Measuring Community and University Impacts of Critical Civic Geography: Insights from Chicago

Abstract

Geographers have increasingly adopted community-based learning and research into their teaching and scholarly activities since Bunge and Harvey called for an applied public geography that is both useful and challenges societal inequalities. With few exceptions, however, there has been little discussion of methods for measuring this work. Many published assessments focus on the impacts of projects on students, but overlook the impacts on community partners. Impacts on faculty and the larger university community are also often ignored. This article discusses literature on the evaluation of community-university research and service learning from a critical perspective. A discussion of service learning and community-based research (CBR) projects at two Chicago universities, DePaul and Chicago State, is presented. In both cases challenges were encountered to achieve full evaluation of projects, yet both included an evaluation of university and community partners that allowed for assessment of the projects' value to all partners.

Community geography as a model for improving efforts of environmental stewardship

“…Community-university partnerships are not without their challenges (Block et al, 2018;Robinson, 2010). However, it is the goal here to demonstrate their advantages because "there are clear benefits to social geographers doing P[A]…”

“…Community–university partnerships are not without their challenges (Block et al, ; Robinson, ). However, it is the goal here to demonstrate their advantages because “there are clear benefits to social geographers doing P[A]R, using legitimacy gained from academic status and ability to engaged in ‘scientific discourse’ to actively work against inequality” (Fuller, 1999, cited in Pain, , p. 659).…”

“…Because PAR involves working with the community in real‐world situations, student can generate (a) soft skills (Kindon & Elwood, , p. 25), (b) career decisions, and (c) awareness through civic engagement. For examples of career decisions and awareness, two students in a CG course explained that “this was the moment I decided to become an urban planner” and “I never really thought about gentrification or how certain neighborhoods struggled, until I came to this class” (Block et al, , p. 286).…”

Questioning the Impact of Impact: Evaluating Community-Campus Engagement as Contextual, Relational, and Process Based

“…In response, there have been calls for more rigorous assessments of CSL impact that focus directly on the effects of communities involved (Beckman et al, 2011;Block et al, 2018;Blouin & Perry, 2009;Vernon & Ward, 1999;Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2000).…”

“…As community-campus engagement (CCE) continues to gain momentum, there have been calls to better understand and evaluate impact well beyond quantitative indicators to include a broader range of approaches (Beckman, Penney, & Cockburn, 2011;Block, Hague, Curran, & Rosing, 2018;Wiebe & Taylor, 2014). For many engaged scholars, this necessarily involves qualitative and subjective measurements rooted in community-based perspectives (Srinivas, Meenan, Drogin, & DePrince, 2015;Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2000).…”