“I had a big revelation”: Student Experiences in Community- First Community-Campus Engagement

Abstract

While there is a wealth of literature on community-campus engagement (CCE) that incorporates student perspectives from course-based community service learning settings, the stories of students involved in longer-term CCE projects remain underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by examining the experiences of students working as research assistants (RAs) within a multi-year Canadian CCE project, “Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement” (CFICE). Drawing on interviews with RAs, student insights from a general evaluation of the CFICE project, and the authors’ own reflections, we consider the ways in which meaningful, long-standing engagements with community partners as part of community-first CCE projects provide students with both enhanced opportunities and challenges as they navigate the complexities of intersecting academic and community worlds. Further, this paper identifies promising practices to improve student experiences and the overall impact of longer-term community-campus partnerships and program management structures.

A Campus-Wide Community-Engaged Learning Study: Insights and Future Directions

“…This article focuses on a selection of findings from a larger internal environmental scan of one slice of community-university interaction, namely, on community-engaged learning opportunities for undergraduate students at the University of Calgary (Bragg & Lund, 2015). Past studies of the impact of organizational decisions have typically focused on student perspectives (e.g., Armitage & Levac, 2015;De Leon, 2014;Moely & Ilustre, 2014;Przednowek et al, 2018) or faculty perspectives (e.g., Cooper, 2014;O'Meara et al, 2013). Drawing on university administrators and program directors' engagement, this research seeks to provide an overlooked perspective in communityengaged learning (CEL) planning and programming.…”

Special Section Introduction: Community Impacts of Engaged Research, Teaching, and Practice

“…matic areas addressing pressing social and ecological issues including violence against women, community food security and food sovereignty (Andrée, Kepkiewicz, Levkoe, Brynne, & Kneen, 2016;Kepkiewicz, Levkoe, & Brynne, 2018;Kepkiewicz, Srivastava, Levkoe, Brynne, & Kneen, 2017;Levkoe et al, 2016;Levkoe, Brem-Wilson, & Anderson, 2019;Levkoe, Erlich, & Archibald, 2019;Nelson & Dodd, 2016), poverty reduction (Erickson, Findlay, & Christopherson-Cote, 2018;Pei, Feltham, Ford, & Schwartz, 2015;Schwartz, Weaver, Pei, & Miller, 2016;Zeng & Honig, 2017), and community environmental sustainability (Martin & Ballamingie, 2016;Nasca, Changfoot, & Hill, 2018). In the second phase of CFICE, from 2015 to 2019, campus and community partners worked on cross-sector collaborations to further develop specific practices and approaches, including community-based CCE brokering (Levkoe, Schembri, & Wilson, 2018;Levkoe & Stack-Cutler, 2018;, student pathways for community impact (Przednowek, Goemans, & Wilson, 2018), and community-based organization access to research tools. 2 The second phase of CFICE also resulted in a new national network and community-of-practice known as Community Campus Engage Canada (https://ccecanada.ca/), which is expected to carry the community first ethos forward on the national stage for years to come.…”