Community Partners’ Satisfaction with Community-Based Learning Collaborations

Abstract

Community-university partnerships offer the potential for a number of mutual benefits, yet working with institutions of higher education can pose unique challenges for community participants. To better understand the community perspective, this paper explores community partners’ satisfaction with their involvement in various forms of community-based learning (e.g., service-learning, internships, community-based research). Drawn from a larger, mixed-methods study of community partners across 13 states, the current analysis assesses community agency representatives’ (N = 201) satisfaction with their community-university partnerships in general as well their satisfaction with specific elements of these collaborations. While the findings reflect generally positive levels of satisfaction overall, several areas of concern are identified, including communication with and presence of faculty, commitment and efficacy of students, and partnership equality and recognition of agency contributions. These findings provide a starting point for improving the community partner experience.