Building Community-University Partnerships: Learnings from Practice for Institutions and Individuals Engaged in Urban and Other Partnerships

This engagement guide is intended to provide readers with information that will help them as they work to build sustainable community-university partnerships. It focuses on urban partnerships, and is largely based on our experiences over several years in building community-university working teams to help address issues central to the vitality of our partner communities. The work was part of broad efforts by the University of Minnesota to develop sustainable partnerships with urban communities. Although our examples and focus are urban, the learnings and processes should apply as well to non-urban issues, for rural and small town areas are facing many of the same issues as urban and metropolitan areas, and principles of partnership development transcend settings. The work engages faculty and professional staff who bring their conceptual perspectives and methods and tools to address the issues. But it also involves students, for today’s college students will need skills to address urban and other challenges as they move through their careers. The contents of this document were developed largely under grant #P116B070062, from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), U.S. Department of Education.