Where Is the “Public” in Public Universities?

Introduction

There is significant discussion about the role of the modern research university.1 Many would agree that the core activities of a major research university are research, teaching, and service. On the research side, faculty and research staff must strive to advance science and knowledge so that the modern university contributes to our understanding of the complexities of the world. Faculty, lecturers, and graduate student instructors must also provide students with an exceptional learning environment. Finally, many would argue that the modern university must encourage faculty, staff, and students to engage in service that positively contributes to the life of the university, academia, and community.

Unfortunately, too many universities spend most of their time emphasizing research first, teaching second, and service last, if at all. This is particularly troubling for major public research universities, which have a responsibility to provide a public benefit to state taxpayers. I argue that research, teaching, and service do not have to be mutually exclusive or ranked hierarchically. Instead, public universities can and should take the lead in encouraging and institutionalizing research that involves the public in the process and results in a public good. One reason why this has been slow to happen is that universities are just beginning to discuss how community service can begin to be a significant part of the appointment, retention, promotion, and tenure review process. In California the state legislature crafted an assembly bill, AB 2132, which requested the University of California and California State University systems consider community service for the purposes of appointment, promotion, retention, and tenure review. Although this bill was vetoed by the governor as being “duplicative of existing systemwide policies that already identify service as a criterion for faculty reviews and personnel decisions,” it did attract media attention and led to discussions at California's public universities.2

One way for public research universities to fulfill their mission is to promote, encourage, and facilitate participatory action research (PAR) among academic researchers, students, and the community. PAR is a research practice that involves academics, practitioners, and community residents as equal partners or collaborators in the research process—from the early stages of design and development, to data gathering and analysis, to the final conclusions and actions of the research.3 PAR is fundamentally concerned with solving a “real world” problem or set of problems in order to make positive changes through practice, policies, and in communities. Moreover, as Baum, MacDougall, and Smith argue, PAR is a “reflective process [that] is directly linked to action, influenced by understanding of history, culture, and local context and [is] embedded in social relationships,” which ultimately enables people to have control over their lives.4

One area where PAR is particularly important and relevant is in the area of environmental justice.5 A number of research studies have shown that PAR is appropriate for collaborating with communities to study and address environmental health related issues and to inform public policy.6 The partnership between West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT) and Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) is an example. Another example is the Southern California Environmental Justice Collaborative a partnership among nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, and researchers from Brown University, Occidental College, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.7

Although the concept of PAR seems straightforward, its execution can be challenging. First, universities do not value PAR in the tenure process the way they value research that includes people as subjects to be studied rather than as active, equal participants in the research process. This is beginning to change as more universities are beginning to have discussions about ways to incorporate this type of work into the tenure, promotion, and appointment process.8 Second, PAR projects are not quick or easy; successful partnerships require building social relationships and understanding all partners' abilities and interests in the project. Finally, academics and community partners may have divergent expectations and interests. Many academics are motivated to conduct research that can be published in peer-reviewed journals, which is key criterion for tenure and promotion. Practitioners are most interested in discrete research that can solve problems and improve the lives of people and communities.

Despite these challenges, it is possible to conduct high quality community-based research in concert with advocates and community members by focusing on five key issues—conducting research that is centered around community engagement and citizen participation, involving community members as equal and valued partners, bridging the gap between academia and community, engaging in a collaborative process that encourages working together and leads to the production of quality research, and focusing on research and policy that leads to institutional change within the university and academia more broadly.

Research Centered Around Community Engagement and Citizen Participation

It is important for academics to identify the problem or set of problems they wish to solve when designing a research project. The research problem may not always be apparent at first glance or in the initial stages of designing a research project, which is why it is critical for academics to reach out to practitioners and community members to be partners in the research process. More often than not, local practitioners or community members are familiar with the challenges and limitations their communities face and can accurately and thoughtfully articulate these challenges. This involves them prioritizing the needs and challenges within the community that should be addressed. Moreover, community residents and local practitioners possess local knowledge that outsiders may not have which allows them to have a strong sense of the action needed to improve their lives and community.9 Therefore, it is essential to start any PAR project by deeply engaging the potentially impacted community and involving community members in the research design process.

This kind of deep engagement should consist of at least having an understanding of the history, culture, and social and political dynamics of a particular neighborhood or community. This is likely to require, but is not limited to, academics attending community meetings, meeting with local residents and leaders, making public presentations within the community about the proposed research and gathering feedback, and including practitioners and community members in the budgets of research grants so that they too are compensated for their community work and contribution to the research project. Through this process of community engagement academics will be able to identify the most appropriate practitioners and community members to form a partnership with on a specific research project. Having a deep understanding of the multiple perspectives of a particular issue and place is critical and can enhance the quality of a community-based PAR project.

But community engagement is not enough to help a PAR project to be successful by itself. Academics must also include community members in the research process. This means academics must allow practitioners and community members to help define the research project, contribute to research instruments (such as surveys or questionnaires), and be active participants in the data gathering, analysis, and defining the action steps needed to make positive changes within the community.

Involving Community Members as Equal and Valued Partners

It is also critical to include practitioners and community members as equal and valued partners in the PAR process. Too often academics view themselves as the only real “expert” in the research design process and ignore the local knowledge, experience, and skill set of community residents10 to the disadvantage of the research project. Involving practitioners and community members as equal and valued research partners helps improve the sharpness and usefulness of the research project in several ways.11 First, as mentioned earlier, most practitioners/community partners are more familiar with the critical problems that exist within the community compared to academic outsiders. For example, in community development research, local residents have a great understanding of the history, culture, and political and social dynamics of a particular neighborhood or community. This local knowledge provides academics with a better understanding of the issue or challenge they are trying to research and solve. In addition to local knowledge, community residents understand the history of a place and the power dynamics among the key leaders and community organizations.

Second, involving practitioners and community members as valued and equal partners in the research process is beneficial because it can add another layer of legitimacy to the research project. The same way academics bring a certain level of legitimacy to an issue or research project, so do practitioners and community partners. Their involvement can help academics reach out to populations who otherwise may be missed or would be unwilling to participate in the study without a known community member “vouching” for the research project. Involving practitioners and community partners may also encourage a greater share of the local population to be willing to answer questions openly and honestly. Moreover, the involvement of practitioners and community partners can strengthen the relevance and specificity of research questions and improve data collection through surveys or interviews. For example, in a research project with colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley, University of California—San Francisco, Mercy Housing (a nonprofit developer), and Related Companies of California (a for-profit developer) around the revitalization of Sunnydale, San Francisco's largest public housing project; we are including community residents and stakeholders in the research design and data collection process.12 This is particularly important because a significant percentage of Sunnydale residents are non-native English speakers, so cultural competency and language translation is critical.13

Finally, in many situations, academics conduct research on a community and not with a community, which results in the university researcher having full control of the data and analysis. Involving practitioners and community members as equal and valued partners in PAR improves the democratic process by allowing them to have ownership over the data and how the data is used. This results in local residents having more control over their lives.

If strong, genuine partnerships are to be formed between academics and practitioners/community members, then power dynamics must also be addressed. This means that each partner understands the role and position they play in the research project. This also requires that each partner openly address any issues related to bias (based on factors such as race/ethnicity, class, outsider vs. insider).

Bridging the Gap between Academia and Community

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of community-based PAR is bridging the cultural gap between academia and community. Universities are large institutions with their own culture, language, values, and defined space, with a mission loosely defined around research, teaching, and service. From a non-university community resident perspective, universities may appear to be “black boxes,” or even worse, elite ivory towers of privilege.

From a typical academic perspective, communities and community residents are places and people to be studied or examined. Academics often view communities and community residents, especially those communities that are low-income or of color, as places and people who need to be corrected, influenced, helped, guided, or improved. In particular, there can be very little understanding about the local dynamics facing communities of color beyond what is reported in the popular media. Unfortunately the media coverage in low-resourced vulnerable communities or communities of color tends to cover a disproportionate amount of negative news that demonizes them.14

In order to bridge the large cultural gap that exists between academia/universities and community, it is important to break down the stereotypes, values, and language associated with each of these terms. Although this is not an easy task, especially given the increased budget deficits that public universities are facing, an effective way to do this is for universities to encourage faculty, staff, and students to learn the methodologies of and conduct community-based PAR scholarship. Institutionalizing university support for PAR would mean that PAR is valued in the tenure and promotion process, classes are taught in partnership with community members and organizations, and long-term partnerships with communities and community members are formed in which community members have access to the university as visiting community scholars.

Encouraging Co-Production of Quality Research

The co-production of research is another important factor in contributing to high quality partnerships and research. Collaborations between academics and practitioners/community members should enable each to own the data equally and produce the results together. Co-ownership and co-production can be done in several ways. Both academics and practitioners/community partners should present research findings together when possible and in different types of settings ranging from universities to community organizations.

Academics and practitioners and community partners should co-author reports and articles that are published through mainstream venues and peer-reviewed journals, as well. Co-authorship is important for a few reasons. First, by co-producing the research findings, co-authorship levels the playing field between academics and practitioners and community partners. Specifically, the co-production of research helps lessen the distinction between university “expert” knowledge and “non-scientific” practitioner or community knowledge. Second, it provides an opportunity to share the research findings with a larger audience. Too often academic-led research is confined to a small cadre of the same type of researchers and journals. Findings may not be widely disseminated across a diverse group of actors such as researchers, policymakers, practitioners, business, and community residents. Practitioner or community member-led research suffers from a similar problem. Much of this research is limited to the nonprofit and foundation community. Neither bodies of research are linked to the greater body of knowledge that exists on the particular subject matter.

Consequently, the limitations of both academic and practitioner/community-led research demonstrate that it is more valuable, and results can be more effectively shared, if PAR is co-produced. This results in a broader dissemination of the research findings to a diverse group of people, ultimately improving the awareness and potential solution to the problem(s), all of which can lead to greater positive community change via policy or practice.

Moving Forward

A significant challenge to promoting and encouraging PAR, especially community-based PAR, is changing the institutional culture of higher education. Currently, higher education does not reward PAR the way it rewards more traditional academic research. If PAR is to be mainstreamed and accepted by the academy, research foundations, and large research institutions such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), or other government-led agencies, more universities must encourage and support it. They can do this is a number of ways. First, as mentioned earlier, universities could require faculty participate in community-engaged scholarship in one form or another. This could require faculty, staff, and students to get involved with local communities and community organizations as partners in the university research, teaching, and service process.

In addition, universities could encourage and accept co-publication and production of research between academics and practitioners and community members. The acceptance of co-produced research would do a great deal to change university culture and help to break down barriers between those with “expert” knowledge and those with “non-scientific” but practical knowledge. The acceptance of the co-production of research and publication between academics and practitioners and community members would also make it more acceptable for government funding agencies to provide grants for PAR.

Finally, if university-community relationships are to fundamentally change, universities, especially public universities, must acknowledge that they have a responsibility to the public to provide solutions to public issues. Universities could institutionalize PAR by giving it weight in the faculty tenure process, offer more methodology courses at the graduate and undergraduate level that teaches it, or provide research funding that supports PAR efforts. At a time when tuition increases have risen dramatically over the last two decades, it is important to show the public that universities provide a great benefit to society, and one way to do this is to engage community in a more meaningful way when designing and implementing research.

Conclusion

Research that is conducted solely for the sake of research is extremely limited. The tools of PAR can improve the quality of research as well as ensure that research conducted has meaningful real world consequences. However, PAR presents its challenges. As discussed above, there are a number of strategies that should be encouraged in order to promote high quality research between academics and practitioners and community members, and to effectively address those challenges. Specifically, by conducting research that is centered around community engagement and citizen participation, involving community members as equal and valued partners, bridging the gap between academia and community, engaging in a collaborative process that encourages working together that leads to the production of quality research, and finally by focusing on research and policy that leads to institutional change within the university and academia more broadly, academics will be able to research complex problems in a way that is both meaningful to academia and to the community at large.