An Institutional Process for Brokering Community-Campus Research Collaborations

Abstract

Knowledge mobilization seeks to identify and support authentic research collaborations between community and university so that benefits of the research accrue to both partners. Knowledge brokering is a key knowledge mobilization mechanism that helps community and university partners connect and build relationships in order to share expertise for mutual opportunity. There remains a need to describe in detail the typical knowledge brokering devices and methodologies. This paper presents a detailed description of York University's knowledge brokering service which is based on eight years of knowledge mobilization practice. The process is broken into 5 broad stages: 1) in progress; 2) no match; 3) match and no activity; 4) match and activity; 5) match and project. Stage 5 includes a step to identify the non-academic impacts of the collaborative research project. This process is illustrated using examples from York University's practice in which a match was brokered for 82% of the 342 knowledge mobilization opportunities

Brokering Community–campus Partnerships: An Analytical Framework

“…They have been shown to support community and academic partners in designing and implementing a project, establishing initial connections, delivering skills training, problem-solving, supervising students' community-engaged research and learning activities, evaluating a project's impact, and using results to improve future programs while contributing to positive changes in communities (Keating & Sjoquist 2000;Phipps, Johnny & Wedlock 2015;Tennyson 2014). CCE brokers have also promoted learnings and insights, and addressed concerns of power and resource imbalance by ensuring community and campus partners share control equitably (Keating & Sjoquist 2000;Phipps, Johnny & Wedlock 2015). In addition, because community organisations and universities face high levels of personnel turnover, CCE brokers can help by sustaining a project over the long term (Keating & Sjoquist 2000).…”

“…To improve the chances for success when setting up a brokering initiative, Pauzé and Level 8 Leadership Institute (2013) stressed the importance of first identifying the goals of the brokering initiative and then selecting a governance structure accordingly. Further, studies have found that brokering initiatives can benefit from having more formalised administrative infrastructure (Keating & Sjoquist 2000), a clear definition of their relationship with partnerships (Tennyson 2005), established guidelines and tools to address partners' needs (Phipps, Johnny & Wedlock 2015) and flexibility in providing long-term support (Dorow, Stack-Cutler & Varnhagen 2011). CCE brokers must also give significant attention to planning before brokering partnerships and initiating projects.…”

“…To address issues of limited community capacity and trust, brokering initiatives can develop funding agreements to more equitably share financial resources, an activity complicated by most academic funding structures (Lantz et al 2001;Naqshbandi et al 2011;Phipps, Johnny & Wedlock 2015). Building trust, however, takes time and commitment, and is a long-term process.…”

“…To establish an evidence-based process for monitoring brokering initiatives, Phipps, Johnny and Wedlock (2015) recommended tracking a broad range of outputs, including the number of opportunities for partnerships, the number of partnerships attempted, the number of partnerships developed, the reasons partnerships did not develop, and the impact of projects on partners. A utilisation-focused evaluation approach allows brokering initiatives to examine the partnership throughout the stages of the research process (Mundy 2013), which helps to identify successful partnership characteristics, key benefits, and challenges that can then be assessed (Hundal 2013;McNall et al 2009).…”