Recently, more and more organizations have become interested in partnerships forged between institutions of higher education and local community-based organizations. Released in late 2003, this 48-page report from the Pew Partnership for Civic Change (spearheaded by Jacqueline Dugery) investigated university-community research partnerships at 19 sites around the United States. Some of these community organizations included groups working in the areas of job training, commercial revitalization, youth mentoring, and job transportation. In order to place these findings in a broader context, the Pew Partnership (in collaboration with the University of Virginia) convened a number of individuals in October 2002 to discuss "the potential for these university-community research partnerships." These remarks are summarized within the body of this paper, along with an explication of a new research model for assessment and evaluation for use by community organizations and local institutions of higher learning developed by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change.
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