Preparing Students to Work with Community Partners

Community Partners (CPs) enhance the learning experience because students have the opportunity to work on real projects that positively impact the work of a local agency. To ensure students are prepared to successfully work with CPs, we have created these resources to help faculty and students.

Tips for Faculty:

  1. Use the Faculty CP Outreach Checklist (attached) to stay on track.

  2. Help students find a good fit. Students could ask themselves the following four questions: do they genuinely want me, will it meet my goals, do I have the knowledge, skills, and technology to complete this successfully, and will my work environment be safe?

  3. Negotiate the scope. Consider constraining the size of the project as much as possible. Advocacy can be overwhelming and intimidating, so having each student do the same type of project, such as a blog, video, or speech, will help scope the project. For example, students could create a 4 minute informational video about a nonprofit that highlights its mission.

  4. Share Interacting with Community Partners hand out with students (attached).

  5. Stay in touch with Community Partner throughout. Encourage students to share drafts of projects with CPs so they can receive and incorporate feedback. This will help mitigate the Partner's concern about a final product that does not represent them well.

  6. Give the CP veto power. If the students create a final product the Community Partner is not happy with, allow an open and frank conversation between the partner and students. Perhaps a solution is allowing the students to share in class, but not with a wider audience.

  7. Do no harm. Take care to “do no harm.” The community and the clientele are not a teaching or research laboratory. The notion of community as laboratory assumes a false hierarchy of power and perpetuates an attitude of institutional superiority. Basic goals of service-learning include community development and empowerment. For these goals to be realized, faculty and community must be equal, collaborative partners.

SL staff help connect faculty with community agencies, and often facilitate matches between course learning objectives and community needs. If you need help finding community partners, please contact KaraBrascia@boisestate.edu or call 426-2380.

To learn more about how you can positively connect with community partners, click here.