Contemporary issues are defined by people who share diverse and often strongly defended views about the topic. In Oregon, citizens are increasingly being asked or expected to participate in complex decisions that require a consensus. Rather than teach one professor's synthesis of a contemporary natural resource issue, faculty from six disciplines coach group process, interactive learning skills, and systems thinking as a way to address complex issues from multiple perspectives. Students learn by grappling with a natural resource issue of their choice within groups based on a diversity among majors, degree status, and gender. Students define situation (S), brainstorm new or different targets (T), and analyze two or more pathways (P), using an STP learning and action process. Exploring potential pathways involves defining possible consequences, stakeholder views, feasibility (ecological, social, economic, and political), and planning that includes expected behavior of the improved system over time. Students present their topics and improvements showing systemic relationships, systematic analysis, and integration of scientific facts and secondary data at midterm and during finals. Reflective learning is fostered throughout the course with prompted questions in a journal notebook. Grading criteria promote meaningful inquiry and participation in group process combined with integration of scientific facts and reflective learning.

Increasingly, it has become clear to social marketers and others that partnerships among organizations are needed to accomplish behavior change and achieve social objectives. While many still take an organizationcentered approach, there has been a marked increase in the number of community-based collaborative research endeavors connecting academics and community agencies in mutual investigation of salient problems. SMQ/VOL.VI/NO. 2/JUNE 2000 at University of New England on May 31, 2015 smq.sagepub.com Downloaded from 10 SOCIAL MARKETING QUARTERLY APPLICATIONSSpecific researcher-driven and agency-driven barriers to successful collaboration were identified, as were enabling factors. Issues concerning training, commitment, understanding diversity, negotiating with bureaucracies and written agreement were found to play significant roles in the outcome of collaborative research partnerships.Participants identified university support as critical: encouraging, helping and rewarding researchers for developing and maintaining relationships with agencies and their clientele. Agencies would like to see communications directed at university policy makers and institutional funders as well as at themselves. These communications should show how the mutual benefits of collaborative research could be achieved.The findings of the focus groups were intended to complement other initiatives of the Maternal Child Community Health Science Consortium at the University of Illinois at Chicago. These initiatives included developing communication and training approaches to initiate and negotiate effective partnering relationships with university researchers and to make better use of the university to improve agency policies and practices. Overall, the study finds that voluntary, mutually beneficial exchange is the basis of effective partnering. Implications for social marketing and training are discussed.

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