Community-engaged research, teaching, + service

In community-engaged research, community partners meaningfully participate in defining research questions, developing methodologies, gathering and analyzing data, and making meaning of findings. This collaborative approach draws on multiple forms of knowledge, including academic expertise and lived community experience, to produce research that is both rigorous and relevant.

Community-engaged research exists along a spectrum of involvement, from projects where community input shapes specific stages to fully community-driven investigations.

The reciprocal nature of engagement requires commitment to co-creation rather than simply obtaining consent or input. 

By involving community members as genuine collaborators, community-engaged researchers avoid what communities too often experience as extractive scholarship. 
 

Community-engaged research in social sciences, education, public health and public policy includes:

• Community-based participatory research (CBPR)
• Participatory action research (PAR)
• Patient-centered outcomes research
• Citizen science

These approaches position communities as knowledge partners who bring expertise about lived experiences, structural barriers, and local contexts that can fundamentally shape research questions, data collection, and the interpretation of findings.

In the arts and humanities, community engagement enriches our understanding of historical events, culture, language, literature, artifacts, and human experience. Community members serve as co-creators of interpretation and meaning. This collaborative approach generates knowledge and creative work that is with communities rather than about them. 

In fields like business, agriculture, engineering, and information science, community engagement integrates technical expertise with community knowledge about local contexts, implementation constraints, and real-world feasibility. Communities contribute essential understanding about how solutions will function in practice, what unintended consequences might emerge, and what defines success.

Scholarly products appropriate to community engaged scholarship reflect the public-facing, actionable nature of this work, while maintaining scholarly rigor. 

In addition to traditional peer-reviewed publications, deliverables include:

• Policy briefs
• Evaluation reports
• Toolkits
• Videos
• Exhibits
• Other formats designed to disseminate findings to both academic and community audiences
   

What distinguishes this approach is its commitment to reciprocity rather than service delivery. Community partners are educators who contribute knowledge and perspective, not merely sites for student placement. By positioning communities as knowledge holders, engaged teaching avoids what communities too often experience as projects done to them rather than with them.
 

Community partners meaningfully participate throughout the process, co-designing service activities that meet their needs and address learning objectives, co-facilitating student learning, and assessing outcomes. This collaborative approach integrates academic concepts with community expertise, producing learning that is both intellectually rigorous and practically relevant. 

Students engage directly with community members through activities like tutoring, mentoring, food delivery, adaptive sports coaching, or leading book clubs with older adults.

These are meaningful experiences for students in any major, developing interpersonal skills, empathy, cultural intelligence, and sense of social responsibility.  

IN PRACTICE

In SPAN374 Spanish in the Community, School of Languages, Literatures, and Culture (SLLC) students work alongside community partner Latino Student Fund, to provide free tutoring to students in the DMV. This partnership connects applied Spanish learning with meaningful tutoring support that meets critical community needs while strengthening university students' cultural competence.

Students create deliverables that support organizational needs, such as:

• Communications campaigns
• Marketing graphics
• Workshop facilitation
• Training curricula
• Business consulting
• Custom tools (e.g adaptive biomedical devices)

Also called client-based, project-based, or skills-based engagement, these can be powerful opportunities for students to use new knowledge and skills to address real challenges. Common in public health, design, education, engineering, and business.

IN PRACTICE

The INFO College's iConsultancy provides a diverse set of information-based services designed to meet business-critical problems while challenging students. Projects and student teams are overseen by professional and academic experts.

Community leaders, faculty, and students review existing research and/or collect local data to inform practice and policy. Examples include:

• Program evaluation
• Needs assessments
• Policy analysis
• Issue briefs
• Data visualization
• Geo-mapping

These projects address pressing community questions with systematic inquiry, while impressing on students the relevance and applicability of their emerging academic skills. Common in all the social sciences, education, public policy, and public health. 

IN PRACTICE

School of Public Policy's PLCY400 Senior Capstone students work in teams on problems and issues presented by outside clients, with guidance from faculty facilitators and interaction with the clients. Each team works with the client to address a particular problem and produce a mutually agreed upon outcome.

Faculty and students work with community members to share experiences and perspectives through projects like:

• Oral histories
• Digital stories
• Podcasts
• Photojournalism
• Arts-based exhibits
• Newsletter content
• Op-eds. 

These projects amplify community voices and are common in the arts, journalism, history, languages, ethnic and gender studies, and writing.

IN PRACTICE

In HIST 688A Collaborative Curation: The 1856 Project, graduate students worked along side the Lakeland Community Heritage Project (LCHP) and a key group of community curators, to develop a semester-long exhibition titled The Heart of the Table, an exploration into the Dory family and their legacy on campus and beyond. Through this collaboration, students gain experiential learning in ethical research and curation while enabling a local community to preserve, interpret, and share their own histories.

The Center for Community Engagement does not directly place individual students with community organizations. However, we can help you navigate the various placement programs available across the University of Maryland, including:

• Internships
• Clinical placements
• Practica
• Community-based Federal Work-Study placements

Each program has specific requirements that vary by academic discipline and accrediting body

Common requirements include:

• Minimum on-site hours for students
• Specific credentials or qualifications for community-based supervisors,
• Documentation or agreements between the university and your organization

As with other forms of engagement, service with communities external to the university could include local, state, or national government agencies, schools, nonprofits, or public serving efforts by for-profits. 

Faculty service in these spaces might involve collaboration on community boards or task forces to:

• Develop policies, practice guidelines, or reports
• Co-creating technical tools to build organization capacity
• Co-authoring grant proposals
• Providing leadership and specialized expertise on boards or councils, and many other activities
   

Community engagement in faculty service embodies the same principles and values as community engaged research and teaching, including reciprocity and collaborative partnerships where all partners contribute and benefit. 

Rather than one-way sharing of expertise, engaged service involves faculty and community partners working collaboratively to identify needs, co-design responses, and learn from each other’s knowledge.