Are you considering writing a grant and want to include organizations/individuals from the community in your proposed project, but you are unsure of the best way to connect with them? Funding agencies like to see established partnerships, with evidence of mutual planning and goal-setting. But how can you find the right partners to work with, and how can you best engage with them for everyone’s benefit?
A panel of faculty and staff colleagues who have been successful in this work gathered Thursday, March 28, in the Laurel Forum for a special Panel Discussion about this topic. Panelists included Ameena Batada, Victoria Bradbury, Kate Johnson, Eric Klein, Ellen Pearson, Karin Rogers, and Irene Rossell.
Panelists shared their experiences on how to locate potential community partners, determine partners’ capacity, navigate relationship dynamics, and work together to build true, productive, and lasting collaborations.
You may view the recording of the panel discussion here.
Here is some background information on our panelists and their work with community partners:
Ameena Batada, DrPH, Professor, Dept. of Health & Wellness, Co-Director of Master of Public Health program
Ameena considers herself a “pracademic”, working closely with community organizations to co-conduct research for action, primarily program evaluations for improvement and funding and primary and secondary data collection to inform and advance policy change. Ameena utilizes approaches similar to community-based participatory research and action (CBPRA) and participatory action research (PAR) with partners and community researchers, identifying and implementing authentic and interactive methods, analyses, and sharing findings.
Victoria Bradbury, Associate Professor & Chair, Dept. of New Media
I have worked with community partners in my research and teaching since arriving at UNC Asheville in 2016. Like many early-career academics, I moved a lot to pursue degrees and teaching opportunities before embarking on my first tenure-track position at UNC Asheville. When I moved to a new place, I worked quickly to make contacts in my field so that I could conduct my research successfully there. When I started at UNC Asheville, I did the same, making contacts in the Asheville area, in arts and business, to build a network and conduct research. When I arrived, I was also inspired by the community-engaged teaching and scholarship that my departmental colleagues were already engaged in – including Lei Han and Curt Cloninger.
One of the first community partners I started working with in Asheville was Revolve Gallery in the River Arts District. I joined the board of Media Arts Project, which later became Revolve’s board of directors. Other community partners I have engaged with include the Center for Craft, Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center, photographer Andrea Clark, The Asheville Art Museum, the Shiloh Community Association, Better than Unicorns, and recently, Asheville Creative Arts. Working with community partners begins with attending their events and introducing yourself. You need to show interest and a commitment to what they are doing and the values of their organization – volunteering first goes a long way to building trust and relationships. You also need to be aware of the dynamics between yourself as a representative of the university – one of the largest employers in Asheville – and the smaller nonprofit organizations or businesses.
Kate Johnson, Director of the Key Center for Community Engaged Learning
Kate has worked in the field of Civic and Community Engagement in higher education for the past 15 years. Her responsibilities have included significant collaboration with community partners, including the coordination of ongoing networking and professional development opportunities for nonprofit partners at a previous institution. Currently, as the director of the Key Center for Community Engaged Learning, she supports partners via onboarding meetings, event and volunteer promotion, the Community Partner Database, and making campus connections.
Eric Klein, Associate Director for Outreach & Success
Eric Klein has been crafting partnerships with public schools for more than a decade. For eight years, he worked on the school district side of those partnerships co-designing afterschool programs and summer camps as well as classroom and off-campus enrichment programs. Partners included higher education institutions, community organizations, individuals, small businesses, community members and large corporations. Before coming to UNC Asheville in 2022, he worked with a cohort of community colleges to design and implement academic enrichment programming with middle schools in their community. Here at UNC Asheville, Eric works to build and celebrate connections between the university and our neighboring communities through on-campus and in-district programming with their public schools.
Ellen Pearson, Professor, Dept. of History, Roy Carroll Professor of Arts & Sciences
In 2020, Ellen Holmes Pearson and Sarah Judson (History) founded “The 828 Digital Archives,” with a goal to center the voices of historically excluded individuals in the region by working with colleagues in New Media and Computer Science, as well as Asheville/Buncombe County community partners to design digital projects that craft a more inclusive and accessible history of western North Carolina. Their relationships with community partners such as the YWCA, St. John “A” Baptist Church, the South Asheville Cemetery Association, Kenilworth Residents Association, Buncombe County Special Collections, Southside Community Association, the Preservation Society of Asheville & Buncombe County, and local community and arts organizers and activists stretch back to the early 2000s. In recent years, Ellen and Sarah, along with Victoria Bradbury (New Media) have focused on co-creation of community histories related to African American women and the restoration and preservation of Asheville’s African American cemeteries. They and their students have worked with community partners in the Historic South Asheville and Shiloh neighborhoods to build digital exhibits highlighting African Americans’ contributions to their neighborhoods, to Asheville, and to the region’s society and culture. UNC Asheville student research helped Shiloh A.M.E. Zion church and Cemetery attain National Register designation in 2022. They continue to work with church and community members to create digital history projects on the community’s late-19th-century relocation from what is now Biltmore Estate property to its present location and on the history and contributions of prominent Shiloh families and individuals. In 2023, Ellen collaborated with the Land of Sky Council on a successful Americorps grant proposal to expand localized efforts to preserve African American cemeteries. This Cemetery Remembrance Project grant will establish a consortium of African American cemeteries in 15 western North Carolina counties to help reclaim, preserve, and restore our region’s cemeteries and to build richer and more diverse histories of our region.
Karin Rogers, Director of National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC)
NEMAC has a proven history of successful partnerships spanning academia, government agencies, non-profits, and private entities since our founding in 2003. Collaborations with organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US Forest Service, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation have enabled us to develop tools and resources supporting climate resilience and adaptation efforts. We also work closely with state and local governments, regional planning organizations, and academic institutions to tailor solutions for specific environmental challenges through stakeholder engagement, co-designing tools, and providing training. Our commitment to collaborative problem-solving underscores our ability to bridge disciplines and sectors to achieve shared goals in environmental resilience and adaptation.
Irene Rossell, Professor, Dept. of Environmental Studies
Irene Rossell is a Professor of Environmental Studies and Interdisciplinary Professor of the Mountain South. From 2018-1022, she directed Science on the Move, which brought Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) programming to children of migrant farmworkers. Science on the Move operated in close collaboration with the Buncombe County Schools’ Migrant Education Program and was funded by the Burroughs-Wellcome Foundation. Three UNC Asheville faculty and ten undergraduate students participated over four years, serving ~100 middle school and high school students, many of whom were not native English speakers and were newly arrived to western North Carolina. Activities took place on the UNC Asheville campus and throughout the region during the summer and academic year.