Place-Based Community Engagement in Higher Education

"While an increasing number of universities have or are committed to engaging their campuses in their surrounding communities, many recognize they lack the strategic focus and resources to maximize and sustain their impact on those communities. Place-based community engagement provides a powerful way to creatively connect campus and community to foster positive social transformation.

Erica K. Yamamura and Kent Koth present the emerging model of place-based community engagement as a powerful process for attaining more positive and enduring results in their local communities as well as stimulating wider engagement by campus constituencies.

Exceptionally well organized and presented, [this] is a significant, insightful, and thought-provoking study that is an especially recommended addition to college and university library Contemporary Issues in Education collections and supplemental studies reading lists."

Midwest Book Review

"Recommended resource for anyone designing or leading efforts that deepen the impact of urban and metropolitan universities in their regions. Offers research-informed guidance from conception, implementation and evaluation. Yamamura and Koth provide insights drawn from case examples that give an honest view of the challenges and hidden opportunities involved in this work."

Valerie Holton, PhD, LCSW Senior Fellow, CUMU and higher education consultant

"This is a terrifically relevant, timely and wise book from Yamamura and Koth. It serves as a road map for universities striving to catalyze community-engaged neighborhood transformation. Built on solid experience and lessons learned on the ground, this book moves the field forward for researchers, policy makers and practitioners. Given seemingly intractable problems of poverty and inequity, I finished the book energized and armed with greater knowledge to accelerate the drive for greater opportunity."

David Bley - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pacific Northwest Initiative

"This is a very timely and important volume. Many institutions around the country recognize that achieving their core mission requires engagement with the communities of which they are of a part. But community engagement must be a two-way street. This book dives deep into examples of several institutions around the country that are practicing more responsive and responsible ways of addressing the needs of communities by working in partnership with, and not merely in them. A must read for anyone on either side of the town/gown divide."

Charles Rutheiser, PhD, Senior Associate, Center for Civic Sites and Community Change - Annie E. Casey Foundation

"Yamamura and Koth offer a spectacular resource for postsecondary leaders, scholars, and community change agents pursuing place-based community engagements between communities and universities. They outline five key principles in practice by presenting institutional cases, portray a developmental process of three phases, render community perspectives, and promote the role of assessment. Perhaps most valuable is their robust exploration of critical issues such as the centrality of mutual benefit, aka the 50-50 proposition (distinct from the postsecondary tendency to focus more on student learning and faculty research impacts); how considerations of power, privilege, racial equity and voice are encountered within place-based engagements; and the “virtuous cycle” that is possible when residents pursue degrees through the university and leverage their education to serve their community or become community change leaders. This book is required reading for those seeking to develop or refine place-based engagement initiatives."

Lina D. Dostilio, Assistant Vice Chancellor of Engagement, Associate Professor of Practice in Education - University of Pittsburgh

From the Foreward:
“The arrival of Place-Based Community Engagement in Higher Education: A Strategy to Transform Universities and Communities is particularly welcome because it provides universities with both the theory and practical logistics for pursuing community-based work. This book invites universities to pursue deeper and more-powerful partnerships with the communities around them, helping to create a comprehensive strategy for disadvantaged children as we have done in Harlem.”

Geoffrey Canada, President - Harlem Children’s Zone

Foreword by Geoffrey Canada
Preface
Acknowledgements

Part One: Introduction, Context, and Methodology
1) Introduction to Place-Based Community Engagement
2) Place-Based Community Engagement in Practice
3) Methodology and Institutional Profiles

Part Two: Phases of Place-Based Community Engagement
4) The Exploration Phase: Listening and Visioning
5) The Development Phase: Experimenting and Growing
6) The Sustaining Phase: In It for the Long Haul

Part Three: Key Considerations for Practice
7) A View From the Community: Community Partners’ Perspectives
8) Pursuing Results: The Practice of Assessment and Outcomes
9) Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

References
About the Authors
Index

Erica K. Yamamura

Erica K. Yamamura is an associate professor and the master's degree coordinator in the student development administration program in the College of Education at Seattle University.

Kent Koth

Kent Koth is the executive director of the Center for Community Engagement at Seattle University.

community engagement
leadership
service-learning
community partnerships
social change
place-based
positive social transformation
community-based work