About the publication
Hear from editors Suchitra Gururaj, PhD, and Brianna Johnson, PhD, about their forthcoming publication and how you can contribute to this valuable book.
Call for chapters
Colleges and universities committed to forging meaningful relationships with surrounding communities become bridges between the institution and the community even as the cultures, demographics, and character of the community evolve.
As scholars and practitioners, the editors of this forthcoming publication have observed that some institutions are drivers of change in the community—attracting college-educated, tech savvy individuals looking for diversity, entertainment, and opportunity in a location. One result is that communities surrounding higher education institutions (HEIs) may begin to shift demographically, subsequently changing access to community identity and leadership, as well as resources. The most frequent version of this change, of course, is gentrification and subsequent displacement. While these shifts are difficult for municipalities and individuals to manage, they also pose challenges for those in charge of operationalizing the public service mission of an HEI to offer programming, help clarify community priorities, or envision and create long-term and sustained strategies for engagement.
The purpose of this edited volume is to explore the challenges of undertaking effective community-higher education engagement in locales that have experienced dynamic changes in population or demographics; highlight the lived experience of institutional and community members as they experienced these changes; record best practices and “what worked” in community engagement in such locales; and to present thoughtfully the picture of change in these places.
This volume is indebted to Yamamura and Koth (2018), who define place-based community engagement as “a long-term university-wide commitment to partner with local residents, organizations, and other leaders to focus equally on campus and community impact within a clearly defined geographic area” (p. 18) Moreover, as they say, these relationships may focus on the three phases of partnerships: exploration, development, and sustaining. Drawing on their work, the editors believe, too, that place-based community engagement is immovable and seeks to foster long-term working relationships in the communities in which they serve.
The editors wish to offer narrative perspectives of higher education administrators and their community partners at institutions located in places where the demographics of their originally served communities are changing or have changed and that shed light on the development and sustaining of community-higher education partnerships in places that are changing. This book will offer to those influencing, guiding, and planning community engagement a set of best practices around managing place-based engagement through demographic change.
Areas of interrogation may include, but not be limited to:
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How did demographic transformation occur near, next to, or otherwise mission-adjacent to your institution and what was the response?
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How did your institution contribute to change in the communities, and how do you reconcile that with the work of responding to new residents/partners/etc?
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How does your institution define community (and thus changes in community)?
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What definitions (reciprocity, mutual benefit, partnership, MOU) became critical to the definition of community engagement?
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How are local identities changing and what is your institution’s stance about sustaining relationships in those localities or even preserving those identities?
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How is demographic/population/identity shift discussed among convenings of institutional and community members? How is community voice accessed?
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Apart from using a “you-know-when-you-see-it” view of community change (for instance, as we discuss gentrification), how else did your institution know that the community was changing?
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What was the lived experience of those in the middle of this shift? How did the higher education institution work with the community to understand this experience?
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What is the institution's stance around diversity, equity, and inclusion in the work as locales change?
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What are models for sustained conversation around these particular issues?
This volume values diverse perspectives from writers across different backgrounds, positionalities, and roles (e.g., community partners, faculty of all ranks, administrators, staff, students, etc.), and will give preference to submissions that are thoughtfully discussed, co-constructed, and/or co-written by community members.
The Process
Abstracts of 350 words or less are due October 31. Abstracts can be submitted via form at this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfSTPQ-GUiE0sP7Jf3ZoeDr6LDjxr20Mu5ErG9bbDI1seKhSg/viewform
Note: We strive to assemble a broad range of narratives from diverse institutions. For this reason, should you have concerns about this deadline or wish to discuss your project before submitting an abstract, please just reach out to us to talk or Zoom.
Timeline
- By November 8 : Selected abstract authors receive invitation and instructions to submit full proposal
- December 6: Full proposals (1-3 pages, including citations) due
- January 10: Selected authors receive invitation to write chapters (3,250 words); authors can opt to engage in multiple developmental editing conversations with editors
- March 21: First draft of chapters to editors, followed by editing and feedback rounds
- June 8: Final chapter submission deadline