engaging students and community in urban environmental...

Engaging students and community in urbanenvironmental sustainability: CommUniverCity San JoseHilary Nixon1 and Dayana Salazar2

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect

Critical components for achieving urban environmental

sustainability are the collaborations between urban universities

and their surrounding communities. This paper critically

examines CommUniverCity San Jose, a unique

multidimensional partnership driven by community priorities,

through the lens of two, highly successful, long-term projects

that have resulted in significant positive change in the urban

environment both in terms of the direct, tangible impact on the

local community, as well as broader policy change in one of the

largest cities in the U.S.

Addresses1 Department of Urban & Regional Planning, One Washington Square,

San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192, United States2 San Jose State University, CommUniverCity, One Washington Square,

San Jose, CA 95192, United States

Corresponding author: Nixon, Hilary ([email protected])

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2015, 17:1–9

This review comes from a themed issue on System dynamics and

sustainability

Edited by Stephanie Pincetl, Laxmi Ramasubramanian

For a complete overview see the Issue and the Editorial

Received 08 September 2014; Revised 17 March 2015; Accepted 15

June 2015

Available online 17th July 2015

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2015.06.007

1877-3435/# 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

IntroductionCollaborations between universities and urban commu-

nities have been called ‘crucial’ for ‘achieving success in

urban sustainability’ [1]. This paper critically examines

CommUniverCity San Jose, a unique multidimensional

partnership driven by community priorities, through the

lens of two, highly successful, long-term projects that

have resulted in significant positive change in the urban

environment both in terms of the direct, tangible impact

on the local community, as well as broader policy change

in one of the largest cities in the U.S.

A multidimensional partnership driven bycommunity prioritiesCommUniverCity San Jose is a higher education–com-

munity–government partnership that engages San Jose

State University students and faculty to work closely with

www.sciencedirect.com

historically disadvantaged inner-city communities and

local government agencies to address the community

development priorities defined by those who are most

directly affected by decision making processes: neighbor-

hood residents. Unlike most campus service-learning or

community-engaged learning programs that tend to form

between two partners (typically the college or university

and the community where the work is taking place),

CommUniverCity is multidimensional, comprising three

equal partners: the City of San Jose, San Jose State

University, and the communities located within approxi-

mately 1.5 miles of the campus.

Located in the heart of San Jose, the 10th largest city in

the U.S., San Jose State University (SJSU) has a long

tradition of service dating back to its origins as a teachers

college in 1857, and a mission to provide access to higher

education to a highly diverse, largely working class stu-

dent population (two thirds of SJSU students are racial

and ethnic minorities). SJSU is part of the 23-campus

California State University System where community

service and service learning has long been recognized

as a valuable component of the higher education experi-

ence for students (Center for Community Engagement;

URL: http://www.calstate.edu/cce/about_us/). In 2000,

the Board of Trustees passed a resolution that called

for every campus to ensure that students have opportu-

nities to engage in community service and/or service-

learning and encouraged (but did not mandate) campuses

to make service an ‘expectation, condition, or require-

ment for the undergraduate-education experience’ (CSU

Board of Trustees Resolution; URL: http://www.calstate.

edu/cce/documents/Trustees_Resolutions.pdf).

CommUniverCity emerged in 2005 out of San Jose State

University’s growing support of community engaged

learning (also known as service learning, a form of expe-

riential education in which students engage in activities

that address community needs together with structured

opportunities intentionally designed to promote learning

and development [2]), the City of San Jose’s commitment

to become more responsive to its residents, and a local

community with both a strong leadership base and signif-

icant challenges.

CommUniverCity is part of a rapidly growing constella-

tion of academia-community partnerships that respond to

calls for an engaged university that brings its significant

resources to bear in addressing the most pressing civic,

social, economic and ethical issues of our times [3–7].


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http://www.calstate.edu/cce/about_us/

http://www.calstate.edu/cce/documents/Trustees_Resolutions.pdf

http://www.calstate.edu/cce/documents/Trustees_Resolutions.pdf

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18773435

2 System dynamics and sustainability

Universities are increasingly adopting Dewey’s proposi-

tion that ‘democracy must begin at home, and its home is

the neighborly community’ [8].

Although civic engagement — largely driven by service

learning — is widely seen as a key element of the higher

education mission in the U.S. and internationally, [9–12]

much of the scholarship and research on service learning

in the context of community–university partnerships has

been done through the lens of academia, focusing on its

impact on traditional academic content and skills, as well

as ‘socially responsive knowledge’ and commitment to

civic service and engagement. Growing evidence suggests

that students benefit more from service than do commu-

nities [13–23].

There is also a growing recognition that academic institu-

tions, which are designed to be highly self-referential, are

not fully prepared to engage in the collaborative, cooper-

ative relationships required to face the complex societal

issues that higher education–community partnerships set

out to address. This work requires multidimensional

relationships that are inclusive, enabling participation

of multiple sectors of society [4,11,24–27].

CommUniverCity’s multidimensional, community driv-

en partnership model provides an alternative to the

growing criticism that community engaged learning part-

nerships are developed primarily to meet the needs of

Figure 1

EN G A

COM

MU

NI

TY

COMMU

UNIVERSITY

BUILDCOMMU

Curren

CommUniverCity’s multi-sectoral partnership model.


academia, without much careful thought given to whether

they meet the genuine needs of the community, and the

positive — or negative — impact the partnerships have

on the non-academic partners [4,16,26,28��,29–35,36�,37–46]. It addresses the need to respond directly to genuine

community priorities and ensure accountability between

all of the partners. Ten years ago, CommUniverCity set

out to develop and maintain a multi sector partnership

structured to maximize community impact based on an

interdependent, equal relationship, where partners are

committed to develop a common agenda, and also share

responsibility, decision making power and rewards. The

partnership rests on the three-way interaction among

communities, the university, and local government. In

the zone where all the sectors interact they work together,

collectively accomplish their goals, and build community

(see Figure 1) [32,47].

In order to establish and grow this multi sectoral recipro-

cal partnership, CommUniverCity employs a distributed

network leadership model — rather than a more conven-

tional centralized organizational leadership model — that

is integrated throughout the entire organization [48�]. A

management team composed of a city, a university and a

community director reports to CommUniverCity’s Steer-

ing Committee with representatives from the community

(including grassroots groups, community benefit orga-

nizations, local schools, businesses and the faith commu-

nity), the university (including administrators, students,

G ED

LE

AR

NI

NG

NITY

CITY

INGNITY

t Opinion in Environmental Sustainability


Engaging students & community in urban environment sustainability Nixon and Salazar 3

faculty and staff) and government (including city and

county agencies). On the field, the project teams mirror

this structure with a project director (typically a SJSU

faculty member) and representatives from the communi-

ty at large and from government.

Departing from the approach of doing for the community

found more commonly in higher education–community

partnerships [26,32,37], CommUniverCity employs a

community-centered approach (doing with the communi-

ty), where its work is driven by community priorities, with

residents taking the role of co-teachers and co-learners

alongside with the academic partners. With the firm

understanding that the community and all partners have

much to teach, CommUniverCity engages a broad, rep-

resentative segment of the community in an ongoing

assessment of its strengths and needs, and in priority

setting that informs the implementation of the commu-

nity engaged learning projects.

CommUniverCity has also shifted the center of gravity for

evaluating impact from a focus on the academic to the

community side, maintaining a primary focus on the

community in measuring outcomes and gauging success.

Outcomes assessment methods include neighborhood-

wide longitudinal social capital surveys, annual door-to-

door resident surveys, analysis of changing trends in

agency and school data, an ethnographic evaluation of

the partnership [49��], and pre-project and post-project

surveys of community participants. A social capital survey

in 2006 and 2011 of over 600 households in the neighbor-

hoods indicated that cooperative efforts by formal institu-

tions and neighborhood residents have increased trust

and civic participation in the community [50��]. The

survey instrument was based on the social capital com-

munity survey developed by Robert Putnam and The

Saguaro Seminar [51]. It was administered in the Five

Wounds/Brookwood Terrace (FWBT) neighborhood

where CommUniverCity first engaged with the commu-

nity as well as a control neighborhood (East Valley) with

similar demographic characteristics as FWBT but where

there is no similar organization actively engaging with

local residents. Survey results indicated a significant

increase in social capital as evidenced in higher levels

of civic participation as well as trust among people in

general, toward their neighbors, the police, and members

of different racial and ethnic groups in 2011 compared to

2006 and compared to the control neighborhood.

An ecology of community engaged learningprojectsOrganizing an average of 50 community based projects

that engage over 1200 university students and 5000 resi-

dents each year, CommUniverCity has created an ‘ecolo-

gy of projects’ [49��] designed to address the community

development priorities identified by the partner neigh-

borhoods. Project structures vary ranging from short-term


projects embedded as a component of a semester-long

course to long-term, multi-year projects that involve

multiple courses and faculty working collaboratively to

address the community priority. Students enrolled in the

specific courses working on CommUniverCity projects

receive academic credit; in addition, SJSU students are

hired on a part-time basis to serve as project coordinators

often serving as key liaisons between the project stake-

holders. Each new community project must first be

reviewed by a committee composed of university, city

and community representatives who determine whether

the purpose, scope, structure and evaluation process of

the project fit neighborhood priorities and CommUniver-

City’s own community-engaged learning process. Fund-

ing to support CommUniverCity comes from three

primary sources: one-third from SJSU, one-third from

the City of San Jose, and one-third from grant support

and private donations.

Among the 350 projects completed since 2005, two sus-

tainability-related projects deserve special attention as

exemplars of CommUniverCity’s brand of community–academia partnership, given their multi sector approach,

response to community priorities, and significant tangible

impact on the local community. These projects, Five

Wounds Urban Villages and Growing Sustainably, ad-

dress environmental and policy changes though transit

oriented development and urban agriculture.

Village planning: engaging the community inthe planning processAs part of a planned extension of the Bay Area Rapid

Transit (BART) system, a new transit station will be built

in Five Wounds, one of the Central San Jose neighbor-

hoods where CommUniverCity works. The original plan

for the station was a large surface parking lot with virtually

no connection to the surrounding neighborhood, leading

to increased traffic and not supporting community goals

around transit-oriented development. Community mem-

bers were unhappy with the plan, but did not have the

resources to effectively advocate for a more inclusive and

sustainability-focused plan. CommUniverCity led a team

of community members, students, and faculty to re-envi-

sion the station plan to create a vibrant mixed use and

pedestrian-oriented development. Multiple community

workshops were held, including youth-only and Spanish-

speaking-only workshops. The initial focus of these work-

shops was to develop a shared community vision for the

station and surrounding area. After an initial vision was

established, CommUniverCity convened a community

task force, supported by students and faculty, to advocate

for the community’s plan and ensure that the community

goals for walkable, transit-oriented development was

formalized in city policies.

Concurrent with this community planning process led by

CommUniverCity, the City of San Jose was in the process



Figure 2

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability

Community meeting to discuss the five wounds urban village plan and the original concept plan by CommUniverCity.

of updating their General Plan. One of the major strategies

included in the Plan was ‘Urban Villages’ (City of San Jose;

URL: http://www.sanjoseca.gov/index.aspx?NID=1736).

The idea behind the urban villages strategy is to direct

housing and job growth into designated areas of the city

that could be developed into walkable, mixed-use urban

communities, key factors known to support urban sustain-

ability. As the City began to develop the first urban village

plan, they drew heavily from the plan created by the

CommUniverCity partnership and the Five Wounds Ur-

ban Village Plan, approved by the city council in Novem-

ber 2013, became the first of 70 urban village plans to be

developed in San Jose (see Figure 2). This participatory

planning effort earned CommUniverCity the Environ-

mental Organization of the Year award from the Santa

Clara County League of Conservation Voters in 2013.

A key component of the Five Wounds Village Plan is the

conversion of an abandoned railway that runs through the

neighborhood into a multi-use trail that will connect all

corners of the neighborhood to the future BART station.

Initially under the leadership of CommUniverCity, this

rails-to-trails project has energized the local community

and led to the establishment of ‘Friends of Five Wounds

Trail,’ a grassroots group that advocates for the develop-

ment of the trail, and its connection to the regional, San

Francisco Bay area wide trail system (see Figure 3). The

Friends of Five Wounds Trail group holds meetings while

walking along the railway, which is currently being used

as a trail. Their advocacy work has resulted in formal

inclusion of the trail in the San Jose’s latest General Plan.

Although these land use planning, policy and advocacy

projects have brought attention to a part of the city that


has been largely neglected in the past, it has become clear

to all project partners that the work would not be done

until the trail, the commuter rail station, and the urban

villages are built. Therefore, the greatest challenge lies in

keeping not only the university but also the grassroots

organizations engaged as advocates in a development

process that will take more than a decade.

This commitment to remain engaged for the long haul

was tested in late 2014 when the local transit agency

announced plans to remove the Five Wounds station

from the BART Silicon Valley extension. The ‘Five

Wounds Village Watchdog Team,’ a community group

that was created to oversee implementation of the

project, quickly responded by organizing and building

coalitions to put pressure on the transit agency to keep

the original plans for the station at the neighborhood.

The original university partners, however, have been

mostly absent from these public advocacy efforts, sig-

naling the difficulty in keeping faculty and students

engaged in projects that span well beyond the academic

term.

As of this writing, the Five Wounds BART station is back

on the commuter rail extension plans, largely due to the

work of the community advocates. In addition, the link

between the university and the community watchdog

group has been maintained by an emeritus SJSU Political

Science faculty member who is also a resident of the

neighborhood, founding director of CommUniverCity,

and active member in campus and civic organizations.

He has become a ‘super-bridger’ [49��] who builds and

maintains vertical and horizontal connections across and

within institutions and groups.


http://www.sanjoseca.gov/index.aspx?NID=1736


Figure 3


SJSU students and faculty participate in five wounds trail clean-up event.

Growing sustainably: promotingenvironmental and policy change throughurban agricultureThe neighborhoods where CommUniverCity focuses are

predominantly low income and a significant share of the

population lives more than ½ mile from the nearest

supermarket. One of the first tasks CommUniverCity

undertakes when beginning work with a neighborhood

is to conduct an extensive neighborhood planning pro-

cess, usually in cooperation with faculty and students in

the Department of Urban & Regional Planning at SJSU.

A key outcome of this process is the development of a list

of neighborhood priorities. A major concern of local

residents was lack of access to healthy food and a desire

to increase production and consumption of fresh, healthy

food in the neighborhood. Out of this community priority,

Growing Sustainably was established with a goal to pro-

mote both concrete, physical environmental change in

the neighborhood related to food access and also to

advocate for policy change at the city-level.

Before the development of Silicon Valley, San Jose was a

major agricultural community and remnants of that his-

tory remain with numerous fruit trees scattered through-

out backyards citywide. Unfortunately, much of the fruit

goes uneaten. Recognizing an opportunity to get fresh,

locally grown fruit into the mouths of hungry residents,

community members approached CommUniverCity to

assist with the establishment of a gleaning program. One

of the first challenges the group faced was how to organize

the program, particularly as it related to liability concerns


from gleaning on private property. Law students from

Stanford University, in collaboration with urban planning

students at SJSU developed program guidelines, includ-

ing detailed legal documents. The next challenge was to

identify residents with fruit trees willing to participant in

the gleaning program and community volunteers to help

pick the fruit. Working with community leaders, faculty

and students from nutrition and food sciences, justice

studies, political science, and other departments at SJSU

conducted this outreach work. Since 2012, the ‘Neigh-

borhood Fruit Pickers’ program has donated over 20,000

pounds of fresh fruit annually to local food programs. The

program has expanded from the original neighborhood to

serving most of Central San Jose with team leaders

coordinating gleans on a weekly basis in their local

neighborhood.

Central San Jose has a varied housing mix with a combi-

nation of single-family dwellings and larger apartment

complexes. Residents of the latter often lack space to

garden and grow their own vegetables. Through Growing

Sustainably, SJSU students and community members

worked together to establish a neighborhood gardens

program where homeowners with space provide an area

where apartment residents can garden (see Figure 4).

Garden education is provided to participants and an

informal ‘sharing economy’ has been established where

gardeners share excess produce with each other and their

neighbors. Similar to the Neighborhood Fruit Pickers

program, Stanford law students developed the necessary

legal documents to ensure that issues related to liability



Figure 4


Front yard converted to shared neighborhood garden.

and program management would be clearly spelled out in

the gardening agreement. Although establishing the ini-

tial group of shared gardens was a challenge, we have seen

an increase in homeowners converting their front yards to

garden space and the number of residents growing their

own food has increased significantly.

Similar to the shared residential gardens, some of the

smaller apartment complexes in the neighborhood have

also participated in Growing Sustainably’s neighborhood

garden program. Complex owners agreed to have Com-

mUniverCity convert an unused area into shared garden

Figure 5

Apartment garden before and after.


space for residents (see Figure 5). Surveys of residents

before-and-after indicate that they have increased con-

sumption of fresh vegetables and, as an unintended

benefit, they experience better relations with their neigh-

bors as a result of increased contact through tending the

garden area.

CommUniverCity’s projects do not always succeed, how-

ever. One of the neighborhood gardens at a local apart-

ment complex saw early successes for the first two years,

but as water rates in San Jose rose, the apartment manager

closed the garden despite willingness from the residents




to pay for the additional water costs. A key lesson learned

from this experience is the importance of working closely

with all stakeholders and identifying potential problems

and solutions well in advance.

The local environmental changes brought about by the

Growing Sustainably project are significant and impor-

tant, but influencing policy change at a broader level is an

important component of the work CommUniverCity

does. In partnership with a local non-profit, Garden To

Table, that grew directly out of the Growing Sustainably

project, CommUniverCity has successfully advocated for

several improvements to the urban agriculture policies for

the 10th largest city in the U.S. Agricultural activities,

including urban farms, are now permitted in commercial-

zoned and industrial-zoned areas of the city with no

additional permitting requirements. The team is current-

ly working on the implementation of a state law, AB 551,

that would authorize the establishment of urban agricul-

ture incentive zones where property owners could receive

reduced property taxes through partnerships with small

urban farms. In addition, Garden To Table is working

directly with the Neighborhood Fruit Pickers program

and the County of Santa Clara to permit the sale of

backyard, gleaned produce at local corner stores. For

neighborhoods with limited access to grocery stores,

having access to low cost fresh fruit nearby would benefit

residents.

A transformative partnershipIncreasingly assuming the role of steward of a thriving

community, San Jose State University has begun to erase

the boundaries that keep the university and the commu-

nity separate and foster significant, long-term improve-

ments to the urban environment. By realizing the

indistinguishable consequences of ‘what affects me

affects the wider community, and what affects the wider

community affects me,’ the university has engaged in a

deep reciprocal relationship with its community and

government partners [52].

Local communities and government agencies are increas-

ingly looking to CommUniverCity to provide crucial

support to neighborhoods in the aftermath of the deepest

economic crisis in over 70 years for both the City of San

Jose and the State of California. This load transfer away

from government to local institutions, including higher

education, has made community members increasingly

look to the university to mobilize resources, create social

capital and engage in neighborhood revitalization and

environmental stewardship. CommUniverCity has thus

become well known in the world of community service

providers and policy makers in the Silicon Valley region.

CommUniverCity has nurtured a partnership where sta-

keholders are transformed through their relationship with

each other [34,53]. Faculty and students are no longer


dispassionate observers in the arena of high stake land use

policy decisions — they join the forces of the community

to advocate for sound decisions that will affect our envi-

ronment for generations to come. Community members

are increasingly confident about calling on their academic

partners when the outcomes of their projects deviate from

the original direction set by the community. City agencies

are learning to work with academic partners and trans-

cending the time-bound and professional and organiza-

tional barriers that kept them apart. This

multidimensional relationship is one of interdependence

where partners contribute experience and knowledge and

share control of the direction of the partnership.

The partnership, however, is not without challenges.

Having evolved with a loosely structured organizational

framework, the partnership relies heavily for its long

term sustainability on the work of ‘super bridgers,’ a

small cadre of deeply committed, charismatic individu-

als (primarily university faculty, community residents

and city staff) who are skilled at making connections

across institutional boundaries and highly diverse con-

stituencies [49��]. The critical process of identifying and

grooming the next generation of ‘super bridgers’ for

CommUniverCity has proved elusive at best, placing

the partnership at risk of losing essential connections

and institutional memory should key stakeholders leave

the organization.

Moreover, high level institutional support for the part-

nership fluctuates with top leadership changes at both the

university and local government, making it depend even

more on its grassroots, decentralized nature. The closely

knit, reciprocal relationships that are forged between

community residents, faculty, and staff from community

serving organizations and local government agencies

while developing long term projects are key to ensuring

the success and sustainability of these efforts in the long

run. Although cross sector collaborations are difficult to

create and maintain it is worth taking the time to explore

them in order to deal more effectively with complex

societal and environmental issues that spill over sectoral

boundaries.

CommUniverCity may appear to be the result of a perfect

storm, though its essential ingredients can be found in

most urban centers: a willing residential community, an

institution of higher education, local government agen-

cies, local businesses, and community serving organiza-

tions. Terry Christensen and Melinda Jackson, [54�] two

SJSU faculty members actively engaged in the partner-

ship provide a list of essential components to establish an

effective community–city–university collaboration, Com-

mUniverCity-style:

� Look for an existing community or neighborhood

organization to work with so that residents can be



involved in the selection and implementation of

projects.

� Reach out to someone in city government for support: a

mayor or city manager or district council representative.

� Reach out to schools, community colleges or universi-

ties. A single faculty member could start with his or her

own service learning projects, but it would be best to

find a few colleagues with whom to collaborate, simply

by concentrating projects in a selected neighborhood.

� Reach out to potential partnering organizations.

CommUniverCity’s partners include the school dis-

trict, and community benefit and faith based organiza-

tions that work on health, environment, affordable

housing, and education.

� Set a priority-setting exercise with the community.

Residents could develop broad project priorities at a

single workshop or faculty could simply take project

proposals to the community organization for approval

(and buy-in).

� Like so much that we do in community development

and academia, this can be done with the sweat equity of

those involved, but success is most likely with some

staffing, including an executive director, a community

director, university students and volunteers (such as

volunteers placed with AmeriCorps, a program of the

National Corporation for Service) — but it does not

have to cost a lot of money.

Despite some challenges facing CommUniverCity, the

model has proven to be effective and the potential for

replication by other institutions is high. In the area of

urban sustainability, the CommUniverCity approach has

been extremely successful, with significant direct envi-

ronmental improvements to the local communities where

CommUniverCity works, included increased access to

health food and the establishment of community recrea-

tional opportunities and transit-oriented development, as

well as broad policy impacts affecting the entire City of

San Jose.

AcknowledgementsCommUniverCity’s urban agriculture and land use policy work examined inthis article was funded in part with a grant by The Health Trust. Thegeneral operation of the organization is funded by San Jose State University,the City of San Jose and contributions from the United Way Silicon Valleyand Pacific Gas and Electric Company. We would also like to thank the twoanonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments and suggestionsthat improved the final article.

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25. Harkavy I: In Foreward In Building Partnerships for Service-learning. Edited by Jacoby B, Associates. Jossey-Bass; 2003:xi-xv.


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26. Jones SR: Principles and profiles of exemplary partnershipswith community agencies. In Building Partnerships for Service-Learning. Edited by Jacoby B, Associates. Jossey-Bass; 2003.

27. Torres J: Benchmarks for Campus/community Partnerships.Campus Compact; 2000.

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Stoecker R, Tryon EA, Hilgendorf A: The Unheard Voices:Community Organizations and Service Learning. Temple UniversityPress; 2009.

This study responds to an evolving critique of community–universitypartnerships’ centeredness on the benefits to academia by, instead,examining the impact on service agencies hosting college students inservice learning activities. The study found a mixed bag of benefits andchallenges for service agencies engaged in service learning. The authorsissue a call to extend beyond self-referential studies that focus on studentoutcomes to carefully examine the impact of community–university part-nerships on community partners.

29. Sandy M, Holland BA: Different worlds and common ground:community partner perspectives on campus–communitypartnerships. Michigan J Community Service Learning 2006,13:30-43.

30. Fitch P: In their own voices: a mixed methods approach tostudying outcomes of intercultural service-learning withcollege students. In Improving Service-learning Practice:Research on Models to Enhance Impacts. Edited by Root S,Callahan J, Billing SH. Information Age; 2005:187-214.

31. Reed VA, Jernstedt GC, Hawley JK, Reber ES, DuBois CA: Effectsof a small-scale, very short-term service-learning experienceon college students. J Adolesc 2005, 28:359-368.

32. Gelmon SB: Assessment as a means of building service-learning partnerships. In Building Partnerships for Service-Learning. Edited by Jacoby B, Associates. Jossey-Bass; 2003.

33. Strand K, Cuthforth R, Stoecker R, Marullo S, Donohue P:Community-based Research in Higher Education: Principles andPractices. Jossey-Bass; 2003.

34. Enos S, Morton K: Developing a theory and practice of campus–community partnerships. In Building Partnerships for Service-Learning. Edited by Jacoby B, Associates. Jossey-Bass; 2003.

35. Brown DM: Pulling It Together: A Method for Developing Service-learning and Community Partnerships Based in Critical Pedagogy.Corporation for National Service; 2001.

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Cruz NA, Giles DEJ: Where’s the community in service-learningresearch? Michigan J Community Service Learning 2000.Special:28–34.

The authors call attention to the dearth of community-focused research inservice learning, and offer a participatory action research model toexamine the process and outcomes of community service-learningfocused on the community–university partnership as the unit of analysis.

37. Ward K, Wolf-Wendel L: Community-centered servicelearning — moving from doing for to doing with. Am BehavScientist 2000, 43:767-780.

38. Marullo S, Edwards B: Editors’ introduction — service-learningpedagogy as universities’ response to troubled times. AmBehav Scientist 2000, 43:746-755.

39. Astin AW: Promoting leadership, service, and democracy: whathigher education can do. In Colleges and Universities asCitizens. Edited by Bringle RG, Games R, Malloy EA. Allyn andBacon; 1999. xiv, 210 p.

40. Eby JW: Why Service-learning Is Bad. Messiah College; 1998.

41. Aspen Institute: Voices From the Field: Learning From the EarlyWork of Comprehensive Community Initiatives. Aspen Institute;1997.


42. Kahne J, Westheimer J: In the service of what? The politics ofservice learning. Phi Delta Kappan 1996, 77:592-599.

43. Bringle RG, Hatcher JA: Implementing service learning in highereducation. J Higher Educ 1996, 67:221-239.

44. Driscoll A, Holland BA, Gelmon S, Kerrigan S: As assessmentmodel for service-learning: comprehensive case studies ofimpact on faculty, students, community, and institutions.Michigan J Community Service Learning 1996, 3:66-71.

45. Morton K: The irony of service: charity, project and socialchange in service-learning. Michigan J Community ServiceLearning 1995, 2:19-32.

46. Noley S: Service-learning from the agency’s perspective. NewDirect Higher Educ 1977, 18:87-92.

47. Lazarus J: The CHESP Program: Progress Update andImplementation Strategy. CHESP and Joint Education Trust; 2001.

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McLeod H, Scearce D: Social Networks for Social Change. MonitorInstitute; 2010.

The authors examine the emergence of network leadership models incollective impact efforts, and their role in achieving meaningful, lastingsocial change. The authors contrast network leadership (collective, dis-tributed, bottom-up and facilitative) with conventional leadership (direc-tive, centralized, top-down and transactional) which has historically beenassociated with strong, hierarchical organizations.

49.��

English-Lueck J, Cerda M, de Soto C, Koskovich M, Martinez M,Nero M, Valpey D, Velazquez Rivera A: CommUniverCity San Jose:An Ethnographic Evaluation. San Jose State University; 2009.

In this study, San Jose State University Anthropology faculty and grad-uate students used a variety of ethnographic techniques, includingcontent analysis, participant observation, focus groups, interviews,and ‘indigenous evaluation’ to explore the quality and depth of the socialcapital that CommUniverCity has built among its stakeholders. Theauthors articulated the structural challenges that the organization facedas it transitioned from ‘start-up’ mode to a point of maturity.

50.��

Garcia CE, Vera-Sanchez CG, Rudy P: Social capital from theground up: building trust and participation in San Jose. San JoseState University; 2014.

This study examines the results of a community survey in San Joseutilizing the social capital framework developed by Robert Putnam andThe Saguaro Seminar. The analysis of the surveys found that levels ofsocial capital in the neighborhoods served by CommUniverCity San Josehave increased significantly from 2006 through 2011.

51. The Saguaro Seminar: SK 2006 Community Benchmark Survey.Harvard Kennedy School; 2006.

The Saguaro Seminar developed a comprehensive framework for mea-suring social capital and a survey instrument that has been used in morethan 50 communities throughout the country. This body of work on socialcapital and its connection to community indicators such as economicprosperity, children’s wellbeing, safety, health, happiness and civicparticipation, is of seminal importance in the field of community devel-opment.

52. Saltmarsh J: Exploring the meaning of community/universitypartnerships. Society for Exp Educ Quart 1998, 6–7:21-22.

53. Freire P: The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation.South Hadley. Bergin & Garvey; 1985.

54.�

Christensen T, Jackson M: CommUniverCity San Jose: buildinga partnership for service and learning. In In Civic Service:Service-Learning with State and Local Government Partners.Edited by Redlawsk DP, Rice T. Jossey-Bass; 2009.

Terry Christensen and Melinda Jackson, two San Jose State Universityfaculty members who were instrumental in the creation of CommUniver-City, provide an overview of the organization’s origins and early evolution.They also offer a tool-kit for replicating this multi-sector, community-driven partnership model.

























































































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