Tracy M. Soska

University-community partnerships : universities in civic engagement

* Preface (Armand Carriere) * University-Community Partnerships: An Introduction (Alice K. Johnson Butterfield and Tracy M. Soska) * LEAD ARTICLES * Understanding Contemporary University-Community Connections: Context, Practice, and Challenges (Robert Fisher, Michael Fabricant, and Louise Simmons) * University Civic Engagement with Community-Based Organizations: Dispersed or Coordinated Models? (Elizabeth A. Mulroy) * COMMUNITY OUTREACH PARTNERSHIP CENTER (COPC) PROGRAMS * Connecting a University to a Distant Neighborhood: Three Stages of Learning and Adaptation (Margaret Bourdeaux Arbuckle and Ruth Hoogland DeHoog) * The Role of Evaluation in Developing Community-Based Interventions: A COPC Project (Sondra SeungJa Doe and Daniel Lowery) * Seven Ways of Teaching and Learning: University-Community Partnerships at Baccalaureate Institutions (Steven R. Timmermans and Jeffrey P. Bouman) * SOCIAL WORK AND UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS * University-Community Partnership Centers: An Important Link for Social Work Education (Mary E. Rogge and Cynthia J. Rocha) * Community Partnerships: An Innovative Model of Social Work Education and Practice (Mindy R. Wertheimer, Elizabeth L. Beck, Fred Brooks, and James L. Wolk) * The Collaborative Research Education Partnership: Community, Faculty, and Student Partnerships in Practice Evaluation (Marla Berg-Weger, Susan S. Tebb, Cynthia A. Loveland Cook, Mary Beth Gallagher, Barbara Flory, and Ashley Cruce) * A University-Community Partnership to Change Public Policy: Pre-Conditions and Processes (Roni Kaufman) * THE PROCESSES OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT * Partnerships and Processes of Engagement: Working as Consultants in the US and UK (Jeremy Kearney and Denys M. Candy) * Community and University Participation in Disaster-Relief Recovery: An Example from Eastern North Carolina (Stephanie Farquhar and Noelle Dobson) * Addressing Barriers to University-Community Collaboration: Organizing by Experts or Organizing the Experts? (Donna J. Cherry and Jon Shefner) * REFLECTIVE ESSAY * Engaged Research in Higher Education and Civic Responsibility Reconsidered: A Reflective Essay (David P. Moxley) * Confluence: An Afterword (Tracy M. Soska and Alice K. Johnson Butterfield) * Index * Reference Notes Included

Service Learning: Community Engagement and Partnership for Integrating Teaching, Research, and Service

Although at times not well defined, service remains one of the three core missions in higher education, along with teaching and research. In developing this special issue on servicelearning, we were cognizant that service in higher education is defined by many parameters, not all of them meriting similar academic recognition and reward. However, all play important parts in the role that higher education institutions play in our society. Faculty service to their professional organizations and disciplines is one such key measure. Another is leadership service to the campus community, which often affords recognition to faculty, students, and staff. General community and public service that mobilizes faculty, students, and staff resources at colleges and universities into volunteer activities is often referred to as academic charity and may be also be a critical component of the cocurricular, or outside the classroom, experience at most colleges and universities. All of these concepts of service have benefits to both recipients and providers, as well as to campus and community, broadly defined. The role of higher education, including our research universities, in developing responsible citizens and promoting civic engagement has long been, and continues to be, an important debate in America, as well as around the world (Arthur and Bohlin, 2005; Benson & Harkavy, 2000; Bok, 1982; Checkoway, 1997; Fisher, Fabricant, & Simmons, 2004). The connection between the rise of urban society and the growth and development of the university, especially in America with its public and land grant universities, is another rich topic of debate and one of rising importance given the growth of universities as economic engines in their communities (Bender, 1988; Freeland, 2008; Kellogg Commission, 1999; Maurrasse, 2001; Ross,

If They Build it, They Will Come—or Letting the People Decide: Lessons in Building Community Participation, Partnership, and Public Trust for Social and Economic Justice

This verse of Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching (originally from the sixth century, BC) is one of my favorites in teaching community organizing students, as it says, at its core, that when the action or task is accomplished, the community owns the process of change. This tenet that echoes forward to Let the People Decide has obviously been around a lot longer than the title of at least two great subtitled books, Robert Fisher’s (1994) Neighborhood Organizing in America and J. Todd Move’s (2004) Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945–1986 , as well as the mastheads of countless current Web sites and blogs from both the far right and left. For those in community practice, the concepts of citizen participation, community-controlled development, democratic decision-making, local ownership of business or processes, and many other similar themes around the adage of “let the people decide” are among their core values and beliefs. For this first issue of our now 19th volume—20th anniversary just around the corner—of The Journal of Community Practice, we are pleased to present a range of articles and book reviews that examine concepts of community control and citizen participation as central to effective

Community Approaches for Addressing Crime and Violence: Prevention, Intervention, and Restoration

Crime and violence have long been among the more pressing and recalcitrant community challenges especially with increasing inequality and growing disparities among communities. Given this context for exploring and understanding community-based approaches for crime prevention, in America, this chapter examines theories related to crime prevention, as well as community organizing and programmatic community-based approaches used to address crime and community violence at the local level. In discussing community intervention methods, strategies, and tactics that have been effective in crime prevention, violence intervention, and promoting collective efficacy and restorative justice, this chapter will provide brief case examples of projects and programs that have been undertaken at the community level. These examples provide lessons learned for community practitioners and leaders to undertake and replicate in similar efforts. We will also examine the evidence-base of such community approaches and what applied research supports as best practice in the field.

Celebrating Some Milestones

It seems only appropriate to take a moment to pause and reflect when reaching important milestones, and with this new year, the Journal of Community Practice (JCP) and its sponsor, the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration (ACOSA), look to pause and reflect on our milestones. You may have already noticed the bright celebratory banner addition to the front cover of this first issue marking Volume 25 for the Journal of Community Practice. The 25th is always an important milestone. This is indeed an accomplishment for our journal, which continues to grow its importance and influence in the field. So, 2017 is a year of celebrating the twenty-five volumes milestone for JCP. We wonder if JCP founding editor Marie Weil envisioned a 25th volume when she began the journal. Yet, here we are, and each year our publisher, Taylor & Francis Group, continues to present the Marie Weil Award for the best article from the past journal volume. This past year, from Volume 23, ACOSA and our publisher recognized Michael J. Parks, from the Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Division of the Minnesota Department of Health with the Marie Weil Award for his article, “Who Is Our Neighbor?: Toward a Multilevel and Cross-National Roadmap for Building Community Capacity.” Congratulations to Michael for this achievement. We wonder which author(s) will be recognized for their contribution in this 25th volume. It also seems fitting that our current editor team will end its tenure working on this 25th Volume. Two of us—Lorraine Gutiérrez and Tracy Soska—will be wrapping up as JCP editors, each of us having served ten years at the JCP editorial helm. However, we are excited that another member of our team, Anna Maria Santiago, will lead the next editorial team commencing with Volume 26 in 2018. Anna Maria will introduce her new editorial team in a future issue. 2017 marks a double celebratory milestone: ACOSA will be marking its 30th anniversary this year. On March 8, 1987, an organizing meeting was held during the COSA Symposium at the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) Annual Program Meeting (APM) in St. Louis, MO. At that meeting, the bylaws were ratified to form the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration and the formal organization developed during that year. So, it only seem fitting that we take a moment to reflect on this organizational milestone that would then formalize its Journal of Community Practice a few years later. Join us in congratulating ACOSA as it reaches its 30th year. While plans are being set to celebrate ACOSA’s 30th Anniversary at the CSWE-APM in Dallas in October 2017, the leadership of ACOSA is also working to use this milestone year to encourage an ACOSA strategic retreat and dialogue in New York City on June 14, in concert with ACOSA’s co-sponsorship of the Community Collaboration track at the Network of Social Work Management Conference, which will also be held in New York City (June 15–16). Given the work that went into the emerging ACOSA organization in 1987, it seems only appropriate to take time this year to revisit our history, mission, and vision as we plan ahead. Not only does this seem an importantmilestone year for celebration, but also, for strategic dialogue and visioning for the future of ACOSA. Stay tuned on the ACOSA webpage—also under redesign during this anniversary year—for developing news (www.acosa.org). JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PRACTICE 2017, VOL. 25, NO. 1, 1–4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10705422.2017.1282803

Improving the Effectiveness of Community-Based Interventions: Recent Lessons from Community Practice

At first glance, this issue might appear to be an eclectic bricolage of articles ranging from housing to food insecurity to community design centers. Although the topics covered in this issue are far ranging, a common theme that ties them all together is the quest for improving the effectiveness of community-based interventions. While the extant literature is replete with scholarship assessing the effectiveness of community health interventions (see for example, Institute of Medicine, 2012), scholarship about the effectiveness of other types of community interventions is more modest. Within the field of social work in general and community practice specifically, the heightened awareness of and shift toward the use of evidence-based practices in both clinical and community work is a relatively recent phenomenon (Gilgun, 2005; Community Tool Box, n.d.; Gambrill, 2008; McNeece & Thyer, 2004; Thyer, 2008). The ability to gauge such effectiveness in community practice, however, has been the subject of some debate (see Gambrill, 2008; Thyer, 2008). Nonetheless, this call to engage in effective social change by using evidence from research and practice was underscored in 2016 with the implementation of the Grand Challenges of Social Work within the larger profession (Williams, 2016). Further, this call is beginning to be embraced through local initiatives such as “Communities in Action” in Seattle, Washington (see Haggerty et al., 2017). Yet, as Rodriguez, Ostrow, and Kemp (2017) note in their recent article,

Community, Organization, and Social Action: Reframing Macro Practice for Action

As editors, we have the privilege of reviewing and considering an array of manuscripts that study, assess, and comment on the state of community practice and its place in macro practice social work and other fields and disciplines. At times, this gives us the perspective on how our field is, or could be, emerging within the context of the practice, research, and scholarship that we labor to adequately capture in this journal. As we move further into 2016 and our 24th volume of the Journal of Community Practice: Organizing, Planning, Development & Change, we take a moment to look back and reflect on some of the milestones from 2015 that will be influencing us this year and beyond. Many of these milestones should be catalysts for revisiting community practice and, perhaps, how we frame COSA in the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration (ACOSA), which sponsors this journal. After 2 years as a formative and active coalition addressing the challenges facing macro practice in social work, the Special Commission to advance macro practice, has formally moved under ACOSA as an independently functioning coalition. With 2016 as a transition year, this new administrative arrangement should generate strategic discussions within both the Special Commission and ACOSA on the goal of building macro practice for the 21st century, as well as hone how these organizations can best work collaboratively on the challenges and opportunities inherent in the goal of “making macro matter.” For the first time in 2016, ACOSA will partner in hosting the Community Collaboration track at the Network of Social Work Management (NSWM) annual conference, which provides further opportunity for these two major macro practice organizations to foster inter-organization collaboration. Not only was 2015 a harbinger for alignment between these two organizations and their fields of practice, but at the 2016 Council of Social Work Annual Program Meeting (CSWE-APM) in Atlanta, Influencing Social Policy—the third sphere of macro practice in social policy—will join with ACOSA and NSWM in creating a macro practice block at the CSWE-APM Exhibit Hall This macro practice alignment in 2015 also saw discussions among the three major journals—Journal of Community Practice, Human Service Organizations, and the Journal of Social Policy—on collaboration around common themes and special issues or publications that might strengthen and advance the discourse and scholarship of macro practice. Other alignments in terms of poverty programs and policy can be seen in the JCP special issue on innovative programmatic and policy responses to poverty in the post Great Recession era, its last issue for 2015, which drew impetus from the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) and a free-standing conference in which ACOSA was a cosponsor in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty. Another important direction that emerged in 2015 was a new national initiative to enhance policy practice in social work. The New York Charitable Trust has served as a catalyst to bring together social work education and practice organizations and leadership in social policy organizations. This has resulted in a new Commission on social policy within CSWE, as well as a new grant initiative to bolster student field opportunities and JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PRACTICE 2016, VOL. 24, NO. 2, 119–122 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10705422.2016.1166415

Building Knowledge and Theory for Community Practice

The Journal of Community Practice (JCP) began publication in 1994, as a project of the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration (ACOSA), an organization of scholars, educators and practitioners dedicated to macro (community and organizational) practice in social work. The organization envisioned a journal that would focus on macro practice, with a strong emphasis on community organization. The creation of ACOSA and the JCP were efforts to ensure that the field of social work would continue to have a strong presence in contributing to broader organizational and social change (Roberts-DeGennaro & Soska, 2002/2011). Over the past two decades, the journal and community practice have continued to develop and grow, in the face of global capitalism, neo-liberalism, economic challenges, and worldwide conflict. Our field of community practice is much broader than social work and is also at home in fields such as community development, community psychology, urban planning, and public health. Each field has developed specific methods such as social marketing, geographic information system (GIS) mapping, and participatory research that are relevant to our overarching goals for social change and justice. This journal, by becoming increasingly interdisciplinary and global in its focus, has engendered more dialogue and communication across what can be separate fields. In looking over our past 20 years, we can ask what the next two decades hold for JCP. Our current ACOSA initiatives, which are focused on global linkages between groups sharing our goals (policy, action, and research collaboration), on advancing macro practice in social work, and evaluating community organization practice (resources for evaluating community organization) point to important priorities for our field. We do not know where we will be as a field in 2035, but our investment in these, and similar, efforts have the potential to play a role in shaping our future. The articles in this issue can contribute to these ongoing projects and discussions in significant ways.

Revisiting the Past to Reinvent the Future

In preparing this issue of the Journal of Community Practice, one of Yogi Berra’s sayings—“It’s like déjà-vu all over again”—seems oddly fitting. We tend to revisit issues and rediscover what was old like it is new once more. Whether 2015 is “déjà-vu all over again” time will tell, but with the looming Presidential race in 2016 unfolding this year with a Bush v. Clinton face-off a real possibility, one starts to wonder. On the macro and community practice front, this tingling “maybe we’ve been here before” seems all too timely. Several articles in this issue and the upcoming JCP special issue examining policies and programs in the wake of 50 years of the War on Poverty make one begin to wonder how long certain issues will stay with us. Conservative and regressive times tend to be catalysts for more progressive periods that, again, give way to more conservative times, only to be replaced by a resurgence of progressivism as we slowly inch forward on the slow-rising tide of social and economic justice. Today, we continue to press for a renewal of macro practice in social work education and practice, courtesy of a Special Commission to Advance Macro Practice. Thus far, the efforts of this group have been important to recognizing and renewing the importance for community, organization, and social action work that supports management and leadership of the human and community service field, as well as in the policy arena that shapes our field of practice. This socioeconomic and political arena remains a cauldron bubbling with disparate and divisive voices yielding too few elixirs to address the ills of poverty, inequality, racial disparities, and a waning sense of political engagement. And it leaves questions begging to be asked, including many we have asked before. Does social work serve to regulate the poor (Piven & Cloward, 1972) and the oppressed, or does it embrace the importance of empowerment, participation, and advocacy in working with those who are not fully and equally participating in our economy and society? Has social work abandoned its mission (Specht & Courtney, 1994)? Can social work be both the “fence and the ambulance” for those at risk of the precipice (Milan, 1895/1936, p. 273– 274)? These questions and tensions continue within social work and merit our ongoing reflection and debate. Sadly, those not fully participating in this economy now include a very large segment of the middle and working classes, a factor looming very large

Teamwork, Teamwork… Team, Team, Team: It Takes a Village to Publish a Journal

This editorial is written as we get ready to return to our campuses and classes for the fall semester, and by the time this final issue of our 22nd volume comes out, we will be in the peak of the American football season that coincides with the start of school. Although we can debate the importance of football and other major sports on many college campuses—and recent court rulings have greatly enlivened the debate about the interface between the NCAA and college life—football metaphors do have a certain resonance. Football is a team sport, and it is hard not got excited about good teamwork and its importance in any large and competitive endeavor. So as we cheer, “Team, Team, Team” in our college stadiums, we also want to reflect on the teamwork that makes the Journal of Community Practice a vital and growing publication, nationally and internationally. It is our opportunity to also give some much deserved recognition and thanks at our mid-point as Editors. With this issue we are moving into our third year as the Editor team for JCP. Go Team! Although we still have much work ahead in exploring changes and improvements that we look to address with our Editorial Board and our sponsoring organization, the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration (ACOSA; http://www.acosa.org) in the months ahead, we are now at point where it seems timely to reflect on our teamwork. Our submissions have increased along with our rejection rate; yet, we have a strong queue of manuscripts ready for our next volume, along with a backlog of book reviews. Our publisher, Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, continues to inform us that downloads of JCP articles continue at a very high rate for comparative journals in their fold, and the quality of published articles continues to grow stronger and more competitive. We remain a leading journal on community practice. Progress in building and growing this journal starts with the teamwork from our amazing ACOSA network and the bold work it has taken on to advance macro practice in social work education and practice. This ACOSA network provides us, not only with JCP sponsorship and financial backing, but with a vibrant membership base that draws from educators, scholars, students, and practitioners who contribute to the Journal. ACOSA is also at an important juncture in its growth and development, and the continued