Beyond the Numbers: Rethinking Success in Higher Education Community Partnerships
Dr. Allison Karpyn, University of Delaware
Dr. Mathew Gendle, Elon University,
Institutions of higher education are increasingly recognizing the crucial importance of meaningful community partnerships on their campuses. These collaborations not only enrich educational and research endeavors but also have profound societal impacts. As we strive to enhance best practices and pursue external credentialing, such as the Carnegie Foundation’s Elective Classification for Community Engagement, it's important to acknowledge that capturing the true essence and impact of these partnerships presents challenges.
Earlier this year, we participated in a regional conference that focused on community engagement in higher education. One of the conference sessions was led by leaders from a business that specializes in using "big data" approaches to assess institution-community partnerships. Specifically, this organization collects quantitative measures of partnerships (such as physical distance between academic institutions and community partners, amount of dollars transferred to partner, and temporal duration of partnership) and then uses this data to calculate comparative measures that they claim can effectively capture partnership quality.
Following this presentation, there arose a critical dialogue among conference attendees that questioned the feasibility of quantitatively rating and ranking specific community partnerships. Can partnership impact be adequately captured using quantitative methods? More importantly, is the quantitative evaluation and ranking of institution-community partnerships in line with the core values of community engagement?
At the core of this discourse lies the question of how we define success. While quantitative metrics like days, hours, and dollars have their place, they cannot be the primary measure of a partnership's value. The success of a partnership is better defined by measures such as reciprocity, trust, and mutual benefit, which are not easily quantifiable. Current approaches using "big data" often overlook these critical aspects. The pressure on institutions to collect and report data for various classifications is undeniable. While purely quantitative tools offer convenient ways to capture, rate, and report community activities, relying solely on “big data” approaches risks oversimplifying partnerships and overlooking their true essence.
What we need is a shift in perspective that acknowledges the limitations of relying solely on numerical data. Evaluating efforts based on qualitative benchmarks, such as the Community Engagement and Partnership Inventory (CEPI; Gendle & Tapler, 2024), which focuses on trust, reciprocity, and mutual benefit, can provide a more comprehensive understanding of partnership quality.
It's encouraging to see universities, grants, foundations, and research funders increasingly supporting partnerships. However, as we delve deeper into metrics, there's a risk of prioritizing easily measurable data over qualitative factors that better identify responsible and meaningful partnerships. In this landscape, institutional leaders should resist the urge to reduce partnerships to quantifiable metrics alone. Embracing qualitative measures like those offered by CEPI can not only improve reporting but actively enhance partnerships. Investing in the long-term sustainability of partnerships by building trust, fostering reciprocity, and ensuring mutual benefit is crucial. While these efforts may not yield immediate financial returns, their long-term impact is invaluable.
Ultimately, the true value of a community partnership lies in the impact it has on lives, perspectives, and knowledge sharing. Without question, quantitative measures can play an important role in thoughtful mixed-measures evaluation strategies for partnerships. However, we must not be seduced by new assessment methodologies that privilege, or entirely rest upon, algorithmic quantitative approaches. Instead, we must embrace qualitative measures that capture the complexity and true value of partnerships. By doing so, we can ensure that our efforts are not just for the sake of classification, designation, or “bean counting”, and remain focused on the genuine betterment of society.
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References
Gendle, M. H., & Tapler, A. S. (2024). The Community Engagement and Partnership Inventory (CEPI): An aspirational open-source instrument to assess community-based global learning programs. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 30(2), doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/mjcsl.4909
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Allison Karpyn is the Director of the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy and is a Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Delaware in Newark, DE, USA. Prior to joining UD Dr. Karpyn was a Director at The Food Trust, a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia, PA. Her background in the non-profit sector combined with her professional interests in food policy, nutrition and food insecurity has led to a commitment to effective community-higher education partnerships. Dr. Karpyn earned her Ph.D. in policy research, evaluation, and measurement from the University of Pennsylvania.
Mathew H. Gendle is the Director of Project Pericles and is a Professor of Psychology at Elon University in Elon, NC, USA. His research and professional interests include ethics and best practices in higher education-community organization partnerships in international settings, as well as disciplinary research in neuropharmacology, consciousness, and the social and geopolitical components of drug use and commerce. Mat has cultivated and supported a multi-year partnership between Elon and Sarvodaya, the largest and oldest NGO in Sri Lanka. He earned his Ph.D. in biopsychology from Cornell University.