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Proponents of community engagement to promote social change advocate bringing together researchers, practitioners, politicians, business leaders, advocates and other relevant stakeholders to identify and solve community problems and issues. This chapter will describe the need for academic and community partnerships, how academic institutions can develop priorities, governance and financial structures that facilitate stronger, more effective community relationships and make contributions to the resolution of social ills. The current literature on community engagement, community-based participatory research, community action research, community-engaged scholarship and service-learning are reviewed. The principles and tenets of engaged scholarship are reviewed, barriers to implementation are discussed and examples provided. Academic institutions can play an important role in social change if they are willing to embrace community engagement. A key to success is building trust, sharing power, fostering co-learning, enhancing strengths and resources, building capacity, and addressing community-identified needs. Academic participation requires institutional and faculty commitment to engagement principles, flexible and inclusive governance structures and strategies to educate community members. The development of the relationships and structures required for successful community engagement can be inhibited by imbalances in power and knowledge that often exist among practitioners, researchers, and community members. This review may assist academic institutions to examine implementation of tenure and promotion policies, oversight strategies and structures that assure community development and benefit, as well as opportunities for faculty, staff and student training on principles and best practices of community-engaged research.

The purpose of the study was to provide an example of instructional coaching for inservice teachers within the context of community-engaged scholarship (CEP), involving professional learning communities (PLCs). This study seeks to encourage policymakers to allocate budgets for instructional coaches, as well as resources for schools.

An exploratory case study design was used to examine the factors that contributed to the partnership and how the PLC sessions impacted the inservice teachers' practices. Data sources included interviews, focus groups, written reflections, observations of grade-level teachers' meetings and administrative meetings.

The study uncovered important factors that impacted the community-engaged partnership (CEP) positively, such as partners having a unified agenda, a common focus on the school's needs and an understanding of the culture of the school. Principals are the gatekeepers in such partnerships.

This study yielded the description of a model of instructional coaching within a CEP that other universities around the world could replicate. The limitations of this study include the length of the study and the time frame in which the PLC content was planned. The study was conducted over 1 year to limited funding. The instructional coach developed the PLC content during the ongoing academic year and that impacted the teachers' initial perceptions and their commitment to the PLCs.

This study offers a new coaching model for CEPs that focuses on closing the gap between theory and practice by integrating PLCs, content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and face-to-face visual support.

Faculty members at public universities in different disciplines view civil society differently as they perform their function of creating partnerships with society. This chapter draws evidence from faculty members in public universities from one African country – Malawi. Drawing from Derrida’s (1978) concept of difference and West’s (1993) views of social theory, the chapter examines three approaches to community engagement (CE) with civil society. It concludes that the growing demands to attain difference in CE have resulted in oversupply of approaches that are often pitied against each other; hence, the hierarchies obscure the work CE is achieving.

The purpose of this paper is to report on six Symposia offered at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held 16‐20 February 2012, in Vancouver, Canada. The theme of this 178th Meeting was: “Flattening the world: building a global knowledge society.”

This report includes summaries of the salient points in each panelist's presentation for the selected Symposia, and it provides internet links to further support the content of the presenters' comments.

The AAAS 2012 Annual Meeting aimed at exploring a broad range of recent discoveries and looming global challenges. The program focused on the current complex, interconnected challenges of the twenty‐first century and on pathways to global solutions through international, multidisciplinary efforts.

This report provides insights on the current research themes such as interdisciplinary collaboration, community‐engaged scholarship, global outreach by sharing science and research data with the public, building collaboratories for research on a global scale, and reducing international knowledge isolation of the “Global South” (the nations of Africa, Central and Latin America, and most of Asia).

The chapter presents womanist musings about the author’s journey and growth as a Black woman scholar-advocate committed to socially just and antiracist scholarship. Using autoethnography, the author has synthesized her personal experience as a mother of a child diagnosed with cancer, with her professional endeavors as the founder Golden Moms (a peer support organization where majority of the mothers and their children are White) and with my work as doctoral student, to challenge White privilege in the academy.

There have been great advances in our understanding of how universities effectively undertake community engagement, with research focused upon understanding community partner perspectives and outcomes (see Andrée et al., 2014; Srinivas et al., 2015; Sweatman & Warner, 2020), and democratic civic engagement (see Hall et al., 2013; Saltmarsh et al., 2009). This chapter builds on these studies to critically examine one university’s capacities to coordinate institutional-level change that supports and advances community-engagement scholarship. A small, rural, undergraduate university in Nova Scotia, Canada, called Acadia University was used as the case study site for this examination. Using an action research case study design, we gathered data from multiple sources within and outside of the University over a three-year period. Through this investigation Acadia’s community-engagement ethos was studied to understand if the University has the assets, resources, knowledge and motivation to create, implement and sustain democratic community engagement initiatives with community partners. From this data, key findings were categorized into three major themes: power and positionality of the University, institutional supports and barriers to engagement, and institutional assessment of community engagement initiatives. This chapter discusses these themes in depth using data from this study and current literature to unpack the practicalities and particularities of an institution committing to a deep, pervasive and integrated community engagement culture. Overall, this study found that Acadia’s community engagement ethos, as it moves towards democratic engagement while navigating systematic internal and external constraints, is diverse and complex. This study contributes to the legitimization of community engagement scholarship more broadly.

This book chapter represents a case study relating to the challenges that immigrants encounter in their host countries and the approaches they adopt to acquire better life circumstances. The researcher implemented a qualitative research method by performing thematic analysis of the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ACIJ) website, social media sites, and other related websites. ACIJ is a social justice organization that assists and advocates for immigrant rights. This analysis utilized the Strategic Diversity Manifesto framework (SDM) to analyze the existent communications of immigrants who arrive in Alabama from different backgrounds to determine whether the ACIJ is applying equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) and also to determine if it is allowing these immigrants full access to its’ services and resources. Applying critical race theory (CRT) to dismantle the problems of white hegemonic racism, which is socially and historically constructed and represents cultural power in the American community. This project offers a valuable contribution to Library and Information Science (LIS) by enabling these migrants to express their voices; obtain inclusion that dismantle the hierarchical structures; and fight against violence and power, leading to improved life experiences in Alabama and to a substantial change within the Alabamian community through boosting racial and social justices.

To describe how academic libraries can support digital humanities (DH) research by leveraging established library values and strengths to provide support for preservation and access and physical and digital spaces for researchers and communities, specifically focused on cultural heritage collections.

The experiences of the authors in collaborating with DH scholars and community organizations is discussed with references to the literature. The paper suggests how research libraries can use existing expertise and infrastructure to support the development of digital cultural heritage collections and DH research.

Developing working collaborations with DH researchers and community organizations is a productive way to engage in impactful cultural heritage digital projects. It can aid resource allocation decisions to support active research, strategic goals, community needs and the development and preservation of unique, locally relevant collections. Libraries do not need to radically transform themselves to do this work, they have established strengths that can be effective in meeting the challenges of DH research.

Academic libraries should strategically direct the work they already excel at to support DH research and work with scholars and communities to build collections and infrastructure to support these initiatives.

The paper recommends practical approaches, supported by literature and local examples, that could be taken when building DH and community-engaged cultural heritage projects.

Community-engaged partnerships have the ability to combine expertise and resources to enhance the local STEM learning ecosystem, by engaging the actors in communities that can enhance students' experiences in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. Texas Tech University (TTU) and Lubbock Independent School District (LISD) have partnered to coordinate an annual STEM Challenge to encourage STEM learning and interest among local middle grade students. Each summer, teams of (three to four) students from ten LISD middle schools participate in a week-long engineering design challenge, facilitated by TTU undergraduate mentors and their teachers, structured by the Engineering Design Process (EDP).

Quantitative (survey) and qualitative (open-ended responses) data from two years of student glider and hovercraft projects offer insight into how 66 students developed STEM knowledge and leveraged 21^st-century skills to accomplish a shared aim (design challenge).

Findings suggest growth in students' 21^st-century skills, most among underrepresented (racial, ethnic and gender minority) groups. Data from year one (2018) informed year two (2019) in both programming and the research, including enhanced training for mentors and a deeper exploration of students' experiences during each stage of the EDP during the STEM challenge.

Significant and salient findings are discussed along with recommendations for both programmatic and methodological improvements for year three (2020). This study provides insight into how to structure similar community-engaged partnerships in enhancing the community STEM ecosystem through collaborative STEM experiences for diverse, younger learners.

In times of deep political and religious division and limited resources, the need for developing leadership that influences and heals our communities is particularly critical. Using service- learning, combined with community engaged scholarship, this pedagogical approach enhanced student transformation, involved and benefited the community growing together, and explored potential contributions to literature in servant leadership. The collaboration involved designing and planning a three-hour event and data collection to address combatting hate and creating greater compassion. Student, faculty, and community worked together in this independent project and reflections indicate significant efficacy of servant leadership in the interfaith community with actionable and accessible outcomes.