No abstract

The impact of COVID-19 on conducting research is far-reaching, especially for those scholars working for or alongside communities. As the pandemic continues to create and exacerbate many of the issues that communities at the margins faced pre-pandemic, such as health disparities and access to resources, it also creates particular difficulties in collaborative, co-developed participatory research and scholar-activism. These forms of community engagement require the commitment of researchers to look beyond the purview of the racialized capitalist and neoliberal structures and institutions that tend to limit the scope of our research and engagement. Both the presence of the researcher within the community as well as deep community trust in the researcher is required in order to identify and prioritize local, often counter-hegemonic forms of knowledge production, resources, and support networks. The pandemic and similar conditions of crises has likely limited opportunities for building long-term, productive relationships of mutual trust and reciprocity needed for PAR while communities refocus on meeting basic needs. The pandemic has now not only exacerbated existing disparities and made the need for engaged, critical and co-creative partnerships even greater, it has also abruptly halted opportunities for partnerships to occur, and further constrained funds to support communities partnering with researchers. In this paper we highlight accomplishments and discuss the many challenges that arise as participatory action researchers are displaced from the field and classroom, such as funding obstacles and working remotely. An analysis of experiences of the displacement of the scholar exposes the conflicts of conducting PAR during crises within a state of academic capitalism. These experiences are drawn from our work conducting PAR during COVID-19 around the globe, both in urban and rural settings, and during different stages of engagement. From these findings the case is made for mutual learning from peer-experiences and institutional support for PAR. As future crises are expected, increased digital resources and infrastructure, academic flexibility and greater consideration of PAR, increased funding for PAR, and dedicated institutional support programs for PAR are needed.

No abstract

In recent years, grand challenge initiatives have emerged nationally with the goal of addressing large, multidisciplinary public problems. The advent of university-led grand challenge initiatives offers an important opportunity to reflect on how institutions of higher education design, implement, and orient externally relevant activities at a time of public skepticism. With a focus on public problem solving, grand challenge initiatives offer a way to re-engage the public’s imagination and faith in higher education, depending on what these initiatives reflect about institutional values, practices, and work. We use this reflection opportunity to review early approaches to university-led grand challenge initiatives. We then propose that two frameworks should merge explicitly into grand challenge initiatives to guide public problem solving: community engagement and collective impact. Finally, we offer the establishment of a grand challenge initiative at the University of Denver (DU) as an example of the integration of community engagement and collective impact frameworks into the organization and implementation of institution-wide, publicly-engaged work.

While the impact of service-learning on students and to some extent on communities is well documented, little research addresses the direct impact on instructors. To fulfill the historic civic mission of education and contribute to civic health, a holistic understanding of impacts on all stakeholders will be necessary. This chapter presents the findings of interviews conducted with diverse service-learning practitioner types (higher education faculty members, K-12 teachers, and nonprofit instructors), institutions and years of experience. The findings demonstrate three categories of benefits that accrue to practitioners: pedagogical, personal and relational. Additionally, indirect impacts also contribute to practitioners' satisfaction. Many of these impacts map nicely onto the existing literature that describes the motivations that lead practitioners to undertake service-learning. The link then between motivations and actual benefits received leads to several salient recommendations that can support instructors and administrators wishing to advance engaged work at their institutions.