement.

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! ©Elizabeth 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. ©Peterborough 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.

• Being a community-based broker
  • Introducing the Trent Community Research Centre (TCRC) and how the TCRC brokers community-based research opportunities
• Being a campus-based broker
  • Introducing the McMaster Office of Community Engagement and how McMaster brokers community-based research opportunities
• Discussion: Reflecting on the similarities and differences between community and campus-based brokers

If you missed out on the day-of presentation, not to worry. We’ve made it accessible below.

Resources

• Being a Community-Based Broker
• Being a Campus-Based Broker
• McMaster University’s

Presenters

John Marris completed his PhD in Canadian Studies at Trent University in 2013, and has been the executive director of the Trent Community Research Centre since October 2015 previously working for the TCRC as director of community-based research since September 2014. John brings a wealth of community research and teaching experience to the Centre, alongside his established relationships with Trent University faculty and students. John has a history of community development work both in Peterborough, Ontario and over a twenty-year period in the U.K. As part of his work at TCRC John is part of a number of collaboratives that address mental health, addictions, social justice and youth issues in the Peterborough community. He has a specific interest in youth engagement and the use of creative practices in community development.

David Tough has a double role at the Trent Community Research Centre, co-ordinating students’ work on the Centre’s research projects and conducting his own research on Community-Based Research. He brings to this work a lot of experience in teaching, research, scholarly writing, and journalism, and a deep familiarity with the social and cultural landscape of Peterborough. David is a scholar of inequality, taxation, and the welfare state who has a PhD in Canadian history from ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University and whose first book, The Terrific Engine: Income Taxation and the Modern Political Imaginary in Canada, 1910-1945, will be published by UBC Press in 2017.

Dave Heidebrecht Since graduating from McMaster’s Masters in Globalization Studies program in 2010, Dave has worked directly with academic, non-profit, and community organizations to help them work towards their goals. In this time, Dave has collaborated with local, national, and international groups to foster and support organizational strategies that produce positive, sustainable, and effective change. Especially interested in the intersections between environmental, political, and social issues facing our global society, Dave is very excited to be working with the Network for Community-Campus Partnerships to strengthen relationships amongst colleagues — both at McMaster and in the community — who are working to address these issues in our communities.

The Trent Community Research Centre in Peterborough, Ont. is just one of the many partners of the Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) project. Since 1996, the Centre has been matching Trent University students with research projects derived from questions in the community.

John Marris, Community Co-lead of the Community Environmental Sustainability (Peterborough/Haliburton) hub and the Community First Tools and Practices Working Group

John Marris, Director and Project Coordinator of Community-Based Research at the Trent Centre and community co-lead of CFICE’s Community Environmental Sustainability (Peterborough/Haliburton) hub community co-lead, defines the Centre as an independent research broker.

“We develop research projects with the community that answer research questions they have. We then match those research projects with the university in conjunction with faculty,” Marris says.

The Centre has three main areas of research: Community development, social support and environmental sustainability. But Marris says the projects can be anything the community approaches the centre with.

“We don’t in any way want to dictate to the community what the brains of our research are,” he says.

“We have a principle where we want to improve the health, sustainability and well-being of our community – that’s what’s really important to us and we want to do that through research work.”

Marris says the Centre focuses on those areas because of the impact to the community.

“We work in areas of social support and environmental sustainability because that’s what helps community development.”

Marris says providing evaluation of the projects is also important to the Centre.

“Impact assessment is a big part of what we do and this is very useful for local community organizations. The impact to the community is doing the groundwork for community development and helping with planning of projects,” he says.

“More and more I’m trying to connect us with projects as they happen so that we can build the evaluation into the design of the project.”

Unlike other programs, one of the unique things about the Trent Centre is that it works with third and forth year undergraduate students to facilitate partnerships, not just masters students.

Students become involved in a project by signing up for one of three courses that run in different departments at Trent University: Forensics, geography and international development. The Centre chose these departments because of the versatility of learning and application.

“One of the critical things that we do is we’re not creating academic exercises; these are real research questions that the community really wants answers to,” he says.

A group of people work together for a project.
©Elizabeth Thipphawong

Students can also go to the  to see a list of projects and approach the Centre themselves.

In the 2015/2016 academic year the Centre had 25 projects on the go, which Marris says is roughly the minimum.

Students really value the opportunity to apply what they’re learning in school to real life projects.

“We just had feedback from students for the academic year and fairly universally the response was ‘this is hands down the best thing I’ve done at university,’” Marris says.

As project coordinator, Marris offers students support, ideas and input throughout the project without grading their work, which is another aspect students really value. But the community also sees value in the partnership as well.

“There’s a huge need for knowledge from the community because sometimes they don’t have the financial wherewithal to pay commercial research organizations to do that work,” Marris says.

“The community gain is they get answers to questions that sometimes they’ve been sitting on for years.”

Marris calls the partnership between students wanting to do research and the community needing answers a “very happy and beautiful coincidence.”

On April 7^th the Trent Community Research Centre, one of CFICE’s Community Environmental Sustainability (CES) hub partners in Peterborough/Haliburton, in cooperation with Trent University and Fleming College, hosted the annual Community Innovation Forum. At this event students, both undergraduate and graduate, who have been working on community-based research projects all year presented in poster form the results or progress of their work. This event was attended by students, faculty members, and community organisations.

A student explains her project to listeners at TCRC’s Community Engagement Forum April 7, 2016. ©Peterborough Examiner

The event was featured in publications by the Trent Arthur and the Peterborough Examiner. Raymond Yip Choy, a member of the forum’s 2016 Steering Committee, was interviewed by the regarding the benefits of these types of community-campus engagement (CCE) experiences for students. According to Choy, they are important to increasing students’ employability after graduation. “The ones who have gone through an applied project have a significantly higher percentage of those who get employment in their field than those who have not,” he said.

, CCE experiences teach students the important skill of translating theory into practice. Since the projects that students tackle are all proposed by community organizations, participating in the projects also allows students an opportunity to give back to the community.

For more information about the event and the interesting projects tackled by the students, check out the articles featured in the  and the .

The Community Environmental Sustainability (CES) hub at Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) works towards facilitating community-campus partnerships to increase environmental sustainability. The CES hub functions at the local level in three key communities across Ontario: Ottawa, Peterborough and Haliburton.

Brianna Salmon, newly appointed executive director at GreenUP, helps facilitate those partnerships to increase environmental sustainability in Peterborough, Ont.

Previously GreenUP’s manager of the transportation department, Brianna says she was drawn to GreenUP because of its commitment to environmental sustainability.

“The work that GreenUP and organizations like GreenUP do is really vital, both in terms of direct program implementation and partner facilitation, but also being an advocacy voice for progressive policies and plans within all levels of government,” she says.

That’s what drew her to this kind of work and she says it’s been hugely humbling.

“I was interested in finding an organization where I could engage in really grounded, vocal work and I think that’s been something’s that’s felt very meaningful to me.”

CFICE and GreenUP partner with Trent Community Research Centre and Trent University to facilitate community-campus partnerships, allowing students and academics the opportunity to partner with the community and work together towards environmental sustainability.

Brianna Salmon is GreenUP’s Executive Director and a community partner with the CES hub. ©the Peterborough Examiner

“As an organization, we welcome hundreds of students to projects but it can often be challenging for us as an organization to manage. We have limited capacity and a lot of our programs and staff are grant funded so they have specific restrictions and things they should be focusing on,” she says. “We recognize it’s very valuable but often facilitating student research isn’t one of those things.”

Brianna says she was drawn to the CFICE project to help facilitate those partnership opportunities.

“I was really interested in looking at how we can support the capacity of community partners, like us, in actually engaging in student research.”

Brianna says GreenUP’s partnership with CFICE has been very meaningful.

“CFICE has meant to me and my organization the opportunity to engage really deliberately and in a way that is more transparent with our academic partners to make sure that our partnerships are as sustainable and impactful as possible,” she says.

But measuring that impact can sometimes be hard due to lack of funding for evaluation.

“Doing a robust evaluation program is something you don’t often get funded for in the non-profit sector and it can be a bit of a gap from my perspective,” she says.

“Often what tends to happen is that we move from project to project really not being able to do much meaningful evaluation.”

Without evaluation, Brianna says, it’s hard to understand what the long-term impact is of GreenUP’s community interventions.

“That was one of the reasons we were really interested in engaging in the CFICE project – to really try and increase our capacity to reflect critically on the kinds of activities that we undertake. Also making sure that we are being able to address some of the environmental challenges that GreenUP seeks to program around in a way that’s really strategic and thoughtful,” she says.

The partnerships are important to get everyone working towards the common goal of environmental sustainability.

“Making sure that the health of our environment remains a priority is everybody’s responsibility,” Brianna says.

“Our livelihoods and human health are contingent upon it.”

Five years ago, a research proposal landed on Todd Barr’s desk. It happened to be CFICE’s grant application for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, passed along for review. Little did he know, the paper actually marked the beginning of a new chapter in Todd’s life and career.

Todd Barr, former CES community co-lead, is ready for new adventures.

In 2011, Todd took on a role as the community co-lead of the Community Environmental Sustainability hub at CFICE, in addition to his role as executive director of the small, non-profit in Peterborough (now known as the Trent Community Research Centre). Todd, a “jack-of-all-trades,” worked tirelessly with CFICE and the centre to build bridges between post-secondary institutions and communities for empowered learning, with an end-goal of improving local economic, social, cultural and environmental conditions.

Although he retired from his leadership role with CFICE last October, Todd’s legacy with the action-research project lives on in his accomplishments.

“Our greatest success I think was graduate student involvement,” he said. “The partnership between CFICE and the Trent community centre provided paid research assistant-ships that have opened the door to working with different community groups here in Peterborough.”

“There’s one master’s student that sticks out in my mind
her name is Tessa Nasca,” he recalled. “For research assistants at CFICE
.well it’s kind of like a job on the side for most students, but for Tessa it’s actually now become a fellowship,” he said.

Tessa’s work with CFICE directly ties in with her master’s research thesis in sustainability studies and “Happy, Healthy Neighbourhoods” at Trent University. CFICE locked in a two-year funding plan for Tessa, which even became part of her offer of acceptance to Trent University. “A bunch of stars aligned in her favour,” he said. “Now she’s a bit of an entrepreneur here.”

CFICE is a huge project, Todd said, with many different players and partners. “It’s not quite there yet, but I hope CFICE will be the start of a community-campus engagement movement that leverages resources to address issues in communities and build collaboration,” he said. “I would hope CFICE can contribute to the bigger conversation, and shift the landscape in how community-campus partnerships address challenges in universities and communities.”

What’s next for Todd?

Todd plans to continue his work as a social innovator and consultant. He found inspiration and a desire for change in reading Al Etmanski’s book, “Impact: Six Patterns to Spread Your Social Innovation.” In a nutshell, he said, this practical guide summarizes where his future is headed.

“I see myself as a social innovator,” he said. “I’m really interested in good processes that effect positive change in our communities
so I’m going to keep doing that!”

Todd made it his mission to catalyze community action through research, and here at CFICE we are very lucky to have had him serve as a Community Environmental Sustainability hub co-lead.