This website is part of the National Community-Based Research Networking Initiative, which is being managed through by Princeton University's Community-Based Learning Initiative and the Bonner Foundation with funding support from the Corporation for National and Community Service.
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Trisha Thorme
Assistant Director, Community-Based Learning Initiative
Princeton University
609-258-6986 • tthorme@princeton.edu
Trisha Thorme, the Assistant Director of Princeton’s Community-Based Learning Initiative, will coordinate the project. She has managed Princeton University’s Community-Based Learning Initiative since 2000, during which time the CBR program has doubled in size while achieving high quality. She was the recipient of the “Rising Leader” award from NSEE in 2002 in recognition of her cutting-edge work at Princeton. She came to Princeton from Lafayette College, where she served as the Landis Community Outreach Center Director. Her scholarly background is in anthropology and archaeology, and she has taught on those subjects at Lafayette and Cornell. She has presented widely on integrating CBR into courses and establishing CBR centers, at such conferences as AAHE, Loka, and the Kellogg Conference on Best Practices in Undergraduate Community-Based Research: Challenges and Opportunities for the Research University.
Robert Hackett
Vice President, Bonner Foundation
10 Mercer Street, Princeton, NJ 08540
609-924-6663 • rhackett@bonner.org
Bobby Hackett has more than 20 years of national experience in the service field, beginning as a co-founder of the Campus Outreach Opportunity League in 1984 and the last 14 years at the Bonner Foundation. The Foundation has supported a national service-based scholarship program for 16 years that currently operates on 75 colleges and universities and last year provided service-based scholarships to more than 2,500 students. The Foundation provides more than $6,750,000 per year in service-based scholarship assistance and has managed one of the largest AmeriCorps Education Awards Programs.
Denise Keller
Project Coordinator, National CBR Networking Initiative
Community-Based Learning Intiative, Princeton University
609-258-9750 • dkeller@princeton.edu
Many universities have started to question how they can invest their resources to build required social capital in the communities in which they are located. Former Harvard president, Derek Bok, commented, “Most universities continue to do their least impressive work on the very subjects where society’s need for greater knowledge and better education is most acute” (Bok, 1990, p. 122). Community organizer and activist, Saul Alinsky, was even more frank when he once stated that the word academic is synonymous for irrelevant (Alinsky, 1969). In attempts to make research more collaborative and participatory, community-based research tends to employ an approach that embraces research, education, and action (Green, et al, 1997). Community-based research seeks to be linked to the community where data are collected and analyzed with the purpose of taking action or affecting social change.
Participants in community-based research are empowered and liberated through a process of self-development through experience. They build upon their capacities in order to find a greater sense of identity and find the courage to voice change and question their rights previously denied. A deepening awareness takes shape when social, political, economic, and environmental contradictions are seen more clearly for individuals to take action against unjust structures and power dynamics. A critical consciousness is developed to improve the lives of those involved in the research process, and to transform fundamental societal structures and relationships.
Elements of community-based research include community participation and an ongoing reciprocal relationship between the researcher and the community. Levels of involvement are balanced between informed and flexible interaction. Community-based research provides a framework in which people seeking to overcome oppressive situations can come to understand the social forces in operation and gain strength through taking collective action. Knowledge and information become the essence of power. The process is directed by the community to bring about greater equality and participation in decision-making.
For students and faculty abstract theories can come alive through practical applications. Similarly, researchers who have questions about community-based programs related to their academic interests can obtain first-hand information and insights from grassroots groups. Academics can therefore become agents of social change by reaching out to under-served communities.
In the community-based model, academic and community members work together to identify the research issue, develop the design, collect the data, write up the results, and work with policy makers and practitioners in designing programs and policies. Research is also action-oriented, in the sense that findings can be adapted for activists, non-profits and government agencies.
The National CBR Networking Initiative grew out of the work done through two Learn & Serve grants that were written by Bobby Hackett and managed by the Bonner Foundation in Princeton, NJ. The initial L&S grant (1997-2000) supported a diverse collection of 15 campuses that engaged 70 faculty and 700 students in creating more than 140 community-based research (CBR) courses and projects. The second L&S grant (2000-03) supported the development of seven local/regional CBR networks involving 55 campuses in Trenton, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Denver, East St. Louis/St, Louis, and the Appalachian Region, which altogether engaged 170 faculty and 1700 students in 250+ CBR projects.
The goal of the National CBR Networking Initiative is to seed community-based research (CBR) into new campuses and regions of the country and to develop a national networking structures to support and connect schools as they expand their service-learning programs to include CBR. This effort will support the development of high-quality CBR through:
The National CBR Networking Initiative is supporting the following campuses in their efforts to establish community-based research courses and a center or home on campus to support research-based community-campus partnerships:
The following eleven schools were selected to receive suport for their innovative CBR courses or structures:
For a brief description of these innovation projects, see this page.